By the time this paper hits the street on Thursday afternoon, you will have plenty of time to tear into these pages and peruse my column and learn that there’s an event going on tonight that you are not going to want to miss. As some of you may know, the Eagle Tavern has been casually presenting Live Music on Thursday Nights for a few months now, featuring a wide variety of mostly local acts ranging stylistically from hillbilly homo to white boy hip-hop, quirky perverse pop to hallucinatory prog-rock, glam-rock cover bands to folk-y singer/songwriters, gothic country/western to the darkest roaring death metal, all for the best admission price in town, free. They merely pass a hat around once or twice throughout the night for donations to be given directly to the bands by the people who most enjoyed them. It’s always a pretty happy scene, bands who are playing a venue because they want to mostly, knowing that they aren’t gonna walk with much more than cab fare and all the beer they can drink, and the satisfaction and experience of playing live to an appreciative crowd. Local rock and roll guitar hero and bartender Doug Hilsinger, with the help of other like-minded employees sharing a passion for music and a drive to give deserving bands the exposure they need, have a good thing going with this weekly showcase, and in a city that has seen far too many venues and rehearsal spaces disappear into the maze of developing noodle-fusion restaurants and other retail gems of gentrification or hollowed shells of the dot com gold rush, The Eagle’s live music Thursdays is giving something back to a music community that constantly faces an uphill battle to survive against conditions created by greed, development and the now slowing wheels of progress. Things were looking pretty grim in general for the local music scene just a few months back but more recently a handful of smaller bars and clubs have begun to feature live music, though often not without noise complaints from neighbors that eventually and assuredly will squelch the option time after time, or force a place to do some expensive sound proofing like Kimo’s on Polk Street just did. At any rate, with this live music night (which you can find more information on at www.sfeagle.com including images from past shows, booking information, upcoming shows and even links for further information on almost all of the featured bands) it is almost a given that other musicians would be turning up to see bands and support their friends and fellow musicians. One such person who happened by the Eagle recently for a show was Rich Millman, guitarist for local band Zen Guerrilla. He must have enjoyed it because he tracked Doug down and asked why Zen Guerrilla had never played there. Somewhat taken aback by the suggestion, as Zen Guerrilla are comfortably poised on the edge of possibly being huge and Doug, like myself is a longtime fan and would like nothing more than to feature San Francisco’s most intensely over-the-top, unhinged, hard rockin, soul stirring, ass kicking band of note in a minute, but figured the headliners were well past the days when a hat was passed around for their fee, or their monster of a show could be contained in a smaller bar situation. Well, think again.
This Thursday night (that’s tonight y’all) May 31, the Eagle Tavern proudly presents one of their meatiest double bills to date and definitely the best double-header rock and roll show this city has to offer anywhere else tonight, Lost Goat and the uber-magnificent, mark-my-words-this-is-THE-band-to-watch-as-they-climb-to-the-heights-of-Rock-and-roll-immortality, Sub-pop recording artist Zen Guerrilla! I’ve gone on and on about this band many times before in these pages and I play them religiously whenever I DJ at the Hole in The Wall and The Eagle and they chart more frequently than any other band on the Hole In The Wall’s DJ’s top picks list, which can be found at http://www.holeinthewallsalloon.com/top_ten.htmand is regularly compiled and posted by our very own web-monster and bar owner John Gardiner. So essentially, if none of these attempts at spreading the word and the godhead sounds of this phenomenal band have yet permeated your consciousness then you better just drag your asses down to the eagle tonight and witness what Zen Guerrilla do best, play live. See a display of extreme talent and musical sense and the zeal of madmen, see the supernatural channeling of spirits that run dark and deep in the history of the devil’s music, watch a guitarist play like he’s walking on a live wire consumed by flames, see a demonstration of concerted power that should make bands like Pearl Jam and Creed and Metallica hang their heads in shame. This is the real thing folks, white-hot R&B Blues-based transformative, visionary, hallucinatory goddamned rock and roll. The last time I saw them stands in my memory as one of the very finest rock and roll performances I’ve ever seen, and I brought along a friend whose personal taste in music leans heavily in quite another direction with keywords such as BPMs, electronic, remixes, turntable, trance, etc., and he was completely transfixed and dare I say, converted. Tonights set should be great. My only fear is that the ceiling above the stage area might be a bit low for the towering vocalist Marcus Durant’s 6 foot 7 inch frame, especially if he leaps straight up, catapulted by the spontaneous transcendent power of this band, unleashed. I can’t fucking wait. Look for the music to begin between 9:30 and 10:00, and don’t let my effusive banter persuade you to miss Lost Goat, as I’ve heard nothing but great things about their live sets of sludgey dark and droning metal mayhem. They should set a perfect tone for a night of great music in a great bar with an unflinching commitment to rock and roll. And you can’t beat the price of admission.
