Aidin Vaziri: January 2010

31 January 2010

Pop Quiz: V.V. Brown

Aidin Vaziri | With her 1940s flat-top hairdo and booming voice, it's little wonder people are tipping V.V. Brown as the next British soul sensation. The 25-year-old singer-songwriter played all the instruments on her retro-leaning first album, "Traveling Like the Light," pairing doo-wop harmonies and Nintendo beats. It's a dazzling introduction to an artist who spent two years in Los Angeles singing backup vocals for Madonna and the Pussycat Dolls and vehemently kicking against a possible career path as a Beyoncé clone.

V.V. Brown
Q: I'm looking at a photo of you about to put a gigantic snail in your mouth. Did you eat it?
A: I did, and it was good. They put loads and loads of garlic in it, and all you taste is the garlic, so it's kind of like cheating. But I like eating weird things.
Q: What other creatures have you put in your mouth since becoming a pop star?
A: I've had snake in Japan. I had fried spider. That was disgusting. I almost had a heart attack. I'm quite adventurous. I'll go to the Amazon jungle and climb trees and eat cockroaches.
Q: So you're diving right into the lifestyle?
A: Well, I don't know. I'm a nerd. I'm not meant for the fame game. I just stumbled into it because I love music. I'm enjoying the ride. I don't think I'll be constantly on the red carpet and stuff because I'm a little too crazy. I don't think my record company would like me to do that.
Read more.

Live Review: Phoenix at the Fillmore

Phoenix floats on sea of ecstasy: Aidin Vaziri | At the end of Phoenix's sold-out show at the Fillmore on Tuesday, lead singer Thomas Mars decided the audience was having so much fun he should join it. So as a triumphant version of the group's hit "1901" crashed to a close, the svelte front man leaped off the stage and raced to the back of the room, where he finished the song to a sea of raised arms and gaping mouths. It's the kind of reception Phoenix has always deserved. Read more.

Paula West's Life In Records

Paula West's life in records: Aidin Vaziri | Whether steaming up the windows with her take on Cole Porter's "You've Got That Thing" or transforming Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin' " into a jazz waltz, San Francisco singer Paula West's adventurous performances are matched only by her impeccable taste in source material. West returns to the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko with the George Mesterhazy Quartet for a six-week engagement beginning Tuesday, and she is sure to pull out more surprises in the set list. "We might be doing the same songs, but they're different every night," she says of the group, which includes New York musicians Mesterhazy on piano, Barak Mori on bass, Jerome Jennings on drums and Ed Cherry on guitar. "We're always turning around, looking at each other and going, 'Wow!' " To prepare for the residency, we asked West to give us a peek into her eclectic record collection. Read more.

Review: Lil Wayne, 'Rebirth'

Review: Lil Wayne, 'Rebirth': Aidin Vaziri | After more than a half dozen delays, Lil Wayne's new rock-leaning album is set to arrive just a week before he begins a one-year prison sentence on gun charges. It could just be bad timing, but you get the sense that maybe the executives at the heavily tattooed New Orleans rapper's record label planned it this way. Wayne is untouchable in the hip-hop world, but on "Rebirth" he tests his musical limits by throwing on Lenny Kravitz's leather trousers and offering a batch of Auto-Tuned cuts that seem inspired primarily by strip club playlists. He channels Nickelback on the grungy "Paradice," does apocalyptic metal on "Prom Queen" and revisits the dark days when Limp Bizkit ruled the Earth on the Eminem collaboration "Drop the World." It's decent, if you're into that kind of thing, but it's hard to imagine this is what people will remember him for while he's away.

Blair Hansen: Breaking Away

Blair Hansen breaking away at the El Rio: Aidin Vaziri | Blair Hansen's friends and family are huddled in the lounge of the Rockit Room, a nightclub on Clement Street, still dripping from the downpour outside. They've come from as far away as her hometown of Castro Valley just in time to find out that her headlining slot has been pushed back an hour. For most young singer-songwriters, this would be the perfect moment to throw down the guitar, aim a few four-letter words at the soundman and pitch a tantrum. But Hansen shrugs off the delay like an old pro. That's because even though she's 23 and still under the radar, she kind of is. She studied opera at 9, picked up a guitar at 14 after she discovered the Dixie Chicks' "Wide Open Spaces," and started playing bars a year later, before she could even legally patronize them. "I literally would have to stay out in the car with my parents, and all my band members would be inside throwing back beers," Hansen says. "Then the bouncer would come out to the car and tap on the window, 'OK, you're on now.' The minute I would step off the stage, I was out again." Read more.

25 January 2010

Review: Corinne Bailey Rae, 'The Sea'

Review: Corinne Bailey Rae, 'The Sea': Aidin Vaziri | Even though it felt about as substantial as a springtime breeze, the sweet pop-soul sound of Corinne Bailey Rae's self-titled 2006 debut helped the British singer sell nearly 2 million albums and earn three Grammy nominations. Her follow-up arrives under less ideal circumstances. Rae suffered a devastating blow two years ago when her husband, saxophonist Jason Rae, died of an accidental drug and alcohol overdose. With "The Sea" she attempts to process her pain while hanging on to the sunshine that made her such a widespread success. Too often, the album leaves you wanting something, anything more. But when Rae gets it right - like on the sensual "I Would Like to Call It Beauty" or the harrowing, gospel-tinged title track - there's a thrilling sense of real life leaking through the well-mannered grooves. "The sea/ The majestic sea/ Breaks everything/ Crushes everything/ Cleans everything/ Takes everything from me," Rae sings.

