Like the finest wine, Dead Can Dance founder Brendan Perry believes that he’s aging really well. He’ll turn 52 this month, but — after taking a decade off to spend quality time with his wife and daughter, who is now 14 — he’s feeling so re-energized that he can’t wait to tour behind “Ark,” a new sophomore solo album he whipped up in his converted-church studio in Britain.
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It’s been a wild ride for Australian alt-rock duo An Horse. Singer-guitarist Kate Cooper and drummer-vocalist Damon Cox arrived at their ebullient, bass-free sound while working together at a hip Brisbane record store, were discovered — and championed on a globe-trotting tour — by Canadian sisters Tegan & Sara, and even namechecked in Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “A Visit From the Goon Squad.” “That’s a career high for me,” says Cooper, who admits that tracking the band’s sophomore “Walls” proved a tad more difficult.
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While few would have thought it was possible, Pia Zadora managed to emerge from the ashes of her post-“Butterfly” brouhaha decades ago with some class. Expect her to bring that attitude to the Rrazz Room stage this week. It’s fitting, too, that her signature song is dubbed, “It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish.”“How you get through the rough times is, really, by the seat of your pants,” Zadora says the bumpy roads of yore.
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As Glasvegas frontman James Allan was recording “Change” — a moody piano dirge on the band’s new “Euphoric///Heartbreak///” sophomore set that features a spoken-word interlude from his mother, he admits to hearing “a subconscious voice shouting ‘This is not the most normal thing to do!’” But he expanded the concept by putting mom — Elizabeth Corrigan — on the CD cover as well, in a circa-1990, wall-projected photograph he’s pictured viewing in a darkened room.
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Sex sells for a reason. Everyone has it, or wants it. It relates to the ever-unifying theme of love, and all art forms have capitalized on it. Ballet is no exception. American Ballet Theatre’s “Lady of the Camellias,” a tragic love story based on the same novel that gave birth to “La Traviata,” is full of the heavy-breathing, necking, nuzzling and bodice-ripping passion that great romance is made of, and choreographer John Neumeier doesn’t shy away from the specifics. The lovers’ choreography is rough yet elegant, swift and sweaty, never crude, yet startlingly sensual.
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The world ended well, after all.Sunday’s premiere of Francesca Zambello’s San Francisco Opera production of Richard Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”) concluded with the rapturous Redemption Theme soaring from the orchestra pit, under Donald Runnicles’ baton, and not much else mattered at that moment.On an otherwise empty stage (thank goodness for no symbolic trash strewn about), Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme), Gutrune (Melissa Citro) and the three Rhine Maidens surrounded Siegfried’s body (Ian Storey) in long dresses — a tableau reminiscent of Greek drama.
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One hundred pair of concert tickets to see U2 will be given away in San Francisco on June 6.The giveaway is being held by StubHub, an online ticket marketplace, for the company’s “Take Off Your Boots” campaign, according to a press release from the company. The campaign is collect shoes for the charity Soles4Souls.The June 6 event will be at the Hard Rock Café on Pier 39 in San Francisco from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The tickets are for the U2 concert on June 7 in Oakland.
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Albert Hammond Jr. doesn’t like to brag. But those who pay close attention to the upcoming Steve Carell-Julianne Moore dramedy “Crazy Stupid Love” will see two suits from the sartorially hip Strokes’ guitarist in the film. “Ryan Gosling just used two of my suits in the movie. He’s actually wearing two of my designs in there,” says the musician. “What’s funny is, I’m not part of the fashion, I’m more of a word-of-mouth kind of thing, and the line I made was very limited. I think it’s pretty much sold out now.”
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It’s only a seven-second moment in a song that’s 1 minute 23 seconds long. But the guitar bridge that explodes in the middle of “Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)” — the punk anthem that opens the dazzling debut from Britain’s the Vaccines — is everything that’s great about rock in one condensed, joyous burst. And when Justin Young and company stretch, on shoutalongs like “Norgaard,” “Wolf Pack,” “If You Wanna” and the definitive “Post Break-Up Sex,” their “What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?” rises to the level of modern masterpiece. They bow into San Francisco this weekend.
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While other kids were told to stop their silly daydreaming, Anna Calvi, who grew up with two licensed hypnotherapists for parents, was urged to pursue it.
“It was weird, with lots of dinnertime discussions about your feelings, your emotions,” says the guitar-slinging British sensation who appears at Cafe Du Nord on Sunday.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/archive/17541/17541?page=62%2C0%2C0%2C1&type[story]=story
