Saturday, March 3rd, i can dress myself is playing Burnal Equinox. This is our favorite Burning Man Party in San Francisco and this is the third year we have been invited to perform! This year the event will be held at Public Works and we are delighted to be playing the main stage at 1:30am. Additionally, this will be our very first show with our new dancers the “i can dance commanders” featuring Bené Aria, Becky Neil, and Jonathan Chan! Come out and get weird!
BREAKIOSAURUS 8.12.11 - RSVP on facebook
The Elephant Bird Camp* Fundraiser
- August 12th, 2011
- The Blue Macaw - 2565 Mission St. San Francisco, CA
- 9pm-2am / 21+
- $5 before 11pm/$10 after
- $6 Jurassic Juice and $3 Sex Pixel Shots
Hip-Hop into our time machine and get fresh in your illest Breakin/Dinosaur outfit and join San Francisco’s Premier Costume Party Proprietors for some Jurassic Malarky!
Featuring performances by:
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San Francisco’s very own silly electroacoustic band produces face-melting dance beats with melodies both whimsical and a little creepy. Join Thundermouse, the Minister of Purpleganda and Graham as they warn you of alien invasions, get down with stegosaurus and leave you boneless. This unique and ecletic trio will freestyle, bow and blast you into the future where (spoiler alert!) there are also dinosaurs.
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San Francisco based, forward thinking DJs/Producers - Sólfire & BTRU joined forces in 2011 w/ Miss Minxx (official VJ) to bring a unique audio visual club experience.
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From a dark alternate future space reality (We THINK), their purpose here and now on PlanetEartZ is unknown, (Likely: breeding/takeover). They eat VHS tapes and write dance music. Their dark, electro-funk songs are bio-genetically engineered to cause listeners’ bodies to immediately disrespect themselves. Starbeast II. In 3D.
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Kraft Funk
With a tip of his hat to hip hop’s origin, producer Josef Allen explains Kraft Funk as a DJ set comprised of early ’80s electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk songs mixed with ’70s - current era funk breaks. A montage of grooving quirky electro-funk performed by triggering multiple layers of samples, loops, and songs.
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* Elephant Bird Camp is the Funky Ones’ on-Playa manifestation located on D at 7:30. Explore live music, open jams, a pastie making workshop, and Grahama’s House, a Mutant Vehicle version of a suburban home complete with a stern but forgiving grandmother.
Our rockin’ friends Zinc Finger in the Major Groove will be playing Hotel Utah tonight in San Francisco. The Funky Ones will be there dancing. Here’s the deets yo:
Zinc Finger in the Major Groove
Bigelow’s Treehouse
PorkChop Express
The Hotel Utah Saloon
500 4th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 546-6300
This last weekend was pretty eventful to say the least. Starting with Friday and continuing through to Monday. I literally called a sick day yesterday. The second big event of the weekend was the Friendly Fires show on Sunday. That band has their shit together, but before I describe the show, I gotta give props to The Independent. They consistently book good acts, have fantastic sound quality, and do a top notch lighting show. Tickets are also always totally affordable (this show was $15). Thus my hat goes off to them for being in the top 5 venues in the city (maybe top 3).
Friendly Fires, as usual did a great job. They are crisp and clean, on point and ready to jam and improve at will. Their set was essentially the same as when they came in about a year ago(they even opened with the same song, Lovesick, my favorite), except with two new songs. What made it different and interesting was that they added a horn section, which consisted of a sax and a trumpet. It was interesting to hear songs like ‘In the Hospital’ with some brass on it. It gave the songs a different feel and was refreshing to hear new takes on old jams. It was also really cool when they looped some of the instruments while everyone played percussion on ‘Kiss of Life’ and others. It’s pretty hard to not get down to full-on drums and percussion rhythms.
Out of all the cool stuff they did on stage, the most memorable part of the show was the singer and his dance moves. Lemme tell you, this guy was a dancing machine. I’m not talking about normal choreography or typical 2-step moves either. I’m talking about that kind of dancing that cannot be mimicked by another human. The kind of dancing that is recklessly executed with confidence, with no inhibition, no worries about judgment. A jerking, hip swinging, chest puffing, consistently-off-the-beat-yet-in-time dancing that one couldn’t help but be delighted and feel privileged to have witnessed. See Friendly Fires when they come to town next.
I was a bit surprised on Tuesday when I got the Call from Tigh, the Burningman events stage manager. He was asking if I’d manage the acts at the Autumnal Gathering at the Bentley Reserve. The reason I was surprised was because 1) it was really short notice for such an important task and 2) because I had shown no interest whatsoever in working their event. I was hesitant. I had people coming over to make art and I am not one to shirk a previous engagement. They also wanted me to work from 9p to 3a, after I was already coming off a full day’s work. And although the event sounded cool and the potential networking opportunity enticing, I didn’t wanna cancel my plans and then rush from essentially one job to the next on my Friday night. I made it clear to them that I wouldn’t be able to do it until 11 and they complied with my wish. I realized then and there that I was in demand with the Burningman people.
It never occurred to me that I was a desirable asset to their organization. It makes sense, however, now that I look at it. I have shown artwork there, my band has rocked their faces off, $tephen Ra$pa (the producer of BM and all it’s events) and I work well together, I am committed to making the event better and I get along really well with everyone in and out of the organization. These realizations, however, hadn’t occurred to me until last night when Byron, one of the talent coordinators, was telling me I should take his job. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but it’s still a great feeling to feel desired.