Speaking of commitment to rock and roll, few individuals I know in San Francisco exhibit such an undying and forthright dedication to presenting it, promoting it, thrusting it boldly into places it’s never been before, and creating it as well as my friend Nancy Kravitz. From her humble beginnings as creator of Female Trouble the first nightclub to pair up dykes and rock and roll and feature and spawn dozens of all-female acts in San Francisco, to her hands on involvement and planning of entertainment stages at our biggest annual Street Fairs, to her being a member of a handful of different bands over the years, and her constant employment or association with at least one live music venue at all times no matter what for over a decade here in S.F., Nancy Kravitz lives, eats and breathes Rock and Roll. At present time, the band she plays bass in for about three years now, Fabulous Disaster, have a new release on Pink and Black Records called Put Out Or Get Out, and when I picked up a copy at Tower the other day I was overcome with a warm mushy sentimental feeling. There it was, in it’s own section with it’s own plastic identifying divider right there in Tower fucking Records, the photo of the band on back, Nancy wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Mister Fucking Nancy.” I felt so proud of her.
Having just returned from a European tour with a variety of other bands from Fat Wreck Chords, Nancy told me of her antics on this rock and roll tour. Fab D being the only girls on board with a bunch of young and rowdy boy bands, what was she to eventually to do but start acting like an 18 year old boy, drinking too much, moshing around with the kids, playing stagehand and throwing stage-divers back into the crowd, catching the boys on the bus using a mirror to spy on one of their band members fucking some groupie in his bunk and joining in to watch, actually visiting Stonehenge and buying a souvenir flask, all really great little anecdotes. She said the band was very well received and getting really tight in that way that only touring and playing night after night can do.
I popped the CD in as soon as I got home and we are talking about one seriously kick ass fast and tough achievement. The disc opens with a snippet of dialog from some movie like Faster Pussycat Kill Kill or some bad teen drama of a man saying, “Do you, you, you and you know that bad girls go to hell?” Then the disc just slams into overdrive, constructed a lot like their live sets, song, quick pause, song, no stopping-for-breath full on assault of very complete and fully fleshed out songs that all clock in at around two minutes or less. Some of the songs are re-recorded versions from their first release, a much less produced one-take live recording, and I’m thrilled to say none of the re-worked versions suffer at all from this process. I hear nothing but total improvement on songs that already showed a promising structure and the newer previously unreleased songs clearly chart a band in synonymous motion progressing and growing as a unit. The lyrics and vocals are much more distinct and easier to understand than on the previous record and basically the predominantly expressed emotion from song to song is good old-fashioned violent anger, and we all know much fun and practical usefulness that can provide in everyday life. It’s even better when that sort of message is conveyed with such sweet sounding vocal harmonies matched to a driven bassline that pummels like heavy artillery and drums quick as automatic assault weapons. Put Out Or Get Out is a prime example of a good band finally hitting their stride, and it just happens to be double-time, dipped in sugar, packing heat, and casting out vicious words that bite. If vengeance had a soundtrack, it would sound like this. The more I play Fabulous Disaster the less I care how old The Donna’s supposedly just turned. I am reminded that over ten years ago I looked towards the Female Trouble scene for a vitality and aggression that seemed to be missing in music in general. Look towards the girls of Fabulous Disaster because they definitely put out.