unpiano: music

//photo by sandy kim

When I was making Sandy Kim’s book a while back (remember that?) I had to edit her mountains of photos and since nearly every third photo is over her boyfriend Colby, I ended up becoming really familiar with him. Of course in reality I don’t know him very well, but because I have spent looking at him and his daily activities I became really into the band The Smith Westerns which he recently joined. Nice fuzzy San Francisco garage rock that makes me want to get high and swing on rope swings all 12 months of the year. They were recently on tour with San Francisco’s Girls and The Magic Kids you can see photos from that tour at Sandy’s website. Did I mention we only have like 20 of her book left? Go buy one before they sell out so that you can see Colby is glorious full color. God that was a lame plug but for real the band is really fucking good and you should catch their next SF show.

The Smith Westerns – Give Me Some Time
The Smith Westerns – Imagine, Pt. 3
The Smith Westerns – Be My Girl

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Secret Seven Records recently released a compilation of unreleased songs from current San Francisco bands (see the full track list at the label site). Some you may recognize and some you may not, but the selection of bands is pretty solid and if you get your hands on the LP you’ll be rewarded by nice big cover art from Richard Hart and some good quality vinyl. The release show was last week at Amnesia but we dropped the ball and lagged on the post (sorry guys). In A Cloud – New Sounds from San Francisco is limited to 500 copies..

Sonny & the Sunsets – Heart Of Sadness
Hannah & Raven (of Grass Widow) – Beehive

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When two students at San Francisco City College met in 1977 they threw together a band called TuxedoMoon and started playing differnet spaces like Salons while their following quickly grew. Eventually they ended up breaking out by opening for Devo and getting signed to The Residents’ label Ralph Records. Thirty years later they are still going strong, (despite moving to Rotterdam to be a part of the electronic music scene there), they are still on tour and released their anniversary album in 2007. All San Francisco bands take note! You don’t have to start here, move to New York and then break up two years later. You can stay here and play music for thirty years and still get on the Downtown 81 Soundtrack. Okay, maybe that sort of thing only happened in the Seventies but.. please?

Tuxedomoon – No Tears
Tuxedomoon – Dark Companion

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