The Wily Filipino

Dan Zanes, San Francisco, 11/26/05.

Dan Zanes and the rest of the house party gang. (I think they were singing "Pay Me My Money Down" here.)

Izzy's first few years are a blur now; somehow I can't remember what her very first concert was (Dan Zanes or Gillian Welch). This is her second Zanes concert, to whose music she grew up. Back when he performed in Berkeley last year (or maybe the year before) Izzy was too small to really jump around with the bigger kids. But here she is now, front and center at the concert (like father, like daughter).

Dan Zanes' music isn't just for kids. It's exuberant folk music that encompasses sea shanties, West African counting songs, lullabies, and gospel, plus a generous dip into the American Folkways catalog. (And his buddies, who just happen to be Sandra Bernhard, John Doe, Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow, Lou Reed and Aimee Mann, among others.) The fact that he also sings "Skip To My Lou" and "Polly Wolly Doodle" shouldn't deter adult listeners; it's a reclaiming -- not that they needed reclamation in the first place! -- of the so-called "children's song" as an obvious part of the musical vernacular.

The whole point of Zanes' concerts is that it's a house party in his living room; the kids, therefore, get to jump and dance right up front (I sat along the back in the orchestra pit). Izzy was enthralled, standing right at Zanes' feet. The set proceeded much along the Berkeley show we saw previously (though with the addition of the Foggy Five (five kids playing wind instruments) and an African dancer); there was nothing wrong, though, with a show that included "Hello," "Wonderwheel," "Que Fortunidad," "Smile for a While," and "All Around the Kitchen." (I think at this point Dad was singing along more than Izzy was, who was still spellbound up front.)

The big guns were reserved for last, once Father Goose stepped up to the mic and delivered his nursery rhymes in a dancehall style. As before, they ended with "The Hokey Pokey" (much audience interaction for that one) and marched off the stage and into the audience with the always-grand "Sidewalks of New York." (Later Izzy met Dan Zanes outside and shook his hand. Fangirl for life.)

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #9.

The Langley Schools Music Project's Innocence and Despair album is so 2001, but it's worth reintroducing to all you folks who missed it at the first time. All the information you need to know is right here: '70s pop songs sung by Canadian schoolchildren in a gym. It's a lot more than just the potential camp value, of course; as John Zorn put it, "This is beauty. This is truth. This is music that touches the heart in a way no other music ever has, or ever could."

The one song that everyone who has ever heard the album remembers -- and now that I'm surfing the net, it's the song that just about every reviewer singles out -- is a cover version of the Eagles' "Desperado," sung by a nine-year old Sheila Behman in a purely unaffected, heartbreaking vocal. I remember playing it to friends who literally stopped what they were doing as the song was playing. (In any case, they wanted to hear the entire album over again.)

I've never particularly liked the Eagles, though there are some songs ("I Can't Tell You Why," "Tequila Sunrise") that I do like simply because of their nostalgic pull. But otherwise the Eagles, who may have been well-meaning country rockers at the beginning but turned into slick adult-contemporary, were never real talents to begin with, and I could easily be happy the rest of my life without ever having to hear "Heartache Tonight" ever again. If you Americans think they're overplayed here, you didn't grow up in the Philippines, where every bar band has to have "Hotel California" in their repertoire, in case some drunken customer with a gun requests it. You then have a choice: "Hotel California" or death. It's not much of one. "Desperado" is the same way: unbearably sappy, with strings swelling in the background, and faux-cowboy lyrics.

In any case, this version of "Desperado" has a force of its own in the context of Innocence and Despair; peruse the comments and you read stories about grown men weeping uncontrollably, a radio programmer pronouncing it "one of the most sublime recordings ever made," someone on Amazon.com writing that the song "almost makes me reconsider my atheism," a reviewer calling it one of the saddest songs they have ever heard, a driver having to pull over because she or he was overcome by tears after hearing it on the radio. A little too much to burden this one song, but... well, you should hear it for yourself.

