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 celebrate a musical legend while delving into a winning New Year’s Eve option for the cinematically enthused NYE partakers. Then, we fast-forward deep into January for some live music shows that are worth your while to grab tickets for now.
Have a great NYE, and thanks for rocking with us here at Under The Stars.
Let’s get after it:
NOISE POP PHASE TWO ANNOUNCEMENT
Cut to the quick, St Nick. Last week, Noise Pop announced its phase two lineup for its mid-February showcase, including Jay Som at Gray Area, who will be appearing at a co-presented event with KEXP Vinelands Live, Marie Davidson, Giraffage, Chrome Sparks, and CupcakKe. Even Open Mike Eagle is returning, this time playing at the UC Theater following his Bottom of The Hill show last July. But once again, when you look closer at the poster, it’s easy to find the local bands, such as Orcutt Shelly Miller and Carpool Tunnel.
The festival’s phase one lineup announcement featured headliners like Chicago-based rock band Tortoise, Los Angeles’ clipping. (the sci-fi rap trio led by Oakland-raised film star Daveed Diggs, performing at Noise Pop for the first time since 2017), and Napa vocalist Shannon Shaw of Shannon & The Clams.
Running from February 19 to March 1, Noise Pop has an impressive lineup of up-and-coming artists this year. These 11 days of sweat-inducing shows and fiery performances will feature quirky jazz groups like SML, and the electronic Turkish-inspired modern music of the captivating Oakland band Beats Antique. Plus, art shows, happy hours, film screenings, and secret after-hour parties. Noise Pop is 2026’s first significant music event here in SF, don’t get left out.
Explore the schedule and grab tickets and badges here.
A VERY PURPLE NEW YEAR’S EVE AT VOGUE THEATER, DECEMBER 31 + RIP JELLYBEAN JOHNSON OF THE TIME
It was “The Walk.” That was the first time I actually heard The Time. The track kicks off with a mini drum solo following a keyboard stab, then flows with a stroll, a glide, and a dip in that hip, and we’re off, officially introduced to The Time. Prince was onto the multiverse thang decades before the Marvel folks. He contextualized his sound with Prince & The Revolution and Vanity 6, the latter a relationship that only lasted for one album, but featured the massive innuendo cut “Nasty Girl,” which got played on all kinds of radio stations.
And then, The Time, fronted by drummer Morris Day, and—in the original line-up before they were fired for doing side production for themselves—Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. As a matter of fact, the track they got caught dipping out to record and produce remains a boogie-skate get down banger to this day:
Listen, there were several characters in The Time besides the Ladies’ Man who loved himself: Morris Day; Jerome, with the mirror and shade-eyed smirk that’s always on time; Jesse Johnson on guitar; Monte Moir on keys; and Jellybean Johnson, the drummer and backbone of the rhythm section who passed away on November 21 this year.
We always wanted more from the film Purple Rain, right? Gimme more of Wendy and Lisa, and definitely extra from The Time, beyond just Morris Day. This band is a band. And bands have chemistry, jokes, inside baseball-type burns, that I want to hear. You know these cats are cuttin’ on each other every second they can outside of performances.
But they still nearly steal the film every time they get on stage, with their live music performances, showcasing that impressive talent that rivals Prince in his own self-aggrandizing faux-biopic. It was set up that way. That’s how drama works.
Even the prickly, heavyweight film critic of the late 20th century, Pauline Kael, who reviewed the film for The New Yorker on August 20, 1984, was feeling—well, with a slight dash of racism—some of the Purple Rain funk:
Prince saves himself by his impudence, and the picture also introduces a full-fledged young comedian, Morris Day. The lead singer of the group The Time, he is cast as Morris the villain—the more conventional funk rocker… Decked out in a glittering gold zoot suit and black-and-gold shoes, Morris Day does his vain, lecherous routines with the ease of the top vaudeville artists of decades past; he feasts his eyes on the mirror, giggling with joy at how he looks, all lighted up like a Christmas tree, or he hurls his magnificence into a waiting car—almost everything he does gets laughs. And when he and his handsome sidekick, Jerome Benton (who looks like a dark Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.), dance to The Time’s music, they have a loose, floppy grace. Morris Day suggests a Richard Pryor without the genius and the complications.
Take a look at The Time’s early music video for “Cool,” which is set in a classroom. The concept echoes the themes found in the J. Geils Band’s “Angel Is a Centerfold” and Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.” Shooting a video in a classroom was an effective ’80s trope, and it certainly worked for kids getting home from school, plopping down, turning on MTV, and seeing these bands in the classroom. There was synchronicity, ya know?
You know what else worked? Garry George “Jellybean” Johnson, drummer for The Time.
He unfortunately passed two days after his birthday on November 21 at the age of 69. Both a drummer and a guitar player, he’s properly and respectfully hailed as a major contributor to that Minneapolis sound, which combined rock, pop, funk, soul, and jazz.
As it was Prince who programmed that famous drum beat for “777-9311” on the Linn LM-1 drum machine. It was a mistake, but he left it in, because he liked the way it sounded.
“Prince did a lot of our songs on drum machine,” Johnson told Reverb Magazine in June 2023. “So I had to learn all those crazy-ass drum machine beats. Some of that stuff is not humanly possible. But I had to learn it. Because live, I was the drum machine!”
The hi-hat rolls in the Linn drum setting are credited to David Garibaldi, drummer for Tower of Power, the Oakland-based band was a favorite of Prince and The Time.
Regardless of the source, though, Johnson perfected those intricate hi-hat patterns and off-beat snare hits during live performances, night after night. (After taking three months at first to get the nuances correct.)
You can catch The Time in Purple Rain at Vogue’s New Year’s Eve double feature, and then stick around for Sign of the Times, which sees Prince adds vignettes and off-Broadway one-act play energy to his epic album soundtrack movie. The older I get, the more and more I’m smitten with the “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man” performance here. You just sense Prince giving those Midwest, Friday night frisky vibes as a response to John Cougar Mellencamp-type yarns that graced terrestrial radio in the ’80s.
Make these films your ultimate low-key option for a mid-type energy night, filled with those purple vibes. Happy New Year!
Grab tix and info here.
BRAXTON COOK, KIEFER TRIO, JOSH JOHNSON FOR THE SMARTBOMB X SFJAZZ COMMUNITY OPEN HOUSE AT SFJAZZ CENTER, JANUARY 18
Running it back for the second year in a row because? It’s a fire-type, flammables situation.
Not some well-meaning type thingy, but absolutely, positively on the strength-come-through-type legit. SMARTBOMB, the Oakland-based creative community and live events-multimedia platform, has assembled a ridiculous and straight-up killer line-up of Bay Area DJs and international cutting-edge artists that I’d personally pay to see in 17 different places. But SMARTBOMB and SF JAZZ, for the second year in a row, got ’em all under one roof.
The operation will be taking over Miner Auditorium, Joe Henderson Lab (you know how live that creative space can get), and Vinyl pop-ups curated by Mike Boo and Lloyds Records, with a lineup that reads like an expertly curated music festival, one that is illuminating boundary-pushing and genre-defying musicians, beatmakers, DJs, painters, and visual artists. Hear saxophonist and composer Josh Johnson, DJ sets by Musa Bey, Lonely Girl, Dani Offline, Jenset, and Ari B. Vendors will include Chameleon Vintage, Irrelevant Press, Highly Human, For Ina + Liyang Network, Claudia Ley Designs, and Rahaal Shop.
Love to see this sell out and give shine to the established artists and the up-and-comers, which is why we are pumping this up early.
With performers and merchants pretty much reppin’ The Bay, come through and let SFJAZZ know that these types of community open houses need to happen more often. Especially with live performance spaces, “little rooms” are slowly disappearing. When you attend these shows, your presence is felt, and the chances for local artists to perform at Noise Pop, Outside Lands, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, and so on increase exponentially. Come through, enjoy, have fun, and support your creative community in the SFJAZZ space.
Grab tix here.
SAY SHE SHE AT AUGUST HALL, JANUARY 27
Talk about a first impression.
It was the day after the soulful female-led band from Brooklyn and London, Say She She, debuted on late-night television that the whole world found out Jimmy Kimmel had been suspended from ABC. According to Billboard, for five days, singer Piya Malik believed her dance-pop trio, Say She She, was one of the final bands to perform on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” So she was “elated” when the Walt Disney-owned network announced less than a week later that the nearly 23-year-old show would return to its late-night schedule on September 23.
“It’s a small win that we all needed right now,” said Malik, “When we act together, we can protect free expression and hold these monopolies to account.”
It’s so funny, I’ve been following the band for a while, along with many others. Its name pays homage to Nile Rodgers, sounding like the French phrase c’est chi-chi (meaning “it’s chic”) and referencing the band’s soulful, danceable music. I just assumed they had already been on the U.S. late-night circuit.
The trio has this 1960s girl group energy that gets flattened out by ’70s disco and ’80s dance grooves. They’re constantly time-traveling with their sound, but their three-part harmonies are always identifiable and welcoming.
Expect the August Hall show to be a classy, high-fashion affair.
Pick up the album here and grab those tix here.
ALTIN GÜN, GARIP
This Amsterdam-based band has been making waves since 2018, and always at the forefront of the revival of Turkish-influenced psychedelia.
That same phenomenon could be seen at Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek’s sold-out show this summer at The Chapel. Amid a packed-to-capacity showing by mostly the hipster kind, the small and mighty Yıldırım, lead vocalist for the band of the moment, spoke very humbly in English between songs in a sparkly shirt, about how these tracks were transposed from folk songs that her people used to sing while working in the fields. The comment stayed with me—and gave such a snapshot of how humble and decent these musicians are. They’re finding global fame by merely performing songs that have been in their culture for so long.
And in related news: Altın Gün, the Grammy-nominated Turkish psych-groove quintet from Amsterdam, are returning with its sixth studio album Garip, a heartfelt tribute to the legendary Turkish folk bard Neşet Ertaş (1938–2012). This beloved icon of Anatolian music, a gifted singer, lyricist, and bağlama virtuoso, carried the spirit of the ashik folk tradition into the modern era.
Garip (“Strange” in English) features 10 of his compositions, each reimagined and richly expanded through Altın Gün’s psyche-funk-folk forward perspective. I am sure that as soon as U.S. touring dates are available, the SF gigs will sell out quickly. Much like Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, Altın Gün’s Turkish-influenced rock and roll, which always lands on the hard-driving side of the road, is not a band to miss.
Pre-save Garip here.
