From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Wallpaper. Gets a Record Deal: It was around 10 o'clock on a Friday night in December when Ricky Reed walked into a meeting at the Sony Music building in Beverly Hills with no idea what to expect. Less than 36 hours later, Reed -- the creative force behind a comically crunked-out Oakland pop-hop outfit called Wallpaper. -- had signed to Epic Records, an imprint of the Sony empire run by the celebrity record executive and X Factor judge L.A. Reid.

In the span of a weekend, Reed, whose real name is Eric Frederic, morphed from a promising but small-time independent Bay Area artist to a new star in the pop machine responsible for radio staples like Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" and Rihanna's "Umbrella." It's a sharp change for Wallpaper., whose boisterous, bass-heavy funk is half a parody of the hit parade, and half a winking embrace of its charm. While much radio R&B embraces the bling-flashing, bottle-popping fantasies of mainstream hip-hop, Wallpaper. songs glorify drinking Two-Buck Chuck and cruising in your friend's mom's minivan. Its biggest hit, "#STUPiDFACEDD," is a bouncy blast of self-deprecation about getting wasted at a friend's apartment. Reed calls his songs "pop music for the 99 percent" ... [continue reading]

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From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Prince Paul and P Forreal

Prince Paul's Musical: Negroes on Ice. That's the name of producer Prince Paul and his son's new hip-hop play. The title is provocative; it evokes scathing images of mainstream millionaire rappers with Bambi-like spindly legs slipping and sliding around on the slick ice of the modern hip-hop world. But the title was chosen less for its subversive suggestion than off-kilter comedy kicks. "I wish I could sit down and tell you about how there was this 1920s figure skater," says Paul, "but, well, it's just a name that me and my son came up with that seems to make people smile." Fittingly then, Negroes on Ice is a good-time hip-hop play that delights in poking fun at the genre's often po-faced figures -- but does so while leaving behind an earnest message about the bond between a father and his son... [continue reading]

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From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Here's hoping Roach Gigz gets his due in '12

Wish List for 2012: Optimists say that if you want to have your dreams come true, you should write them down. We frankly doubt that elucidating the things we want to happen in S.F. music in 2012 will make them come to pass. But then it's not like things are particularly shabby, musically speaking: 2011 saw local artists get more attention than in many previous years (even if those artists weren't always the ones we wanted), and brought numerous other encouraging developments (also many depressing ones). We can't help feeling a trifle optimistic at the start of this leap year, so it's with a pinch of hopefulness that we offer a wish list for Bay Area music in 2012. If any of them come true, remember whom to credit.

KUSF returns to the airwaves.
The FCC hasn't approved the transfer of the broadcast license from this once-mighty community radio station to a classical-music radio group partly owned by the University of Southern California -- at least not yet. We hope it doesn't go through. Finding a way to return the 34-year-old volunteer-run station to its former glory would be a tremendous longshot. But without KUSF, Bay Area radio doesn't represent the cultural diversity that makes this such an interesting place for music lovers to reside. So, gods above: Shake the earth, shoot lighting bolts, make the sky spew broadcast licenses, whatever. Just please get KUSF back on the air.

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From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Looking Back on 2011: A lot happened in Bay Area music in 2011 -- and not all of it had to do with a female rapper from Oakland called Kreayshawn. Remember KUSF getting shut down? Or the battle to save the Eagle Tavern? And it wasn't all sad news either -- 2011 saw a number of local creative breakthroughs, the continuing rise of electronic music, and some incredible shows. Relive it in our handy local music 2011 rewind.

JANUARY

San Francisco's own state Assemblywoman Fiona Ma works on the Anti-Raves Act of 2011, a bill intended to ban raves -- defined as nighttime events lasting longer than three and a half hours and including prerecorded music -- on public property.

Jan. 18: University of San Francisco officials abruptly shut down the college's radio station, KUSF 90.3 FM, after selling its FCC license to a classical music network partly owned by the University of Southern California. Students, volunteers, and music lovers around the world protest... [continue reading]

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From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Billy Sprague

Cassette-only labels are back: With vintage tape duplicators whirring beneath a dizzying backdrop of art supplies, busted keyboards, and shelves of tapes, Billy Sprague describes his long-term relationship with cassettes and the outlandish art that accompanies them. After praising at length the format's financial practicality and sonic warmth, he pauses, smirks, and offers another, perhaps underappreciated quality of cassettes: "They're cute."

Sanity Muffin's Billy Sprague makes runs of 100 tapes -- and they usually sell out.
Sprague runs Sanity Muffin, a modern cassette label that follows the path of vaunted indies like 4AD, Rough Trade, and Factory. In the '80s, those houses explored die-cut, fold-out packages, custom screenprinted snap covers with buttons, and Velcro. In today's mp3-happy music universe, Sprague and many other locals keep the analog tradition alive by releasing innovative music on cassettes, often with bizarre artwork... [continue reading]

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From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Metallica at the Fillmore

Metallica at 30: Text messages like the one I got from a friend before the third Metallica show last week -- "You are dead to me" -- were exactly the reason I decided to go to all four of the Bay Area metal band's 30th anniversary concerts at the Fillmore. Spending some 12 hours with Metallica in San Francisco's best rock venue might be an Elysium for its fans, but most people I know would rather hang out for a day with Michelle Bachmann, or a dental drill. Going to all four shows would be crazy, torturous, character-tarnishing, and possibly dangerous. "I can't believe you're doing it," I kept hearing, as if I might walk out onto Geary Boulevard on Sunday morning 20 years older, wearing a goatee, and ride off on a Harley with some leather-clad metal vixen. (Or, worse, appreciate St. Anger.)

