34. Shonen Knife, Slim’s, SF, 12/11/07.

(Snagged by Laurel, since we were standing in front of the monitors.)

There used to be a time, back in those days when Kurt Cobain was still alive and saying things like “When I finally got to see them live, I was transformed into a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert,” Shonen Knife was being derided as part of some Hello Kitty Orientalist Conspiracy, only valued for being petite and cute and not having real musical chops and playing sub-Ramones songs. Well. That’s clearly because they’ve never seen Shonen Knife live.

Funny, too: I was properly introduced to Laurel about three years ago at a Shonen Knife concert, also at Slim’s, and we’ve been carrying halves of a BFF medallion ever since, ha ha. (Just be gentle when you pull out the feeding tube.)

And with that, my concert year comes to an end — 34 shows!!! — with some of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever been to, period. (And since this is an end-of-the-year thing, I’d like to say “thanks” to my 2007 concert buddies too: Laurel, Rinna, Eloise & Son & Weiss, Lan & Juan, Jens, Randall, Karen & Craig, Romeo, Roy, Talaya & Ben, Jeannie, & the other Eloise (who calls the other Eloise “the other Eloise” too). Here’s to 2008.)

Best Concert Year Ever highlights:

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(The photo of kare-kare above is actually taken from Kamayan sa Palaisdaan, in Los Banos, Laguna; it’s the yummy mess in the upper left-hand corner that’s under discussion below.)

It’s been a great week for me in terms of Filipino food. Last week I was the lucky beneficiary of a delicious estofado a la poeta (props to the guinataan too), which was accompanied not only by late, if minor, Kurosawa (with analysis both high and low, the latter to which I mostly contributed) but a conversation about Filipino cuisine.

(I actually have the transcript of a lunch conversation I had at Market Market, somewhere in my files around here, which I should really post some time, with Tita Cely Kalaw, the proprietor of the legendary Bamboo Grove, and the naming of Bicol Express, and her dream of restaurants specializing in quickly-disappearing provincial cuisine, using only ingredients from those provinces.)

But all this was preceded by a dinner earlier that week with my new friend The Llawyer at Palencia, a relatively new Filipino restaurant in San Francisco (in the Castro) that friends have been raving about. Funny, though, how the food — and this “review”, for that matter — ended up revolving around the bagoong, which was served with the kare-kare.

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I want to make a quick plug for my new favorite album, Anna Järvinen’s Jag fick feeling, from the Häpna label. Reviews later (like every other blogger out there, I feel obliged to come up with my year-end list soon), but here’s the album blurb (plus downloadable mp3s and a video), and you can buy the whole album right away from Klicktrack (there are 30-second samples for each song). Or, if you want the physical thing, it’s arriving on Amazon in a week. I’m not kidding, though, when I write that it’s one of the greatest things I’ve heard this year. I just wish I could understand what she was singing.

(For people who don’t know how this works: a flash widget opens at the bottom of the entry. Sometimes it takes a long time. You can play them and do other things, like d–nl–d them. Then I delete the mp3s after a while.)

1. Bergheim 34, “Take My Soul”
from the 2003 album It’s Not For You As It Is For Us

I love the cold, Teutonic, skeletal clatter: the metallic rattle of robot femurs in a disco laboratory.

Forced Exposure link.
Bergheim 34 discography.

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2. Caribou, “Melody Day”
from the 2007 album Andorra

I was totally unprepared for the twin-drum attack at the Caribou show at Slim’s a few months ago, but you can hear it on the bridges of this track of swirly, sun-tinged electronic pop.

Video on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

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3. Wild Billy Childish and The Musicians of the British Empire, “Date with Doug”
from the 2007 album Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall

There are more things in the Billy Childish discography than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and this three-minute, eleven-second track is but a tiny fraction of Childish’s output. The man’s a jack of all trades: singer, painter, composer, poet, Stuckist, guitarist, “the king of garage rock” — and purveyor of this ragged piece of pop bubblegum, with Nurse Julie on vocals. (It’s an unnecessarily mean song though, but it’s part of Childish’s long war against the insipid.)

Amazon link.
Official website.

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4. Hem, “Jackson”
from the 2002 album I’m Talking With My Mouth

Something in the water in Brooklyn feeding all this talent — check. (That’s where Hem is from, and not somewhere a little more south.) You may be more familiar with the faster Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash duet from At Folsom Prison; Hem slows it way down and luxuriates over one of the greatest opening lines ever: “We got married in a fever.”

Amazon link.
Official website.

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5. Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, “What Have You Done For Me Lately?, Part 1″
from the 2006 compilation Daptone 7-Inch Singles Collection, Vol. 1

It’s a 21-year old song made to sound 35, and the dance pop of Janet Jackson’s original is channeled here into a furious Declaration of Asskicking.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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6. Jean Knight, “Do Me”
from the 1971 album Mr. Big Stuff

This song just sounds dangerous, a nice thick slab of sizzling funk that can’t be healthy for you.

Amazon link.
Wikipedia page.

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7. Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter, “Your Eyes Told”
from the 2004 album Oh, My Girl

Tin roof shaking, crashing black
Well, i ain’t going back
Deliver me, take me in
Let me breathe your coarse wind
Day is empty, night too long
River hums a sweet song

Every song your lungs sang
Every lie your eyes told
Canyon whisper, canyon weep
I thought you were behind me

Tin roof shaking, crashing black
Well i ain’t going back
Deliver me, take me in
Let me breathe your coarse wind

Sublime music for driving in a dry country.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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8. The Zombies, “This Will Be Our Year”
from the 1968 album Odessey and Oracle

The warmth of your love
is like the warmth of the sun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

don’t let go of my hand
now darkness has gone
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

and I won’t forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won’t forget the way you said,
“Darling I love you”
You gave me faith to go on

Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun
This will be our year
took a long time to come

The warmth of your smile
smile for me, little one
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

You don’t have to worry
all your worried days are gone
this will be our year
took a long time to come

and I won’t forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won’t forget the way you said,
“Darling I love you”
You gave me faith to go on

Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

Yeah we only just begun
yeah this will be our year
took a long time to come

My first reaction upon hearing this song was, “Where has this been all my life???” People should dance to this at weddings.

Amazon link.
Wikipedia page.

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Yes, it’s an ad. Yes, I think I get beer money for it courtesy of the folks at Mad Crowd Media. (Actually, my kid brother, who people constantly mistake for my elder brother when we’re in the same room, is managing director of the outfit.) Yes, I’m about to totally ramble because I don’t know how to make this ad post count.

I’ve never played poker online myself, and I think I’ve played Texas hold-’em exactly once, at a graduation party in Milpitas, CA. (The city is 15% Filipino, so: clearly a connection there.) I can’t bluff, which is why I’m bad at a) dates; b) telling students I loved their work; c) convincing players to raise their bets. Ah, but the joy of card games. I did use to play Pusoy Dos back in the day, and can happily admit to bringing the game to Ithaca, NY — okay, to one household in Ithaca, anyway, where its name was met with skepticism. “Pussy Doze? What sort of perverted game are you teaching us, Vergara?”

How these PokerStars folks figure out your Filipino identity is a mystery to me — a Philippine address? A nickname like Cookie, Bongbong, or Doods? A particularly wily way of bluffing? Do Filipino Americans count? What if you’re only a permanent resident alien and have a Philippine passport? Beats me. But check out that phallic stack of chips anyway, and marvel at the wonder of a champion poker player actually named Chris Moneymaker. I’m off to bed.

— AD BEGINS HERE, JUST IN CASE YOU WEREN’T SURE —

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