The Freight & Salvage has hit one out of the park with their new facility which provides a showcase for $13M well spent.
Upgrades over its old facility are abundant, one being location which is in downtown Berkeley instead of the San Pablo Avenue corridor. This makes it accessible to BART which helps the transportation problem, and places scores of restaurants within walking distance which helps the dinner-and-a-show problem. (more…)
The Riptide, the last bar in San Francisco before the Farallone Islands, has been recording video of its bands and publishing the performances on YouTube. The result has been an extensive video collection of local and not so local bands that have played the Rip. Find them all by searching riptidesf in YouTube.
Red Meat, East Bay Grease, Porkchop Express, Burning Embers, Joe Goldmark and the Seducers, and the now-disbanded Plain High Drifters are among the locals. Big Smith and Rancho Deluxe are among the visitors. Several clips are from Anna’s Monday night open mics. (more…)
After ten years and five managements, each seemingly less focused than the previous, the historic 23 Club in Brisbane is moving on and quite possibly up. It’s been a goth venue, a Russian restaurant, a few other things that nobody (least of all those who were running it) quite figured out, and its last incarnation as a Latin club became the disaster that everyone predicted.
BBC, the Other One
Rock and roll, rockabilly, and punk has a new stage on the Mid-Peninsula. The British Banker’s Club opened three decades ago as a Menlo Park fern bar. These days the ferns are gone and the club books live bands like Santa Cruz rockabilly from the Chop Tops, Santa Cruz surfabilly from Los High Tops and SF rockabilly from Miss Fire and the Detonations. Talk about disturbing the chardonnay! Thanks, BBC, for letting the Pabst drinkers in and bringing life to the mid-Peninsula dead zone.
On third Thursdays The Sleeping Lady in Fairfax hosts Larry Carlin’s Bluegrass Showcase which is invitational, and Carlin, who is Marin’s main man for bluegrass, knows just whom to invite. He produced monthly shows for many a moon at the Sweetwater Saloon in Mill Valley and at the Sweetwater Station in Larkspur. Those venues have closed but the post office will stop delivering mail before Larry Carlin stops producing bluegrass, so off to the Sleeping Lady it is. He also publishes a bluegrass newsletter that can be subscribed to by contacting him via his site.
CLUB WATCH: However bleak the future my look for Bay Area bands and clubs, new ones keep cropping up. Cafes seem to be where the action is. 33 Revolutions in El Cerrito is the newest; it’s a combination cafe and vinyl record store that favors jazz and rock, but offers roots and other styles as well. The similarly named but unrelated Revolution Cafe is across from the Makeout Room, on 22nd between Mission and Valencia in SF. It ran afoul of S.F. City Hall’s music gatekeepers, but they are booking music on the acoustic side once again. The Blue Macaw, a restaurant that features international music, has opened in the former 12 Galaxies space on Mission. They may not have a lot to offer HWS readers, but a tip of the hat is due to any live music venue opening in the teeth of a recession… The Country Casanovas have ended their Wednesdays at Pissed Off Pete’s in SF’s outer Mission. By agreement, the band was at the club on an off-night to use it as a practice/performance space, but as the band got better they didn’t need a once-a-week practice. HWS spoke to Pete himself who said the club is open to bands that want to use it. Talk to Pete at the club, which doesn’t have a site.
