San Francisco Music Blog

Wholphin screening Friday at ATA

​Shake off the workday without shedding too many bills. Check out this week's picks for living cheaply without giving up your weekend dose of pop culture and pedal steel.

Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo @ de Young (Fri.) The art produced on the streets (and walls) of the Mission is world-renowned. From the educational tours through the murals to the occasional stumble down an alley to check out intriguing graffiti, there's plenty of eye candy painted all over the city's most colorful 'hood. The de Young Museum is devoting a full year of its Friday night happy hours to Mission art, kicking things off tonight with a giant book release party for the giant (900-image strong) book Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo. The new art tome collects together  work by TWIST, Rigo, and taqueria muralists, poems and essays, and more. Tonight the Mission Muralismo launch party includes live music by Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeno Band among other entertainment. (Free, 5:30 p.m.)

Wholphin Screening @ ATA (Fri.) Check out another creative wing of the Dave Eggers publishing empire with a screening for the new edition of Wholphin, a DVD magazine of "unseen films." Highlights from issue 10 include a Spike Jonze/Catherine Keener short where they act out a childhood memory from Maurice Sendak, and a young Todd Haynes in "He Was Once." A selection of short films from people with long resumes kicks off tonight at ATA. ($6, 8 p.m.)

KUSF Rock 'n' Swap Pre-Party (Fri.) and Rock 'n' Swap For Real (Sun.) One of our favorite local community stations, 90.3 KUSF, has hit hard times. Its DJs regularly complain of broken turntables, fer chrissakes. Instead of regular pledge drives, though, KUSF hosts regular Rock 'n' Swaps, gigantic flea markets of vinyl, CDs, music DVDs, and more held on the USF campus. The next Swap is on Sunday, where $3 gets you entry between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. (hard-core music nerds pay $20 for the early-bird admission between 6 and 10 a.m.). If you want to start the KUSF donations early, hit Poleng Lounge on Friday night for FutureClassic with DJs Natural Self, J-Boogie, B-Cause, Proof, and more. ($5-$10, 10 p.m.)

​Andy Caldwell is a skilled pianist and trumpeter, but his classical training takes a back seat to his rep in the clubs. The Om Records staple and Uno Recordings owner has spent the past decade and a half touring the world (hitting all the big dance meccas: Ibiza, Berlin, Australia) with his turntables and recording tastemaking mixes. His latest album, Obsession is a departure from the San Francisco house scene he's synonymous with; here he collaborates on electro bangers with Mr. V, Storm Lee, Femke, Mr. J. Madeiros, and more. It's fitting that he's sonically departed the Bay Area, as he also moved down to Los Angeles, looking for better weather and a change of creative scene.

Caldwell is back in town on Saturday, Nov. 14, with a show at Vessel and, most likely, a stop at his favorite bakery. 

Name: Andy Caldwell

Style(s) of music you spin: house, house, HOUSE!

So what's your story, in 100 words or less? Just a kid who fell in love with house music, dedicated my life to it, and never looked back.

When and why did you leave San Francisco? I moved to LA not too long ago because I was feeling creatively stagnant and was looking for a place with warmer weather. Also many of my closest friends live here so I had a nice social network already. I like visiting SF though! I spent 12 years there.

What do you miss most about living here? One word... Tartine.

Click to enlarge

We can't tell either.

​ Found on Townsend and Fourth Street.

​Local producer/remixer/dancefloor commander Wallpaper. posted a new upbeat number this week. Main man Eric Frederic mashed a little Mariah Carey ("Emotions") into Fools Gold's "Surprise Hotel."

Frederic told Stereogum (which posted the track) that the song is part of a new  "SiSTRS From Different MiSTRS" series. He explained that this track was specifically inspired by the fact that the original songs matched in key--and in exhuberance. Emotional indeed.

Blues Control @ The Hemlock

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In terms of cringeworthy musical clichés, stating that "the blues" is a state of mind ranks near the top of the list. Thankfully, Queens-based duo Blues Control gets into the best kind of headspace possible: that of a total mindfuck. The band crafts woozy, inscrutable, seemingly endless instrumentals on one guitar and a keyboard (and sometimes an old drum machine), making music that always seems to be unraveling, at once hypnotizing and confounding. Built up from tape loops or primitive electronics, the guitar oozes and flares, never quite settling into a pattern, while the piano seems to be everywhere at once, underpinning the proceedings while also taking them further out.