It seems, in any case, fitting for a Wes Anderson film: you approach it as slightly arch and distancing, perhaps, and then you're hit sideways by something genuinely moving. (There's apparently a scene in Jim Sheridan's In America that basically rips off the Langley Schools arrangement of the song.)

Hear it (4.93 mb, m4a).

[All mp3s on this site are posted only for a limited time and are for sampling purposes only -- buy the album! The rest of it is excellent: a mind-blowing "Space Oddity," a joyful "Saturday Night," a version of "The Long and Winding Road" that's better than the original (and there are at least a few more tracks like that).]

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson film, Track #8.

Every Wes Anderson film needs a good British Invasion song for the characters to run around pell-mell to, preferably in some narrow hallway. So here's The Move's 1967 hit, "I Can Hear The Grass Grow" -- a great running-around-pell-mell-to-for-quirky-characters song if there ever was one -- brought to you by Roy Wood and Company before he and Jeff Lynne (who was also in The Move) co-founded the Electric Light Orchestra.

There's no mistaking what the song's about, but it's remarkably free of any psychedelic filigree (no sitar, no phasing, no stereo trickery); it's straight-up guitar crunch and drum fills apparently nicked by Keith Moon for "I Can See For Miles."

Hear it (4.56 mb, mp3).

Updates on Antwi Akom.

There's an article about last week's preliminary hearing in Prof. Antwi Akom's case in SFSU's [X]press: the article also has a link to a .pdf copy of the police report. (To the best of my memory, he cast doubts on the veracity of some of the accusations in the report -- actually, his language was stronger, referring to the unlikely possibility that he would actually dare a police officer to pull a gun while his kids were sleeping in the car outside -- but I can't find the e-mail message, so don't quote me on this.)

[Update: I found the e-mail. Here's an excerpt of what Antwi wrote on Oct. 30: "I just got done reading through the entire police reports and I have never seen fabrication of this magnitude in my entire life. What saddens me besides the magnitude of lies and fabrication is the fact that those with less social, cultural, and economic resources could never fight this level of deception and survive. Truth be told I may not survive. I don't think I'll ever be the same person again. Fo' sure I won't. What saddens me is that I thought I had a handle on how corrupt the system was. I was way off."]

Meanwhile, the passage below was posted as a comment to an older posting; signed "Old Friend," the whole message is worth moving up from the comment area as its own post:

Before he was the man you know as "Dr. Akom" he was my best friend...whom I called "Twi". We grew up in a Rockwellian town in central Pennsylvania. We did all the things that make for great childhoods; played some sort of ball all year 'round, did a lot of fishing in the creeks behind our houses, had neighborhood games of tag, hide-n-seek, Army(what did we know), rode our bikes everywhere, made crank calls to bowling alleys and pizza parlors...and did I mention that we were playing ball of one sort or another all year 'round? We had great times...we lived in a very safe little town where there was no obvious crime, no gangs, no obvious poverty, everyone was relatively educated (a college town after all)the public schools were the only option and that was fine.

Then we found out that Twi was black.

That's right, he was black. It took some mental midget behind the counter at a Dairy Queen one summer evening the year we were 11 to point out that Twi did look different from all the other people in the store...I was shocked, I couldn't believe that he had been hiding it our whole lives. Our moms were shocked too, and they were both real, real pissed off, and you know what? That shitty old Dairy Queen closed down not long after, they felt pretty bad about making our moms mad, and I think they just figured that they would best serve the community by leaving it.

Well, I and all of Twi's other friends (which was pretty well darned near everybody else in town) had just about forgotten that my best bud was black when our sixth grade teacher felt that she needed to keep hearing Twi read part of Mark Twains classic "Tom Sawyer" out loud and he needed to make the character of the slave sound like a real "colored". Well that teacher was very close to retiring anyway my mom told me, and so she agreed with my Aunt Margot ( Twi's mom) that that old teacher should apologize for being such a fool and then she oughta find a hobby for all of her free time, because she all of a sudden found herself with a whole bunch more of it.

