Sebastopol: Party People in the Place to Be

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DJ Vadim is gonna be at Hopmonk’s Juke Joint this Thursday, and although his last few records have been heavy on the reggae tip, I wholeheartedly recommend getting thy ass down there and checking it out. Born in Russia, raised in London, and now living in New York, Vadim’s style is a true cross-cultural hybrid; his series of USSR albums on Ninja Tune bridge in the most perfect way the worlds of hip-hop and electronica, and feature mostly rappers from outside of the United States. I am listening to USSR: The Art of Listening right now, and feeling good.
I stopped by the Guayakí Mate Bar a couple weekends ago to catch the Highlands and the Semi-Evolved Simians, where Celeste and her dad David have started putting on shows. The setup’s great: A cafe and coffee bar in the front and the “Aché Room”—a resplendent name for a venue if ever there was one—in the back. It is wider than it is deep, which is good for bands who don’t exactly draw 300 people, and being right next to the now-desolate Barlow Co. assists for nighttime walks between bands. The Crux played there last weekend; the owner’s planning on booking more shows in the future.

I talked to Noah D today, who’s getting married soon and is feeling the down-home spirit of friends, family and funk. He’s starting a weekly night at Aubergine called “The Dial Up.” I like the name. He doesn’t. The first night’s this Tuesday, June 16, featuring all vinyl—no CDJs, no Serato. The flyer promises Funk Essentials, Hip-Hop Slumpers, Big Reggae Tunes, Soul Boulders, Dancehall Gems and R&B Classics. I’m not sure what a “slumper” is, but A Tribe Called Quest might be a good signpost. Future nights will feature Nick Otis; a pay-the-bills ’80s Night; and Noah’s inventive hip-hop group, Sonicbloom.
Add to all of this Monday Night Edutainment over at Jasper O’Farrell’s still going strong, and the story of nightlife in Sonoma County in 2009 starts with an S and ends with an L. Somehow Sebastopol has gotten nightlife figured out, while Santa Rosa continues to have problems with live music.
This might also be a good time to mention Hillcrest Middle School in Sebastopol, whose marching band were given the chance to perform a song in the Apple Blossom Parade of their own choosing by their teacher, Mr. Fichera. Q: What did the students pick? A: “Love Lockdown,” by Kanye West! Fichera arranged it for marching band in about three hours, and the song’s huge drum cadence never sounded more amazing than bouncing off the buildings of Main Street on a Saturday morning.

Live Review: Abdullah Ibrahim at Yoshi’s

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0

Despite that fact that most of Abdullah Ibrahim’s performance last night was a 50-minute, uninterrupted medley of themes largely in the same key and slow tempo, admiration was the prevailing response over boredom. To the uninitiated, the incessant piece seemed like the piano equivalent of stumbling into Guitar Center and hearing the omnipresent Dude Who Plays Unending Blues Riffs; Ibrahim would play a melody for a minute or two, change gears, play a different one in the same key for four minutes, change gears again and so on. Sound dull? To Ibrahim’s many fans who filled Yoshi’s in San Francisco, it was a celebration of a rich life and an underdog career.
Born in South Africa, Ibrahim’s music is inextricably linked with the political struggles of his homeland (Ibrahim’s composition “Mannenberg” was the first music Nelson Mandela heard in decades). He grew up amidst upheaval, was discovered by Duke Ellington, moved to Europe and lived in exile until returning to his home country after the fall of Apartheid. His latest album, Senzo, is a solo recording almost identical to last night’s concert: a pensive outing and essentially a 1,224-bar blues with so many chord changes that each resolution to the root seemed like a triumph.
Ibrahim said no words to the crowd, only bowing with palms together before sitting down and showing that he has aged in the best possible way. His playing could never go completely New Age or into the realm of post-Bill Evans fluidity. Ocassional four-fingered, octaved arpeggios recalled Jaki Byard, and at times his use of discord rivaled Paul Bley’s Closer. Snippets of “Memories of You” or “Round Midnight” crept into his playing, but for the most part it was all Ibrahim: a man no longer nimble, full-bodied or particularly fast at the keys, but a man playing as breathing proof that emotion and experience trumps technique.

