Another in a string of great Club Sandwich shows. This one was Tuesday, June 23 at 21 Grand in Oakland. It was a well-rounded evening with two out-of-town (actually international) bands, ahem, sandwiched between two local bands. All the bands had one thing in common though, their various musical offerings are challenging to pinpoint and describe. Here is my best attempt to recreate a night of sound/shape-shifters:

K.I.T.: The first band was local punk-garage rock group K.I.T. This was my first time seeing K.I.T and I'm glad I got a chance to catch their set. They were fun, raucous, and loud. On an online press packet, each member is credited with their instrument first and then another kind of contribution (yelps, thrashes, etc). Those extra credits are all deserved, they really do play those dual roles, each one adding a bit more than notes or beats or words. Their lead singer Kristy Geschwandtner takes hold of the audience, belying her small frame with a whollup of a scream. She paces and bounces in front of the band. George Chen's guitar work is intricate and noisy, punctuated with planned feedback. The band is tight, with badass bass & drums holding up the intricately structured songs throughout. During the last song the drummer, Vice Cooler, lost one if his sticks in a fit of a drum break. After a moment of trying to play with only of them, Cooler tossed the remaining stick aside and just started banging on the drumheads with his hands. K.I.T.'s next endeavor is a new recording. Can't wait to hear what they do next.

BAADDD: Wild ladies doing their art noise scream dance duo thing. They writhe and squeal to dancey Goldfrapp/Peaches-esque beats. These two Aussie girls start out in furry costumes, strip down to leotards and get dirty on the dance floor. My favorite "song" of theirs is called "Owly." They also have a song about how they hate their douche of a grandpa and don't like it when boys cum in their faces. Good stuff. If this is what Riotttt Grrl+lady punks+Peaches/Goldfrappe electroshit hath wrought, that equation = a super happy me.

Father Murphy: This band from Italy put on a deep, dark show. I felt like I was lost in a hollowed-out old church with a blindfold on, and had only echoes and sparse sounds to guide me through. Despite some minor technical difficulites with their pedals and other gadgets, Father Murphy pulled off an impressive set. The best way I can describe them is monastic drone noiserock. Throw a bit of folk in there, too ... somewhere. They started out from a single rough strum on the guitar and some scream-singing from the singer/guitarist. The trio-Reverend Freddie Murphy, Chiara Lee, and Vicar Vittorio Demarin-continuously added layers of gloomy harmonies, chiming bells, feedback, weird electronics and pedals throughout. Their vocals, especially when all three were singing ocassionaly got lost in the wash of sound, but for the brief moments that I could separate them out, they were brilliant. Their set did not have many stops in it and at times it was hard to tell where one song ended and the next began, but not in a bad way. It was like listening to a well-crafted album where every song draws you along from the last one.

Strip Mall Seizures: You will be hearing about Strip Mall Seizures in the coming months. This was my second time seeing them. The first time was at Thee Parkside, but 21 Grand suited them much better. It was dark, sweaty, and some of the band performed on the floor instead of the stage, which allowed judy bawlz (aka cyndi leper) close interaction with the audience and seemed to fuel her performance. I find it tough to describe this band, REALLY tough. On their myspace profile, they self-identify as "thrash/trance" and "MAGICALLY DIASPORIC CYBER NOTHING PUNK", so I'll stick with them on those. The recordings I have heard don't do the singer justice, but give a reasonable sense of the rest of the band. They are skilled musicians and clearly draw on varied influences. Some of their songs have a piratey howl to them and make you feel like you're lost at sea on a creaky old ship, other songs are dancier and have a proggish weird time signatures that make the audience jerk and sway and stomp. Their style is part Gogol Bordello, part Dead Kennedys and part tons of other stuff. In a friend's blog post about the show, under a picture of Strip Mall Seizures, she wrote, "reminding me why I love music," a sentiment that pretty much sums up the feel in the room that night.

-Natalia Cooper

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Ok, first off I need everyone to stop reading this and go grab another cup of whatever beverage gets you out of bed in the morning - your brain might need it for this installment of Five Questions. Our current Artist of the Month, Chris Stroffolino, has provided us with what could easily be considered the most thoughtful and perceptive, yet mind-boggling answers to our re-occuring column. Ready?

What food item best describes your music?

