This past August, I found myself back at Rickshaw Stop for a Popscene show. Brooklyn electro-outfit Fcukers was on stage and the sold-out room was downright sweaty. For all the gripes about how SF crowds don’t dance anymore (they’re not entirely wrong), this was hardly the case this evening. The fog machine was turned up to 11, there was a palpable industry buzz lurking throughout the 400 capacity space and the energy in the room was downright intoxicating; I wanted to live in that concert moment forever.
And I’ve felt this way at Popscene so many times before, a club night on the precipice of its 30th anniversary that’s made it a habit to host the SF debut of the next big thing. There was Wet Leg in 2021, a night where I lost count of how many music biz types were there (in SF?!) to lurk on what would soon become one of the hottest indie bands on the planet. My buddy Brandon “dragged” me out one night in 2015 to check out Wolf Alice, a band I hadn’t heard of at the time, but who a few years later went on to win the Mercury Music Prize for having the best UK album of the year. My friend Alyssa forever gives me FOMO talking about the time she saw Sam Smith’s 2014 SF debut there, which feels incredibly full circle today, given Smith’s bonafide queer-icon status and upcoming residency at the reopening of the Castro next February.
When you’re in the room, Popscene maestro DJ Aaron Axelsen makes it a point to project a Coachella-style poster on the wall of all the artists that made their SF debuts at this crucial indie party—at both Rickshaw Stop and the bygone 330 Ritch, Popscene’s home until 2010. It’s a head-turning list of names to get lost in. Billie Eilish, Arctic Monkeys, Blood Orange, Vampire Weekend, Florence + The Machine…heck there was a night in 2012 when Charli XCX headlined Rickshaw Stop with The Neighbourhood as her opener?! That’s just plain silly.
History aside, it’s the continuity that Axelsen, DJ Omar Perez, and the fine folks at the Rickshaw Stop have been committed to that makes Popscene essential. In a live music world increasingly controlled by corporate promoters, Popscene stands out as a truly independent entity in an inclusive space. How it manages to keep up with the giants is a marvelous feat and I’m forever amazed at not only Popscene’s influential taste in music, but also that of its patrons.
Look, I consider myself well-versed in the best of what’s next, but Axelsen and Co. are steadily bringing in acts from the UK and across the country for the first time that I’ve never heard of, that are still selling out hours after tickets go on-sale. Popscene in and of itself is a powerful platform for music discovery, and it thrives on a symbiotic relationship between a curator with decades of bullseyes and an audience that’s always along for the ride. Count me in forever.
