Category: Music

The music of San Francisco

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SFGate gets Internet Radio

I caught a tweet today from Earbits that their deal with SF Gate [the Chronicle] has gone live. I was contacted a couple of weeks ago by them because I’m a San Francisco musician and asked if I’d like to have my music streamed through their website to readers of sfgate.com [hell YES!]

Well, I believe the tweet was a bit premature because if you go to sfgate.com you won’t find any mention of it, but if you go to sfgate.earbits.com you’ll get the station. I’m currently clicking through the songs in various categories and found it odd that for a station that is supposed to be based around the SF Bay Area indie bands that bands from Los Angeles, San Diego and Chicago are popping up. I did find some San Francisco bands though, but I feel there should be more. If any San Francisco bands are out there that read this contact me and I’ll hook you up with earbits so you can get your music heard.

I have my album I’ve Got a Guitar and I’m Not Afraid to Use It! on their playlist as well as my recent single Funk U, but I haven’t heard it yet on the station yet. They definitely need more local talent on there. I’m also a bit surprised at how they classify the music. I currently have the Hard Rock and Metal channel playing and there seems to be a definite lack of hard rock and metal there. I’m hearing a few ska bands and whinny emo-like bands with the occasional metal band thrown in and every other song seems to be from Santa Cruz punks called Seduce the Dead.

Earbits also includes a social networking aspect linking in with facebook and twitter so that you can share the bands you like with your friends and followers. It has potential, but needs more local bands to make it stand out as significant to the Bay Area. They also have apps available for the iPhone and Android so you can listen on the go.

 

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The day I knew I was in the music business…

I went over to my friend’s recording studio in the Richmond District one day a few years ago to help him fix some problems he was having with his mac. We were upstairs and and he was running all about and he came to me and asked me if I could take over for him in the sound check downstairs because he had to run out to the store and pick up a few things for the two guys he was recording downstairs. I didn’t think anything of it because I knew my recording skills were good and my friend Pete had taught me a lot.

So we go downstairs and I start looking at where he was so far and and I hear him say, “Arlo, Jack, this is Eric he’ll be getting you set up.” I turned around from the recording console to be staring in the face, Arlo Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. I believe I should have been wearing diapers at the time. The first thing that hit me, other than shaking a little bit were the words, “You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant.”

Shit, Fuck, OMG. I was being asked to do a sound check for Arlo Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. I wasn’t too big on folk music and at the time I looked like your typical metalhead, but still, these guys were famous musicians and I freaked a little bit. Would they think I totally sucked? Would they yell at my friend Pete for giving the sound check and prep for two folk singers over to a METAL HEAD!?!?!

I took a breath. They could see I knew who they were were and kind of laughed at the fact that a metal head would feel nervous around them. Thinking back that was kind of a funny moment all in all. I sucked it up and sat down at the console and checked the levels and adjusted the mics. Pete had a heater running in the studio to keep their bones warm and that was something I had to make a few adjustments for but the studio was practically air tight so we could turn it off once they got their end together along with me.

What seemed like hours, but was probably only about thirty minutes Pete came back and took over and I went upstairs to fix his computer. A couple of hours later they took a break and invited me down to have a beer in the backyard with them. So there I was a metal head sitting with two folk legends and a man who was in the rock and roll hall of fame for producing the UK’s first psychedelic song [that was Pete, if you can’t make the connection] drinking beer and just talking. It was just one of those experiences that make you realize that people are people no matter how famous they are and most of the time you can just walk up and crack a beer with them and chat.

No I will not yell “Freebird!” and hold up a lighter. Ya’ll don’t pay me enough to do that.

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My First Music Video!

Well it took me 10 years to put out my first hard rock album, so I guess I can be cut a little slack for taking three to get my first music video out. It’s for my song Seaside Strut from I’ve got a guitar and I’m not afraid to use it!