When I'm at my freest playing wandering solo piano instruments, I may be like the kind of water it's safe to drink from a stream or even a waterfountain. If I record it, it probably turns all Evian. But I don't change water into wine. Like Tom T. Hall, it turns into beer. My most danceable band grooves may be like Jim or Jack or even Dewars; or some very low-cal leafy green salad with some kinda protein dressing. So, yeah, I'm working my butt off to make Diet Music. I'll do ads for Mr. Pickle! or The Philly Cheesestake shop, especially if they offer discounts if you bring your proof-of-purchase seal that you went out dancing at, say, The Knockout, while Neil Martinson's presiding. Sounds delicious! Appetite songs!

What instrument have you wanted to include but have yet to find a way to fit into your sound?

Jazz Bagpipe, a la the late great Rufus Harley!

Embarrassing childhood memory?

Trying to sing along with Mickey Dolenz on re-runs of The Monkees, and thinking those (Goffin-King) words were "Peasant Valley Sundae" and then getting put in my place by my first teen crush.

Is that a trick question? That's why George W. Bush came close enough to winning that he could steal the election. I'd love to record with Steve Malkmus & Jolie Holland again (beer or no beer). Is Tom T. Hall still alive? Does Jonathan Richman still drink?

All space travel is also time travel! So, time travel's wider--but I want to tour England for at least one week in 2010.

Hear more from Chris On Pirate Cat Radio tonight, Wednesday June 24th from 4-6pm.

-Nicole

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There are so many things to love about the city of Portland - and here's one more: The Deli Portland! Tons of great music is coming out of this wonderful northwestern city and now you have the perfect resource for finding out about it all.

Welcome to the family Portland, The Deli SF hearts you.

-Nicole

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Tomorrow is the 3rd annual Bicycle Music Festival from 9:30am to 11pm. More than 15 bands on a 200 watt petal powered stage in Golden Gate Park, Dolores Park and Pier 7. And it's all FREE! Sean Hayes, La Colectiva, Oona Garthwaite, Manicato, Tornado Rider, Antioquia, Spaceheater, Stitch Craft, Tin Cup Serenade - and this is just a partial list! Visit the Bicycle Music Festival website for the full line up and schedule.

13 1/2 hours of bikes and music. Sleep it off on Sunday.

-Nicole

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The Three Potato 4 is the solo effort of Ryan Kittleman. Crafting and building songs in his San Francisco apartment for the last nine months, Ryan has compiled an engaging and personal record, “Album Savant.” The instrumentation is adventurous, the lush cello arrangements of George Chavez provide a bed for the Casio keyboards, dollar store toys, and found instruments to accompany the more conventional instruments: guitar, vocals, and drum machines. At the core of the songs you’ll find Ryan’s voice, sweet and endearing it acts as a gentle guide from beginning to end. “Album Savant” is, at its most basic level, a solid avant-pop record. The melodies are catchy, the songs are quirky, and the arrangements are creative. But at times there is much more to this album. Songs such as “Sometimes She Said” and “Victory” transcend their humble bedroom roots, making the details of the “found” instrumentation and Casio keyboards less important and letting the songs exist on their own as really great pop music. “Album Savant” by The Three Potato 4 is out now on Series Two Records.

-Glenn Jackson

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The Deli SF was thoroughly confused to find this email from Tricycle Records in the overstuffed inbox this week:

"Please join us for The Blacks final performance, "Death By Tambourine", this Thursday, June 18th at The Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. The Blacks will share the stage with The Red Verse and The Ferocious Few, with very special DJ sets by DJ Choice and Dan Francisco.

While we are deeply saddened by The Blacks decision to disband, we are equally excited we were able to squeeze one more record out of them before they pack it in.Tiger Songs will be released on Tricycle Records Digitally on July 21st, but as a special treat for all you Blacks fans, we will have limited edition pre-release copies of Tiger Songs available at the show."

A celebration and a breakup? Thats more entertainment than you can get on a reality show broadcast through your digital converter.

-Nicole

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“String Metal” is the term used to describe the unique sound of the Oakland-based band Judgement Day. The band is a trio made up of two brothers—one on violin and the other on cello—and a friend on drums. As they clarify on their first CD, their band has no guitars, yet sounds like the most hardcore heavy metal you have heard in a long time.