The show itself was awesome. There was a chillout room designed by Hookahdome, with pillows and nice rugs on the ground where people could lounge and listen to downtempo world dance music. There was another room adorned with branch sculptures (sculptures made of branches) playing experimental house with people playing percussion. The main room had a stage where musical and dance acts played with aerial performers along with dancers getting down on side platforms. It was pretty incredible. Yes, not only did I have to be persuaded to do this, but I also got to dance and drink for free!
For the first half I spent most of my time getting the musical acts and dancers ready and in position. But by the time Freq Nasty started, however, I had taken care of pretty much everything and could get the fuck down. And you heard me correct, I’m talking about none other than the greatest DJ in the world, Freq Nasty. If you don’t know who he is, Freq Nasty is to dubstep as Paul Oakenfold was to trance. Needless to say, I got down hard, all while wearing a bow tie and a cummerbund.
I saw Ladytron at the Fillmore a couple months back with Emily, who is in my band ‘i can dress myself’. The lighting and sound were incredible, with huge LED screens and great mood colors. The whole presentation really brought you into a dreamy and lucid musical zone, but this might also be due to the fact that we took a mild amount of mushrooms.
Sometime near the end of the show a fight broke out between two stocky 200lb dudes, which makes no sense at a Ladytron show, but I’ve seen stranger shit happen. This one guy was wailing on the other one and no one broke it up, so I tasked myself the job of pulling the two dudes apart. I pulled one of them aside to keep him away and calm him down and, let me tell you, he was furious. Those shrooms must’ve boosted my diplomacy skills, however, because instead of getting punched in the face I convinced him to relax and enjoy the show. We parted ways, but not before he could give me a hug that nearly crushed my entire torso. One of the singers of Ladytron didn’t take the fighting ordeal lightly and said, “No fighting, we don’t wanna play anymore because people are fighting.” Everyone then felt ashamed and somehow gave a harmonious “NOOO! SORRY!” I’m assuming Ladytron forgave us because they continued to play and even came back for a deserved encore.
Something else of note. A newly acquired friend’s nickname (according to her) is Ladytron, yet she had never even heard of this band. All these things combined make this a worthy song of the day, which goes to Ladytron’s ‘Seventeen’ off their 2002 album ‘Light & Magic’.
The song of the day has a story behind it.
My last year of college wasn’t very fun to say the least. I was writing my 20-page senior thesis as a physics major, my relationship with my girlfriend at the time was deteriorating, and I had a roommate who was an angry and aggressive alcoholic who picked fights and destroyed everything he touched. Needless to say, when I was done with school I got the fuck out of SoCal. I had plenty of friends there, but there was so much bad history in such a short period of time that I figured it would be best to wipe the slate clean and return to SF.
I came back and I was jobless and living at home with my parents. I had 2 friends, of which I hadn’t really been in close contact with through college. One of those guys is a fellow named Cole. Growing up we were really close friends: we followed the same trends, liked the same music, chased the same girls, etc. Once we had reconnected it was like nothing had changed.
One night soon after I got back we were looking for trouble and wanted to get drunk. I was totally unfamiliar with the SF bar scene and had barely been to any shows, but somehow we found The Parkside. A show was playing, people clustered outside just hankering to get inside to the music. As per Cole’s genius thinking, we simply walked past the overwhelmed doorman to get in for free. We came in probably 2 songs into the set of one of the most memorable shows I’ve been to. Playing was a little known band out of Bellingham, WA named The Trucks.
They were playing music that can only be described as a mixture of punk, synth-pop, peaches and total badass. They’re an all-girl band that wears colorful ripped tights, big tutus, and dirty shirts. The lead singer is missing her front teeth, they dance with jerky motions and they play with keyboards. Needless to say, I danced my goddamn pants off. Cole and I got the fuck down, more down than I thought possible up until that point. It was one of those shows that gets everyone in the audience to immediately become best friends with each other. All these things are the very reasons Cole and I danced, put arms around, sweat and yelled with The Trucks’ largely lesbian following.
That was a night I’ll remember that not only showed me how lucky I was to have a friend that could get down like me, but how lucky I was to live in a city where I could stumble into an all-girl-electro-punk-lesbian show for free.
The song of the day, is to commemorate that silly evening. Enjoy ‘Titties’ by The Trucks off their 2006 self-titled album.
Last night I went to Pinback at Bimbo’s with Cole, good show. What makes their show consistently good is not the performance aspect, but mostly how tight and technical the band is as a whole. What I won’t forget about the show, however, was not the quality of music, but when the lead singer/guitarist got mad at the light guy for turning on this bright white light mid-song. The singer continued to sing, but replaced the normal lyric with “turn off that fucking light please” over and over for the remainder of the song. The light didn’t go off. When the song ended the singer then repeatedly asked politely to turn it off, but the light dude must’ve been taking a shit or something because the light remained on. After a number of normal requests he turned to a more alternative approach of looping the phrase “please turn off the light,” which the band played over for about 5 minutes. The light won in the long run and they had to play their next song, during which, of course, the white light went off. At the end of that very same song, however, a bunch of red lights went on, which pissed off the singer again. Of course, no one in the audience knew why these lights agitated him so much, which is why he explained that they tell all the clubs they play at not to have hard red and white lights on while they play. I guess it makes sense. At any rate, the whole exchange made the show that much more memorable.