Then there was the time a few months after the teacher thing when we were all (maybe 20 of us kids)up on campus at Rec Hall playing a game of tag/hide'n'seek that we town kids liked to play where we could hide anywhere in the entire facility. There was nothing illegal about it, heck half the kids had parents who worked up there. One sunday afternoon a couple of the campus cops decided to play, next thing you know there's Twi spread eagled and up against a wall with one cop holding a gun on him while the other rifled his pockets (they took his packet of "Big League Chew" bubble gum). They were gonna arrest him on account of his being the only black kid in town, but some of our parents thought that was a bad idea. The parents (especially Aunt Margo) also thought that it was a mistake in judgement for those poor cops (who had been in fear for their lives they said)to point a gun at my best friend who was 12. Those two fellas got new jobs and now they don't have to be afraid of kids anymore, isn't that great?

These kind of things happened to Twi for the rest of his time in his perfect little home town, I picked three of them to write about, I could fill a book with this garbage and that would only take Twi through high-school. Racist Dads who wouldn't let their Daughters date Twi-could be a whole seperate volume...I still laugh when I think of the time one Dad confronted Twi(who was 15 at the time)and suggested strongly that Twi find some black girls to talk to instead of his lillywhite little girl to which Twi shot back with "there aren't any black girls, so yours will have to do!"

Anyway, I could go on forever, but I won't. I will relay one more story though because it adds some depth to the man I knew as a boy; One time Twi and I were talking about life (we were probably 15) and I asked Twi if all the shit that had happened in the years since that Dairy Queen were getting to him...I don't remember his exact words, but the gist of what he said was that he had his mom around to watch out for him and keep the racial BS at bay so that he wouldn't be bothered and could concentrate on his education, which he felt would take him to some much more enlightened locales where his being black wouldn't matter so much. He also told me, and I think it was in the same conversation that he would take things much more personally after his mom died. Before he became Dr. Akom he was just my friend Twi, and he was the most focused and driven and decent kid in town.

I am very sorry to have to tell the SFSU PD that Twi's Mom is gone, and know you will have to bear the full weight of Dr. Akoms wrath. This will not go well for you.

an old friend

What A Day.

No, not the Throbbing Gristle song (a great song, but not as good as "Hamburger Lady.")

As icing on my cake of penury, my car got reversed on this afternoon as I was driving out of the school parking lot; the driver of the errant truck was so eager to give his parking stub to another driver that he reversed without looking. Cue the sound of breaking glass and the oddly soft crunch of metal bending: one headlight was out of commission, with the hood poking up about half a foot to expose the wirings and stuff underneath.

The driver was extremely apologetic, and offered to pay me even in cash, pay for a rental car while the car was in the garage, even accompany me to the garage for estimates. None of this was in writing, of course, so I take down his name and address and phone numbers and e-mail address.

As I get on the freeway, however, I realize -- in a sudden panic -- that I had not even taken down his license plate number. Great, I say to myself. I give the number he gave me a call, hoping he'd pick up. He does, but tells me he'll call me up in a few minutes because he's driving. I'm thinking to myself, great, he's not going to return the call, when the phone rings. He had pulled over, it seems, to read his license plate to me. He promises to call tomorrow after I go to the garage for an estimate. My fingers are still crossed.

I am, in any case, feeling rather bad for my poor Honda Civic. (D-Dog and I went on a Road Trip O' Death from Los Angeles to San Francisco earlier this year, but we survived.) About three weeks ago the third of my four speakers gave way to an annoying tinny buzzing rattle, much like an old Ulver record, everytime the bass would thump. (The little tin cone inside the speaker had come off and was bouncing around inside.) Now I listen to either one speaker (the one farthest from the driver's seat, alas) or have the bass lowered so far down; since I don't own a stereo, it's one of the few places I can listen to music that isn't on headphones. (This car, by the way, was once dubbed by J-Lu as "the rustiest car I've ever seen;" a couple months ago the metal "HONDA" letters fell off into the trunk as I opened the door.)