Oddly enough, while I’ve always been a big early adopter, I’ve had to cut back of late being married and having a daughter so I was really happy when HD cameras became available, but I actually didn’t even have to use on for this. I had some friends in Hawaii set me up with some footage of them surfing that they recorded in HD. It was really easy for me to put this all together. Why surfers? Well, when I wrote the song it kind of came to me after watching the surfers one day and San Francisco doesn’t have the nicest beaches for surfers. They’re pretty angry waves even if they’re small so they needed some angry music. Unfortunately filming at Ocean Beach gets kind of rare because I don’t surf anymore and the sunny days are pretty hit or miss. My friends had the waterproof cameras and did a great job on what they shot.

For me what’s the most interesting part is that prior to 2000 this wouldn’t have been so easy. We’re only talking a little over 10 years and now, today you can buy a computer that comes with audio recording software that’s decent, but not the best [it’s still better than what you could do 20 years ago] AND you get video editing software that comes with it. It’s only been a few days, but you’ll probably be able to do all this on the new iPad 2. How good it will be I’m not sure yet, but it’s definitely going to be a new wave for multimedia people. So on that note, enjoy the video and leave me some feedback. I know some of the readers are old friends of mine from college who went through broadcasting just like I did, so I’d like to hear what you think for my first time go around.

For those who want the technical specs, the song was recorded in Digital Performer and I played all the instruments. The drums are actually built in touch sensitive samples that I triggered through an external source [i.e. an old electronic drum kit]. The amp for the guitar & base is a podXT Pro which can replicate pretty much any amp out there. Final mixdown and mastering was also done through Digital Performer and then I brought the music into iMovie and basically tapped along with the song to determine where the cuts will come. Total time for getting the video together: 3 hours and mostly that was because I exported it twice and realized I had made a couple of errors. Enjoy!

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Where has all the music gone?

San Francisco used to be THE place for live music. We had clubs all over the city that had bands playing their own music, not just house “cover bands” but music that would end up leading them somewhere. We used to have big clubs like Wolfgang’s and the Stone that were the center’s of the metal scene to some smaller clubs like Mabuhay Gardens that was the center for the punk scene. You had bluesy bands like Tommy Castro and Johnny Nitro playing down at some of the bigger bars on Fisherman’s Wharf with the occasional shot at one of the dive bars in North Beach.

Today? What happened? My friend Jimmy Arceneaux shared a video on facebook a few days ago that had me thinking about this. Jimmy was one of the guys who did the booking for the bands that played at the Stone, Keystone Berkeley, One Step Beyond in Oakland and for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place in San Jose as well. All these places are gone today.

Broadway Street in San Francisco had 5-6 clubs mixed in with all the strip clubs that were running full strength through the 80’s – 90’s and now there’s nothing. There would be other clubs that would pop up for a few weeks or months and then fade away. Why was that?

Well, I can only blame two things. Industrial music and hip hop. Industrial music was kind of like heavy metal with sounds of machinery added in. It was very heavy and raw and at first the bands played live. Then as they go more technologically proficient it became pretty close to impossible to perform live what they did in the studio because the electronic equipment didn’t put on as much of a show as four guys in jeans or spandex and leather depending on which decade you’re looking at. Hip hop was a bit different in that they would record their CD and then do another mix down without the vocals so it was more like karaoke for an established band. The first time I had to do sound for a hip hop band called Aztlan Nation they handed me a cassette tape and told me, “play it”.

I didn’t know what to do so after the first song ended I stopped the tape and one of the guys runs over to me yelling, “just let it play!” OK, that’s an easy job for an engineer to do. Drop in the tape, press play, kick back and drink your beer. I didn’t really have any work to do anymore. The clubs didn’t have to worry about having the right or enough mics for the band. You just hit play and sat back. I think I finally walked off the side of the stage at some point because they didn’t need me anymore.

Eventually, this led to the “dance club” phase where bands had become kind of irrelevant. If you had enough space to pack in people and didn’t need to have a stage or a band to argue with over payment [which was rare] you could just give a DJ $50 to spin some records [remember those black 12″ things and no, I’m not referring to a porn film] and people would still come. It was somewhere in the 90’s that the live music clubs started to close or turn into “dance clubs” where you just had a DJ. Bands now had a tough time to make it.

