As Jennifer Maerz reported last week, SF has a new go-to spot for jazz. The site of the former Levende/Butterfly is now Coda (a musical term meaning outro) a name which sounds cool and hip and is easy to say to boot. I swung by Coda on opening night to check out the festivities and found pretty much the usual suspects: the Jazz Mafia, Marcus Shelby, and some other mainstays of the local musician community, like Felonious emcee Soulati (who was called to the stage to kick some microphonage).
The vibe was somewhere between buzzy and laid back, with lots of scenesters present, including Raw Deluxe emcee Mic Blake and Greg Scott bassist Angeline Saris. It was cool for opening night, but it will be interesting to see if Coda can maintain the same type of energy once they start actually charging a cover to get in. Besides the fact that the place looks much the same as Levende, my biggest complaint was the outrageous price I was charged for a Cazadores margarita: fourteen dollars. Ouch. And it wasn't even a double. Manhattan prices in San Francisco? Can't say I'm too jazzed about that.
Cumbia is the new Afrofunk/Batucada/Baile funk/Bhangra/Reggaeton. Hipsters have embraced the quirky Latin dance music, just as they did other global sounds of recent note, with open arms. If you need further evidence of that, you shoulda been at the Makeout Room last Saturday night, when a live set by the Mexican Institute of Sound preceded El Kool Kyle y Roger Mas' weekly "El Superrrrrrritmo!!!" cumbia DJ night. (Listen to a preview of M.I.S.' album Soy Sauce here .)
M.I.S. head honcho Camilo Lara was joined by special guest Money Mark, aka Keyboard Money Mark of Beastie Boys fame, for a raucous set which was punky in energy yet traditional in flavor. At one point, Money Mark held up a skateboard and announced the presence of local hero--and Mission district muse--Tommy Guerrero, who jumped onstage and tapped out the rhythm to Toni Basil's "Mickey" on a drum machine, over which Lara added vocals and MM supplied squealing synth runs. As if that wasn't enough, M.I.S.' short yet sweat-drenched set was followed by local bilingual emcee Duece Eclipse (Zion-I/Bangdata/J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science) who showcased some of the Spanish language cumbiaton tracks he's been working on with El Kool Kyle. All this for only five bones at the door. No wonder the hipsters are all up on this trend--it's kind of like a meal at a taco truck: cheap, filling, and tasty.
Rafael Casal knows how to make a stir for this month's release of the Monster LP: the creation of a catchy, funny, instantly-viral hit that doubles as a dictionary for local lingo.
"Bay Area Slang Top 100 (The Grinch song)" fliles through 100 Yay Area phrases in three minutes, with a video that offers subtitle definitions for those who didn't know, say, "Pop your collar" is "an action that asserts your dominance over anything oppressive."
Check the video above. If you have favorite phrases to comment on here, or lingo Rafael missed in the linup, let us know below.
