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

Comments (0) By SF Weekly Staff Wednesday, Jun 6 2012

Sizzle

Christopher Victorio

Garbage at BFD

Peter Figen

Doc Watson, R.I.P

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• Live 105's BFD put more than three dozen acts on four stages for some 12 hours, basically turning Shoreline Amphitheatre into a rock 'n' roll playground on summer's opening weekend. Garbage, Cake, and Fun. were highlights amid the '80s-ripping sea of electro-pop acts, dance music, and drunk kids. Too bad the local band stage wasn't on the main schedule.

• S.F. future-pop outfit Stripmall Architecture got our attention — and pretty much everyone else's — with the kind of NSFW music video you don't see often: one in which the explicit images of woman-on-woman hooking up truly fit the mood and subject of the song. Musically and visually, "Dusk Drinks" is a dim-hued success.

• Ever wonder what happened to former Elastica singer Justine Frischmann? Turns out she's now a painter living in Marin County. Art website In the Make tracked down Frischmann — one of the most notable women in Britpop — at her Eichler home. She says she's wary of using her musical success to promote her visual art.

Fizzle

• America lost perhaps its greatest folk guitar player with the passing of Doc Watson, who died at age 89. The North Carolina native went blind before age 1, but became known for his supernatural guitar technique, best shown on tunes like "Black Mountain Rag" and "Deep River Blues," which explored the common ground between blues, country, and folk.

• It's now been 16 months since USF officials abruptly shut off KUSF 90.3 FM in their plan to sell it to a SoCal radio network. After all this time, there's still no indication whether the FCC will approve the sale.

• We rounded up the worst-ever music biopics, and found ourselves freshly agape at the ineptitude displayed in these portrayals of Madonna, the Rat Pack, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and the Monkees. Watch them and shudder.