Beige is Out

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The U.S. Bank Building at 50 Courthouse Square, one of downtown Santa Rosa’s most prominent buildings, gets a paint job. The building has been beige since at least 1975. A dark brown color now sets it apart from the Rosenberg’s building across D Street and the two other tallest buildings in the area, the AT&T Building on Third Street and Bethlehem Towers on Tupper Street—both beige. (The flower planters and concrete downtown markers at street level, beige for decades, were painted an aberrant salmon color three years ago.)

June 9: Brandi Carlile at the Lincoln Theater

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You’d be hard-pressed to find many lines on Brandi Carlile’s face, and yet the lines on the fresh-skinned young singer provide the jump-off for her biggest hit, “The Story.” “All of these lines across my face,” she sings, eruptively and with an otherworldly crack in her voice, “tell you the story of who I am.” That incredible split-second vocal crack, and not the imagined wrinkles around her eyes, tells the true story of Carlile, a talented songwriter with an unswerving knack for emotional wallop who had the good fortune of blowing away Dave Matthews at the Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington and hooking up with producer T-Bone Burnett. Even those unfamiliar with Carlile’s name have probably heard her music. Grey’s Anatomy has featured her repeatedly, and television commercials have used “The Story” to sell cars and beer to fast-driving, gut-bulging guys. Carlile, a lesbian, is having a good laugh, enjoying sold-out shows and planning her follow-up album after winning over crowds on the Indigo Girls’ latest tour. She appears on Tuesday, June 9, at the Lincoln Theater. 100 California Drive, Yountville. 7pm. $26–$36. 707.944.1300.Gabe Meline

June 6: Fur Dixon and Steve Werner at Studio E

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The Hollywood Hillbillies might not have received much press for their music, but the Southern California country-punk outfit brought live chickens out onstage with them, and that was enough to earn attention for Fur Dixon and her fellow band mates. As a bassist for the Cramps during a short but influential spell in 1986, Dixon toured the world in a fuzz- and reverb-drenched haze behind the unpredictable onstage presence of Lux Interior, but shortly afterwards got back to her hat-and-boots roots alongside Rosie Flores in the Screamin’ Sirens. With her wilder days mostly behind her, she conjures Bakersfield-like imagery with Steve Werner, with whom she has an infectious musical rapport. Dustbowls, tumbleweeds and rambling are central to their well-blended two-part harmonies. Sit a spell next to the old wood stove and hear their songs and stories on Saturday, June 6, at Studio E. Address provided with ticket, Sebastopol. 8pm. $23. 707.542.7143.Gabe Meline

June 6: Beerfest at the Wells Fargo Center

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After 18 years, the microbrewery mecca Beerfest still hasn’t succumbed to the brand of hoity-toity, touristy gimmickry that so pervasively seduces our long-running institutions. After all, what more does anyone need besides killer music, great food and cold beer? The grooves this year come in the form of the Thugz, who pepper their starry tributes to Monte Rio with a barrelful of Grateful Dead covers and who’ve honed the art of the long set list at their weekly nights at the Pink Elephant bar. The food comes courtesy of over 35 booths, from Johnny Garlic’s to Larry Vito’s barbecue, and the beer comes from every good place in the North Bay and beyond. Furthermore, it’s beer! It’s summertime! Bottoms up! Ticket price includes all the food you can eat and all the beer you can drink, but moderation is encouraged. All proceeds benefit Face to Face, and last year’s event sold out, so get your tickets now for Saturday, June 6, at the Wells Fargo Center. 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 1–5pm. $35–$40. 707.544.1581.Gabe Meline