You could fill out lots of paperwork and throw out some of your hard earned cash to get city permits to play a free gig in the park, but that started to get old quick when bands had to pay money to get people to hear their music. None of the DJ at the clubs played much if any of the unsigned acts at the clubs. Bands that used to play at the bigger clubs like the Stone or Wolfgang’s now were left with playing at very small bars like the Nightbreak on Haight St. and they were lucky to get a free beer for playing.

Live music will never die though. There are starting to be a few places popping back up for the bands to play again. Slim’s has come back from the dead and there’s the Avalon and Thee Parkside, but we still need places for live bands to play that have a capacity of more than 100 people. If you find some places other than little dive bars let me know because a lot of the old bands are coming back and there are new bands popping up that need a place to play.

So now I want all of you to step away from your computers on Friday and Saturday nights and go out and find some good live music and post comments about it here. Any upcoming shows you think people should know about, let me know and I’ll let everyone who reads this know about them.

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KUSF: Update from Ian Kallen

For those of you who read yesterday’s post about KUSF, I got an email today from Ian Kallen, one of the founders of Rampage Radio with Ron Quintana. He clued me in to adding geo-tagging to the site for each post which makes it even better, but I visited his blog and he had this to say, so I thought I’d share it with all of you.

BTW Ian, Thanks for the info on the geo-tagging plug in!


KUSF: A village on the airwaves burned down

As some readers may know, I founded Rampage Radio with the guidance and support of Howie Klein back in 1982. I only stuck around for a few years and thereafter left it in Ron Quintana’s able hands. But those were years with impact, I look back at them fondly and the show has been running on the air ever since, the last broadcast was in it’s usual time slot last Saturday night. As someone who grew up in San Francisco, I always felt that KUSF’s presence at 90.3 was a comforting constant. Apparently a deal to sell off KUSF’s frequency was consummated last week and the signal was abruptly shutoff Tuesday morning. A rally and a dialog took place last night at Presentation Theater with USF President Father Stephen Privett. I commend Father Privett for coming out to face the music, all 500 or so of us in the packed theater were upset by these events and I think it took a degree of courage to show up. However, after the two hour question and answer sessions, it became clear to me that Father Privett has suffered a third degree failure.

First, the outcome was poor; the students who he claimed to be acting on behalf of will have reduced volunteer support, the revenue (purported to benefit students) wasn’t subject to a competitive bid (it was the first and only deal under discussion); just an NDA-cloaked back-room agreement. Aside from poorly serving the students, his notion of the University as an island, that serving the broader community is detrimental to serving the students, is fundamentally flawed. Serving the community and accepting the efforts of volunteers benefits both the students and the broader community.

Second, the process was terrible; instead of backing up and reaching out to the array of interested parties that a deal discussion might commence, he signed the non-disclosure agreement and completely shut out the faculty, students and community. Instead of embracing the stakeholders and providing some transparency, he went straight to the NDA and ambushed them.

And the third degree failure was the cowardly absence of recognition of the first two failures.

[mappress mapid=”6″]Father Privett claimed full responsibility, explained his rationale for what he did and the process he followed but his rationale for the process was weak. Before going under the cover of NDA, he should have reached out to the students, faculty and volunteers to say: before this goes away, give me some alternatives that will serve you better. Father Privett’s gross incompetence was saddening, he should just resign. In the meantime, using another frequency as a fall back for a rejected FCC petition makes sense but there’ll always be this sense of a vacated place in our hearts for 90.3 as San Francisco’s cultural oasis.

I’m certainly hoping that KUSF can reemerge from the ashes. Please join the effort on Facebook to Save KUSF!

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Pollo Del Mar

We took a trip to the local Parkside public library that’s been recently remodeled and ran into a friend of mine for many years. I was originally going to write about the new library, but instead decided to write about my friend’s band, Pollo Del Mar.

The band is one of the more popular “third wave” of surf bands who also might delve into surf versions of Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, the Dead Kennedy’s or even Edvard Grieg [look up “Hall of the Mountain King” if you don’t recognize the name.]

