Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and Lows from the Last Week in S.F. Music

Sizzle

Girls at Great American.

Lupe the whiner.

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• Christopher Owens
• Bert Jansch
• Great American Music Hall
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

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• S.F.'s Girls brought the national tour supporting their new album home to Great American Music Hall, dazzling a sold-out house with muscular rock tunes fronted by the vulnerable, compelling Christopher Owens. With three backup singers and plenty of sidemen, the band filled the beautiful hall with some of today's most-likely-to-be-classic indie rock. Owens even watched openers Sonny & the Sunsets and Carletta Sue Kay from the back balcony.

• The Saloon — S.F.'s oldest bar and best live blues venue — turned 150 years old over the weekend. Owner Myron Mu says the place was saved from the 1906 earthquake and fire because city firemen were regulars at the bordello upstairs. In celebration of its birthday, the bar brought in live blues bands all day Saturday.

• Humblebrag: Our free North Beach party with local rapper DaVinci and others turned out to be a great time. DaVinci did a quick set on the mic, featuring tunes from his latest EP, Feast or Famine, and DJs Ammbush, Prince Aries, and our own Derek Opperman worked the decks. We even got to party with some sailors in town for Fleet Week.

Fizzle

• Steve Jobs, whose work at the helm of Apple radically changed the music industry as well as how we all buy and listen to songs, died last week at age 56. The man behind the iPhone, iPad, and the iTunes store made digital music what it is today — and gave us the iPod, the best gadget ever made for music geeks.

• Bert Jansch, a Scottish folk titan who influenced artists such as Neil Young and Nick Drake, passed away after a battle with lung cancer. His spare style is the epitome of haunting — it's no wonder his best-known song is "Needle of Death." Jansch was 67.

• Lupe Fiasco, who came to the Fox Oakland this week, is doubtless rap's greatest whiner. First he whined about not liking the hip-hop game. Then he whined about not getting enough attention. Then he whined about Twitter. There are way better rappers who don't get as much attention as Lupe does, yet all he can do is complain about it.