June 4-7: DjangoFest at 142 Throckmorton

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Of all the guitarists with limited use of their fingers, Django Reinhardt far and beyond stretched the guitar to its furthest capability. With only two properly working fretting fingers, Reinhardt nonetheless laid down some of the finest solos in the history of the instrument, and remains a looming influence on every jazz guitarist today (guitarist Jim Hall’s dog is named Django, for example). It is impossible to separate Reinhardt’s music from the extraordinary circumstances in his personal life—including a Gypsy caravan lifestyle and signing some of the shrewdest contracts in the history of recorded music—but one need only to listen to his timeless statement of beauty, “Nuages,” to hear pure genius. Reinhardt is celebrated this week at the fourth-annual DjangoFest Mill Valley, a series of concerts and workshops celebrating Reinhardt’s cosmopolitan style with performers Panique, Hot Club of Marin, Pearl Django, Mimi Fox, Gonzalo Bergara, Hot Club of San Francisco, Stochelo Rosenberg and far too many more to list. There are now DjangoFests all over the West Coast. Find out why Thursday–Sunday, June 4–7, at 142 Throckmorton Theater. 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley. $20–$60. 415.383.9600.Gabe Meline

New View

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New View

06.03.09

Even if John Handy had quit playing immediately following his 1959 solo on “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” from the celebrated Charles Mingus masterpiece Mingus Ah Um, his stature in jazz would have been cemented. A yearning, somber statement that eloquently captures the ache in Mingus’ Lester Young tribute composition, Handy’s solo is both immediately classic and perpetually fresh-sounding; even the most prepared listener is laid speechless part way through, when Handy throws in an intimate, impossible tongued tremolo.

Handy, of course, didn’t quit playing after “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” although he’s likely to be known mostly for his short time with Mingus—to the 76-year-old saxophonist’s chagrin. “I’ve been playing for 60 years, and I don’t have time to talk a lot about Charles,” he says by phone from his East Bay home. “I did much more on my own than in the four-and-a-half months playing with Charles.”

Indeed, after leaving Mingus, Handy would make jazz history by hushing a 1965 festival crowd with the opening strains of “If Only We Knew,” a composition that, coupled with “Spanish Lady,” make up Handy’s mammoth Grammy-nominated album Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Later, he would record one of the first ethno-fusion jazz records, Karuna Supreme, with Ali Akbar Khan and Zakir Hussain; notch a crossover R&B hit, “Hard Work,” in 1974; and, while teaching at Berkeley, Stanford and San Francisco State universities, accompany all variegated manner of jazz ensembles.

And yet it’s the stories about Mingus that Handy cannot help but tell. The night at the Five Spot when Mingus egged him onto the bandstand and, upon hearing him play, started shouting that Bird was alive. The night at Minton’s when he chewed Mingus out for telling Horace Parlan, who had polio, that he’d only hired the pianist because he was handicapped. The night he spent sympathizing with Mingus’ girlfriend about the bassist’s temper, only to find himself insulted onstage and his featured solos cut from Mingus’ Monterey Jazz Festival performance the next day.

“I’ll put it this way: I went to New York to play music, not to go to jail,” explains Handy, a featherweight champion in high school. “I’m not the kind of guy anybody would hit and get away with. We did have a talk, early in our relationship, when it appeared he was thinking about that. And I just got very close to him on the bandstand, and whispered to him, ‘I can hit much faster with this saxophone than you can with that bass. And every time I see you, we’re gonna fight, I don’t care where it is. When you come out of your house, I’ll be there. When you come home, I’ll be there.’ And he started laughing! He started laughing! And I wasn’t smiling, I meant it, totally, all the way through. And, you know, Charles didn’t hit everybody. Nobody told people about the fact that Elvin Jones pulled a gun on him or that Sunny Murray knocked him down.”

After his time in New York, Handy returned to the Bay Area, finding his old Fillmore neighborhood had changed. The famous nightclub that would let him in when he was underage, Bop City—where he’d shared the stage with Benny Bailey, Kenny Dorham and Paul Gonsalves—had closed. He’s nonplussed about the area’s forced revival.

 

“I never encouraged them to try to recreate what they thought was there,” he says carefully. “It would take that kind of population, the circumstances with the war, and the immigration, all the people coming from various parts of the scene. We’d have to have restrictions in the movement of African Americans and Asians and Latinos to create that atmosphere. The atmosphere’s not the same.”

Handy hasn’t yet been hired to play in the new Fillmore neighborhood, either—that’s up to the bookers at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. This weekend, he reunites with Denny Zeitlin, who preceded him onstage at Monterey in 1965, for a special appearance. Now age 76 but confident as ever, Handy promises he’ll bring his best stuff. “To be honest, and not to be arrogant,” he proclaims, “I’m never worried about my performance. All I need is an audience.”