Whatever -- I enjoy Metallica, or at least I used to. Somehow I needed to understand how the teen who listened to Master of Puppets for two years straight grew up to be an adult who sings along to Taylor Swift. And I wanted to know whether the Bay Area's biggest rock export in three decades still matters, if this Napster-hating, Lou Reed-collaborating, shrink-visiting foursome has anything important left to give to the world... [continue reading]

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From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

Tycho

Tycho: Scott Hansen may not actually have synesthesia -- the condition where one's sensory perceptions are connected, so that they see music or hear colors -- but you'd be forgiven for assuming he does. Making music as Tycho, and designing visually as ISO50, Hansen possesses an uncanny ability to evoke sensations outside of his work's medium.

His music is immensely visual: Dive, Tycho's latest release (and Hansen's first since his 2004 debut, Sunrise Projector, was repackaged and re-released as Past Is Prologue in 2006), features 10 songs that construct an immersive environment -- a warm bath of swirling melodies, digital delay, and propulsive, almost motorik rhythms. The album draws you into its own landscape, starting with the first track, "A Walk": Slow and ponderous tones float idly over a beat-less surface, creating a hazy atmosphere reminiscent of a coastal rain forest. These notes are gradually met by a laid-back rhythm that expands to include an ambling bassline and ethereal slivers of feminine voice. Halfway through, the song breaks, and we're transported at 80 miles per hour along a coastline at ground level. Moving rapidly, the musical images fade into a blur, as though Hansen is driving a Greyhound bus through a tone poem. And actually, that's what all of Dive feels like -- one continuous visual journey viewed out of a passenger window. Tracks like "Adrift" and "Dive" create entire highway networks from washed-out synthesizer pads, reverb-soaked guitars, and wandering monophonic motifs... [Continue reading]

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The Weakerthans

From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

The Weakerthans: Staying abreast of contemporary music is an exhausting and nearly futile enterprise. Too many bands exist, as do too many songs, too many shows, too many tweets, too many everything. Thankfully, bands like The Weakerthans exist, too -- groups whose members resist saturating the world with input and only say something when they have something worth saying.

Since their inception in 1997, the Winnipeg four-piece has made only four full studio albums and six total releases. Reunion Tour, The Weakerthans' fourth and most recent full-length, arrived in 2007 -- which feels like an eternity ago. But that brief discography indicates a great sense of care, not laziness. When a Weakerthans record arrives, you can be sure that you'll have a lot to chew on. This week, they're giving local fans a lot of live material to digest by playing their four albums over consecutive nights at The Independent: 1997's Fallow on Wednesday, 2001's Left and Leaving on Thursday, 2003's Reconstruction Site on Friday, and Reunion Tour on Saturday. They will repeat this routine in New York City soon thereafter... [continue reading]

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DJ Neil Armstrong will be performing at Distortion 2 Static's farewell party.

From SF Weekly's latest print music section:

No More Static: "Me and Ariel Nuñez walked into the public access TV studio on a Friday in 2002, and they gave us a time slot for that Monday!" Halline Overby, who performs under the name DJ Haylow, is recounting the day that he and Ariel Nuñez were given the go-ahead for their hip-hop TV show. Named Distortion 2 Static, after a song by the Roots, the show quickly became a Bay Area broadcasting beacon: on it, Ariel Nuñez (also known as Rel), his brother Aries Nuñez (a.k.a. Prince Aries), and Overby profiled local artists without major reputations, and hustled interviews with soon-to-break megastars. On Nov. 25, they will close the show's decade-long reign with a farewell party at Mighty.

The way Overby and Aries tell it, Distortion 2 Static was fueled by the unbridled enthusiasm of die-hard hip-hop fans, coupled with an aptitude for professional broadcasting... [continue reading]

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Peter and Sergei Varshavsky, founders of Porto Franco Records

Bon Voyage, Porto Franco: Big-time success was never a likelihood for Porto Franco, a family-run Mission District record label that prides itself on championing local artists, rather than ones working in the same musical genre. Russian immigrant Peter Varshavsky started the project with his father, Sergei, in 2008, hoping to help the San Francisco musicians they loved -- jazz wizards, folk singers, an incredibly talented Ethiopian-born singer named Meklit Hadero -- put out records, build a following, and realize some of the success that the Varshavskys believed they deserved. No one thought that sustaining a new label was going to be lucrative or easy: From the start, Peter Varshavsky says, "Everyone told us not to do it." But he and his father thought they could at least build a business that would support itself.

Three years later, many of Porto Franco's more than 20 artists have raised their profiles; some, like Hadero, are on their way to international stardom. But as a business, Porto Franco has failed. Having invested between $300,000 and $400,000 of their own money into the project, and made almost none of it back, the Varshavskys plan to stop releasing records around the middle of next year. Porto Franco will carry on as a website and a blog, with self-produced videos of its artists, curated show listings, and other content. But it will be out of the business of subsidizing or funding new recordings by local musicians... [continue reading]

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