6/13/08 O-Scene Weekend

Featured Event: Emily King and Anthony David

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

Emily King and Anthony David
$35
Doors at 6, Show at 8pm
Q’s Lounge
126 Broadway, Oakland, CA
www.eandjbbq.com

5/23 O Scene Weekend

Featured Event: Decoy

The ability to manipulate form and color in order to blend into your surroundings is one of nature’s true wonders and a time honored tool for hunting and basic survival. Whether it’s a frog turning itself all types of rust colors to snag that tasty fly, or a fish that blends into the background whenever the big bad eel comes along, or the short skinny kid from middle school who strikes a ninja pose and vanishes into the crowd to avoid that weekly ass kicking, in certain situations, the ability to fade and mimic have proven to be crucial skills.

Along these same lines, certain industries have been known to use visual deceptions to their advantage in several, sometime shiesty ways. From passing counterfeit twenties to packaging a generic product to look just like the New! Improved! Tide! sitting right next to it, media and marketing especially have been using mimicry,camouflage and decoys to get over for years.

Tonight a group of artists are giving the technique a try. Decoy, the new show at Lobot Gallery is a group exhibition of sculpture, painting, video, and works on paper featuring recent work by Patrick Blaeser, Robert Burden, Ross Campbell, Diane Derr, Robert Jackson Harrington, Claire Jackel, Whitney Lynn, Jana Rumberger and Brian Stinemetz. The show attempts to engage the political and psychological aspects of deception, perception, cognition and abstraction.

There’ll be music by The Tea Set, MNDR and Family Tree, and Lobot Resident Artist Patrick Blaeser will open his studio for viewing.

Decoy
Friday May 23
Free
8:30
Lobot Gallery
1800 Campbell St. Oakland
www.lobotgallery.com

Love Oakland Friday Night at Luka’s

You love Oakland. And so do we. And if you want to celebrate this love, head over to Luka’s this Friday night. With a club night called We love the town, DJs Zita and Dmadness will unleash their version of Oakland love by playing hip hop, funk, dancehall and “lotsa Town bizness.”

Expect to hear Toni Tony Tone, En Vogue, Club Nouveau, The Coup, Too $hort, Digital Underground, Hieroglyphics, Goapele, Zion I, and Mistah FAB. Also expect to see the latest issue of the OakBook. Get it while you can this Friday night at Luka’s.

2221 Broadway (at West Grand)
10pm to 2am,
$10
21+

2/22 Novoscene Weekend

From wine tasting to booty shaking, art tours to praise songs, this weekend’s events combine the sacred and spiritual with the secular and the satirical, kind of like the novometro gang. With only slight leanings towards the secular. Just slightly.-kwan

By the way, look out for Oakbook vol. 2 at these fine locations. You’ll be glad you did!

Friday, Feb. 22

Planetary Alignment
Planetary Alignment is a new live arts performance talk show dedicated to artistic empowerment, ecology, education, health, enterprise, and global awareness presented by Laney College and Peralta TV. This opening show will feature performances and conversations with community arts and artists including musicians Hairdoo, dance companies Starchild Dance and Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet and live painting by Oakland muralist Khufu. The show will be hosted by the husband/wife hip hop/soul raggae duo Fiyawatah.

Planetary Alignment live taping
Free
8pm
Laney College Theater
900 Fallon St in Oakland
415.608.3207
www.peralta.TV

1/18/08 Novoscene Weekend

 

 This weekend we’ve got dribbling B-Balls, French juvenile felinquents, experimental poetry and even more experimental Christmas music.  Check it out below.-kwan

1/16-2/10 Danny Hoch at the Berkeley Rep

 

Danny Hoch is Taking Over

-kwan booth

For the next month expect a lot of discussion about gentrification and consumerism over at the Berkeley Rep-folks moving in moving out, urban redeveloping and the take over of space-as hip hop theater artist Danny Hoch premiers his first solo show in 10 years.

The new play “Taking Over” grapples with the issues of displacement and gentrification in trademark Hoch style. Through a collection of 10 characters based on people he’s come in contact with during his 20 year stay in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the actor, director and Hip Hop Theater Festival founder dissects what happens when a neighborhood gets a facelift. Using the uncanny knack for mimicry first displayed in the 1998’s Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop ,the voices range from the trust funded hipster to the militant rapper to the big budget developer.

12/31 New Year’s Eve Events

 

 

-Brass Menazeri

Take heed all ye faithful revelers, your night has arrived! The streets will be filled with merriment, the music will play, the drink will flow and the world will move just a little closer to universal peace, love and understanding-or at the very least we’ll see some fireworks, blow some noisemakers and bond with tons of people you won’t remember in the morning.

From the traditional to the eccentric, the formal to the WTF! there’s a little something in the Novoscene New Year’s Eve guide for however you like get your respective groove on. See you in the New Year!

-kwan

2008 New Year’s Bash w/ DJ Jay-R

$10

8 p.m

White Horse Inn

6551 Telegraph Ave., Oakland

510-652-3820

WhiteHorseBar.com

 

 

Brian Jack & Zydeco Gamblers

$45

9 p.m.

Eagles Hall, 2305 Alameda Ave., Alameda

415-285-6285

SFZydeco.com

 

 

Black Comedy Explosion W/ Earthquake, Lavelle Crawford, Sheryl Underwood, & Rueben Paul.

$39.75-$67.75

10 p.m.

Paramount Theatre,

2025 Broadway, Oakland,

510-465-6400

ParamountTheatre.com

 

Bootie Pirate New Year’s Eve Party w/ Adrian & the Mysterious D, Party Ben, Dada, Smash-Up Derby, DJs Earworm Freddy & King of Pants, & the Indra

$20-$30

9 p.m

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., San Francisco

415-626-1409

DNALounge.com

 

 

Cake W/ the Lovemakers

$69.50-$79.50

9 p.m.

The Warfield

982 Market St., San Francisco

415-775-7722

12-7-07 Novoscene Weekend

It’s here!! The OakBook Party!!! Tonight!!!

There’s lot’s of other cool stuff in the calendar too, but…

THE OAKBOOK MAGAZINE IS HERE AND THE PARTY’S TONIGHT!!

See you there.

-kwan

11/23 Novoscene Weekend

I know it’s Black Friday and you’re all pooped from shopping and stuffing yourselves with stuffing. Well get those keisters back in gear dammit! There’s goin’ out to do! Tonight stop by the AK Press warehouse and hear one our foremost US policy critics get critical, then hop to Berkeley to find out why everything you’ve brought today is wrong. Saturday is a bit more cheerful with spoken word and community celebrations before Sunday comes round with a great reason for all you writers to get out from behind your desks for a few hours. A great way to work off those holiday pounds…

-kwan

10/17 Frank Warren at Diesel Books

Ever have something that you really need to get off your chest? A secret you’re just dying to tell someone but couldn’t without fear of mass ridicule and possible stoning in the public square? Well Frank Warren is the man you’ve been looking for. For the last two years Warren has been soliciting secrets from any and everyone and the sharing them with the world.