Their new 7” of live recordings titled Out of the Abyss: Live on Tape serves as a teaser for their upcoming sophomore release titled Peacocks/Pink Monsters. The first song of the 7” is a live version from their first full length album Dark Opus. A head-thrashing but also beautifully composed piece, it entices listeners with Judgement Day’s unique sound.

The band is made up of Lewis and Anton Patzner, Lewis being the younger of the two. Lewis graduated from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore last year. Many may recognize Anton as the violinist for Bright Eyes, as well as fellow Saddle Creek electronica band The Faint. The Patzners were apparently spotted playing music on the street in front of the Great American Music Hall in SF by members of Saddle Creek punk rock band Cursive before their show in ‘04, which lead to these opportunities. When back with the band, the Patzners and their drummer, Jon Bush, toured with such indie favorites as Mates of State as well.

The second song on their new release features just Lewis on cello, in a song titled “Etude”, which is the French word meaning study, and refers to an instrumental musical composition, one that is very difficult and meant to be as practice material for improving a certain skill. Considering the band’s past with intellectual intensity, or what you could also call witty playfulness (such as the last track on Opus in which a Choir to sings some of the Book of Revelations in Latin—which Anton translated himself—with an incredibly melodramatic affect) this title seems only fitting, The song does seem as if it could be grueling to play, but sounds gorgeous.

And the last “Bonus” track gives a more clear hint as to what we should expect of their release later this year—the beginning sounds more dance-ready and wild then their typical dark material. But never fear—the dark depths to which Judgement Day always reaches is still there in this almost ten minute head-banger.

Considering that the band started off on the streets of Telegraph and San Francisco, and are talented enough to now be touring the world, you definitely want to take a minute to check these guys out. Or, if you are into zombies, at least watch their new video for their song “Out of the Abyss” where Anton is adorned in eye-liner and zombies get down to the sounds of this string metal trio.

-Shauna C. Keddy

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Coming up this Wednesday June 17th, the 5th installment of Vive le Rock, a reoccuring show at El Rio that has featured Oakland's Gosta Berling along with other fine local indie bands and filmmakers. Vive le Rock V - The Fine Art of (Re)Surfacing features Gosta Berling with Skeletal System and Kid Mud. Between sets you can watch two short films by local filmmaker Nick Gamino. Treat your eyes and ears for ony 5 bucks!

Vive le Rock at El Rio Wednesday June 17th 8:30 $5

-Nicole

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Steve Taylor knows how to write a tune. His recent release Has the Size of The Road Got The Better Of You is filled with upbeat, infectious pop songs and heartfelt ballads that are heavily influenced by 60’s and 70’s pop and R&B. Taylor’s songwriting is catchy with lyrics that paint a familiar landscape. Nothing Left for example, is straight out of the Stevie Wonder songbook. Like many of the other songs on the album, it’s both nostalgic and soulful. Often it’s the big, warm production on the album that remains on the forefront but there are moments, for instance in the title track, where the sound is stripped down a bit and the artist shines though. Overall, Has the Size of the Road Got the Better of You is a well balanced, strong release from this Oakland singer-songwriter.

You can catch Steve Taylor tonight at Hotel Utah playing with other locals The Greening and Cohen. You can also catch Steve playing keyboards for another band you may have heard a time or two - Rogue Wave – they play the Wanderlust Festival in July.

-Nicole

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Don't forget to come out to El Rio tonight for The Deli SF Presents: Gand Lake, Beatbeat Whisper and The Heated. It's going to be a great show and it's only 5 bucks!!!

-Nicole

The Devotionals set a spell, the choir filled the show, and the brave were rewarded with a late night treat at the show’s closing.

Wednesday night’s Rickshaw Stop show suffered from one of those awkward “the main band is not who everyone came to see” situations. The worst part about it was—Garrett Pierce, a native San Franciscan singer-songwriter, is actually quite talented. With two albums out, (both solid, filled with catchy and thoughtful songs) Pierce was a great performer and deserved a better audience. This does not count my hero of the night, a girl standing near the front but on the side, who mouthed all the words passionately while playing air guitar in time to Pierce’s songs all to her friends delight and mine as well. There was a good amount of people who obviously came for him, but the crowd hung back, so much so that Pierce even said, “We would feel a lot more loved if you all came closer to the stage”. Thank goodness for one girl from the superb opening act, a 40-50 piece women’s choir called Conspiracy of Venus, who was dancing the night away right in front.

