This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Name your band after our favorite novel, will you? Better be damn good, tell you what. Better reflect the observant, overeducated, hardhearted but innocent protagonist, maybe with a great and sensitive vocalist. And don't think you can get away without making a nod to the odd, beautiful, anachronistic mother character -- which you could do with a guitar, if it was plucky and pretty enough. OK, so we were set to really hate Birds of America, but Nathaniel Russell and Sam Flax Keener were way ahead of us, and completely in tune with vastly underappreciated writer Mary McCarthy and the Velvet Underground. Damn good, in fact. Mt. Egypt and Jean Marie share the stage at 9 p.m. at the Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St. (at Bryant), S.F. Admission is $6; call 546-6300 or visit www.thehotelutahsaloon.com.

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