Under the Stars: Superlative locals Umbrellas, Fake Fruit, Now take the SFMOMA roof

Well, hello lovers of music and culture. We are Under the Stars, a quasi-weekly column that stays on message with strong-ass opinions, presenting new music releases, upcoming shows, and other adjacent items. We keep it moving, hustling with the changes, thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for five years… Spend some time with us…

FAKE FRUIT, THE UMBRELLAS, AND NOW AT SFMOMA, SEPTEMBER 18

I love writing about local bands, artists, and collectives who get to perform in their city for their fans, friends, and supporters. There is nothing better than witnessing that live and in person. A couple of weeks back, I saw Mae Powell from the balcony at The Independent with a fellow SF music head. (Full disclosure, Mae put me on the list, and I say thank you, Mae.) But the feeling in that building, her fans, on a Thursday night, getting to experience her album release night? Not a better feeling in the world.

Here is a similar situation. Listen, I’ve written many words about both Fake Fruit and The Umbrellas over the past four years. They represent what’s happening in San Francisco music right now. Nothing curated or manufactured about these bands. They are real artists, holding down numerous jobs, some at Amoeba Records to be exact, still paying their dues around the city, the country, and the world. So a gig on the roof of SFMOMA in the fall presented by Rooftop Radio and (((folkYEAH!)))? That right there is a sweet, done deal.

Get ready for magical special moments when our local museum gets to host bands who are defining what is happening right now in San Francisco. Art in motion, folks, it doesn’t get much better!

Grab tickets here.

SHONEN KNIFE AT BOTTOM OF THE HILL, OCTOBER 19

Formed in 1981 by Naoko Yamano, her friend Michie, and her sister Atsuko, this band has influenced alternative rock bands like Sonic Youth, Redd Kross, and L7 for over 35 years, with 19 albums and well over 1,000 gigs. Even in the early days, the pivotal lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of a little Seattle band called Nirvana said, “When I finally got to see them live, I was transformed into a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert.” According to NPR, in 1991 Nirvana asked Shonen Knife to join the group on tour. At the time, Naoko said, she’d never heard of Kurt Cobain and company, but their grunge look gave her pause. “I was so scared because their looking [sic] was very wild,” she recalls.

Nirvana’s seminal album Nevermind was in the process of knocking Michael Jackson’s Dangerous out of the number one Billboard slot; culture was shifting quicker than record companies could adjust. But as Cobain told MTV News a couple of years later, he was fanboying out over Shonen Knife. “I was an emotional sap the whole time. I cried every night,” said Cobain, who frequently shared his love of the band with interviewers.

So what does that mean for SF this fall? If you respect legends who might not have knocked MJ off the pop charts, but understood the importance of this little band hailing from Osaka, go see Shonen Knife at Bottom of the Hill. Maybe you will be inspired to start your own pop-punk band.

Grab tickets here.

DJ-KICKS 30TH ANNIVERSARY

DJ mix sets have become a crucial part of the electronic music industry (Bar Part Time has quickly risen as a local key player in this area), and the DJ-Kicks series, created in Berlin in 1995, claims the title of the first officially licensed DJ mix series available commercially. Think early ’90s underground hip-hop mixtapes (Fat Beats, Tony Touch, DJ Kid Capri), but with a focus on house and techno, drum & bass, downtempo, trip-hop—genres whose names were often made up on the spot, showing how quickly their scenes were evolving.

DJ-Kicks saw what rave/underground kids and DJs were doing (passing around mixes on cassettes that were incredible and playing them in the car on the way to the next underground spot) and created their own unique brand of mixes for this new audience to geek out about. DJ-Kicks will celebrate its 30th anniversary in December with a 30-artist lineup in London. Understand this: whether you perceived this series as industry trade publication fodder or actual art, the successful !K7 Records series has helped shape the current global EDM movement, which garnered approximately $10.167 billion in 2024.

All praise is due.