So anyhow. I finally get back home. It's dark as I pull into the driveway. As I come out of the car and pick up my stuff, my shoe hits something as I close the door; it rolls a few inches away from my feet. I figure I had dropped it, so I pick up the hard cylindrical object and turn it toward the light to see what it is. It's a dried-up dog turd.

What Band From The '80s Are You?

You're all about the music. Not too incredibly
mainstream, but not too incredibly underground.
It's awfully hard for anyone to oppose you,
seeing as how you rule.


What band from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Andy Bell / Postcoitus / Viva K, SF, 11/10/2005.

Well, I figured I'd strike out at some point, given my amazing concert batting average this year. This one pretty much sucked. Encouraged by the blurb that this SF show was one of only two where Andy Bell would actually sing -- including, so they said, "a few Erasure classics" -- J-Lu (who calls herself a "psychotic fangirl") and I arrived at the Mezzanine at 9 and the place was almost empty.

The first band was Viva K. Sorry -- lose Ashlee Simpson.

I actually rather enjoyed the second act, Postcoitus: two Oakland guys in running shorts and striped tube socks, blissfully stupid electroclash rhythms, strobelight abuse.

Andy Bell finally comes on around 11:45 and announces, much to our disappointment, that he would be playing a 90-minute set and finish up with four songs from his latest album. Well, boo. The music was good (I'm ultimately a dancing-in-place kind of person; J-Lu, apparently, doesn't dance unless it's a class requirement), but unfamiliar to me. I think I picked out Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown," Avenue D's "The Punk Song" and New Order's "Jetstream" at some point. Far and way the most frustrating thing about the whole concert was Bell playing this fantastic remix of "Oh L'Amour," which seemed completely superfluous; after all, the singer himself was standing right there, just inches away from the microphone. By this point the crowd had thinned considerably.

Finally, around 1:30 (aside: don't DJs bother to beatmatch anymore??), he steps up to the mic and sings, just as he had announced, four songs from the new album (a great "Crazy," the first single). The bears and buff boys went wild. And then it was over.

TsuShiMaMiRe / The Amppez / Red Bacteria Vacuum / All Ages, SF, 11/8/05.

Let me cut to the chase: for about 45 minutes last night (more if you count the drive home), TsuShiMaMiRe (or Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re, or Tsushimamire) seemed like the greatest band in the world. Go out and look for their 2004 Benten album, Pregnant Fantasy -- one of my favorite listens of the year. (You can preview/download it from the iTunes store; just do a search on the album title.)

All Ages was the opening band -- I didn't pick up their merchandise, so their name is near-unGoogleable -- and they played good basic power pop, though I think they'd be most remembered as "that band with the goofy Japanese guy with the big mouth and the mohawk who stripped down to his boxer briefs." (Later he would start a mosh pit, into which I was dragged at some point against my will.)

And then onto Japan Girls Nite proper: Red Bacteria Vacuum -- self-described, I think, as "a Monster Girls Rock band who plays Pop to Hard core with amazing performance" was first up. Headbanging hardcore, lots of screaming, with (I think I used this phrase to describe Om in a previous entry) hair flying everywhere.

Red Bacteria Vacuum.

Ranran from Red Bacteria Vacuum. (Later she would bonk her head pretty hard on my shoulder while dancing to Tsushimamire's set.)

Akeming and Ikumi from Red Bacteria Vacuum.

Marie from the Amppez.

The Amppez's set was unfortunately marred by a ridiculously loud fuzz guitar; I couldn't hear what sounded like rather pretty melodies over the guitar chaos (and no, I don't think it was a My Bloody Valentine move).

And then, TsuShiMaMiRe:

TsuShiMaMiRe in full nudge-nudge wink-wink Orientalist mode.

Mizue and Mari from Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re.

Yayoi from Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re.

