In certain ways I think I had the strangest moment in my life on Friday night.  I made sure to hit “record” in my brain so I could relay this to you all this morning.

If you’ve ever been “backstage” at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco, you would know that it’s more like a garage, complete with shelves holding cans of paint, a cold cold cement floor, and dozen circuit breaker boxes… only it’s just three feet wide.

I’m no snob – this is surely an unconventional backstage, but this fact merely added to the strangeness of that moment.  There I was, with a Budweiser in my hand… in a bunny outfit.  There was even a mirror so I could marvel at myself the whole time I was waiting for Felsen’s seventh song of the evening, “Two Utensils In One”, my big moment to arrive onstage and make my debut as The Felsen.

Andrew Griffin, songwriter and frontman of Felsen, told the crowd that the Felsen is “a mythological half man, half rabbit with tremendous musical and reproductive prowess.”  I have spent a considerable amount of time perusing the net for anything to support this fact to no avail.

Oh well 

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Gosh I hope so.  Call me a tree hugger or a hippie, but I do hope this really happens.  An article in the Money Times confirmed the details, but then the divestment of SAAB stopped when GM was able to strike a deal with a Dutch car maker.  They were trying to unload SAAB onto a Chinese company.  Wait a second…

A) When did we start selling worthless pieces of junk to the Chinese???

B) Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we were all in a tizzy because China, as a developing nation, was dragging its feet on committing to any kind of emissions cap?  How would owning the HUMMER brand help that?!

My heart goes out to anyone who loses his or her job because of the disappearance of HUMMER, but I think in the long run the extinction of this dinosaur will be one of the things we look back at as being a silver lining of our economic downturn.

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Single bass drum and a banjo cradled between his knees, a mic set up on one of those accordion holders, the One Man Banjo man is a singular figure. In the middle of the song “Harlequin King” he switches speeds and becomes the smoothest crooner. Banjos are not just about frenzied strumming—this  is a blues man to the core. He’s a charmer too in eye shadow, a bowler hat, black blazer and striped with thick black and gray bands.

The One Man Banjo aka Sean Lee playing on Mardi Gras 2010.

I realize: it makes me sort of feel bad to be typing notes on the newest of Netbook circuitry while the One Man Banjo goes on singing about Algerian dances and Parisian waltzes.

All sorts of dancing going on now on this Tuesday evening at the Stork Club in downtown Oakland. Sean Lee aka One Man Banjo is breaking in the stage before The Hobo Gobbelins and the Blue Bone Express play. The acts on the bill have got the crowd swerving and moving. It’s the fuck-it kind of dancing. Real dancing, not the head bopping you see at rock concerts. A lot of arms are being thrown into the air. Knees are wobbling and hips are swaying. To an ex-Deadhead with a pentagram t-shirt and a top hat adorned with red garlands, One Man Banjo declares: “And the the prize goes to this guy right here for dancing his ass off!”

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…My band was not one of those bands.  Perusing the net today I came across a short piece on The Morning Benders’ upcoming record on theocmd.com (Obsessive Compulsive Music Disorder).  Ah yes, The Morning Benders!  First off, their name is just confusing enough to make you look at it three times and wonder what on Earth it means.  I think I opened for them at Blakes maybe three years ago – or my friend’s band did, I really don’t recall.  If it was my friend’s band, I don’t even recall which friend it might have been, but I do remember The Morning Benders.  Should I be jealous that they made more of an impact on me than I did on myself?  Haha.

I do mean what I said in the title, also.  Blakes, with the back row all of fifteen feet away from the main speakers and the side areas literally ninety degrees in either direction, it’s a room I’m not fond of.  This band was somehow able to wrangle the sub-optimal sonic qualities into submission.  I witnessed the same phenomenon a couple weeks back on Valentines Day as well at Grant and Green.  The first band sounded like a really old dishwasher it was so mid-rangy and unmix-able.  While the second band, comprised of more seasoned individuals, (such as the guitar player from Counting Crows) was clear as clear can be.

