If you want to catch a unique show, check out Etana at Mezzanine! Her music is gorgeous and it will give you a chance to check out some music that may not be "the usual" in regards to local shows. We love local bands forever, but everyone’s got to stretch their wings a bit. You won’t have to stretch far. Make your way down to Mezzanine in San Francisco on June 6th!

The soulful Jamaican vocalist who has been described as "reggae’s Jill Scott" (NPR) or"reminiscent of India.Arie" (Essence) – dropped her fourth album I Rise on Oct 28, 2014. The album was helmed primarily by the legendary Jamaican multi-instrumentalist and producer Clive Hunt (Stevie Wonder, Peter Tosh, Rolling Stones, The Wailers, Grace Jones, Jimmy Cliff). It hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard Reggae Album chart, making Etana one of the three Jamaican female artists ever and the first in nearly two decades (since Diana King and Patra in the mid-90s) to land this highly-coveted chart position. I Rise follows Etana’s critically-acclaimed albums Better Tomorrow (2013), Free Expressions (2011) and The Strong One (2008). With poised assurance, she continues to evolve spiritually, mentally, emotionally and musically and carry the torch as reggae’s leading lady.

You can check out the awesome indepdenent film that shares how hip hop and break dancing has crossed International borders and touched the lives of young people all over the world. Shake the Dust gives a very intimate look at hip hop youth culture in Uganda, Columbia, Cambodia and Yemen. This film is very compelling and we totally recommend you check it out!

From executive producer and Grammy-nominated rapper Nasir “Nas” Jones and journalist-turned-filmmaker Adam Sjöberg comes the buoyant, globe-trotting film SHAKE THE DUST.

With a propulsive soundtrack of international hip-hop samples, music from both emerging emcees and established superstars like Nas, Common and Talib Kweli, as well as some of the most jaw-dropping breakdancing moves ever committed to film, SHAKE THE DUST is an inspiring tribute to the uplifting power of music and movement. By highlighting the stories and moves of some of the most talented breakdance crews in the poorest urban neighborhoods of Colombia, Yemen, Uganda, and Cambodia, Sjöberg weaves together the stories of rappers, DJs, and b-boys across three continents, revealing how breakdancing today acts as a positive force for social change.

June 3-6 — Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, Berkeley

Lately, Collin Ludlow-Mattson & the Folks have been stretching out their songs—exploring their material from many angles through improvisation. They’ve evolved into something of a post-punk jam band. This new improvisatory approach results in interpretations of songs that are highly situation-specific. What is played is not just a reflection of the song as written; the playing also very much reflects the atmosphere in which the song is currently being played and the evolving relationship of the musicians (Collin, Indianna Hale, Sean Olmstead, and Sterling Schlegel), who are housemates and friends. The kind of music Collin Ludlow-Mattson & the Folks are making now grows best when it is exposed frequently to an audience—people who respond to the music and cause the musicians to respond to their responses. It is perfect then that in June CLM & the Folks have a Tuesday-night residency at San Francisco’s Amnesia—placing them in contact with an audience weekly. Amnesia, which is the hub of a blossoming Bay Area music scene, will be hosting a number of very exciting lineups during the CLM & the Folks residency. The lineups for all five shows are full of local bands who have very compelling catalogs of songs and unique sonic approaches for realizing their songs in a live setting. This is a not-to-be-missed June event, one that will perfectly compliment other notable musical events taking place in Northern California in June—like Hickey Fest and the Grateful Dead reunion concerts.

6/9: Soft Shells
Pat Hull (beautiful tunes from Chico)

6/16: Mark E. Deutsch (super album release!!!!)
Dead Recipe

6/23: TV Mike and the Scarecrowes (playing songs of the Grateful Dead)
Sea Dramas

6/30: Jeff Grimes
1 more band TBD!

The San Francisco based psych shoegaze band, The Spiral Electric and Fine Points, the new formation of a band featuring members of the successful local psych-soul band, Sleepy Sun are going to be performing live at Brick and Mortar Music Hall on June 3rd.

