What’s up with the East Bay?
August 4th, 2008 by Legs GinigerHoly shit, I have been so remiss. Originally “hired” by World Famous to be your East Bay reporter, I got caught up in some theater projects and my nights have been pretty well occupied. But I’m free now, and I did a pretty authentic tour of the scene last week. I mean, what’s left of the scene. With 21 Grand even further underground, and with Jon Benson’s bus missing-in-action and “resting” in a field somewhere in Michigan, it’s been a quiet summer, and I haven’t seen some people forever.
Except on Tuesday, everyone came out for the Club Sandwich’s 2-year anniversary Lobot show with No Age, Mika Miko, and Abe Vigoda. And by everyone I mean me, the five other people I knew there over 30 (six including George Chen, although I didn’t see him in the crowd), and the 400 teenagers who’re too young to get into the 18+ show at Great American Music Hall the previous night. I have never seen so many 15-year-olds in one place. Correction — I’ve never seen so many 15-year-olds popping pills in one place, but I’m pretty sure those weren’t black beauties. In every other respect the show reminded me of LA 20 years ago, and I guess LA hard-core is back. Mika Miko sounds so much like X, and X is my favorite band, so overall I thought this show was pretty great. Scott and I tried to figure out why shows aren’t surly affairs like SF in the 90s or straight up intimidating aggressive scenes like LA in the 80s and we figured the drugs are different now. And I’m pretty sure all the kids’ parents from Lobot are therapists and college professors.
On Friday there was First Fridays art-walk centered around Stork and Mama Buzz and it is just as retarded and hipster overrun as I suspected. John Benson threw a party at his house and Fly Fly Fly from Oregon played. They’re a noisey three-piece from Oregon and I liked them alot; it was a nicely aggressive counterpoint to the hipster takeover at 19th and Telegraph. What I didn’t like is punk-show hygiene. Is it a punk law that you must not use deodorant, and that you must proceed to sweat profusely in small crowded homes, and that you must proceed to invade my clean, well-groomed personal space with your subpar hygiene? Can you please get your dreadlocks out of my face? Thanks, and talk to you all later.
Berkeley, Why So Retarded
February 20th, 2008 by Legs GinigerThis is like the easiest potshot ever, but over here in Berkeley apparently they’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol. Hey give the peace symbol a chance, Berkeley’s been doing it for 50 years. Come for the symbol, stay for the folksingers.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-02-19/article/29275
News Flash: Burning Man ruins Oakland House Party
February 16th, 2008 by Legs GinigerNot too long ago I attended a pretty rad Oakland houseparty. I thought I was having a good time when all of a sudden a bunch of my friends left, and I noticed that the party was inundated with Burning Man ravers, most of whom seem to have stayed sartorially stuck in 1997. Predictably, I became annoyed. Hey burners, do you really have to wear your furry pants to a punk rock house party?
The “burners” self segregated themselves in the kitchen, totally missing out on the band action in the living room, which included San Francisco’s most charming punk rock combo as well as their glamorous LA counterparts.That’s what I love about “burners” though — they’re the most solipsistic group of individuals. They try and re-create BM wherever they go, and for all their professed open-mindedness, God forbid they should step outside of their cozy fake fur cocoon, drop the ketamine bumps and the spandex body suits, and actually expose themselves to something a little bit different.
On another note, I heard that a super-underground rock band called the Foo Fighters played a show down the road at the Oakland Coliseum that same night, and word on the street is that their drummer is pretty awesome.
Arthur Mag, Annoying
February 5th, 2008 by Legs GinigerHey it’s the week for new contributors. I will be bringing my own particular brand of the hate, but sometimes the love.
Lately, Arthur Magazine has really been annoying. I mean they’ve always run small annoyances like that column for the practice of magic, or as they like to say “magick”. I don’t know, affected early-modern English nonstandard spellings really annoyye me.
In the December 2007 issue, Douglas Rushkoff, regular contributor, wrote the tedious “Raising Baby Einstein” to make a point about how raising a baby has become so commercialized and professionalized. And I usually really like what he writes, you know tearing down the whole edifice of 9/11 conspiracy thinking as a waste of valuable time was right on! But Rushkoff made the regrettable error that afflicts most parents, the belief that what they’re undergoing is so special and magical that they must then inflict the magic of parenthood on the rest of us. I tried to read the whole thing but had to quit when I reached the paragraph on, “the lost art of breast-feeding”. Writers, please do not use the word “latch, nipple, draw, and infant’s lips” in a column published by a putative music mag. Gross. Seriously.
A year ago Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond annoyed me when she renounced her class hate in favor of a particularly icky brand of Topanga Canyon free-love. But I would expect that from someone named Lavender Diamond. Rushkoff, you’re losing your edge to the babies.