I like to think of myself as a little more seasoned now.  Perhaps we shall share the stage once more, Morning Benders!

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The Vinyl Princess is the latest teen novel from Yvonne Prinz, cofounder of Amoeba Records, the independent music chain with stores in San Francisco, Berkeley and Hollywood. It follows 16-year-old Allie, lover of all things musical and preferably analog, as she spends a summer working in (where else?) an independent music store.

It has been called “as dead-on a portrait of a true-blue teenage music obsessive as you’re likely to find” by Colin Meloy, bandleader of The Decemberists, a group the Vinyl Princess herself is a fan of.

MuseZu caught up with Prinz for a little Q&A on the eve of her appearance at The Booksmith on Haight Street, Thursday February 17. Joining her there for a live set will be musicians Matthew Edwards and Isaac Bonnell who contributed to a CD that comes with the novel.  ~Perry Shirley

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[The following is a special feature by freelance journalist Heather Mack. ]

In the far Southeast corner of San Francisco, tucked among ancient train tracks and imposing warehouses, a little piece of musical heaven is making a name for itself. It’s called the Accordion Apocalypse, and it’s a true place of revelation for the charming albeit cumbersome instrument. Open since 2006, the blossoming repair shop, showroom, lesson center and antique museum is the only of its kind in the SF Bay Area, and is here to accommodate the recent surge in the instrument’s popularity.

Long viewed as the ironic novelty sidekick of Weird Al Yankovic or Steve Urkle, the ever-growing underground circus punk music scene has propelled the accordion to a level of proliferation that proves there is nothing nerdy about it.

Skyler Fell, proud member of San Francisco's accordion scene.

Even the city of the San Francisco knows it. On April 26 1990, the Board of Supervisor voted 6 to 4 in favor of designating the accordion the city’s Official Instrument. You read that right. It may be that after the rattling Loma Prieta earthquake the previous year, the city needed a spirit lift from the rousing squeezebox.

Heading the today’s bellows-driven, free-reed revolution is entrepreneur and accordion punk princess Skyler Fell. An avid accordion player since 2002, Fell is leading the new generation of enthusiasts by running her modest Bayview shop, promoting events like the Cotati and San Francisco Accordion Festivals, all while playing in an Oakland punk/bluegrass band The Hobo Gobbelins and assorted trios and circus troupes.

On Tuesday Feb 16, the Gobbelins capped off the East Bay’s Mardi Gras celebration with a show at 8PM at the Stork Club at 2330 Telegraph Ave in Oakland.

“This is a hyper-niche market I’m working in,” says the resplendently bohemian Fell, 27, who was born in England to Ukrainian parents. “In the past two years, this has really taken off. Now the challenge is to bridge the gap between the two groups: the older generation playing traditional folk tunes, and the younger generation that’s going to Burning Man and playing at pirate punk parties.”

“The accordion is a folk instrument,” she says. “A lot of people hear it and think of family and community, but also bohemian spirit and something playful.”

The most popular mainstream accordion is heard in Latin music, with polka and gypsy tunes following, but waltzes and jigs from the Czech Republic to France are also a big in the accordion’s catalogue, along with burgeoning punk. To hear and see the accordion is somewhat overwhelming, as it produces an in-your-face barrage of sound and is also awkward and heavy to handle. Not surprisingly, Fell notes the instrument seems to “call out” to very unique people.

“I don’t want to call these people weird,” she says with a grin. “But the accordion attracts a, uh, special group of people.”

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Alright, sorry y’all for the 7 full days in between these two posts, but I really do have a good excuse, my Pearl Jam tribute band, Riot Act was playing it’s first real gig last Friday and my week was rather consumed with that.  I’m going to tell you all about that some other time, but for now let’s continue on with this.

