Hey, it’s Under The Stars, babe. A quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for five years, talking about San Francisco music: past, present, and future. Thanks for the hang… We know… it’s rough, like sandpaper, out there. So, spend some time with us.
SPACE GHOST AND TEDDY BRYANT, MAJESTIC FANTASIES (PEACE WORLD RECORDS)
So goes the saying, the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. It’s no surprise that Oakland-based producer Space Ghost and vocalist Teddy Bryant squeeze every ounce of that ’80s R&B magic into Majestic Fantasies, the debut album from Space Ghost on his Peace World Records imprint. Anybody familiar with Ghost’s resume are fans of the “after-the-rave sunrise” sensations and deep, funky-house select arrangements that have us waiting, straight-up fiending for this type of release. Yet, proper space, heh, is reserved for some pristine-sounding street soul balladry, which reminds us all The Whispers were from The Town too. Majestic Fantasies presents past R&B stoic styles—Carl McIntosh ring a bell?—and designs them for a modern reconditioning, but it’s still equipped with all the love and positivity you need to have a better day. Your soul can’t afford not to purchase this album, which will be out on June 13.
Pre-order here.
MADISON MCFERRIN AND THE SESHEN AT YERBA BUENA GARDENS FESTIVAL, SAT/24
We want to inform everyone that some free live music concerts taking place this summer in downtown San Francisco do not feature EDM DJs. Unusual, right? Many thanks to YBGF for bringing no-cost soul music back to Cloud City.
The highly creative, San Francisco-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin, best known for making a cappella jammers a thing once again, will headline a performance this Sat/24. Her debut album I Hope You Can Forgive Me from a couple of years back saw her produce 70 percent of an album that combined complex rhythms and careful arrangements into stellar songbook creations, elevating the human voice to its highest heights.
Her father, the jazz-folk vocalist Gawd who is Bobby McFerrin, was the only feature on the project. Their collaboration “Run” melded up a symphonic blend. These two inventive vocalists from different generations join to form a stylish bumper of jazz, funk, electronic, and soul. Matter of fact, I’m still waiting for the drum and bass remix.
Be in attendance early to grab seating to catch Bay Area outfit The Seshen open in support. Soul, out on the green on a Saturday afternoon? Refreshing.
Make sure to RSVP here.
THE B-52’S, THE WARNER AND REPRISE YEARS (RHINO RECORDS)
Theo Parrish, people. Not Jann Wenner, Kurt Loder, or even the esteemed rock critic David Fricke, told me to go buy “Mesopotamia,” the six-song 1982 EP by The B-52’s, produced by David Byrne. Yep, the unapologetically Black house hero himself put me up on game.
Not any of the old guard white Rolling Stone rock critics we were all subjected to read back in the olden times, not Nelson George or Greg Tate at the Village Voice—two of the few Black voices who covered music for the titan of all independent weekly newspapers back in the day. Not even Pitchfork, with their vaunted Sunday reviews, their hit-or-miss longreads on albums from the past.
Nope, none of them.
Theo (freaking) Parrish, Mang! Master DJ, soul controller behind the decks, extreme record producer, father of the Ugly Edits (praise Black Jesus), who brings needle skips into proper context when playing for six-plus hours, spinning that vinyl to let you know there is a human, not a robot, at the controls. He of the NTS mixes or IRT DJ gigs in Brooklyn, Berlin, or London, the kind of gigs where people write down playlists on toilet paper. Everybody there knows they are in for a ride. Disco, techno, hip hop, house, new wave, rock, jazz, dub, fusion, Brazilian. It all plays on his floor.
Yep, that guy. And I still wasn’t ready when I bought the sucker.
Sometime in the late 2000s. I was getting ready to hit Mighty (now known as The Great Northern) to see Theo put it on folk—excuse me, perform. He happened to be outside, looking at what shoes the ladies were wearing (if they were trainers, aka sneakers, that means folks came ready to dance—it’s an old Duke Ellington observation that still works), and we chopped it up.
