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Went to see Deerhoof play

play the soundstrack

to films by Harry Smith at the Castro on Thursday night.

I hadn’t known anything about Harry Smith, but he seems to have been quite a fixture of the conterculture/avant garde in the Bay Area in 60s. The feature presentation, Heaven and Earth Magic, is black and white stop-motion animation using photographic cutouts. It’s a bit like the animated segments on Monty Python, but about 100x stranger.

I’m not quite sure what the movie was about. There seemed to be a narrative thread in there somewhere, but I couldn’t quite tease it out. I’m not sure you’re supposed to, though.

It was pretty amazing. You just don’t see stuff like this anymore, never mind with a live soundtrack by an amazing band. Deerhoof added some sections of retro-electronic chirps (it often looked and sounded like Donkey Kong on acid) as well as some hits from their records. Good good.

The
tragic accident on Castro

had occurred just a few hours before. After the movie, we emerged onto the street to see burned-out husks of cars and motorcycles and cracked and singed storefronts.

A Deerhoof is a hovercraft that wrenches and lurches down the road with blown gasksets and thrown rods and no problem because it’s being driven by transdimensional elves. Last night, I finally saw it drive through the Great American after 2+ years of their-CDs-are-amazing-and-I-am-meaning-to-go-see-them lameness.

I was not disappointed; it truly was the most amazing show I’ve seen in years.

I think I’m getting old. More and more, I just don’t understand the music the kids are listening to these days. But occasionally some kind soul reminds me that I’m probably not supposed to understand it:

Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” is one of the most baffling pieces of music of the modern age. It’s got something to do with cheerleaders—that much is clear…[more]

Not quite a fountain of youth, but I’ll take it.

Some old friends of mine from Portland have a great new band called Ape Shape. They just came through town on a west coast tour opening for Built to Spill, playing three sold-out shows at Slim’s.

I put some of them up and was able to spend some time hanging out with everyone. We went to the shows and played some basketball up in Corona Heights park. Overall, just fun.

Life on rock tour has a very different cadence from my life now. I sometimes miss it; it was nice to experience a little bit of it vicariously.

Here are some pictures.

This is a digital message-in-a-bottle to any Kicking Giant fans who may be googling around the web.

Years ago, my copy of Secrete Teenage Summer was destroyed in the Great Sone Cadillac Fire of ‘95. By then the tape was completely OOP and soon became impossible to find. None of my friends have a copy. I can’t find it anywhere.

These were some of my favorite songs of the early nineties, and it’s now been ten years since I heard them. Summer is almost here again and for somewhy I really want to hear them again. Someone out there must have ripped it into mp3s…