So we’ve dissected “Gonna See My Friend”, as I recall.  Tracks 1-4 on this album can really be thought of as one song.  They all rock, they’re all catchy tunes but not blatant pop, and they’re all short.  They are like eating ice cream, it just goes by too fast and you look up and it’s all gone, but that fact doesn’t dissuade you from eating or liking ice cream, it’s just the way ice cream is.

The Fixer.  This composition is genius.  I think I had to listen to it about 15 times before I could even hum along with the guitar riff it’s so, just, off… a classic Matt Cameron rhythmic invention.  At rehearsal last week for Riot Act we were flying through the songs (Andrew Griffin, our drummer, is quite proficient and generally only needs one listen to a song before he can play it to near perfection) and six seconds into The Fixer he mused, “That’s F%$^d up” and gave up on that one for the moment.  Cropduster from Riot Act (the album, not my band) and Slight of Hand off of Binaural were in odd time signatures (I think 7/4 and 19/4 respectively – don’t really know about that last one, you try counting to 19 while listening to a really nice song, it’s hard.  If anyone knows please clue me in!) and sometimes I get the feeling that Cameron does that just because he can.  He’s a modest showoff, but then again he should be.  He is in Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.  What a resume.  Hey what do you do for a living?  I’m in Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.  Ha.

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There’s music in everything.

Well, there is if you’re listening to your headphones at all times in public.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday in The City. The 22-Fillmore is as crowded as they come on a day when maybe some who aren’t used to riding the bus are doing it anyway and it’s definitely a risk. But it’s fun too.

If you’ve never been on Muni you should know it’s not a means to get from A to B so much as a lurching-and-abrupt-stop rolicking ride from where you came from to where you’re going to get off, panting, frazzled, nauseous and maybe a little vomity. But if you know what you’re doing it’s just fun to watch everyone else struggle.

So there I was, headphones in and waiting for a spectacle, some aerial trick from a Muni Newbie to make things interesting. Or at least make me feel smug. And boy did I get it. At the 59th second of the track “What She Came For” from 2009’s “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand,” on my first listen-through after freshly downloading the album that day, no less.

I’m on the bus. The song begins with a steady slacker beat punctuated by handclaps. The bassline teases out short burps of cool melody like the best of Cake. A Moog tweeters behind.

Sexy, skinny singer with the defiant look:

“I got a question for YA.

Where d’you get your name from?

I got a question for YA.

Where d’you see yourself in fiiiiiiive minute’s tiiiiiiiii–“

Right then, I see the body swing. It was a guy in a red fleece barely up from the stairs with one hand on a bus pole. No second point of contact. Big mistake. Right at the APEX of the singer’s “tiiiiiiiiime,” the bus lurches forward. His whole body pivots on that pole. As the notes at the climax of the verse fly into my ears, this mass is thrown in a great arc through space. The instruments have fallen silent in THIS split second, ready to bounce off into the next verse. And just as they do, the man lands on the lap of a young woman. She screams. And AT THE EXACT TIME of his crash landing the drummer crashes down on his instrument. Perfectly choreographed. Glorious. Epic.

And it was all for me. Like I said: there’s music in everything. Or at least, people willing to dance to your music.

…

I did eventually make it to the Horseshoe Tavern on Chestnut Street, a regular dive bar packed with septuagenarians and girls on the wrong side of thirty who still shop at Forever 21. Not too many people care about the game itself. By then the New Orleans Saints are down 10-0 to the Indianapolis Colts in the first quarter of Super Bowl XLIV. Because of Hurricane Katrina four years earlier, the Saints are the sentimental favorites. You can tell because of the lack of hollering at the intense moments. N.O. fails to score two yards from the goal line with two downs to go and the chatter barely registers.

Halftime show now. The Who has been dug up to play. We would later learn that 57 percent of American TVs were tuned to the Super Bowl on Sunday. That’s 106.5 million people with their eyes peeled to the boob tube. Okay, that’s a big audience.

So they made sure we were entertained. The teams may be from the Bayou and Indiana but the championship game’s in Florida. Why? Because they needed all that time to set up the stage, to time the lights just right. And you can tell they threw everything at it.