In fact, the reason the tiny venue was so jam-packed for the opening acts was because it seemed each woman in the choir had at least one family member, friend, or partner in the audience to see them perform. Thus there was a much older crowd than one would usually expect to find at such an obscure venue, so late at night, midweek in the city, as parents of some of the younger women came to cheer their daughters on. The choir was formed in 2007 and is directed by Joyce Todd McBride. It is diverse in age and ethnicity, but the women are evidently a tight knit group, and were all dressed to the nines for their choir’s season finale show.

Audience members were treated to a few Tom Waits and Bjork songs, Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”, as well as “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” by Rufus Wainwright, and, as a shout-out to their male counterpart Conspiracy of Beards, Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man”. It was a great feat that so many women could fit on Rickshaw’s small stage, and they sounded beautiful. The crowd loved them and even though most came to see someone specific in the choir, I noticed many audience members talking about how awesome they think the choir is, and saying they just came because they like what the choir does.

The first opening act was a new project between Two Gallants’ Tyson Vogel and violinist Anton Patzner of Judgment Day, who also worked with indie-favorite Bright Eyes on the Four Winds EP and the Cassadaga CD. The two young musicians are both Bay Area natives and Two Gallants records on Saddle Creek, the record label Bright Eyes is on, thus the get-together of Vogel and Patzner makes sense. The new band, called the Devotionals, also includes Jeff Blair on the drums. Vogel took to the stage as the venue was still relatively empty, playing a long solo guitar piece without saying a word. But afterwards Patzner and Blair joined him onstage, and the band introduced themselves.

By this time the few people sitting in the front had set a trend, and the venue was filled to the back with a quite respectful audience sitting as if for story time. And in fact, that is practically what it became as Vogel launched in to what he called the “nerd part” where he recited a poem. Although Two Gallants has performed to huge audiences such as the Treasure Island Music Festival last year, Vogel usually finds himself hidden behind the drums, and this new role of band leader and poem reader found him quite nervous. He read well though, and the sound of their band was very alluring. I overheard one woman say “I like to close my eyes to listen to it”. And so their name rang true, as a sort of spell was drawn over the crowd with Patzner’s mystical violin playing and Vogel’s amazing guitar work. Blair’s drum work rounded off the sound nicely, and some songs did include lyrics but most were purely instrumental. They ended off the set with Vogel reading another poem and then playing another hypnotizing solo guitar piece. He thanked the audience for the respect showed to them, which was unusual, for everyone to be quietly sitting and giving their full attention to such an experimental opening act.

Although Pierce got the short end of the stick starting at 11 o’clock on a Wednesday night, I still found his set to be very strong, playing mostly songs off of his latest album All Masks and also a cover of the Nina Simone song “Keeper of the Flame”. Audience members yelled “Encore, one more, one more” when they finished the set and Pierce eventually, albeit begrudgingly, agreed to play one more, not willing to even tell the name of song since he was so determined it would go badly. He then launched into what I consider the strongest track from Masks, called “Your Feet in Wet Cement”, and without having practiced it for the show, it sure sounded great.

-Shauna C. Keddy

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Have you ever imagined yourself with headphones on, behind a microphone, playing music that you know people need to hear over the airwaves and into thousands of cars, homes and computers? Or maybe you've just wondered how an independent, non-profit radio station operates? This week is your chance to find out! KALX 90.7FM is holding their spring recruitment this week from Thursday, June 11th to Wednesday, June 17th. The radio station is on the UC Berkeley campus but volunteer opportunities are available for anyone in the local community. In fact, the whole darn operation is run by volunteers so they could probably use your help and musical expertise right about now. The bonus for you is that they'll let you wander their massive music library and listen to what they've got for hours on end.

26 Barrows Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus. Call the KALX office for specific times of the recruitment: (510) 642-1111 or publicity@kalx.berkeley.edu

And folks, this isn't going to be happening again until Spring of 2010. Now is the time to live, or perhaps re-live, those glory days.

-Nicole

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As a preview to their upcoming release, Eskimo Snow, Oakland's Why? have released a new video for A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under. The video is done in one 2 1/2 minute take that slowly unfolds in the middle of a mysterious and slightly absurd story line involving a building takeover by hooded figures with glowing lights for eyes. Watch it twice just to get the full effect.

-Nicole
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