John Handy performs on a double bill with Denny Zeitlin as part of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival on Friday, June 5, at the Raven Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. 8pm. $25&–$40. 707.433.4644.


Pop Goes Le Novel

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Pop Goes Le Novel

06.03.09

Iggy Pop’s last solo album, 2003’s star-studded Skull Ring, was an abrasive segue to the Stooges’ reunion (Raw Power‘s James Williamson is on board for the next one), but this week’s Préliminaires is like nothing the old Iguana has ever done. Sounding like a homage to the recently released Serge Gainsbourg masterpiece Histoire de Melody Nelson, the 12-song set is inspired by French author Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 apocalyptic novel The Possibility of an Island.

“I thought the book was a motherfucker,” Pop said recently, and his subdued song suite is no different. It’s a shock to hear him sound so seductive on the opener, a flamenco-sketched cover of jazz standard “Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves),” sung in French. But his deep, commanding Cohen-esque delivery works, as it does on gentle piano ballad “I Want to Go to the Beach,” which almost sounds like a late-era Johnny Cash outtake.

While inherently strong in concept, Préliminaires—initially outlined by Pop while living alone in his Florida cabin—could be his most eclectic record yet. It seems to cover all of his previous music colors, from the dirty synth-funk of his Bowie/Berlin era in “Party Time” to straight-ahead rawk in the electric thump of “Nice to Be Dead.” The acoustic “He’s Dead / She’s Alive” wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Stooges’ debut, while “A Machine for Loving” is a spoken-word exploration of dog-owner relationships that’s more thought-provoking than gimmicky.

Most thrilling, of course, are the jazz excursions, like Jobim’s “How Insensitive,” where Iggy actually croons effectively. The highlight on Préliminaires, though, is “King of the Dogs,” a New Orleans stomper. “I got a smelly ear, I got a dirty nose, I don’t want no shoes, I don’t want no clothes,” Iggy sings with a virtually audible grin. “I’m living like the king of the dogs.”

I’m not sure if Préliminaires will inspire listeners to check out Michel Houellebecq’s book, but it reaffirms that Iggy Pop is still an artist to watch.

 


Round Pond Estate

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Round Pond Estate

One hour and 10 minutes after our original appointment, we had to call again to say we’d be late. Who could have guessed we’d be stuck in traffic on Highway 29 on a holiday weekend? The tricky part of winetasting appointments is that one is obligated to keep them. The upside is just about everything else. With Napa Valley tasting fees creeping steadily up to $25 just to join the crowd at the bar and stand around like cattle waiting for hay, it’s not enough to merely pay your fare anymore; the real estate ain’t cheap, folks. So here’s a strategy for having a better time in Napa: make the call, pay the little extra and be treated more like expected guests than nominal “guests.” Many old-timers have such programs, while newer outfits like Round Pond, somewhat off the well-traveled road, often have fabulous facilities, are well-staffed, eager to please—and graciously understanding to egregiously late guests.

Round Pond is at the end of a palm-tree-lined drive. Tasting is upstairs in the atrium or on a big, well-furnished terrace overlooking the vineyards with sweeping views of the area. Far from traffic, the center of Rutherford proves to be quiet as any far-flung California farmland on a midafternoon that would seem to last forever. Just to the south, Round Pond’s new biodynamic kitchen garden is surrounded by two-story spikes that give it the look of some savage stockade. They’re teepee poles, topped with bird houses—a warning only to bugs.

Grape growers on some 400 some acres in the heart of Rutherford since the 1980s, the MacDonnell family recently got in to olive oil, then the wine business. Most of their harvest fills the bottles of their more well-known neighbors.

I like the tasting notes describing the 2005 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon ($65) as having an aroma of baked earth; it resonates with the wine and sounds like you could make an eco-friendly adobe with it. Black cherries, dried fruit, licorice mix with a muted potpourri of tobacco aromatics. The bright cherry, cranberry fruit soaks up the 90 percent new French oak with ease, leaving only a mild, wood-fire baked bread toastiness. The food pairing, asiago tartlet with leeks, was so scrumptious that we asked for a second helping.

