This is the Oakland blog for people living out loud. True to the Oakbook philosophy, we’ll tell you where to go, what to do, and what’s really going down in the town and around the Bay. From parties to films, peace protests to flag football, if there's a there there, we'll blog it.
Invite us to things. We're great at parties.
If you've got events, photos, videos, announcements or general news on all the happenings in the Bay, send 'em over to Kwan Booth at kwan (at) theoakbook.com. And don't be afraid to leave a comment. Don't be shy...come over and talk to us. You just might get lucky!
Nelson Mandela turns the big 9-0 tomorrow, and to celebrate the B-day of the historic South African freedom fighter, Ashkenaz is hosting a special performance by freedom song choir, Vukani Mawethu.
“Vukani Mawethu was formed in 1986 for a concert at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall organized by the late South African singer and freedom fighter James Madhlope Phillips. Since then it has performed at festivals, concert halls and rallies for an array of social causes, using music to uplift spirits and move the struggle forward. The nonprofit, multiracial choir sings the freedom songs of Southern Africa, primarily of South Africa, in Zulu, Xhosa, Sethu, and English, and also gospel, spirituals, labor, and civil rights songs linking peoples in the U.S., South Africa, and around the world. The choir continues to sing out against racism and injustice whenever and wherever possible - from small AIDS rallies to homeless shelters and prisons, and throughout the cities and townships of South Africa on a dynamic cultural tour in 1997. Proceeds from concerts go to support a return trip to South Africa and to help ongoing AIDS work in that country.” Read the rest of this entry »
By most accounts, Annie Hall and Manhattan are Woody Allen’s best movies (although to be honest, I think Celebrity and Sweet and Lowdown are tops). The flicks catch Allen at the height of his mature neuroticism, after the slapstick of What’s Up Tiger Lily and before the “just a little too dry” newer stuff like Cassandra’s Dream. Both screen tonight as part of BAM/PFA’s 90 year anniversary tribute to United Artist Films. Check ‘em out. Cuz anxiety, depression and angst of this magnitude deserves to be seen on the big screen at least once.-kwan
Annie Hall’s Best scenes: (Best Line “We’ll kiss now, we’ll get it over with then we’ll go eat, we’ll digest our food better.”)
Ever been to a hoe down? I mean a real hippified, jug band, backyard, bare foot, dust kickin’ kinda hoedown? Well, being from Virginia and having been fortunate (?) enough to get hitched to the String Cheese Incident, Keller Williams, Hot Buttered Rum Band set for a while, I’ve been known to get my feet dusty on occasion. And you can too, (granted, without the actual dust) as Ashkenaz hosts a show by Oakland roots and “Soul Tub” band The California Honeydrops.
While young in years the Drops are old in influence. Versed in varying types of American Roots Music (that catchall category encompassing Blues, Bluegrass, Ragtime, Gospel, Jug Band and music originating in rural Southern and Midwestern communities) the quartet of Lech Wierzynski, Nansamba Ssensalo, Chris Burns and Ben Malament play everything but the kitchen sink as they run through bluesy numbers and dance floor friendly interpretations of classic work by Big Bill Broonzy, Rae Charles, The Soul Stirrers and a long list of other acoustic artists that are being pushed more and more into obscurity with each digitally enhanced day.
Check them out tonight as they put a new hand clapping, foot stomping twist on some old classics. Some sweet southern licks right here in Bay. Bare feet optional.-KwanRead the rest of this entry »
Or not so boring. By all descriptions Zach Plague’s debut novel is a rollicking good skewer of hipsters, the art scene and most commonly held notions of book layout and typography.
“When the mysterious gray book that drives their twisted relationship goes missing, Ollister and Adelaide lose their post-modern marbles. He plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus, while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the art school set experiments with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. But none of these desperate young minds has counted on the intrusion of a punk named Punk and his potent sex drug. This wild slew of characters get caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus’ giant art ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion.”
