Cover Story: The Hatching of Dirtybird
The story of how four friends turned a barbecue in Golden Gate Park into a dance music empire. SF Weekly (Cover story) I’m standing in the center of a party bus, clinging to a stripper pole. Deep, molecule-rearranging bass music vomits out of the speakers, drenching...
Throwback on Wheels: Touring SF in a Vintage Van
There's just something about riding in a vintage Volkswagen van that makes taking a tour of San Francisco so appealing. SF Weekly A vintage Volkswagen van covered in psychedelic, S.F.-centric paintings idles on the corner of Jefferson and Hyde streets, its doors wide...
Cash Rules Every Song Around Me
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers recently sued nine venues around the country for playing members' music without paying. The Grand Nightclub in San Francisco is one of them. SF Weekly We’re living in a golden age for live music. Seemingly...
Cover Story: Doug Hream Blunt’s Funk Revival
Three decades after its release, the 67-year old San Francisco musician's debut album finally enters the limelight. SF Weekly (Cover Story) Doug Hream Blunt was watching TV in his first-floor, Visitacion Valley home when the phone rang. It was the middle of 2015, and...
Grooving With Rockin’ Jim, a Public Radio Legend
For more than four decades, the KPOO DJ has been spinning '50s and '60s tunes on nighttime radio. SF Weekly It’s a little before 8:30 p.m. on a Monday night, and Jim Rigsbee is sitting in the studio at public radio station KPOO, shuffling through a stack of CDs and...
Dank Digits: The Newest Trend in Nail Art
Incorporating weed into nail art is the new way to show your love for the plant. SF Weekly Walk into any nail salon and chances are you’ll be greeted with the smells of rubbing alcohol and acetone. But a new trend is sweeping the nail-art world that might introduce...
Berkeley Rapper Rexx Life Raj is Feeling Like A Dad Right Now
SF Weekly On a recent Saturday night, upwards of a hundred millennials gathered in an Emeryville warehouse to gleefully chant "Got me feeling like a dad right now." Leading the chorus was a 6-foot-3 man with chest-length dreadlocks flecked with gold beads, dressed in...
THIRD EYE BLIND: Two Semi-Charmed Hours With Stephan Jenkins
The Third Eye Blind frontman dishes on the band's next album, trolling Republicans, and becoming 'a whole person.' SF Weekly Interviewing Stephan Jenkins is like herding cats or trying to get my very untrained dog Mischa to do a trick. He evades questions, changes the...
CLAMS CASINO: Like What You’re Hearing?
Thank Clams Casino. SF Weekly In 2011, Michael Volpe was a 23-year-old physical therapy student who lived in the historic township of Nutley, N.J., with his mom and her two dachshunds. In his spare time, Volpe produced beats under the name Clams Casino and used...
THE GROWLERS: When The Going Gets Tough, Growl
Beach Goth 2016 was a fiasco and City Club sounds too polished, but The Growlers don't give a shit. SF Weekly I’m lucky to get Brooks Nielsen of The Growlers on the phone when I call on a recent Thursday afternoon. “I do the whole ‘I’m not talking to anybody anymore’...
Cover Story: Beyond The Stage
The history of San Francisco's most iconic music venues SF Weekly (Cover Story) From techno warehouses to indie-rock taverns, San Francisco has no shortage of music venues. We’re especially lucky to have a few that are over a century old, having weathered fires,...
JUICY J: Chronicles of The Juice Man
Popping our collars with Juicy J. SF Weekly If you’ve never been to a strip club but still know what “bandz” are, you have Juicy J — the rapper behind the 2012 Billboard charting single “Bandz a Make Her Dance” — to thank. One of the co-founders of the legendary...