All that is night

 Shot on Scene

Photo by James Norton

Fuck Fame Bang Bang, a new club night we hope to see return sometime soon, went down last Wednesday at U-31 in North Park. The night, billed as a place for “style conscious individuals who dare to think for themselves, go against the grain and do not watch MTV,” featured DJ EJ and rapper Archie Dean (right), among others. Femi (left), a local Suicide Girl, was one of those style-conscious folks who answered the call. www.myspace.com/fuckfamebangbang. 

Hardest of core

“It is our honor and privilege, from the depths of our fucking hearts, to play for you tonight,” said Amenity singer Mike Down last Saturday night. “It’s been 18 years….” And with that, the recently reunited Chula Vista hardcore band launched into a brutal, 45-minute set at the warehouse behind The Guild in Barrio Logan. Much of the packed house hadn’t yet been born when Amenity played their last show in 1990, and though they sounded rusty on classics like “Repercussion,” the crowd hardly cared as it slammed around, stage dived and screamed along to every song.

The show also served as a book release for Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore, but there was no doubting the night’s real draw. And so right before 20 kids jumped onstage to sing along to “This is Our Struggle,” Down made it clear that some things never change.

“It’s so great that we got to do this show at this warehouse,” he said. “Not over at the House of Blues or some other shit with some asshole security guards.” Incidentally, hardcore legends Bad Brains were playing HOB the next night, but Down knew the difference: “We’re here. That’s what makes it hardcore.”
—Seth Combs

Locals Only

Grammy nominees were announced on Dec. 3 and the big local winner was Jason Mraz, who garnered nominations for Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the single, “I’m Yours.” Another notable nominee is the San Diego- and Tijuana-based Nortec Collective side project Bostich + Fussible, who are nominated for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album for their album Tijuana Sound Machine. The winners will be announced via live telecast on Feb. 8.

A memorial show for the late Scott Zenson will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14, at Desi ’n Friends in Point Loma. Zenson was the editor and publisher of the website My Week in Music. He died Nov. 26 after suffering a heart attack. The show will include an open-mic session and performances from Brooklyn, Sandi Shaner, Veronica May and others.

Local rapper MC Flow will premiere her new music video for the song “Incredible” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Whistle Stop.

X1FM has launched a new weekly show called The Open Door Sessions. Broadcast on Friday evenings from 6 to 8 p.m., the show will consist of one hour of local music and an in-studio performance from a local band streaming in audio and video. People of all ages are invited to the National City studio to see the show live. www.x1fm.com.
—Seth Combs

The Enrique Experience

Birthed in 1993, La Pocha Nostra goes far beyond an art collective with its unapologetic, in-your-face mixture of politics, performance art and cultural commentary. The group is like a case of heartburn you get after eating a 3 a.m. burrito that only a mescaline-laced Tums can heal.

“You want to come play with us?” ringleader and co-founder Guillermo Gómez-Peña told attendees last Saturday at Downtown’s Sushi Performance Gallery, inciting guests to pose for pictures with members of his troupe. Dressed in a black bustier, matching carwash-flap-like skirt, a manly boot on one foot and a stiletto on the other, the gray-haired Svengali described, between poses for photos, the nature of his art as “our impurities.”

A woman in a gorilla mask and lavender granny panties then offered me a piece of chocolate stuck inside a banana. I got a feeling that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, or San Diego for that matter, but rather some mythical land where locals are fed by sucking surrealist milk from Frida Kahlo’s tit.

The night’s main event, dubbed The New Barbarian Collection, featured a runway show that would send Tim Gunn into a psychedelic stupor. Looks included a pristine ballerina with a strap-on under her crinoline and a noose around her neck; a man in a star-spangled swimsuit, fishnet stockings and Lucite hooker heels; a frantic burqa-wearing woman with a crown of thorns and a German taskmaster armed with a pair of surgical shears strutting her stuff as an Irving Klaw-directed Bettie Page video projected on the walls with audio of Barack Obama’s “Change We Need” Berlin speech serving as a soundtrack.

The display ended with a group of naked artists on the catwalk shamefully covering their heads with shopping bags, a critique on holiday consumerism that made visions of cracked-out Chicano sugarplums dance in my head:

Horny ballet dancers, lingerie on fellas / Old pin-up videos and Nazis with umbrellas / These are a few of my favorite things.
—Enrique Limón

Have you heard?

As of Dec. 1, the Illfonix Show, a radio program that mixed hip-hop with jazzy house, soul, traditional jazz and spoken word and aired every Wednesday from 10 p.m. to midnight on Jazz 88.3-FM, is gone.

However, the show’s creator and host, Eddie Hernandez, aka DJ Sachamo, says the show’s far from dead. “My creativity won’t stop,” he said, soon after getting word that, after seven years, his show had been canceled. “I’m not dying, the Illfonix Show is going to continue, and I’m eager to shop the show around.”

Sachamo’s looking into hooking up with a radio station that has a younger demographic, which makes sense since Jazz 88.3’s reasoning behind the cut was that the station’s going back to its traditional-jazz roots and catering more to its older members. (Jazz 88.3 is a nonprofit station, which means it relies on membership fees for support.)

Jazz 88.3 program director Claudia Russell said several other mixed-genre shows, like Jazz Underground and The Poor Man’s Almanac, were also canceled to make room for new shows featuring straight-up jazz, like Live Recordings at Anthology, a show that debuted on Dec. 5.

“What we tried to do for a few years with Illfonix and those shows was stretch out to a younger audience,” Russell said, “but the audience didn’t respond.”
Russell says she hopes to see the canceled shows continue on other stations.

Meanwhile, Sachamo’s keeping up his regular gigs (he plays at the Onyx Room’s Live Jazz Jam event every Tuesday and Arterra at the Marriot Hotel in Del Mar every Thursday and Saturday), plus he’s starting a new night, The Illfonix Underground, which kicks off at 9 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, at The Radio Room, 3519 El Cajon Ave.
—Kinsee Morlan