The 2008 Estate Sauvignon Blanc, Rutherford ($26) had bright, citrusy Sauvignon Blanc aromas tinged with lemon-butter and artichoke, and was viscous on the palate with a sensation of sweetness but without heat on the finish, a rich, not crisp, style. But the soup pairing soon stole the limelight: a little boat of garden-fresh sweet pea soup with Meyer lemon olive oil drizzle had a surprising, bright, vegetal taste to charm each spoonful.

Who can’t imagine returning on a late fall evening, say, and cozying up next to the big gas-burning hearth, watching the sun set and savoring that Rutherford dusk?

Round Pond Estate, 875 Rutherford Road, Rutherford. Tastings by appointment daily, 11am to 4pm. $25. 888.302.2575.



View All

Sebastopol: Party People in the Place to Be

DJ Vadim is gonna be at Hopmonk's Juke Joint this Thursday, and although his last few records have been heavy on the reggae tip, I wholeheartedly recommend getting thy ass down there and checking it out. Born in Russia, raised in London, and now living in New York, Vadim's style is a true cross-cultural hybrid; his series of USSR...
Read more

Live Review: Abdullah Ibrahim at Yoshi’s

Despite that fact that most of Abdullah Ibrahim's performance last night was a 50-minute, uninterrupted medley of themes largely in the same key and slow tempo, admiration was the prevailing response over boredom. To the uninitiated, the incessant piece seemed like the piano equivalent of stumbling into Guitar Center and hearing the omnipresent Dude Who Plays Unending Blues Riffs;...
Read more

Beige is Out

The U.S. Bank Building at 50 Courthouse Square, one of downtown Santa Rosa's most prominent buildings, gets a paint job. The building has been beige since at least 1975. A dark brown color now sets it apart from the Rosenberg's building across D Street and the two other tallest buildings in the area, the AT&T Building on Third Street...
Read more

June 9: Brandi Carlile at the Lincoln Theater

You’d be hard-pressed to find many lines on Brandi Carlile’s face, and yet the lines on the fresh-skinned young singer provide the jump-off for her biggest hit, “The Story.” “All of these lines across my face,” she sings, eruptively and with an otherworldly crack in her voice, “tell you the story of who I am.” That incredible split-second vocal...
Read more

June 6: Fur Dixon and Steve Werner at Studio E

The Hollywood Hillbillies might not have received much press for their music, but the Southern California country-punk outfit brought live chickens out onstage with them, and that was enough to earn attention for Fur Dixon and her fellow band mates. As a bassist for the Cramps during a short but influential spell in 1986, Dixon toured the world in...
Read more

June 6: Beerfest at the Wells Fargo Center

After 18 years, the microbrewery mecca Beerfest still hasn’t succumbed to the brand of hoity-toity, touristy gimmickry that so pervasively seduces our long-running institutions. After all, what more does anyone need besides killer music, great food and cold beer? The grooves this year come in the form of the Thugz, who pepper their starry tributes to Monte Rio with...
Read more

June 4-7: DjangoFest at 142 Throckmorton

Of all the guitarists with limited use of their fingers, Django Reinhardt far and beyond stretched the guitar to its furthest capability. With only two properly working fretting fingers, Reinhardt nonetheless laid down some of the finest solos in the history of the instrument, and remains a looming influence on every jazz guitarist today (guitarist Jim Hall’s dog is...
Read more

New View

06.03.09Even if John Handy had quit playing immediately following his 1959 solo on "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," from the celebrated Charles Mingus masterpiece Mingus Ah Um, his stature in jazz would have been cemented. A yearning, somber statement that eloquently captures the ache in Mingus' Lester Young tribute composition, Handy's solo is both immediately classic and perpetually fresh-sounding; even...
Read more

Pop Goes Le Novel

06.03.09Iggy Pop's last solo album, 2003's star-studded Skull Ring, was an abrasive segue to the Stooges' reunion (Raw Power's James Williamson is on board for the next one), but this week's Préliminaires is like nothing the old Iguana has ever done. Sounding like a homage to the recently released Serge Gainsbourg masterpiece Histoire de Melody Nelson, the 12-song set...
Read more

Round Pond Estate

Read more
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