Bangin’ 7-gram rocks

SN&R’s Jammies are back:
Perhaps it was a lost outtake from a 1980s Woody Allen melodrama: a rainy Sunday on a university campus (Sacramento State doubling as NYU), a half-full recital hall, kids performing classical music in front of judges. Can’t you just hear the gravely Martin Landau voice-over, pontificating on the collision of innocence and music history?

Or maybe not. Crimes and Misdemeanors this wasn’t; instead, it was the first event of Jammies season, a kickoff to SN&R’s annual music competition for teenagers, going on nine years. Ten under-18 classical musicians—cellists, flutists and pianists performing pieces varying from Haydn to Beethoven—went in front of Ernie Hills and Claudia Kitka of Sac State, Michael Frost of Capital Public Radio, and Kenneth Raskin of the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra. Students Eunghee Cho, Margaux Filet and Kiana Okhovat emerged as winners; they now have the opportunity to perform at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis on May 7. Oh, and they could win $3,000.

Guess I should have kept up with my classical guitar lessons. (Find out more, including upcoming Jammies Battle of the Bands shows, at www.jammies.com.)

Your station for ‘suburban McMansion, gated-community, vanilla pop’:
The billboard campaign for local Now 100.5 FM radio proclaims: “Today’s best hits, without the rap.” The ad certainly gets the station’s point across. But is it in poor taste? Or be construed as a polarizing, veiled racism?

If anything, the “deejays” at CBS Radio-owned 100.5 FM, whoever they may be, are serious about their newly implemented rap moratorium: Station censors even edited Snoop Dogg’s rap bridge out of Katy Perry’s hit “California Gurls” (can they still call it “gurls”?).

CBS Radio did not return calls by deadline.

And sure, at the end of the day it’s about a style of music, not race. (I bet 100.5 FM plays Bruno Mars’ “Nothin’ on You” at a nauseating click.) Yet still, the “rap/crap” play on words and its indirect stigmatizing of a predominately black music genre—Eminem aside, he’s likely too busy cashing Chrysler checks—are disconcerting.

New CUF:
Local underground hip-hop legends the CUF will drop, of all things, a brand-spanking-new, full-length album in the upcoming weeks. Titled CUF Caviar Vol. 1, the release doesn’t have a hard-and-fast street date just yet; hit up Facebook for some details. Or catch the troupe’s live set on April 14 at the Blue Lamp, with Equipto, Z-Man and Boac.

RIP Dam:
Bad news for the city of Davis this week: 40-year-old cooperative the Domes faces an uncertain future (see “Last days of the Domes,” SN&R Frontlines), and the legendary Dam Haus will be no more as of summer.

The home has hosted hundreds of amazing gigs over the years, from Rocket from the Crypt in the ’90s to the Mayyors farewell show with Thee Oh Sees this past summer. Residents were informed this week that they’ll need to move out by the end of August.

Feminism, live!:
The Davis Feminist Film Festival isn’t until April 14 and 15, but get a head start this Friday, March 11, at “Hefty Thigh: A Fem Fest,” or live gig with all-female musicians, including Alak, DJ Hailey, Group Rhoda, Beastie, Shannon Harney, Vee, Rogue, Fuzzbox Flynn, Juliaaa, Rogue, Purr and others (at the Technocultural Studies building in the Art Annex; 8 p.m.; donation; all ages). More than 200 have RSVP’d on Facebook, so get there early.

Sucked into the ma-Sheen:
Producers of the Gregory Brothers at Songify This have brought their talents to Charlie Sheen—and the results—duh—are winning. Can’t kick the song’s mod-rock, pop chorus: “I was banging 7-gram rocks / that’s how I roll / winning!” It’s their catchiest since Antoine Dodson. Find it on YouTube—“Winning—a Song by Charlie Sheen”—where it was uploaded on March 7.