The Who started with “Pinball Wizard.” The band is standing on a circular stage, a sort of giant screen that reacts to whatever they play. “Pinball” plays so of course the band is now at the center of a target from a pinball game. Later, waves of lights pulse away from the band–perfectly in time with the beat of the music. It’s gotta be exhausting to be playing inside of those zany visualization screens packaged with iTunes. And there’s everything else. Fireworks, flames in a circle around the stage. Laser lights beam over the heads of the band members.

Okay, I guess it’s entertaining. But they tried so hard, you know?

For my money I’ll take the surprise aerial sideshow on the Muni any day. For that, you really gotta keep your eyes open. And the music blasting.

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I know what you’re thinking, Backspacer came out in September, why have I waited until February to write a review?  Simple: while everyone else out there is scrambling to get the first hottest album review up to make sure their blog gets as many cheap clicks as possible, I wanted to wait until I had truly absorbed the record until I put my thoughts in virtual ink.  But for me this is quick, when Pearl Jam’s eponymous last record came out it took me an entire year to listen to anything else at all.  I always know when I have come to grips with a new PJ album when I find myself hankering for something else.

It makes sense that this process was quicker for this album: the album is shorter.  At about 36 minutes, Backspacer is a far cry from their 15 track behemoth Riot Act.  This is refreshing in and of itself.  As a songwriter I’ve always said if you can get it done in two minutes, get it done in two minutes.  The album heck of a lot less depressing too, musically and lyrically.  Don’t get me wrong I love to curl up in a mental blanket and bemoan the shortcomings of our culture with Eddie as much as the next guy, but this new record is a breath of fresh air.  In this review I’m going to go ahead and assume you know a stupid amount of information about Pearl Jam, which I know is a bad assumption.  If I had to give the history of everything I’m going to say this would end up to be a 20,000 word blog.  Please feel free to comment and ask questions, I’ll be happy to answer!  Alright here we go, track by track:

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Cowboys on horseback galloping after villainous outlaws, guns blazing in the hot desert sun : the stories of the Far West have always been a fascinating part of Americana. But to the band members of San Francisco outfit The Green Door it was the Spaghetti Westerns films of the 60’s that really thrilled them. In tribute, they’ve crafted Psychedelic-Rock songs tainted with the cinematic flavor of Western classics like Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars.”

The band’s lineup feels well-calibrated and ripe for fruitful work. The songwriting falls mostly to lead singer and guitarist Mike Carnahan and drummer Vanessa Wolter, a long-time couple since their days in school in Florida. Bassist Devin Triplett learned to play academically, taking courses while he studied to become an English teacher. The gearhead in the group is guitarist Nick Di Lillo, forever tweaking knobs and pedals to find new sounds and infusing the room with boundless energy.

I’ve come to a little studio in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, an area not so gentrified you can’t turn the volume knob to 11, to watch them play. The band is setting up for the first of two rehearsals in the days before their show at Irelands 32 Irish Pub on Friday, January 22. With the instruments plugged in, the lights are turned off. “We only discovered mood lighting, as of the last practice,” Mike explains. “Helps set the mood. Makes it less industrial.” While the music oozes out, the space has become dreamlike, steeped in black with just a few candles, more histrionic than useful.

They’ve been subleasing the place from folk-rocker Chuck Prophet. It was originally just while he was touring in support of his new album “¡Let Freedom Ring!” but they got an extended invitation to share the space. After running into the career musician there, I had a chance to ask him what he thought of The Green Door.

“Mike and his gang?” Prophet wrote in an e-mail. “They got taste. They got instincts, muscle and heart. Not big muscles but muscles nonetheless. Smarts too. If Mike didn’t set up the Internet here, how would I surf for more broken gear on the web? I like those guys (and girl). What can I say, if they asked me to piss in a cup and pour it over someone’s head, I’d probably do it.”

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