Whaddya mean you don't know Trig Richards

Here's "Hollywood Cat" from Bay Area bad boy Trig Richards who penned "Lisa Marie" for The Beau Brummels' Sal Valentino. 

Happy Birthday Fred Smith of Television!

Raising a glass to Fred "Tonic" Smith with a some Television footage shot at The Fillmore in SF back in 2015. 

Happy Birthday Jesse Fuller!

Remembering Georgia-born blues great Jesse Fuller on his birthday with a 1971 documentary "A Portrait of Jesse Fuller"

Michael Belfer tells the SF scene story of Tuxedomoon and The Sleepers

The 2nd edition of Michael Belfer's 70s SF underground study When Can I Fly? is available from Hozac Books right here. 

Here's the scoop...

Just when you thought you knew all there was to know about ’70s San Francisco underground music,

here we have Michael Belfer- one of the SF scene’s earliest progenitors, who straddled two very different worlds playing guitar in two of the Bay Area’s most creative musical groups, The Sleepers and Tuxedomoon. By far two of the most unique bands in the early San Francisco musical landscape.

When Can I Fly? is a harrowing memoir filled with stories encapsulating the seedy side of the San Francisco punk and post-punk scene in great detail, from the opening of the Mabuhay to the closing of the Savoy Tivoli and every back alley overdose in between. Tracing the earliest roots of The Sleepers in Palo Alto in 1975-76, Belfer was privvy to witnessing the nascent SF punk scene development as his bandmate Ricky Williams (aka Ricky Tractor) was already playing drums in the first lineup of CRIME at the time. This memoir offers a glimpse into the inner workings of the complications of street-level avant-garde musicianship, as well as the drug empire that was fueling the fires within the movers & shakers of the late 1970s in seething detail, and on a few occasions with grotesque precision.

What do Herb Alpert, ‘Joe Boxer’ briefs, Will Shatter’s secret salsa ingredient, Celestial Seasonings tea, and HEROIN all have in common? They all somehow intersect with Michael Belfer amongst the pages in When Can I Fly? – and man, what a ride!

As Belfer’s recollections cover his unusual position of drifting between two well-known working bands, both orbiting around the shadier side of underground musical expression in the uncharted waters of the late 1970s, what’s apparent in hindsight is how both seem so conceptually disconnected from the rank & file punk bands they played alongside at the time. Combining this lurid scene of drug-soaked denigration with the most mind-bending experimental sounds of the Bay Area during the era, When Can I Fly? portrays the side of the SF punk story lost in the shadows of addiction and compulsion, and almost even breaches into Breaking Bad territory at some points.

Fortunately, When Can I Fly? has been blessed with a plethora of incredible and previously unseen photography from the Richard Peterson archive (Search & Destroy magazine) covering Belfer’s intertwining tenures in both The Sleepers and Tuxedomoon, as well as a wealth of rare flyers and photos by James Stark, Ruby Ray, and Sue Brisk. And with a Foreword by none other than Jon Savage as well as an Afterword by Hunt Sales (Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Todd Rundgren, and son of Soupy!), this is yet another sickening volume of underworld legend you shouldn’t miss.

Happy Birthday Sterling Morrison

Remembering Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison on his day with a 37-minute version of "Sister Ray"

Peter Case, Paul Luc @ The Dakota Tavern, Thursday

If you don't see Peter Case perform, you miss the amazing stories he tells between his great songs. 

Watch Cannonball Adderley live in 1961

Cannonball Adderley discusses jazz and blues with Ralph J. Gleason for Jazz Casual on October 24, 1961.

Whaddya mean you don't know: The Ace Of Cups

San Francisco's Ace Of Cups: Mary Gannon, Marla Hunt, Denise Kaufman, Mary Ellen Simpson and Diane Vitalichn

Music by The Ace Of Cups

Wooden Shjips spook Brooklyn hipsters

While you were out trick-or-treating Halloween night, San Francisco's pysch overlords Wooden Shjips were engaged in a densely droning freakfest with the Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts and Religious Knives at 171 Lombardy in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood.
Fortunately the tech-savvy folks at NYC Taper were on hand with an Edirol R-44 four-track recorder and a pair of Neumann KM-150 microphones to properly document the Shjips' fuzzed-out onslaught which appropriately culminates with a searing swing through Neil Young's Vampire Blues.
Download an MP3 or FLAC version of the Wooden Shjips 40-minute set here.