See? That doesn’t sound dull at all. Plague calls the project a” hybrid typo/graphic novel” which also doubles a series of folded posters. So even if you aren’t feeling the words, you can always bliss out on the pretty pictures. Check him out tonight at Pegasus.-kwanRead the rest of this entry »
I got a call a few weeks back from the moms. She’d found a box of my old clothes and wanted to know if should she keep them or sacrifice them to the gods of Goodwill. When she started describing the threads it instantly took me back the early ’90’s, what’s referred to in hip hop as the Golden Age, when the usic was pure and the clothes were super huge and super bright-I’m talking purple jeans, orange and purple Nikes, multicolored Cross Colours button ups with the fitted baseball caps and jackets that matched the rest of the outfit way, way too much. And these were the stepping out clothes. We must have looked like a gang of hood peacocks. Needless to say the box got the donation treatment real quick.
If you’re in possession of such a box of unmentionables, or just have a closet full of last year’s designs you’re itching to get rid of, the homeys from Homeygrown have to solution: bring everything down to Soundwave Studios this Saturday for the Soulstice Swap, a knock down drag out free for all clothing and stuff swapathon. Just show up with your own bag of clothes, movies, books, music or nonperishables and dive right into the mountains of free schwag.
Homeygrown is a local arts and design collective with the mission to “provide a support system for striving artists by offering outlets for exposure.” In the past they’ve sponsored fashion shows, screen printed T-shirts, pushed artist created merch at local street fairs and thrown kick ass parties on both sides of the bay.
Saturday’s event should be another good time. And with the promise all you can drink beer and Sangria for 5 bucks, you just might find yourself coming home with a few questionable items, but hell, just toss them in the closet till next Summer. Unless you find a pair of Orange and Purple Nikes. I might want to get those from you.-kwan
A guitar, a mic and a head full of songs combined with a few beers and a reasonably attentive audience-it’s such a simple formula really, and that’s what makes it so damned hard to pull off.
Before the digitization of all things melodic turned everyone and their momma’s into laptop producers, the easiest way to jump into the industry was as a singer/songwriter: get a halfway decent guitar, a few heartfelt lyrics and a couple of people to listen to you and boom-you’re a musician.
But while a hand full of newbies have successfully pulled off the Joni Mitchell/Traci Chapman steez, the road to Bob Dylanhood is littered with discarded guitar cases, cried in beers and song lyrics scribbled on barroom napkins. But for singer/songwriters Emily King and Anthony David, playing tonight at Q’s lounge in Jack London Square, the road has put them on the highway to success and a possible place among the coffeeshop greats.
22 year old Emily King is a bit of a musical prodigy. After leaving school at 16 because classes were moving too slowly, the ambitious New Yorker got her GED and set out to start her own musical movement that so far has led to international acclaim and a 2007 Grammy nomination for her debut album “East Side Story”. From the beginning, King’s music-nimble guitar playing under soul, jazz and pop melodies that lives somewhere between Corinne Bailey Rae, Norah Jones and Mary J Blige, has been drawn from her life story, independent ideology and desire to make a difference in the world. “I think music is such a revolutionary thing” she says “and that’s what it should be.”
Atlanta’s Anthony David isn’t necessarily out to start a revolution, he just wants to make some good music. “Sometimes (my music) is escapism, sometimes it’s sympathy or emotion,” he explains. “Sometimes it’s grounded in the present and some times it’s taking you away from it.” The modern day troubadour calls his style “Millennium Blues” because of the way it “all goes back to the blues. The lyrics, the music, my using everything from acoustic to hip-hop, the story telling…all of it connects through the blues like a bridge.”
A product of Atlanta’s singer songwriter and spoken word scenes, David is signed to close friend India.Arie’s Soulbird Music label and has worked with some of the ATL’s most prolific performers. When he straps on his guitar southern influences drip from his music like molasses. His guitar playing on his new album “Acey Ducey” has a relaxed, “on the front porch” ease to it, and his lyrical honesty paints a picture of a man who’s comfortable in his skin and with what he has to offer.
David’s songs are impressive without trying to impress. From the duet “Words,” that reveals his musical relationship with Arie, to the “Red Clay Chronicles,” a candid depiction of hustling and city life to “Smoke One,” an ode to kicking back with friends-David says this relaxed, no frills approach to music is the only way he’d ever think of creating.When the young revolutionary from back east meets the laid back southern crooner tonight over dueling guitars, it should be a great meeting of the musical minds as well as an instructional session on how to make this deceptively simple style sound as sweet as we all know it can.-kwan
Oakland’s Hieroglyphics are on the bill for Saturday.
UPDATE: We just got the news that Saturday’s Paid Dues concert in Berkeley has been canceled. Find on more information on refunds on the festival website.