I don't have very good pictures, simply because I was jumping around too much, as was everyone else, to bother grabbing the camera. It's hard to describe how damn good (and fun) this band is; style-wise, they run the range from Japanese disco-funk to hardcore to and yes, hair flying everywhere. Sometimes, in the space of one song (like the marvelous "Tea Time Ska"), a death-metal vocal interlude gives way to a pop ska chorus. They didn't have much material to draw from -- one 32-minute album and a CD of demos -- but they sure played the hell out of it. With, uh, hair flying everywhere.

J-Lu's making me and her friends wait for over an hour outside Studio Z.Tv paid off: one of the best things about being front and center -- other than being right there -- is that you get to yell your requests and actually make them heard. For the seemingly unplanned encore (it wasn't on the setlist), TsuShiMaMiRe played the song we were yelling out, the epic "Manhole" and "Lingerie Shop."

And so J-Lu's friend Kenny caught one of Mizue's drumsticks, J-Lu got her CD signed by all the band members, and I shook hands with them, got my CD signed by Red Bacteria Vacuum, got my chin "signed" (long story -- Akeming wanted to do it), and got asked if I was Japanese (Ikumi then grabbed my hand and yelled "Firipin!").

Petition to End Violence against Filipino People.

From The Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective:

If you wish to sign the petition, please RSVP/send your reply on or by November 9, 2005, Wednesday. In the body of your e-mail, please write your name, institution and affiliation.

Reply to:
pinasatrocities@yahoo.com

Your e-mail address will not be printed in the petition and will not be used for any other purpose other than this petition. After collecting the signatures on Nov. 9, our colleagues in Bayan-Philippines, through Dr. Joi Barrios (Associate Dean at the University of Philippines-Diliman), will submit the petition to representatives of the Philippine Government.

CALL FOR U.S. SUPPORT TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST FILIPINO PEOPLE

As progressive U.S.-based academics, writers, and labor activists, we condemn the growing spate of killings and human rights violations of political activists, peasant farmers’ rights advocates, lawyers, priests and journalists in the Philippines. The Philippine military is targeting and murdering Filipino activists and civilians under the pretense of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo regime's “War on Terror.” The U.S.-backed Arroyo regime's campaign of surveillance, abduction, torture, and execution is a campaign of terror against the Filipino people. The recent gang rape of a Filipina by six U.S. marines, stationed in the Philippines to conduct “counterterrorist operations,” is another example of the terror experienced by Filipinos under the U.S.-backed Arroyo regime.

International and Filipino human rights groups have documented that since 2001, more than 49 Filipinos have been killed by the Philippine military or paramilitary. The death toll has risen in just the last week as Filipino union leader Ricardo Ramos of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU), BAYAN-Pampanga leader Francisco Rivera, BAYAN allies Dr. Angel David, Vonjohn Maniniti, and most recently ANAKPAWIS Leader Federico De Leon were assassinated. Other recent killings include the Sept 22, 2005 assassination of labor leader Diosdado Fortuna, a Nestlé worker and chairperson of a Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) regional chapter, and the November 16, 2004 massacre of seven striking peasant workers at Hacienda Luisita, a large sugar estate owned by the family of former President Corazon Aquino.

Since then, death squads comprised of Philippine military, police, paid mercenaries and others yet to be identified have either killed or made attempts on the lives of a wide range of progressive activists. Our U.S. troops continue to be deployed in the Philippines to train Philippine military and paramilitary forces to infiltrate and destroy progressive Filipino organizations, particularly those affiliated with the national democratic movement. The on-going investigations regarding the rape of a Filipina by six U.S. marines underscores how a dubious “War against Terror” conducted by the U.S. in the Philippines furthers violence against innocent Filipino civilians.

In deep sympathy and solidarity with organizations such as Bayan Muna, BAYAN, ANAKPAWIS, GABRIELA and Kilusang Mayo Uno/KMU, who continue to be targeted by militarist brutality, we denounce the Arroyo government and the Bush administration’s support of the Arroyo regime. Consequently, we censure the Bush and Arroyo administrations' false accusations against anti-imperialist activism as “terrorism.” This strategy justifies and condones the brutal suppression of those who collectively organize against injustice and exploitation.

We support the Filipino people and their acts of civil disobedience such as peaceful rallies, marches and protest actions. We stand in solidarity with the Filipino people’s desire to end the illegitimate and tyrannical regime of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and end U.S. military presence in the Philippines.

We ask our U.S. colleagues and conscientious individuals to:

1) Boycott any and all Nestlé Company products and Nestlé Company subsidiaries
2) Invite Bayan activists to your institution to discuss the human rights atrocities in the Philippines. Contact the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective at cffsc@focusnow.org for more information or contact Bayan-USA: Bayan-USA chair, Kawal Ulanday at chair@bayanusa.org or call 800 -874-9794.
3) Sponsor a film screening on a new documentary on human rights violations
in the Philippines, There's Blood in Your Coffee, a documentary on the continuing 3+year Nestlé workers’ strike in Cabuyao, Laguna, Southern Tagalog, where Filipino Nestlé Union President and Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) Labor Leader Diosdado "Ka Fort" Fortuna was brutally murdered. We also recommend Hacienda Luisita, a film documenting the struggles of sugar cane and sugar processing plant workers and the violence against their efforts to organize and to demand for better wage and living conditions. This documentary film honors the lives of the workers who were killed on November 16, 2004.

We hope you will join our global efforts to expose and end the brutality of the Arroyo regime.

Maraming salamat and peace,

CONVENORS OF THE PETITION:

Members of the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective
1) Benito Vergara Jr.
Assistant Professor
Asian American Studies Department
San Francisco State University, CA

2) Rowena Tomaneng
Associate Professor
English Department
De Anza Community College, CA

3) Neferti X. Tadiar
Associate Professor
History of Consciousness Department
University of California, Santa Cruz

4) Jeffrey Santa Ana
Assistant Professor
English Department
Dartmouth College, NH

5) Joanne Rondilla
Doctoral student
Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley

6) Robyn M. Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Rutgers University, NJ

7) Dylan Rodriguez
Assistant Professor
Department of Ethnic Studies
University of California, Riverside

8) Gladys Nubla
Doctoral student
Department of English
University of California, Berkeley

9) Vernadette V. Gonzalez
Assistant Professor
Department of Global Studies
Saint Lawrence University, NY

10) Luis Francia
Journalist, Village Voice and Philippine Inquirer Author and Lecturer, Asian Pacific American Studies Program New York University, NY

11) Sharon Delmendo
Professor of English
St. John Fisher College
Rochester, NY

12) Peter Chua
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
San Jose State University, CA

13) Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns
Assistant Professor
Departments of Asian American Studies and World Arts and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles

14) John D. Blanco
Assistant Professor
Department of Literature
University of California, San Diego

15) Nerissa Balce
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures University of Massachusetts, Amherst

[NOTE: Add your signature by sending e-mail to pinasatrocities@yahoo.com]

Current 93 / Om / Pantaleimon / Six Organs of Admittance / Maja Elliott, SF, 11/5/2005.

This was Night #2 of the big Current 93 lovefest; given that this was only the second time, in almost a quarter century of existence, that Current 93 has toured San Francisco, I bought my ticket the day it went on sale. (The fact that Om was opening for them made the concert even sweeter.)

First up was Maja Elliott: while her piano has, in essence, been the cornerstone of Current 93's sound in the last few years, Elliott solo is another matter; the music wouldn't seem out of place on a Windham Hill release circa 1982. (Not necessarily an insult, but you know what I mean.)

I have to confess I walked out once from hearing Six Organs of Admittance (he was opening for Ghost last year). This time, however, Ben Chasny started off with some serious effects pedals din, flailing around like Keiji Haino; by the time he would alternate this with relatively gentle and intricate fingerpicking, I was hooked. I'm not walking out on him again.

Pantaleimon, who is basically Andria Degens -- whose album I bought off eBay when I got home from the concert -- played haunting stuff: droney tone poems on harmonium (I think) and hammered dulcimer (I think). Too bad the audience was extremely, rudely loud at this point.

Then Om was next. I have Variations on a Theme (and of course all the Sleep albums), but listening to them on crappy computer speakers simply didn't prepare me for the sheer, brutal, lunkheaded purity of their vision: detuned bass guitar, a badly-abused drum kit, blown-out speakers, hair flying everywhere, and one hypnotic 45-minute track (or at least it seemed that long). This was straight-up, bludgeoning stoner rock right out of Jerusalem / Dopesmoker; considering that Om is basically Sleep minus one (i.e., Matt Pike's guitar), the new music is necessarily even more reductive, if that were possible. (I think they annoyed the hell out of the Strawberry Switchblade goths in the audience, so it was great to hear Tibet later call Om "my absolute favorite band in the world." A few around me had their fingers in their ears the entire time; that may have included the guy with incense up front who, I swear, was writing in his diary in between sets.) Their set alone practically wiped me out already.

Of course, the band everyone came to see was Current 93. The current touring lineup -- Elliott on piano, John Contreras on cello, Joolie Wood on violin, William Breeze on viola (one would think that the Caliph of the O.T.O. would be pretty busy, but hey), Baby Dee on harp, Chasny on electric guitar, the legendary Simon Finn on acoustic guitar, and of course, The Artist Formerly Known As David Tibet on vocals -- was a quite formidable one, at least sonically speaking. Because of this, in many ways, the highlights of the concert were the new apocalyptic songs from the upcoming Black Ships Ate The Sky album; the so-called Coptic single, for instance, is a collision of Soft Black Stars-style minimalism with the industrial crash of his earliest albums.

The last time I saw David Late Tibet was at the same very venue, though I was standing next to the bar and mostly hearing the clink of the bottles. This time, however, I had managed to wriggle my way into the second row, close to the center, right behind David's lyric sheet stand (one row away from where I was standing at the Merzbow concert a couple of months ago). This gave me the perfect vantage point to see him declaim and grimace and twitch like a preacher possessed, almost unrelenting in intensity.

The setlist, as one could have guessed, drew largely from the output of the last few years (see also How I Devoured Apocalypse Balloon and Halo), with a blistering "Oh Coal Black Smith" before the encore, from those days when David and Boyd Rice and John Balance and Douglas Pearce were all still buddies. (At some point some idiot in the audience yelled for "Freebird," to which Tibet replied, "We're no fucking covers band," but did do a scary version of Bill Fay's "Time of the Persecution.") The evening ended with one of my favorite C93 songs: piano, vocals, "Have pity for the dead / Sleep has his house." Amazing.

Jeannie Barroga's Banyan.

Jeannie Barroga's new play Banyan begins, quite promisingly, with the sight of Ona's (aka Dorothy, played with a kind of wide-eyed scariness by Victoria Mejia) red Converse shoes, her iPod, and, perhaps most important for the opening scene, the sound of shredding paper over the fading notes of "Somewhere over the Rainbow."

The ambient sound -- along with, at times, the distracting chirps of birds -- is important, because in a sense it's all background noise. There is hardly a moment of stillness in the entire play; the actors spend their time on stage drowning each other out, as if the constant, logorrheal flow of language (and there are indeed bodily fluids aplenty, including one long, ill-advised, piss) could smooth over the growing noise around them. Or, better yet, as if their constant chatter -- the first scene, for instance, revels in what I can only call Wall Street staccato -- could somehow ward off the evil spirits that lie in wait. It doesn't work. The aswang gets you anyway, and will suck out your life essence until you're -- oh, I can't resist a Munchkin reference here -- morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably... dead.

Playwright Jeannie Barroga explains that Banyan is a response to 9/11, by way of a Pinay Wizard of Oz. In this respect, Banyan, like the tree that gives the play its title, is something of a sprawling mess. This is not meant to be negative, though it does point to something of a problem with the narrative.