Fine Points are so new that they have yet to release any recorded material, so this show should be some incentive to massage your curious nature (if you possess it) and see what the band can actually do. Obviously, The Spiral Electric is a great live band, and the legendary neo psych band, The Warlocks will be in town to put on an always stellar performance. The Warlocks are an indispensable band to the Los Angeles and Bay Area neo psychedelic music scene. They’ve opened doors for countless current local bands and helped set the sonic standard for the washed out, reverb latent garage rock style that we’ve all become accustomed to knowing as a huge chuck of the local music community’s signature sound. If you want to know where current San Francisco neo psych-garage rock got born, check out this show.

Counter Culture and POW Magazine present the Nevada City, CA (we have no idea where that is) based electro-lullaby music group, Dazeys, who are set to support a couple of great San Francisco based bands next week at Rickshaw Stop on Wednesday, June 3rd. Band buddies (bands that know each other well and tend to share bills together when they can) The She’s and Union Pacific will be filling out the rest of the bill to play a comfortingly familiar local show. With all the changes going on in the Bay Area music and art scene, it’s nice to see bands being consistent and supporting local venues.

We need local bands to continue to play local venues just as much as we appreciate touring bands coming into town to join our local shows and line ups. Do your best to show up, dance around and support this show!

The San Francisco based all female neo garage rock band, Dirty Denim will be performing at Brick and Mortar Music Hall tomorrow night in support of the Los Angeles based psych western rock band, Spindrift. The Bay Area based band, Mount Vision will be premiering their live tunes for the first time in San Francisco as the band consists of members of the neo psych rock band, Asteroid #4.

Spindrift is bringing a brand new line up into town as Kirpatrick Thomas works with a plethora of California based musicians to perform his "music-to film" style of imaginitive and energetic modern western rock songs. Spindrift puts on a good show!

Head down to Brick and Mortar and support Kymberli’s Music Box shows, the great local bands who are performing along with the headliner.

The San Francisco based soul-gaze band, Future Twin has produced a music video for their upbeat rock-pop track, We’re Here. The video is great. It’s always good to see the conceptual expression of helping ordinary people escape what is boring and mundane, and discover what colorful fun life has to offer. We’re Here tells a story of three people who are seemingly lost in the monotony and routine of their realities until a strange human lady with a colorful mask appears to break them free of their pain and disenfranchisement.

“"We’re Here” is a song about standing together. About not being broken up. It’s about cohesion. The script and concept that we attempted to portray in this music video center on the daily lives of archetypes of urban life: the office worker, the service worker and the retired elder. In hyper-productivist America, we often ask people when first meeting them, in order to get to know them better, “What do you do?” Playing on this way of defining people, as if our day job equates the very fiber of our being, as if that’s the most interesting facet of someone’s life (what they do to commodify their labor)– we attempted to show the triviality of such things." – Jean Jeanie, Future Twin

We like Future Twin and we like the song, We’re Here, so it’s a happy experience for us to share a music video that they’ve been super passionate about sharing with the world. Here it is, check them out and make sure you attend their upcoming Bay Area shows:

Jun 06 SubZERO Festival San Jose, CA
Jul 18 Dissilience Oakland (A benefit for Oakland Fund for the Arts) w/ Jean Jeanie

The Oakland based progressive, avant art rock band Makeunder has released a new single entitled, Great Headless Blank. This song is the title track of their brand new EP and is exciting, interesting and encompasses splashes of electronic (computer parody) sound installations that take you on a wild musical ride. Great Headless Blank is reminiscent of new wave music like DEVO and Talking Heads and could be a soundtrack to a David Lynch short film. The music is like an artsy ice bucket to the face, which can be refreshing and utterly intense. There is a bit of swagger to the music though. You can hear a soulful confidence in the songs that seperates it from being avant nerd rock or classical alt rock, which can be coy and standoffish.

"Makeunder is the solo project of bandleader Hamilton Ulmer, who crafted his first release using a violin, saxophone, fatigued vocals and a small hand drum. Since then, Ulmer has rounded out the band’s lineup with Van Jackson-Weaver (vocals, guitars), Samantha York (vocals), Mario Godoy (synths, saxophone), Carolyn Walter (saxophones, winds) and John Doing (percussion). In Great Headless Blank, Ulmer confronts personal tragedies sorting through the ashes with a juxtaposed, exuberant sound comparable to Passion Pit’s Gossamer."

Makeunder is a bold music project and we’re into to this new track. Take a minute to check it out!

The San Francisco based psychedelic revivalist band, The Love Dimension has shared a new music video for Inner Eye Insight, a single from their latest album, Create and Consume. The video was directed by Matt Robeson of White Light Prism.

"Matt took us around the Bay Area last December and January on location to various spots in Oakland, San Francisco and Marin County. Hiking around with all that gear into all of those nature spots wasn’t easy, but we had a lot of fun filming this so want to share it with you." –Jimmy Dias, lead singer/songwriter of TLD

Oh, we’re so into the love-centric, esoteric lyrics of Inner Eye Insight and the amazing nature shots going on in the video. It’s really nice to see the band’s six member full line up grooving all in one shot!

Check out the video and then take the opportunity to see The Love Dimension perform live at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on Saturday, May 23rd. The show will also include performances by Cellar Doors, Buzzmutt and The Bad Jones.

The Deli Magazine San Francisco celebrates Bay Area based underground and emerging artists almost every single day. I’m completely inspired by new music and what’s going on in the local performance arts community, but last weekend on May 16th, I ventured out to Facebook Headquarters to talk to Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers about his work with the music education nonprofit organization, Little Kids Rock.

Music education is being taken out of the public school system, and I know this for a fact because I work with Bay Area children who don’t have mandatory music programs in their standard public school curriculum. Chad Smith believes music should not be an elective, but a part of American children’s day to day public school experience. You can listen in on a chat I had with him about how music education enriched his life and made him who he is today. If you want to get involved, reach out to your local community’s board of education and help work to include music education in Bay Area schools.

You can donate to and/or get involved with Little Kids Rock, Bay Area Girls Rock Camp or Hip Hop for Change (Oakland, CA) to support hands on contemporary, alternative music education as well.

Publik / Private Podcast with Jordannah Elizabeth: Ep01. Chad Smith of The Red Hot Chili Peppers by Jordannah Elizabeth on Mixcloud

San Francisco’s Brick and Mortar Music Hall will be hosting an awesome Beijing invasion on June 1st in the Mission District. A Recordings Ltd. (Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s record label) artists, Birdstriking will be performing in support of their new self titled album. The strange and experimental nu-gaze band, The Pleasure Routine will be sharing the bill with Birdstriking along with the psych, slightly prog influenced experimental band,  Chui Wan and Birdstriking/Chui Wan combo side project, Deadly Cradle Death. If all of that info is not cool enough, long time Brian Jonestown Massacre member, Ricky Maymi will be DJing at the show!

You can get out of town (and the country) just by proxy of wandering into this awesome International show. Get a taste of a different culture! The music is going to be noisy, ear splitting and massively fun.

The Bay Area based band, Survival Guide, whose music falls somewhere between indie rock and electronic music, touched with descriptive, storytelling lyrics and strong vocals is giving The Deli SF the lovely opportunity to stream their brand new debut album, Way To Go! Musician Emily Whitehurst, who has recently been featured in the Deli as a collaborator on the Bay Area singer/songwriter Travis Hayes‘ recent EP, is making strides of her own as vocalist and keyboardist of Survival Guide.

The album is brave and paints broad brush strokes of electronic, pulsing instrumental overtures and heavy beats. Way to Go goes on the fringe of alternative music to share a melting pot of disco, pop and indie rock genre influences. The music is exciting because the band clearly has no regard for what’s happening on the radio or even in the local clubs.

You can celebrate the release of the Way To Go at Neck of the Woods:
5/22 – San Francisco, CA @ Neck of the Woods (Album Release Show)

"I am excited, relieved and proud to be releasing this full-length record. In a music world where there’s so much emphasis on the individual song, I truly believe in the importance of a collection of music that’s pieced together artfully to convey a journey of emotions. I’ve experienced nearly every emotion in the making of this record, and I hope it shows.” – Emily Whitehurst

Support local music!