The band has traveled all over the world to Europe and Japan as well as around the US, but San Francisco is their home.  They’ve had songs on 26 different surf compilation CD’s in addition to their own in their 16+ years as a band. Just to give you a little feel about where this is band is coming from here’s a little paragraph from their website:

Your hosts for the evening: Jono Jones suavely stands at center stage; his greatest guitar influences: Hugh Hefner and David Niven. Jeff Turner on fretless bass, a portable energy packet and low-end rocket launch pad. Jeremy Rexford, beating the skins into submission, teaching them a painful lesson they will not soon forget! Ferenc Dobronyi, versatile man about town, roadie,  do-gooder and occasional lead guitarist.

Anyone who cites Hugh Hefner and David Niven as guitar influences is definitely marching to a different drummer. I was lucky to catch these guys live a few times and while they sound surf there’s still just something a little bit odd about hearing a surf cover of a Zeppelin tune. Things like this set them apart from others which in a music town like San Francisco is essential. If you’re the type of person who likes kitsch and good music you should definitely check them out. Here’s a little sample of them called Cutlass Supreme.

Oh and if you didn’t know it, Pollo Del Mar is Spanish for “Chicken of the Sea” a reference to a certain tuna product which of course ties in with the surf theme of their music. Check them out. They’ve usually got a few shows a month when they aren’t out touring the world.

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R.I.P. Phil Kennemore, Bassist for Y&T

We got into the car to head off to the library today we turned on the radio and found out that Phil Kennemore, bassist for Y&T had died. They didn’t give the how’s and why’s, just that he had died and then played just about every Y&T song they could play in their library. Apparently Phil was diagnosed with lung cancer in August of last year. I hadn’t kept up with Y&T too much lately so I didn’t know what was going on with them.

I do remember when a friend of mine let me borrow his copy of Earthshaker and after hearing that album I had to get it. Next my friend told me that Y&T were playing at the Old Waldorf and we should go check them out. I think I was about 18 at the time and I had never been to a night club so I didn’t know what to expect. When Y&T came on my jaw dropped. Here they were in a small club and they sounded just like they did on the album minus the pops and vinyl noise. I wanted my band to sound that way. Even though Y&T were formed in Oakland, we all considered them to be a San Francisco band. When they started to hit it big on the radio Y&T was San Francisco Music.

I found the following common by guitarist Dave Meniketti of Y&T today:

It is with profound sadness and disbelief that I tell you that my best buddy for 37 years passed away this morning, January 7, 2011 at 1am at Stanford Hospital. Bravely and steadfastly battling the horrible spectacle of lung cancer, at the end he was surrounded by his family members, and the Y&T family up until his final breath.

All the beautiful things that I could say about my buddy Phil could never be summed up in a short sentence or two, and I promise that I will be back to say so much more about how I feel about him and his talents in due time. But for now, at 3am, after just having returned home from his passing, let me at least put this out there.

Phil Kennemore was not only a sweet and passionate man with his life, friends and family, but as an artist, he also had that rare ability to say what was on his mind with the most eloquent, clever, and to-the-point lyrics, yet could turn it on it’s head in a second with some other viewpoint on reality and nail the point dead center. He was able to do what very few can – say the things that others have been thinking, but could never quite seem to put into words. He has always had a keen knack for doing that.

As a musician, with those huge fingers, his bass playing was always loud, strong, and deep, filling the largest or smallest of stages equally.

He had an amazingly strong life force that has influenced everyone who ever had the opportunity to be called a friend of his. I am forever grateful for our lifelong friendship, that was always in place throughout the worst and best of times. I will miss his sense of humor, his amazing wit, but most of all I will always miss not seeing him to my left on the stages I will play from this moment forward.

Yes, he was one of the class guys on this planet, and in this business, and I will always do what I can to spread the legacy of Phil Kennemore across the globe on every stage that I land on.

You know how much I love you Phil, and you knew how much your fans and fellow musicians loved and respected you. There was nothing left unsaid. You had a rich and wonderful life and I can only tell you that I was happy to have been alongside you every step of the glorious way.

Cheers to you, Phil.

Your friend forever,
-Dave

I’m really sorry to hear of his passing and I wish all the guys in Y&T and Phil’s family the best. The best I could do for a tribute was a you tube video. Check out Phil’s bass solo right after the bridge.

