White Crate — April 9, 2021
The Reds, Pinks & Purples release their sad pop full-length, Berkeley punks Street Eaters' EP features Screaming Females, and La Doña drops a sparkling cumbia single
Wow, it’s really happening. The SF Examiner this week:
San Francisco plans to allow indoor live music and other events to resume next Thursday with some limits, after about a year of being prohibited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So who are we seeing?
Joking aside, I did get my vaccine today, so it really does feel like I could very soon be entering a small concert venue and experiencing live music with my friends again. But, on the other hand, things look grim in many other parts of the world, from Poland and France to Brazil and Uruguay. And the U.S. isn’t doing particularly great itself.
Nothing to do, I suppose, except stay positive. I’m optimistic things will get better, but also trying to stay realistic that we’re probably going to be in a strange, hazy limbo for at least another year or two. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” as they say.
Peace,
ronny
THAT NEW NEW
Following a slew of singles over the past few months, SF musician Glenn Donaldson’s indie pop project The Reds, Pinks & Purples released Uncommon Weather, a wistful 35 minutes reminiscent of everyone’s sad love songs by artists like Robert Smith or the Magnetic Fields.
In case the only thing your life was missing were club remixes of Korn, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, and other seminal turn-of-the-century classic rock bands, Oakland producer Bored Lord has you covered with Nu Metal Toolz. For more ravey goodness, check out their show on Lower Grand Radio, first Sundays at 8 PM.
Bay Area rappers Deuce Eclipse and Equipto teamed up with SF producer Nick Andre for “Pen and Paper”, a dark and heavy tribute to the healing power of storytelling.
SF’s Aklasan Records, the only Filipino American punk and hardcore label in the U.S., released two politically-minded post-punk tapes, one of which is a split of Bay Area bands Hafner and Edomites. (Full disclosure: I’m Hafner’s bassist.)
Bay Area rapper Hitta Slim released gangsta hip hop track “I’m Out” backed with characteristic west coast piano vamps.
Last year Strut Records released funky space jazz trip Shaman!, reuniting alto saxophonist Idris Ackamoor with original members of 1970s collective the Pyramids. Now the label has reissued three of Ackamoor’s earlier albums: Portrait (1998), Centurian (2000), and Homage to Cuba (2004). Ackamoor has been based in SF since 1979, when he founded the performance company Cultural Odyssey.
SF indie musician Kalou released three lo-fi, one-minute songs on Loosie.
Persian classical singer Mahsa Vahdat, whose Enlighten the Night made KQED’s 10 Best Bay Area Albums of 2020, appears on “Tolo-E Shams” by Ali Darya.
Berkeley punk group Street Eaters released Simple Distractions, a four-song EP featuring Stevo of Tony Molina Band plus Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females providing vocals and guitar on a cover of Gang of Four's "Love Like Anthrax."
Composer and pianist William Susman re-released Collision Point on Bandcamp. Originally released in 2019, the album is a celebration of a 10-year collaboration with the Rome-based ensemble Piccola Accademia degli Specchi.
Queer country music? It’s more of a thing than you’d think. KQED wrote a feature on Dale Henry Geist, the Bay Area-based publisher and creator of Country Queer, a music website and media company devoted to uplifting LGBTQ+ voices in country music.
ONE TO WATCH
Bernal Heights-raised La Doña released this video for her new cumbia/reggaeton single “Setas y Ceros” (“Mushrooms and Zeroes”), a psychedelic, glittery, conflicted celebration and protest of capitalism.
CLASSICS
I revisited this one a couple weeks ago as part of my “1001 Albums” project. (For those who don’t know, a few years ago I began dedicating one week to each album in the 2016 edition of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.)
Though she was born in Texas, Janis Joplin is most closely associated with San Francisco, where she rose to fame as lead singer of the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. Whether you’re from the city or not, you likely associate her with the Haight-Ashbury hippie movement of the late 1960s.
Pearl, released in 1971, would end up being Joplin’s last album, as she died of a heroin overdose before recording the vocals for the last track, “Buried Alive in the Blues.” The last track she did record was “Mercedes Benz,” a hilariously tongue-in-cheek anti-capitalist a cappella track that shows how captivating she could be even without the big amplified sound of her backing group, the Full Tilt Boogie Band.
But the album is blues rock greatness from beginning to end, whether it’s the lesser-known tracks or big hits like soulful “Cry Baby” and the Kristofferson-Foster country standard “Me and Bobby McGee.” Because we know what her fate would be, the closing song “Get It While You” is a heartbreaker, with Joplin urging you to not turn your back on love; life is just too fragile. The entire album is almost too much poetry to bear, but it’s beautiful, explosive, and always worth another listen.
SHUFFLE ON
If you ever want to press play on the growing list of artists covered on White Crate, follow this Spotify playlist. Shuffle and crossfade recommended!