With all these balls being juggled, it would inevitably be difficult to keep them all in the air, and this is where the play becomes hard to follow, both tonally and thematically. Francis Tanglao-Aguas' able direction keeps the cast's feet firmly planted on the ground, but Barroga's writing teeters quite close to farce at many points (which seems to contradict almost everyone's high-minded seriousness in the program notes). Add to this stew a couple of indecisive corporate execs, a trio of quarrelling soldiers, and yes, a blood-sucking, hump-hungry, succubus-like creature -- with almost all the actors playing double, if not triple roles -- and you get, as written above, a sometimes confusing tangle of tree roots. (Vicki Zabarte, as the aswang, actually does triple duty as the Wicked Boss Witch and, in a scene-stealing performance, a shrill Philippine Airlines flight attendant.) Towards the end, the "dream" bleeds more and more into "reality," making the sense of disorientation -- also felt at least by this member of the audience -- even more acute.

[Special mention must also be made here of Jose Saenz, who, I swear to god, must be the hardest-working Filipino American in show business, at least in these parts. (I think I see him on campus almost every week, and, it seems, in just about every other theater production in San Francisco.) His unctuous CIA agent / mysterious black-clad assistant strikes just the right note; to watch him unexpectedly channel the Cowardly Lion (at least that was how I interpreted it) is one of the play's better touches.

The set design, by Michael Mehler, is exemplary in its relative economy: the exposed office piping standing in for roots and branches, the shredded paper strewn everywhere as both corporate debris and oppressive rainforest moss. There are no windows in this New York office for its imprisoned employees; the walls are perversely covered by glossy Philippine tourism posters of beaches and blue skies. The banyan tree trunk itself looks like a transparent cloth canopy that could be both Enterprise Transporter or butterfly cage; either way, it works really well.]

But there's a good reason for what I described above as "a sprawling mess" (and again, it's not necessarily meant to be a negative): the fragmentary nature of Banyan's scenes, as well as the palpable feeling that things are about to go out of control (notably Michael Dorado, who plays his custodian / soldier role in perfectly calibrated, but slightly unhinged mode), are clearly in keeping with the setting, i.e., the dizzying experience of a company going down the tubes, the dislocation of an impenetrable Philippine jungle, and the breakneck use of language in a last-ditch attempt to anchor one's self. (One of the more amusing subplots in the play is how Barroga employs the cliche of the Filipino American "going back home" to the Philippines to "rediscover" her roots -- and ends up getting kidnapped by, in essence, the lion, the scarecrow and the tin (wo)man.)

"Maybe some of us need myths," Ona says at some point. This play is, perhaps, Jeannie Barroga's ambitious and fascinating attempt to make some overarching sense of the chaos of the last five years, a way of re-articulating the war on terrorism and the Philippines and the fiscal malfeasance of Enron into a grander and more spiritually resonant narrative. Banyan, then, could be seen as a shotgun marriage of Hollywood mythos and Filipino alamat -- perhaps echoing that originary, violent moment of the American incursion into the Philippines, at the barrel of a gun. Barroga's play gestures to something bigger than Oz; as Dorothy insists at the end of the 1939 film, it wasn't a dream -- a dream jungle, if you will -- but a place. (And you, and you, and you, and you, were there.) Ona's whirlwind journey may be in her head, but real corruption, and a very real war, is still happening in a real, truly live place.

Banyan, presented by the Asian American Theater Company, is playing from November 3-20 -- Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8, and on Sundays at 7 -- at New Langton Arts on 1246 Folsom Street (and 8th) in San Francisco. (Tickets, for only $15, can be purchased here.)

More Updates on Antwi Akom.

The felony charge was dropped, but the misdemeanor charges remain -- see the Xpress article.

Meanwhile, a white supremacist forum has linked to my blog (specifically, Antwi's letter reproduced in a previous post). I really don't want to link to it from here, so the url is available upon request if you're interested in their take on the matter.