White Fence's Tim Presley

And, no surprise, it's good. We're basically just assuming that with "To the Boy I Jumped in Hemlock Alley," White Fence's Tim Presley is referring to San Francisco's Hemlock Alley. (Y'know, that sketchy little alley next to Hemlock Tavern?) But since Presley is a Bay Area native who records and performs up here regularly, that's a pretty reasonable assumption. The song, the third track to be released from Presley's upcoming album, Cyclops Reap (out tomorrow), is another wonderfully damaged slab of slow, Lennonesque pop. But as initiates know well, White Fence does this stuff fantastically well. Take a listen:

See also: White Fence: A Bay Area Outpost on the L.A. Garage Rock Scene

More »

Patrick Wolf spent three weeks this month living and writing in San Francisco.

For a non-native, San Francisco looms large in Patrick Wolf's world. A two-day tryst at the Phoenix Motel during Wolf's Magic Position tour laid the foundation for his song "The Future." But it was a recent October show at the Great American Music Hall that drew him back to the City by the Bay for three weeks this January to hunker down in a Hayes Valley Victorian and write material for his next album.

"I was given, like, eight standing ovations. It was mental," the London-born Wolf says, his six-foot-four-inch frame resting at one end of an enveloping red couch. "When a city shows me so much love, I forever have a great adoration for that city. In some way I'm connecting, and I need to go and explore why."

And explore he has: Wolf spent much of his time here haunting bookshops, chatting with locals and quietly writing. He began reading the poetry of San Francisco's Beats, particularly Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind, and reflecting on the city's potential to let artists reinvent themselves.

More »

We are now three years into the loud history of the S.F Mixtape Society, a quarterly gathering where cassette aficionados trade tapes, sip drinks, and give each other awards for doing things that people who like mixtapes enjoy. The concept is simple: You bring a mixtape to give, and you leave with one that someone else made, all the while drinking and discussing and generally having a good time.

More »

Beach Blanket Babylon's Tammy Nelson as Adele. Photo by Rick Markovich for BBB.

Every San Franciscan has a list of local activities they haven't done that the average visitor to this city probably has. One of those, for us, was Beach Blanket Babylon, the North Beach musical revue famous for its huge hats and culture-skewering whimsy. The show comes recommended by seemingly every travel guide, as well as local newspaper critics. But Beach Blanket Babylon is one of those things, like going to Alcatraz or eating a bowl of clam chowder in a bread bowl, that a self-respecting San Franciscan probably wouldn't be inclined to do on their own. Which, as we found out Saturday, is a big mistake -- especially for fans of pop music.

More »

The live venue inside the Chapel

Last Friday, amid an avalanche of accidental entendres (One of these, directed at a female SF Weekly correspondent: "Want to go down and see what happens to you next?"; another, aimed at no one in particular: "I'm really not that into VIP-ness") and crude cultural allusions ("It's like a Shakespearean fuckin' playhouse!"), Bay Area real estate developer and restaurateur Jack Knowles found time to show a small group of local journalists around his promising new venue at 777 Valencia St. in the Mission.

See also:

* Preservation Hall West at The Chapel, New Mission Music Venue, Announces Opening Concerts

More »

Negativwobbyland with their Boopers.

Just what is electronic music, anyway? That phrase typically connotes electronic dance music, your techno/electro/electronica, untz-untz-untz and all that. The mostly annual LovEvolution festival calls itself a celebration of "electronic music culture," and we here at All Shook Down described the not-actually-in-the-city I Love This City Festival as featuring "electronic artists." That's all completely valid, and we love it, but that's not all there is to the fire of electronic music, either.

Ever since 2000, the annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival has offered a different kind of electronic music experience, one which is simultaneously more straightforward and more abstract than the other events, with a primary focus on "independent artists whose innovative aesthetics challenge academic and commercial standards." This isn't the electronic music of DJ Tiesto at Shoreline, but instead harkens back to a more basic form, to John Cale testing the sonic limits of the Vox Continental organ in a chilly New York apartment in the 1960s.

So, where the other festivals are electronic dance music, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival is electronic experimental music, what the founders call "sound art." As an added bonus, you get to sit down, and the restrooms are clean and easily accessible.

More »

Roach Gigz releases his debut album today.

Roach Gigz releases his debut studio album today. Titled Bugged Out, the rapper is banking on the project to build on the buzz his mixtapes have cultivated and jolt his career up another notch. So with Gigz being at the forefront of San Francisco's fresh new generation of rap talent, we got him to run through his five essential hometown spots. He obliged -- and came through with a selection heavy on food and music. Gigz performs with Main Attrakionz, A-1, and Baby E this Friday, Sept. 7, at Slims.

Amoeba Music
Man, I was addicted to music. I used to be in Amoeba for hours. All the way in the back, when the hip-hop section used to be in the right corner, you could catch me going through every single clearance CD they had. I used to come up on all the good shit. I have this one memory from back in the day when Eminem first came out with the Slim Shady LP. My mom dropped me off in front to go run in and buy the CD, but the teller who was helping me, she was like some older woman [who] played me out crucially: She walked me outside to the car and convinced my mom not to let me buy it because it was too explicit and that bullshit. Every time I'm on Haight street I always stop by Amoeba.

More »

This man will tell you the future.

King Khan, everyone's favorite body-fluid-obsessed, Berlin-based psych-soul misfit, is not content merely to come to play a show in San Francisco. Even when that show may involve antics that would cause all your mothers to weep. So before King Khan and the Shrines bring their hot-sauce-slingin', party-starting musical chaos to Great American Music Hall on Sept. 4, Khan is holding a contest for fans, the winner of which will get to have his Tarot cards read by the King himself.

More »

The Glowing Stars

If you play games, you've probably built some strong associations around the music of games. Maybe you recognize a passing Pandora jam from the latest Madden. Maybe you catch yourself humming the Super Mario Bros. theme at your desk at work -- hell, you at least know the tune. Even that goddamn Angry Birds song grows on you. Gaming music has exerted an especially powerful pull on gamer geeks, tech-heads, and mainstream artists alike, but the etymology of its influence isn't always obvious.

As part of its "Cyberpop Overload!" theme, S.F.'s fourth annual J-Pop Summit Festival has dotted its musical lineup with such "video game inspired artists and DJs" -- a broad claim that speaks as much to the evolution of gamer culture as it does to its music.

More »

Trade the Bay Area for this?

Bay Area bands move to Brooklyn. It's just a thing that happens. You've got your Morning Benders (ahem, POP ETCs), your Royal Baths, and now S.F. gloom-gaze outfit Weekend trading Oakland (formerly S.F.) for the hallowed grounds of Williamsburg or Bushwick or Greenpoint or wherever. But why? Why do they leave the lovely Bay Area for the nation's alleged cultural capital? Why trade the stench of bum shit on S.F. sidewalks for the reek of bum piss in the subway tunnels of NYC? More to the point: Why do they leave the land of holy burritos? Good question. Here are the top 10 reasons Bay Area indie bands move to Brooklyn.

10. They just read that USA Today article about how Brooklyn is "hip" now.

More »