Underground hip hop heads rejoice-your time is here. As the 3rd annual Paid Dues Festival swings through Berkeley this Saturday, so come the legions of dreadlock sporting, Mos Def quoting, 50 Cent dissing, super lyrical MC’s and bedroom DJ’s that have followed the fest’s Pied Piper call for Real Hip Hop since it’s debut 3 years ago.
Armed with backpacks full of promo mix CD’s, bottled water, fliers for the next hot open mic night and an encyclopedic knowledge of rap history, they’ll descend on the Berkeley Community Theater for an afternoon of serious rhyme saying, beat breaking and head nodding courtesy of a line up that includes Mos, Rakim, De La Soul, Gza and Oakland’s Hieroglyphics and Blackalicious. Along with the Rock the Bells festival that takes place later this summer, the case could be made that Paid Dues is one of the best things to happen to hip hop since Black Moon first started rocking backpacks in the early 90’s.
The brainchild of uber MC Murs 3:16 from the Living Legends crew, Paid Dues is a national touring festival that celebrates the non-mainstream artist. The festival name comes from the concept of Paying Your Dues-grinding and hustling your way up from the bottom of the barrel to the top spot-from carrying the DJ’s crates and sneaking in clubs through the exit door to headlining Madison Square Garden. These are the artists you usually won’t find on MTV and KMEL but who play a critical role in promoting hip hop as a culture and not just a marketing tool for high end Vodka. They’ve amassed loyal followings through independent hustling, creating buzz on sites like Myspace and Imeem and generally working their asses off to get their music to the people-from pushing their product on the BART platform during rush hour to slipping promo CD’s into copies of local weekly newspapers.
Little Brother at Paid Dues 2008
While not always the case, underground heads are usually known more for a dedication to craft than cash and lean more towards the anti capitalism, left of center side of things than most of the artists found on KMEL and the latest Billboard top 10. This tendency has led to the branding of all underground rap as “Conscious” and focused more on social justice and everyday life than spinning rims and Escalades. And while artists like the aforementioned Mos, De La and Little Brother and are active in grassroots politics and organizing endeavors, they-along with MC’s like Supernatural, GZA and Yak Ballz are just as likely spit rhymes about lyrical murder or whacked our social observations as they are to drop a track supporting the democratic presidential nominee.
Chances are, if you’re a hip hop head, backpacker, activist rapper or the like you’ve already got your ticket and are on your way to camp out overnight next to the stage. But if you’re just entering the underground then this show just might change your mind about the culture and what’s really going down in the bedroom studios and freestyle ciphers around the country.-KwanRead the rest of this entry »
Featured Event: Oakland Art
Y’know that often repeated “fact” that Oakland has the most artists per capita of any city in the country? While I like the idea, I’ve always met the statement with just a slightly snarky hint of “Oh, really? Is that a fact?”
It’s not that I don’t love the Town’s art scene-I really, really do-it’s just that I’ve always found the statement a little hard to swallow. Well this weekend I’m eating crow, big brightly colored bowls of artistically arranged crow. As the sunshine from the first weekend of June beams down on the timely convergence of Art Murmur and East Bay Open Studios, there’s truly a ridiculous amount of art happenings happening-from photography to fresco, installations to open studios. It’s enough to turn even a skeptic like me into an ardent Oakland Art Cheerleader.
Tonight kick things off on 14th and Broadway at Joyce Gordon Gallery’s annual “Insight” emerging photographers exhibit. The six Bay Area and two London based photographers, including Traci Bartlow, Rameen Gasey and Judy Seidel vary in styles from black and white photojournalism to abstract imagery but all eight have proven that they have bright futures behind the lens.
Afterwards head next door to Awaken Cafe for “Superimpositions,” Julie Oppermann’s exhibit of small watercolors and large mounted canvases centered around the idea of layering, collaging, and juxtaposing patterns, shapes, lines and colors.
Next there’s “Myths and Dreams,” showing at the Front Gallery on Grand Ave., featuring frescos, video and prints by Calixto Robles, Alexandra Blum and Ana Hurk respectively. Each artist uses the various mediums to explore ideas “inspired from memories, images, fables and myths that bridges concerns of the modern world and that of the traditions of ancient Meso-America.”