I distinctly remember a time in SF when the classic drum & bass Kemistry and Storm mix from 1999 of DJ Die’s “Clear Skyz” was boom-banging all over town and through the fog, and on constant rotation in record stores (RIP the downtown Diesel Store—hello, Capitol One Lounge in the same space), Whooptie VW Cabriolets, and tricked-out Honda Civics. Back when Sci-Clone’s anthemic “Everywhere I Go (Remix)” would be blaring from the same cars all leaving The Top (now Underground SF) at 3am on a Sunday, hitting that rave spot off to the side of a farm on that particular beach in Daly City. IYKYK.

All the squares who were trying to convert would use the term “electronica” (terminology that still makes me vomit in my mouth a bit) when purchasing the famed Kruder and Dorfmeister K&D sessions mix.

Listen, like any musical artist, the series has had its share of misses. However for the most part, especially in the past 10 years, it has made an effort to showcase the current roster of globally traveling DJs who are shaping electronic music culture in real time. They finally let go of the white-guy-who-looks-like-a-Dieter concept and evolved. DāM-FunK (2016), Robert Hood (2018), Peggy Gou (2019), Laurel Halo (2019), Jayda G (2021), Theo Parrish (2022), and Cinthie(2022)—they’ve championed the music non-stop. And after recently seeing Floating Points put on a seminar on how to mix and maintain an active Zoomer dance floor at this year’s Outside Lands, it was one of the best performances at this year’s edition. What the hell, give ole Sam Shepard a mix too while you are at it. Dude is out here building sound systems for the culture, ya dig?

Now with Soundcloud, Mixcloud, NTS radio shows, and so many platforms presenting the music mixed daily, who knows how long this platform will continue? But its commitment—again, whether for financial or cultural gain, is undeniable. It’s made careers and presented this movement to the world. The late-great MC Conrad spoke of Roni Size being on the DJ-Kicks: Nicolette (another classic) session, how that one song “Phyzical” opened up markets for MC Conrad and Roni Size to tour that they never envisioned before.

All of these things, just because of a mix.

You can pre-order the upcoming Modeselektor DJ-Kicks mix here.

DEVO AND THE B-52s AT SHORELINE AMPHITHEATER, OCTOBER 16

Why am I writing about the Devo Netflix documentary when our ace film critic Dennis Harvey already wrote an in-depth—knocked the snot out of it—review for 48hills a couple of weeks ago? That’s the same question my boss, Marke B., is also prolly asking. Reason? I had no idea that without the Kent State massacre in 1970—when the Ohio National Guard shot 30 and killed four unarmed students during an anti-Vietnam War protest—Devo might not have existed.

The co-founders of Devo, Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, were students at Kent State University at the time of the protests. Casale attended the protest and personally knew two of the victims. This tragedy led the band to be a bit more serious, a bit more tenacious. Technically, Devo began as a reimagined protest band, even though “protest artists” of that era were primarily identified as longhairs.

These folkies saw the world and the country going in a certain direction, and Devo was the laser pointer saying “aHem.”

Their 1981 album New Traditionalists made me a believer. It had drums like Prince, keyboard chord progressions, and basslines like Prince, too. But these nerds were pushin’ their own type of funk, from the reverse flower pot hats to picking up the vibe of the Ramones and playing their arty songs faster, and even the power/control game they engaged with from David Bowie and Brian Eno, producing their first album, Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! from 1978.

The Netflix documentary tells an insightful story about a band from Ohio that stuck to their guns, made it on MTV by being themselves, and then descended when the video channel wanted them to repeat themselves.

They were through being cool, indeed. Catch them at Shoreline with B-52’s on October 16.

Grab tickets here.

THE SAXOPHONES, NO TIME FOR POETRY

On November 7, Oakland-based outfit The Saxophones will release its new album No Time for Poetry on the Full Time Hobby imprint. Inspired by mid-career Leonard Cohen, the moody, blue-lit soundtracks of Drive, The Last Showgirl, and the cheeky ’80s southern California police teleplays, No Time for Poetry is a glimpse of The Saxophones’ inner dialogue, laden with notes processing their precarious environment, marked by dry fatalism and woozy up-ticking ennui. They’ve shared the lead track “Too Big for California,” which paints a picture worth further examination.

Pre-order here.