The band's third album, Local Flavor, is its most coherent yet, at least in terms of the duo's aesthetic sensibilities. "Good Morning" opens things up with a frantic lo-fi drum machine before moving into a fuzzy guitar outburst. The deft piano accompaniment expands upon the melody. A touch of layered brass caps off this lo-fi boogie-glam hybrid. Ambient loops and murky melodic excursions waft in and out of focus throughout Local Flavor, culminating in the mesmeric 17-minute smog of church organ and fried guitar on "On Through the Night."

Read the full Blues Control profile here, and check out the band live at the Hemlock (9 p.m., $7)

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"One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran" @ Intersection For The Arts

Taraneh Hemami of San Francisco and Ghazaleh Hedayat of Tehran teamed up to curate "One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran," describing life in the city through the eyes of its artists. The show (at Intersection For the Arts) acknowledges the ephemeral quality of a place that has been exciting and volatile through the years. Aside from Hemami, who was born in Tehran and came to the United States in 1978 to attend college, the participating artists reside in Tehran. Using photography and mixed media, they present work that responds to daily life in Iran, illustrating culture in a city of almost eight million people filled with variables and contradictions. Viewers may recall Hemami from her beautiful Transcendence installation at YBCA this spring, which was a response to war and strife in the Middle East. Three prayer rugs, pointing east, were constructed of shattered glass and ashes. The paradisiacal tree of life was detailed on the rugs in blue, orange, and clear glass. Her sharp, aesthetically gorgeous social commentaries are well complemented by the work of her colleagues, and further illuminate life in a country so physically distant but constantly present in our news.

A free opening reception starts at 7 p.m.

Beware, San Francisco. The VIP dwelling, bottle service-ordering, loud cell phone-talking douchebags of the world are organizing. They demand a new, politically correct respect from all you snide hipsters out there. And they've made a video (posted on Laughing Squid earlier in the week) to prove it.

​You don't know what you got til it's gone. And if you're a commuter, that mantra holds doubly true for the Bay Bridge. Last week's bridge shutdown caused massive migraines (and prevented us from hitting the Alameda Flea Market!). But difficult times can produce great art.

Local funk/jazz/soul aficionado Kev Choice (who leads the Kev Choice Ensemble) hit the studio to bang out a killer homage, a little anthem called "The Bridge." The tune starts humorously--with a sample of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters." Choice adopts a somber tone and announces, "after being down for nearly a week, the bridge finally opened up yesterday..we couldn't party in The City but we had a good time in The Town, right?"

From there "The Bridge" becomes a love song, with Choice listing off all his good memories with the bridge and all the good things it's brought to his life. "We can't have the bridge falling down," he concludes in the chorus, "This ain't London...There may be other ways, but it ain't no better way to keep us moving through the Bay."

Check out "The Bridge", the fifth entry in Choice's Daily Dosage series.

Infrogmation

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SF Weekly is looking for local freelance music writers to contribute to All Shook Down. We're seeking both occasional and steady contributors. Applicants must have solid knowledge of multiple genres and the local music scene, and be plugged into all the requisite social media networks. Newswriting skills a plus. Assignments include live concert reviews, music news items, band Q&As, and CD reviews.

To apply, send a cover letter, copy of your resume, and links to your best published writing to Andy.Wright@sfweekly.com: make sure to write "Music Blogger Applicant" in the subject line. You can also mail your work into Music Blogger, c/o SF Weekly, 185 Berry, Lobby 5, Suite 3800, San Francisco, CA 94107.

No phone calls or follow up emails please. Seriously. We will hunt you down on Facebook and defriend you for life you if you break this rule.

​Photographer Hanna Quevedo hit the Dia De Los Muertos party in the Mission--where, she writes, "sugar skulls and candles meet bike-powered carriages and shadow puppetry in a mash-up of the traditional and the new."

See the full slideshow here.