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There was a lot of good music in my life this last week. Monday night was
Fatboy Slim at the Fillmore, which I freely admit I never would have
attended had my friend Jim not bought me a ticket for my birthday. It's
just rare I go to such a major show anymore, much less on a school night.
I got my time on the dance floor in during the opening DJ Scanty Sandwich
while most of the crowd was still standing around the border of the
Fillmore's wood floor like it was a junior high social. Mr. Sandwich had a
really dumb name but some pretty good tracks, including one that started
out as Daft Punk and turned into Madonna's "Music". I actually have my
suspicions about where he got that particular record, because it
reappeared later during Fatboy Slim's set, causing my companion to wig out
in a drunken sort of deja vu. Next up after S-Sandy was Darren
Emerson, formerly of Underworld and part of the reason I was so stoked to
be at the show. He was Brit-boy cute and, I admit it, I was drooling for a
while. Until I noticed how tremendously into himself he seemed. He was a
fine DJ and all, but very few artists can pull off lifting their arms into
the air in self-acclamation every five minutes without looking like a
self-centered git. He did fill up the dance floor well in time for Fatboy
Slim to come onstage carrying a cake with candles lit to celebrate
Darren's birthday. Darren blew out the candles and handed the turntables
over to Fatboy Slim, and the rest of the night was sheer bliss. He
started out with the American Beauty song I mentioned a few columns
back, and continued on to intercut his own songs and mixes with really
wonderful random stuff. I can hit a point when I'm listening to
electronic music where I really glaze over, but it just never happened
with Fatboy on stage. What he was doing was just too interesting. He had
great stage presence besides, grinning like a maniac and blowing kisses to
the audience before holding up a record sleeve to the camera trained on
him with "I love San Franna" scrawled on it. He kept writing
messages to the audience through the whole set, my favorite being "Please
dance sideways instead of up and down...The whole room is shaking!" The
bouncy floor in the Fillmore was causing his records to skip. He was
still going strong when I ducked out early at 1am.
More fabulous music for me on Wednesday when I went to see Dandeline in
the Cellar at Johnny Foley's. It was an acoustic show in a space I'd
never been in before but reminded me a lot of the intimacy of Cafe du
Nord. Dandeline consists of two people I know from their work
in Tiny, but now they're playing music firmly in folk territory instead of
rock, with
beautiful results. Sheila still plays a mean fiddle (and cello!), and now
we get
to really enjoy her sweet singing voice as well. No drums necessary; Dan
adds his own little percussive touches over the mike while strumming his
guitar. Their own songs convey a beautiful melancholy, but they did a
kick-ass
cover of a Billy Nayer Show tune as well.
I'll be going to many many more of their shows, and not just
because Sheila's a friend of mine.
Finally, Friday night I went to a club called Myx at Kelly's Mission Rock.
I'd been hearing about the venue for ages (great location! right on the
Bay!) and was dying to check it out. When I got there I realized I'd
actually been there for a Mermen show about four years ago when I had a
major crush on one of their managers and before my recent excision of them
from my CD collection. The Myx folks did a fantastic job setting up three
very different areas of music with more traditional techno in the large
room upstairs, psychedelic trance on one end of the deck outside and
quieter ambient weirdness on the other. Though most of the DJs I know and
love
were playing upstairs, I never really made it out of the psy-trance area
until my Red Bull and vodka wore off and I retreated to a corner of the
ambient deck where various people high on various substances came by to
tell me I was a beautiful person before wandering off again. It was a
clear almost-warm night under an almost-full moon, and seeing the Bay
Bridge all lit up as I stumbled back to my car made me very happy.
my fave Fatboy Slim site
Dandeline
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Heidi J. De Vries
