I broke character last Thursday 10/14 and headed to the Hemlock Tavern in SF to see friend and author Eugene S. Robinson read from his latest novel, A Long, Slow Screw. Though, given that the Hemlock is traditionally a live music venue, and Eugene is, more than an author, known as the frontman of archetypal art metal band Oxbow, the scene wasn’t all that far out of my comfort zone. Anyway…

Joined on stage by spur-of-the-moment ambient noise duo guitarist Chris Corona  (Floating Goat, Orb of Confusion) and bass player Monte Vallier (Jet Black Crayon, Swell), Eugene sipped briefly from a glass of red wine, removed his beanie and launched into a passage from the book, not reading it, but impressively reciting it from memory. Eugene is a showman — an actor and performer (if you’ve ever seen Oxbow, you know) — so there was a bit of drama in his recitation; nothing over the top but just enough to make it engaging and appropriately intense for a scene from a book about theft, graft and the general gritty ugliness of the NYC criminal underworld of the early 1970s.

The performance was brief, only about 30 minutes, but it was worth it. Here are some photos (see ‘em at full size over on Flickr)…

Bonus: Someone shot this video of Oxbow performing an acoustic version of “The Geometry of Business” at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Looks like a cool space, definitely a cool song (you should get the album, The Narcotic Story)…

Bay Area emcee DaVinci is from SF’s Fillmore district, he’s a standout among a small crop of artists who are poised to own independent rap music for 2010, and he absolutely murders this beat. Check this out…

This song is from DaVinci’s debut album, The Day The Turf Stood Still, which you can download for free, legitimately, HERE. Highly recommended.

Want more DaVinci? Check out this clip, a DaVinci interview from The Smoking Section, conducted by Corey Bloom, shot and produced by Thug E. Fresh…

A stencil promoting the International Day of Climate Justice. Apparently “climate justice” doesn’t include the use of aerosol cans in a street-level marketing effort.

]]> http://maxonemillion.com/2010/06/13/what-1-75mil-gets-you-in-oakland-ca/feed/ 0 http://maxonemillion.com/2010/06/13/across-the-mission/ http://maxonemillion.com/2010/06/13/across-the-mission/#comments Sun, 13 Jun 2010 06:22:29 +0000 Max Sidman http://maxonemillion.com/?p=1034

Some bullshit I shot out the back window of Murph’s car driving from 24th & Potrero to 25th & Mission, San Francisco, CA. Friday, June 11, 2010. Music: “Lacville ’79″ by Devin The Dude.

Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco, CA. Friday, June 11, 2010. No cameras allowed past the first room on the main floor.

Now, I got all kinds of love for E- 40 — call it Bay thing — but this track represents a direction I’m not all that comfortable with. Corey Bloom over at What Up Though mentioned that he’s a little worried about The Ball Street Journal (“Too much Droop and Lil Jon and not enough Rick Rock and Studio Ton” …nicely put homie), and I couldn’t agree more. This track just feels like some studio-cutting-room-floor beats and raps. I’ll reserve final judgement until I can hear the whole record, but… I don’t know…

I like to take photos of stencils. I’m not a stencil artist or a graffiti writer, and I’m not interested in any so called quality-of-life arguments, but it suffices to say that I enjoy the “vandal arts,” I’m fascinated by it, and I’m a fan. I really started seeing lots of sidewalk stencils when I moved to the Bay. So I take photos of it.

I snapped this at the Market & Spear St. entrance to te BART station in SF last week. I’m not sure what the point is — if there are two things I’m pretty sure Barak Obama is not, it’s a terrorist and a Marxist.

NERD

It all started on Friday at the AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show at Moscone Center in downtown SF. It’s the nerdiest audio nerdfest I’ve ever been too, and it goes down in SF every other year (alternates between the Bay and NYC). I have to be there for work, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get certain degree of personal satisfaction out of it. I record bullshit at my modest home studio (Maxin’ & Relaxin’ Studios, Oakland CA), and play in a three-piece rock band, so audio geek shit is kinda interesting to me…at least, in a much as it relates to what I’m doing.

After running through all the dope boutique outboard studio gear, new microphones, and niche software plug-ins, I found myself short of interest. This took all of five hours. Not that there wasn’t some excitement afoot — DigiDesign’s ProTools 8 and Cakewalk’s Sonar 8 were released with much fanfare, but since I use neither in my studio, those demos were of cursory interest to me. Still, it’s not like I was there against my will.

I had plenty of opportunity to get my nerd on, and the Universal Audio both alone made the whole day a worthwhile venture. The top-notch pro-audio manufacturer was showcasing all kinds of crazy-awesome stuff: new UAD-2 cards, which I’m told they can’t make fast enough to keep up with demand (and I believe it, I have a UAD-1, and I freakin’ LOVE it); the 710 Twin-Finity tube and solid state preamp and DI; the LA610 MKII channel strip; and the Moog Multimode Filter plug-in for the UAD-1 card (I know where my next $200 in nerd-related expenditure is going).

I looked at — and at times tried (and invariably failed) to find the rational to invest in — a lot of other cool stuff too, like Eventide‘s digitalModFactor effects pedal, which, among other things, allows users to update it by downloading new software from the internet; Radial Engineering‘s Phazer Box and new Phazer Bank; Line 6‘s Pod Farm amp and effect modeling software; and handheld field recorders — the Marantz PMD60, and the Sony PCM series handheld devices, which are both pretty cool (Marantz wins; the Sony doesn’t record to MP3).

ART HOUSE MUSIC

Since I spent the day looking at all the shit people use to make music sound good, I figured I’d go to a show and watch some people actually play good music. After AES, I headed over to Less Respect $tudios, drank beer, watched Olberman and listened to G-Pek play with his new Serato set-up for a few hours while a crew gathered. Eventually we made our way to 111 Minna to catch the homies TopR and Grand Invincible. It was starting to rain, but that didn’t keep people from hitting the spot; it was already kinda jumping off when we got there at about 10:30, and it just got more and more poppin’ as the evening dragged on. SF’s own Melina Jones set it off, and she kinda killed it. Grand Invincible — DJ Eons and Sacred Hoop’s Luke Sick — laid down the smokey golden era jams and TopR is still pissed at the world, and really good at explaining why. Good rap show.

Bonus: Half of the art currently on the walls at 111 Minna — which is primarily an art gallery, for those of you who aren’t knowin’ — is by Henry Lewis, the painter and tattooer who has been working on my left arm sleeve. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his painting, and it’s better than ever. Check it out this month at 111 Minna.

NERD, PART 2: UNDERGROUND SOUND

Saturday afternoon, slightly hung over from the night before and tired as hell from having to get up at the crack of dawn and get on a day-job-related conference call, Colin and I hit Mr. Toad‘s in SF, where we met mastering engineer Ben Adrian to sit down and master the new Ovipositor record, Oakland Minor. The subterranean mastering suite is dope, a simple setup with a single mastering station, a small couch, muted moveable sound walls and carpet, and two huge, really great sounding Dunlavy SC-IV monitors.

I know the record isn’t ever going to sound as good as it did coming out of those Dunlavys, but it sounds pretty good in my living room, in my car, and coming out of the puny computer speakers in my office, too, so I know Ben did a good job. We’ll be working pretty hard to sound that good when we play live again in December at the Hemlock.