I mentioned that I was digging in on post-punk, no-wave, disco-not-disco tracks, and before I knew it, he might have interjected. Unlike me, he had a set to play that night,
“Hey, brotherman, Doctor Talky McTalky. Go to your local thrift store and dig through the rock section for Mesopotamia by the B-52s. It’s produced by David Byrne. It will set you back no more than two bucks and will become priceless in your DJ sets.”
Word. Bet.
The next day, I went down the street to Community Thrift on Valencia. Arrived at 8:59am, perused the rock section, passed over five million copies of Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees (a 2021 Pitchfork Sunday review, I may add), found Mesopotamia, and it cost me a buck 75. Paid for it, swung by Blue Bottle for some pricey high octane and croissant, went home, threw that bad boy on the turntable.
And got blown away.
And now, the B-52s have announced a career-spanning vinyl box set. On June 20 via Rhino, they’ll release The Warner and Reprise Years, a 9x LP box set on colored vinyl comprised of their studio albums from the 1979 self-titled debut on up to 1992’s Good Stuff. The box set is being released in time for Pride Month, and as such, the vinyl makes a rainbow: The B-52’s on yellow, Wild Planet on red, Mesopotamia blue, Party Mix! green, Whammy! smoke-colored, Bouncing Off the Satellites pink, Cosmic Thing orange, and Good Stuff purple, issued as a double LP. The box set will also be released on CD the same day.
Pre-order here.
AUTOCAMPER, “AGAIN,” WHAT DO YOU DO ALL DAY? (SLUMBERLAND)
Well, alright! Manchester’s Autocamper makes melodic, jangle-pop ear jammers with catchy hooks and lyrics that snap into position. Band members Jack Harkins and Niamh Purtill put together these accessible, seemingly simple lyrics that have just a bit of slick work added, for an effect that works so fluidly, it’s a while before you start thinking how someone worked hard to make something that rolls off the tongue this easily.
With an upcoming release on the almighty Oakland-based imprint Slumberland, along with Safe Suburban Home in the UK this July, label this as an incoming treat for the senses.
Pre-order here.
BLACKSTAR SYMPHONY: THE MUSIC OF DAVID BOWIE AT SF SYMPHONY, JUNE 26 AND 27
Moonage Daydream, a two-hour-plus theme park of a 2022 documentary about David Bowie’s committment to the essence of performance, arrived tuned up with a big honking noisy rock show swagger, built for IMAX dispensation followed by midnight cinematic runs for years to come. For the film’s narration, director Brett Morgen used audio clips from the enigmatic rockstar. Bowie’s mumblecore snippets, internal dialogue that slipped out, steals the show, running commentary interspersed with shifting aspect ratios and film stocks that depict the frenetic points and psychological states of Bowie’s creative eras as they growl and provoke everybody throughout several decades.
In another tone of voice entirely was Blackstar, Bowie’s final album, a direct message from the ultimate art hustler himself released on January 8, 2016, his 69th birthday. It blended atmospheric art rock with various jazz styles, pulling inspiration from artists that included Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips, whom he listened to during the album’s production. Two days after the album’s release, Bowie died of cancer. Tony Visconti, who worked on his albums Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Low, Lodger, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Heathen, Reality, The Next Day, and finally, Blackstar, described the latter as Bowie’s intentional swan song and a “parting gift” for his fans.
You can expect the BlackStar SF Symphony event to be a life-affirming wet kiss from Bowie. Swan songs deserve to be celebrated more than once and certainly, by the living. The album will be reimagined by a 65-piece orchestra and performed with the original Blackstar band.
The evening culminates in a celebration of Bowie’s iconic song catalog, featuring touchstones like “Space Oddity,” “Life on Mars,” and “Heroes.” Blackstar Symphony will allow Bowie fans to reconnect with the one-of-a-kind art hustler over two electric nights.
More info here.