Pop Quiz: The Cribs

Aidin Vaziri | With former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr joining their ranks, Britain's most dangerous band, the Cribs, have stopped breaking stuff long enough to deliver the album of their careers with "Ignore the Ignorant." Fronted by twins Gary and Ryan Jarman, with their younger brother Ross on drums, on its fourth full-length release the band brilliantly balances punk and poise with tracks like "We Were Aborted" and "Cheat on Me." The Cribs perform Wednesday at Bimbo's 365 Club. We spoke with Gary from a tour stop in the wilds of Michigan.

Gary Jarman of the Cribs
Q: The last time I saw the Cribs live, you guys were having a hard deciding what to destroy first, the club or each other. Are things tamer now?
A: Yeah. It's a frustrating reputation to be seen as a destructive punk band. That's all I wanted when we started, but I just don't want to be that one-dimensional. We've been trying to highlight the other side of the band more. I think that was just born out of an effort that we never shortchange people. We never thought, "Let's save ourselves for the big New York show."
Q: How did you trick Johnny Marr into joining the band?
A: One of the first things Johnny told me when I met him was that he was a fan of the Cribs. We became good friends with a similar ideology and the things we were excited about. I love his playing and I always have. Johnny works the way we do. It was very simple for those reasons. That's all you look for in a band. We've never really thought much about it. We can't imagine him not being there now.
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Review: Vampire Weekend, 'Contra'

Review: Vampire Weekend, 'Contra': Aidin Vaziri | How did a group of Ivy League students with an unnatural affinity for Paul Simon's Afro-pop-influenced 1986 album "Graceland" become the biggest indie act going? Maybe it's because Vampire Weekend has managed to make banal soft rock sound exotic with surprise melodic twists, singer-songwriter Ezra Koenig's unapologetically WASPy lyrics and an arsenal of instruments made out of animal toenails. Set to a frantic ska beat that would make even the members of No Doubt feel jittery, the Brooklyn band's second album surges forward with breezy tunes like "Horchata" and the heavily auto-tuned "California English" before abruptly coming down with the yearning closer, "I Think UR A Contra." Over swooning strings, Koenig weeps into his pink Ralph Lauren sweater, "Never pick sides/ Never choose between two/ But I just wanted you."

Grammy Day: Doing It For The Kids

S.F. State's Grammy Career Day draws hundreds: Aidin Vaziri | Hundreds of Bay Area high school students converged Wednesday on San Francisco State University for Grammy Career Day to learn several important lessons about the music business: The food is lousy, guitar players don't wear nearly enough deodorant, and one of the backup singers on Whitney Houston's version of the female-empowerment anthem "I'm Every Woman" is actually a very large man named Claytoven Richardson. When Richardson, a veteran session player and producer from Berkeley, delivered that last bit of information during the standing-room-only Vocals Workshop, at least one kid in the audience gasped, "For real?" To which Richardson responded by breaking into a pitch-perfect rendition of the chorus, "I'm every woman ..." Read more.

Porto Franco Records: No Boundaries

Porto Franco Records an investment in S.F. music: Aidin Vaziri | When Peter Varshavsky and his father, Sergei, decided to start a new music label in San Francisco last year they had no idea what they were doing. Having come from stuffy academic backgrounds, the Russian transplants just knew they wanted to do something to promote all the great local music they were hearing in clubs. So they picked up a couple of outdated books about the music industry and studied them carefully. "We built our business model on breaking almost every rule those books were giving us," says Peter. In November, the Mission District Porto Franco Records put out its first six releases, immediately going against the grain by introducing an eclectic collection of music that runs the gamut from Gaucho's moody Gypsy jazz to Mark Matos and Os Beaches' twangy psychedelic rock. "The way we were reading about music marketing, we were told to find a niche and stick with it," Peter says. "But the way we like music is one day you go to an old-time jazz band, the next day you go to an indie rock concert. We were seeing a lot of the same people in the audience." Read more.

05 January 2010

The Decade in Bay Area Music

10 high notes from Bay Area decade in music: Aidin Vaziri | The music industry may have spent the past decade in a free fall, but we here in the Bay Area hardly noticed. Our independent record stores thrived, our radio stations resisted the scourge of Nickelback, our artists blossomed, we pushed boundaries, and the live music scene just got bigger and bigger. We celebrate some of the defining musical moments from the past 10 years.

1. "American Idiot," Green Day One good thing to come out of George W. Bush's reign of error was the newly politicized Green Day. The East Bay punk trio dropped its recycled Ramones riffs and songs about bodily functions in favor of epic tunes for epochal times. "American Idiot" sold more than 14 million copies worldwide, scored a Grammy and - what else? - inspired a stage musical.
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Review: Mary J. Blige, 'Stronger With Each Tear'

Review: Mary J. Blige, 'Stronger With Each Tear': Aidin Vaziri | Mary J. Blige burned through so much raw emotion in her early albums, particularly in the period covering 1994's "My Life" to 1999's "Mary," that you might forgive her for lifting her foot from the gas pedal midway through her career. Reliving her coming-of-age struggles so vividly on those releases brought her critical acclaim, commercial success and the opportunity to move on. So why hasn't she? "Stronger With Each Tear," Blige's ninth studio album, once again finds her mining the past for inspiration, but with only a fraction of the sweat. Apart from the minor-key standout, "I Can See in Color," on loan from the soundtrack to "Precious," Blige sounds sterilized amid all the top-shelf producers, collaborators and Auto-Tune technicians who let her surface above the electronic burble only to offer the kind of bland affirmations best suited for daytime talk shows.