World Famous In San Francisco

I think maybe this should be filed under World Famous in LA given that Anavan is a totally LA affair. If you're not familliar, imagine you started an ESG inspired dance band but you were weened on nineties post punk/post hardcore weirdness (well, Anavan were on GSL). Also you're really taken with that whole nu rave scene going on (or do I mean ravesploitation). Throw in some football helmets fitted with mics for a good electro aesthetic and you've got Anavan. I swear!

Anyway, last month they visited TransAm -- speaking of, its that time again. TransAm is this saturday with Ex-Boyfriends -- and pretty much brought the house down. Maybe those helmets were more literal than I thought, it was like they were running plays out of their retard football playbook: running around, rolling on the floor, and feeling up the boys in the audience. Oh, and playing their hearts out.

I had a great time at the show, but I'm getting less mileage out of the tour EP. It has more to do with being over the ESG sound after the great post punk boom of the early 2000's than anything to do with the EP proper. I'm not overly familiar with Anavan's past albums, but this EP does feel like the band is sniffing around for a new trail to follow. I like the new wave explorations of 'Not Sure' the best, but I'm going to put up a song called 'Traumatology' as I think it sounds the most representative. Look and listen!

Anavan - Traumatology

You know, originally I was just going to post about a few options available tonight but now that I have these three fliers in one place I wonder if I should do an expose on flyer design. Ok, specifically flyer design for the gay stuff. Everybody: there are options other than porn. Even if its extreme and amateur and funny porn.



Anyway, Anavan plays tonight at monthly beard party Trans Am. One of the dudes in Anavan runs eggcityradio and I appreciate all of the downloaded goodness I get from that site. Hard Place assure us the band is great live and I've been wanting to check them out since we had to leave before their set in Austin. Kdaija (who has no internet presence in 2008) and Ambrosia Salad will emote in wigs. DJ Dirty Knees keeps this party going every month. For completenesses sake I should mention Dee Jay Pee Play of Honey Sound System is playing too.


Club Feral is also tonight for those of you who are more gutter punk goth freak than beard fag. I like this club because they have a bake sale and I'm usually hungry. Death Of A Party, sexual terrorists Wealthy Whore Entertainment, the totally deranged Stalker Holler, and Goo perform. Plus, our buddy Gary Fembot from The Clap and Violent Vickywill be spinning records. Keep your eye on gary though, he's totally going to flyer you for his band's show coming up this Friday.



Doesn't Randy look great in that photo?? Carletta Sue Kay play tonight and they summed this show up better than I could:

lee is going to freakin' kill me. he just came home blasted. i made him something to eat. he told me to f@#k off then passed the F(%k out on our bed. i went to see if he was okay and he had sour cream ALL OVER HIS FACE. wanted to take a picture but in the end decided to be nice. instead ive opted to drink all if not most of his ardbeg. he's gonna KILL ME!!!! oh! right! we are playing tonight, saturday, at 285 9th street at the Nine Gallery. the sound is actually going to be really nice so COME ON OUT YALL!!!! it is absolutely, 100 per cent FREEEEEE, and...now im speaking to all my friend's livers....AN OPEN BAR!!!!!! AND, there is going to be some really lovely art and probably a few people who you quite likely would not introduce to your family. always fun. so come on out and hear our sad sappy songs. we love you....FOREVER...EVER....EVER...EVER....randy

TransAM was super fun! Lots of people came out in the crappy weather, the beard party was in full swing, and there were even some cute guys. The downstairs DJ, DJ Jef Leopard, played some seriously choice records -- that is, if you like that British DIY kind of thing, trashy seventies rock, tropicalia, and 'good' punk like the Dead Boys, and Iggy.

If you couldn't make it, here's a bunch of videos Myles took (continuing his reign of awesomeness with that camera):

Miss Nix:


Hard Place:




Rentecca:


As usual, I took too many photos:


see the rest here

Did we mention this:



One of the neat things about San Francisco is we end up with club nights that try to mix and match scenes. TransAm tries to brings the gays out of their Castro shell by luring them to SOMA with drag queens, cheap drinks, and guys looking to get laid but they mix it up by having a local band headline the evening and the DJs spin the rock musics. Actually, I don't know if they're luring anybody who wouldn't already be heading to SOMA, but its a nice change of pace from the Donuts crowd. And the guys seem to like it because TransAm is usually pretty busy.

Tomorrow should be fun, Hard Place will have their trail of costumes, confetti, and whipped cream behind them and the drag queens look good too! I don't know anyhting about Miss Nix but Rentecca put on one of the filthiest performances I've seen, like, ever. I'm kind of surprised its not on youtube as it was a film piece done for Midnight Mass a few years ago. I won't go into details, but it involved an unorthodox enema and ice cream. This was followed up by a routine to "Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blue" by Crystal Gale. This is also not on youtube, but you can watch Crystal's version here if you're like that. It seems Drag Queens didn't start putting their shit (literally) up on youtube until last year. However, I guess Rentecca did a cover of "Brown Eyed Girl" which is basically the same thing:



I liked "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" better, it was more restrained. But let me tell you, I've never seen people scatter like that when something was tossed into the audience. And we were in theater seating, so people were climbing over each other to get out of the way. Priceless!

So come out tomorrow night! Who knows what you'll get on you!

Someone totally harshed the promoters of TransAm and Chrome's mellow. Turns out there is some retarded rule that's all "you're not supposed to project pornography inside of a place where you serve alcohol." What a bummer. Supposedly they threatened to yank their host's liquor licenses if everyone didn't, like, all agree to stop! Like, this is so lame!

There's a nice review of The Passionistas show at Trans Am over on the deli (shhhh!). I missed the show, but I've scored some photos:


Photos by Geof Teague
Those boys (and gal) know their audience. I did actually make an appearance at the club, but after the bands and the drag queens and the general faggotry. Even though it was late (by San Francisco standards that is) the gays still seemed to be out -- so it seems I wasn't out past the general buggery. There was a pretty good dj downstairs playing some standard eighties fare (siouxie and the like) but I heard some Opal and that was cool. Upstairs was this other DJ and his fall out boy record collection -- I don't really know what that could have been about, some kind of ironic fraternity boy worship? -- and I needed to get away from that fast but Myles and I were asked to pose for gay.com. Completely absurd, we can't wait to see what that looks like!

Always posting these last minute: