March 26, 2003

BAY GUARDIAN WATERCOOLER chatter: The Bay Guardian's art director and Camper Van Beethoven's bass player was on everybody's lips last week thanks to his excellent adventures at a March 15 wingding hosted by New Times – that thuggish ole corporate ogre in independent weekly clothing – during the South by Southwest music convention in Austin, Texas.

It seems the organizers of the event should have hired John Ashcroft to do some of those deep background checks before asking Victor Krummenacher and his venerable band of musical miscreants to perform at their private event.

So of course Krummenacher wanted to dress appropriately. And naturally he chose a Bay Guardian T-shirt proclaiming, "Corporate Weeklies Still Suck." Now, in any other situation that stylish fashion selection wouldn't have gotten you a second look – or even points on Are You Hot? Nonetheless, he reports that when he walked into the club the tension was palpable. The door person actually piped up and asked, "Are you sure you want to wear that T-shirt in there?" Krummenacher answered that he was with the band and ended up having to explain later to other inquiring New Times minds that he worked for the Bay Guardian and that, yes, the shirts are available and for sale to disgruntled New Times drones and everyone else.

Camper played a full hour-long set to a half-enthused, half-peevish crowd, which Krummenacher topped off with an admittedly snide "Thanks for letting us play your corporate party." That was it, until, he said, "this guy walks up and starts screaming at me and says, 'You have a conflict of interest! You shouldn't cash a check if you have a problem with New Times! You're a fucking poseur!' "

Krummenacher slipped out of the scrape, though he confesses he was happy to do damage to corpo complacency. "I was hoping to stir up shit. But I didn't think it would end up on Rollingstone.com," he told me last week. "I just couldn't pass up an opportunity like that. It was too good and too much fun, and Camper always thrived on rancor anyway. And it's no conflict of interest for me to publicize my band and talk about where I work."

Chick flack-tor

How quickly the tide of popular opinion turns: It seems like just a few weeks ago we were bashing the Dixie Chicks' Eurotrash fashion-victim getups and zombified rendition of "Landslide" at the Grammys. Now we're banding around lead vocalist Natalie Maines, who always seemed to have had her head screwed on straight, even when it was teased, tousled, and tormented by off-the-hook stylists.

After remarking onstage in London a few weeks ago that she was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," the Chick found out just how vindictive her rabidly defensive and patriotism-drunk compatriots can be, as country stations around the nation pulled the band from playlists, citing listener complaints. Then the backtracking began with the Chicks qualifying the statement by saying they were amazed by the growing anti-American sentiment overseas (more on this in the aforementioned Victor "Welcome to My World" Krummenacher's recount of his recent European tour experiences on page 41) and sped up with Maines explaining her right to express her point of view to all you freedom-loving reactionaries and then actually apologizing to Shrub/Dubya/Puppet/President We Didn't Elect/Our Least Favorite Frat Boy in the White House.

Before and after the Chicks' backpedaling, chat accelerated in antiwar circles and Web sites about showing due respect to Maines and the Chickadees, and local hip-hop writer and DJ Davey D weighed in with support on his board (www.daveyd.com) and Chuck D's Rapstation (www.rapstation.com). In an environment in which impromptu antiwar MP3s by everyone from Zack de la Rocha to Meshell Ndegeocello are proliferating, and musicians ranging from Autechre to Jay-Z to Fugazi are backing Musicians United to Win Without War (sign the antiwar petition at www.moveon.org), there's a showdown building between the people who make the music and those who feed off it. What's with Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, San Antonio, and Cleveland sponsoring pro-war "Rally for America" events, where thousands have gotten their jollies waving signs dissing the Dixie Chicks and ragging on France? Whatever happened to the so-called objectivity of trad major media companies, and can you imagine an institution like the BBC getting in on that lame act, publicizing the events on its corporate Web site as Clear Channel has?

Contrary to popular wisdom – and despite the much reported anti-Chicks backlash – the Chicks' record sales soared to number four on the Billboard 200 last week. Yep, all y'all should know those Dixie Chicks continue to be pretty damned popular – and there's nothing like a country scorned by their C&W sweethearts. Here's to the hope that the Chicks will realize that while there's a lot of ugly truth to the bumper sticker "Don't mess with Texas," backtracking can be just as messy. There's no need for that kind of "Landslide."

Electroclash lash

Electroclash tour organizer, genre trademarker, producer, high-muck-a-muck of Mogul Electro Records – Larry Tee is too busy to worry about whether he's a savior or a sellout or the ruination of a scene that hasn't even found its feet. On the phone from the Winter Music Conference in Miami, he rushed around putting together a chilled-out little pool party and warned me that in 30 minutes it was "going to be like Desert Storm" when the crowds begin to descend. Pray for him.

And it doesn't stop. He'll be in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall on April 4 for a mini-size version of last year's mostly sold-out Electroclash™ tour – this time with W.I.T., Avenue D, and My Robot Friend. Tee will DJ and tout a new album, The Electroclash Mix by Larry Tee (Moonshine Music). The reason for this quickie jaunt through the Bay Area, the ever plugging Tee proclaimed, is to show off artists such as Avenue D. "They're two girls who are just trashy beyond, really big in L.A.," he raved. "And My Robot Friend performs in a lit-up robot suit – you just can't take your eyes off him. He rivals Fischerspooner. And there's just a national demand to see the girls – W.I.T. – out there."

It's all in the name of battling that "nameless, faceless producer-driven DJ scene," said Tee, who has more than a little of P.T. Barnum in his been-there-done-that, 43-year-old native Atlantan frame. "People got burned out on DJ as sport and the chunky producer twiddling knobs. They're ready for content, politics, glamour, and star power again. There's the politics of Chicks on Speed, the camp sex appeal of W.I.T.," he said. "We're in the middle of war and it speaks to the politics of what needs to be addressed immediately – that we've become an aggressor nation. I think people are ready for a message. And to rock some butt."

In his mind, electroclash provides a safely destabilized dance floor on which "techno, rock, and electro collide mercilessly." Heaven or hell forbid that he ever control the movement, he protests. "That's not really my thing, to be honest," he said. "I do really love the music – that's why I drove it from the beginning. When I saw the 'Sweetness' video, by Fischerspooner, I wanted to cry again. It was something that was so powerful to hear, after listening to blank music for so long and eating to house music and trance. I felt this music was important to champion.

"W.I.T. is my Trojan horse," he continued, gushing about the girls, who first approached him with the idea for their group while he was DJing in Brooklyn. "It gets on radio because it's pop, but when you open the door, out jumps avant-garde artists, and they turn out to be articulate, strong women with something to say. This is the first scene that's grabbed me by the neck and forced me to do something for fear that evolution had stopped in electronic music."

Get on board

Still operative: About 50 people, including Oakland mayor Jerry Brown, jumped aboard the Oakland Metro's cause March 19, reports Oakland Metro spokesperson and Oakland Opera Theater artistic director Tom Dean.

"It worked out really well to tell the truth," he said. "Jerry Brown wrote us a really great letter and stopped by and said we were important to the economic development of the Jack London Square area and that we put on theater and opera and we should be encouraged."

The series of frantic recent e-mails calling for support apparently worked. The nonprofit won over O-town's planning commission in its bid to get a theater license to sell spirits, all of which will lubricate fiscal matters and allow it to keep the venue chugging along. Dean told me Metro will also get to continue operations without having to hire a costly outside security company and will be permitted to apply for a permanent license with the state alcohol and beverage control board in April.

That's a relief for independent promoter Dani Eurynome, who spearheaded an e-mail campaign, puts on shows regularly at the Metro, and claims the club was harassed by the police on the city's Alcohol Beverage Action Team.

"They've been perpetually harassed by police, in the sense that they're being harassed out of existence," she told me on the phone a few weeks ago from CBGB's, where she was hustling her clients the Suicide Kings onstage. "The ABAT police entity that enforces permits hates them, and they're hassling Black Box and Sweet's Ballroom too." Ah, the dream of doing liver damage beneath the graceful art deco murals of the moldering Sweet's. Sweet.

How to choose a guy

You should know that, yes, that was really Kate Hudson, reprising her Penny Lane role while hubby Chris Robinson covered "Sin City" and coursed through new originals, at Slim's. Hudson was said to be lovely and chatty, though when she found her old man "smoking" in his dressing room, she gave him "the very evil eye," one source told me. Could "Fist City" be far behind on his covers to-do list?

Meanwhile, uptown, former Roofies vocalist and current Dynasty frontperson Jibz Cameron is doing her own part to bring the thespian and the rocker together as one. Beginning March 28, she'll play Heather, a potty-mouthed hooker who hooks up with a cop, in the West Coast premiere of Blue Surge at the Magic Theatre.

• • •

What would the Bay Guardian be without at least one weekly mention of Cameron chum, Hemlock Tavern booker, former Icky Boyfriend drummer, and your friendly Mr. Evil? Anthony Bedard was flown to New York on Wednesday to appear as a guest on the Maury Povich show as the boyfriend of Dixie Evans, 77-year-old burlesque star and curator of the Exotic World burlesque museum. "For reals!" affirms Bedard, who met Evans when he was playing drums for Fisherman's Famous Burlesque. "She's the sweetest, coolest woman." No icky boyfriend he.