Sound Advice: A shot at love

So long, Luigi’s: As a teenager, my Saturday nights were spent in one of San Francisco’s many all-ages venues, singing every word to every song, sneaking booze into plastic baggies and sometimes making it backstage. And feeling really cool about it.

Now I have this job. Writing about music. And there’s no way that would have happened if I wasn’t exposed to a live-music scene as a highly impressionable 15-year-old.

By now, most Sacto showgoers have heard that Luigi’s Slice in Midtown was sold. The owners of Azul Mexican Food and Tequila Bar bought it, and they haven’t returned my calls.

“[Losing] music [is] the biggest bummer and heartache for us,” Linda Brida, co-owner of Luigi’s, told SN&R on the worst aspect of selling the business. She doesn’t know if all-ages shows will continue.

Which means there’s a chance. Which means, if you care about the concept of all-ages venues—giving younglings a shot at falling in love at a rock show and all that—you should go support the place before it closes on May 17.

But if you don’t, I understand. Because the pizza parlor is not an attractive venue at all. The lighting, the space, the smell of cheese—it’s all awkward. And too often empty, like last Thursday night, despite an excellent lineup of experimental pop acts.

Los Angeles’ Eliza Rickman opened up with an arsenal of toys. Really, she played a toy piano. Plus accordion and a glockenspiel that sounded like fairies. Her songs were like magical storybooks. She wore a Victorian-goth getup, had a creepy doll onstage, and I totally dug it.

Austin-based band Technicolor Hearts played next. Vocalist Naomi Cherie wore a floral halo and glitter eyeshadow, and she struck bows against a xylophone. Then she danced with them, because they were decked out with shiny plastic strands. She also played a violin, vintage phone and a children’s toy that resembled a salad spinner. It squeaked. Artfully.

The show ended with local trio Pregnant performing busy, otherworldly synth. The sound guy dragged me—and the chair I was sitting in—around in what ended up being a three-person conga line.

Even in that nearly empty room, my 15-year-old self would have been stoked.

—Janelle Bitker

Keep your money, cars and womenfolk: The future of the Wu-Tang Clan is still in limbo with Raekwon on strike, accusing the RZA of trying to swindle fans with a mediocre album and delaying the unfinished A Better Tomorrow. (Which is not to be confused with The Wu—Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, a secret sole-pressing album that will reportedly be protected by an engraved, handcrafted container and sold for millions of dollars.) Through all the drama, its members continue on solo paths, one of which brought GZA to Assembly on Cinco De Mayo.

A recent Rolling Stone infographic posted on the magazine’s website that compared the lexicon of rappers to great literary figures’ listed GZA as the second most well-versed writer—ahead of Herman Melville and behind Aesop Rock. He’s been known as “The Genius” his whole career, but this past Monday night at Assembly he channeled his departed cousin Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “drunken monkey” style of rhyming. Initially he was aloof, stumbling through a few opening songs, and in general, seeming ill-fit for the night ahead. But after disassembling the barricades separating him from the audience, GZA spent the duration of the set among the masses, young and old—in need of a deeper connection to our energy.

He posed for selfies, rhymed directly into filming iPhones, flirted with the ladies, and incited jumping sessions to verses from “Protect Ya Neck,” “I Gotcha Back,” and “Clan In Da Front.” If we are a generation with a film-first, experience-later mentality, GZA insisted every paying customer get an up-close shot of his performance.

Throughout, he mostly stuck to his classic 1995 solo album, Liquid Swords, which included an always stir-crazy run through “4th Chamber,” featuring Killah Priest as a surprise guest.

Near the end of his set GZA seemed compelled to explain his motives for the night’s populist appeasement, declaring that money, cars, and women don’t matter to him as a musician. He’s only interested in performing from his heart. As the eldest member of the Wu-Tang Clan, he’s still the spiritual head of the New York crew. Whether A Better Tomorrow is the final album or suffers through civil disputes, the spirit of one of the greatest rap groups of all time will always live in its individual performers.

—Blake Gillespie