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D-D-D-Danny’s Birthday

Stacey Maisenbach, D-D-D-Danny, Thaen Rassmussen

Last night was a big blast from the past for me as my friend Danny had his birthday party. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen Danny and all the people from the metal scene in SF so it was a fun time seeing people who are now 15-20 years older than when I last saw them.

Let me tell you a bit about Danny. He’s been known by D-D-D-Danny and stuttering Danny D. His stutter [which isn’t that bad anymore] has sort of made him stand out and he knows it. He’s a comedian, always onstage and always ready to bring on the fun. He’s like a big kid with a smile on his face all the time. This is probably because he and his roommate Ace put out a local show called Reality Check TV.

I’m not sure when Reality Check started, but I always remember seeing Danny and his team traveling around the clubs with their video camera taping people and then going home and editing it together to be shown on public access television. It was raw and rough, but it really captured the scene the way it was then and they’re still capturing it today…and it’s still raw.  Any book written about the metal scene in SF should have a whole chapter just about his exploits. Between him and Ron Quintana you’ve got an entire library of the scene from the 80’s until now.

Now Danny and Ace have branched out a bit from just being local only. They’ve done shows from the AVN awards, Danny’s been in several documentaries on the metal scene. I gotta say that I couldn’t do what he does today even if I’m only 4 years older than him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANNY!

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Heavy Metal Never Dies

After reading about Ozzy and Mötley Crüe and how they tried to kill themselves I thought it would be nice to have a book about Metal in San Francisco from it’s start in 1980 to where it is in present day.  So I’ve decided to write a book on the subject and have it self published.

What I need is to hear from the bands and people involved in the scene because there’s some parts that are a bit foggy for me and some that I missed out on. I want to do interviews for the book with the people who also pushed the scene along like Ron Quintana, Danny D and all of the others. Pics will help as well. I’m hoping you’ll all provide the words and stories that I missed out on, like the East Bay scene which I was only a peripheral member of, mostly seeing the bands when they came to play in San Francisco. Remember some of the old Waller house parties?

San Francisco was the spawning grounds for Thrash Metal that defined San Francisco as one of the big thrash metal scenes, so please contact me with information so I help all of us remember who was who back then.

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What the HELL happened to radio?!?!?

My wife and I have been having trouble with radio in the car. We’ve got three stations we hop between and can’t really figure out which one to stay with. Here’s our choices:

  1. 107.7 The Bone: The all Metallica, AC/DC, ZZ-Top station and if you listen long enough you might hear some else, like Led Zeppelin or George Thorogood.
  2. Live 105: We’re Modern Rock. We don’t know what the hell we’re playing, but we have lots of emo sounding crap that we mix in with old rap and here’s an AC/DC song for you!
  3. The Band 103: OK, we admit it we’re old enough to admit we’re old and listen to classic rock, oh, here’s an AC/DC tune for you!

ACK! It’s bad enough that the top radio station in the city by the bay has always been an AM talk radio station, but COME ON! This was the center  of the summer of love bands in the late 60’s, in the 80’s we were thrash central and the music stations were all very defined. I think I’ll have to blame it on grunge music from the 90’s.

When grunge came out the hard rock stations like 107.7 said, well, we’ll have to adapt and there’s distortion on the guitars so we’ll live with that. Then Live 105 must have said, well, we don’t have new wave anymore and it’s quickly becoming old wave so I guess we’ll mix in some grunge. The band doesn’t really count because they just showed up one day with, hi we’re going to copy you, but with a softer hand. We’ll focus on Bryan Adams and John Cougar (Mellencamp half decaf latte with soy milk). Oh and here’s an AC/DC tune!

When I have to listen to radio on the internet to hear new bands or even to find out that old bands I liked are still around is ridiculous. We’ve already seen the music business going to hell in a hand basket quick style and I guess that means radio has to follow along. I worked for two local radio stations in the early 80’s and both of them could define their music style in a sentence, KFRC was “Top 40”. You knew what that meant. K101 was “Love songs, nothing but love songs.” Well, until people realized that wasn’t going to sell, but at least it was defined. Now if I could figure out how to stream internet radio in my car I’d be fine because for most of them there’s no bottom line, it’s only that they love the music they’re playing. I wish I could say the same for commercial radio here in SF.