After a bit of Meso art head over to 21 Grand for their 8th annual Benefit Art Sale, featuring the work of over 70 local artists, all priced to make sure you leave the spot with your own personal masterpiece tucked neatly under your arm…
As you make your way up to Well Boutique, one of the newer Murmur additions, located on Telegraph and 43rd. Shop owner Riquelle Small is on a mission to create a little spiritual oasis in the Temescal with her combination of healing products, local art designs and jewelry in addition to the art openings she hosts in the back room. Illustrator Johnny Siu’s work fits right into the aesthetic, with colored pencil sketches of wide eyed little girls and fantasy figures.
Then if you’re still thirsty for art but want something a bit less “artsy,” make the trek over to Compound Gallery on San Pablo for “Water, Oxygen, Light” a collaboration between Emery Secondary School Biology Instructor Cassandra Neaves and Kala Arts Instructor Eric Sanchez that explores the process of seed germination and vegetative rooting. Science and art all in one place? Hmm, (slow, thoughtful chin stroking) very fascinating…
And this is all just tonight! We haven’t even begun to talk about the weekend’s East Bay Open Studios or Oakbook’s resident art critic Theo Konrad Auer’s handpicked faves. I mean, not to get all zealot on you dudes but I’m just saying: Oakland is where all the real artists kick it. And that’s a stone cold fact.
Got a boyfriend/girlfriend/otherfriend and another piece on the side? Do you want one? Do you feel bad about it and want to put it all out there, but are scared to get all polygamist on your main squeeze? Well open relationship and polyamory curious types take note-”Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage”, the new book by Jenny Block, is for you.
“Jenny Block was the average girl-next-door, a suburban wife and mother for whom married life never felt quite right. Deeply in love with her husband but unsatisfied with their sex life, Block didn’t believe her marriage was working - but also didn’t believe in cheating. “Open” tracks the rocky road from husband and wife to husband, wife, and others, and is an intimate look at one woman’s experiences in finding happiness for herself and her family with honesty, love, and commitment. Block brings an eye-opening perspective on polyamorous relationships.”
A great companion to the 1997’s open love bible “The Ethical Slut,” “Open” offers an intimate first person’s account of having your relationship cake and eating it too.-Kwan Read the rest of this entry »
From now through June 1, Cal Performances host the newest work by acclaimed director and writer Robert Lapage and the Ex Machina theater company-
“Robert Lepage is one of Canada’s most renowned artists, ‘a theatrical conjurer, whose dazzling shows have captivated audiences around the world with their mixture of storytelling and stunning imagery’ (The Guardian, London).
In The Andersen Project, he continues to push artistic boundaries with a work freely inspired by two stories by Hans Christian Andersen (”The Dryad” and “The Shadow”) as well as anecdotes drawn from the famed Danish author’s Parisian travels. This spellbinding solo piece draws on some of Lepage’s favorite themes: the confrontation of past and present, of Romanticism and modernism, and of recognized and underground art forms. In this fascinating piece, Lepage also explores more personal territories in questions about sexual identity, unfulfilled fantasies, and the thirst for recognition and fame that are drawn from Andersen’s life and writings.” Read the rest of this entry »
Nelson Mandela turns the big 9-0 tomorrow, and to celebrate the B-day of the historic South African freedom fighter, Ashkenaz is hosting a special performance by freedom song choir, Vukani Mawethu.
Ever been to a hoe down? I mean a real hippified, jug band, backyard, bare foot, dust kickin’ kinda hoedown? Well, being from Virginia and having been fortunate (?) enough to get hitched to the String Cheese Incident, Keller Williams, Hot Buttered Rum Band set for a while, I’ve been known to get my feet dusty on occasion. And you can too, (granted, without the actual dust) as Ashkenaz hosts a show by Oakland roots and “Soul Tub” band 
Or not so boring. By all descriptions Zach Plague’s debut novel is a rollicking good skewer of hipsters, the art scene and most commonly held notions of book layout and typography.
Got a boyfriend/girlfriend/otherfriend and another piece on the side? Do you want one? Do you feel bad about it and want to put it all out there, but are scared to get all polygamist on your main squeeze? Well open relationship and polyamory curious types take note-”Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage”, the new book by Jenny Block, is for you.
From now through June 1, Cal Performances host the newest work by acclaimed director and writer 