Wasn’t it way back in 2006 (or was that aught five…) when everyone was getting crunk and ghostriding the whip? We remember like it was just yesterday: Making the scene with the gangster lean with our thizz faces on, pumping the Mac Dre, J-Diggs, or even Beeda Weeda.

But you know, the San Francisco Bay Area, isn’t just all about hyphy. You can’t swing a dead cat on any side of the bay without hitting a musician of some sort or another. The place is totally lousy with them.

We suppose to get a handle on at least some of this joyful (and not so joyful) noisemaking and suss out who the players might be, we’ll attack the problem geographically… So steaming through the Golden Gate, we’ll make landfall and hit the beach at Emeryville and first conquer the East Bay. Besides the aforementioned hyphy stars, we can check in on Blackalicious who make their hip hop on a positive tip — no gangstas, bitches and ho’s for these guys.

Now if you’re starting to think the East Bay is all about rap, think yet one more time. Let’s flash back to Berkeley’s punk rock Gilman Street scene and one of its biggest alumni Rancid whose frontman Tim Armstrong recently released a solo album of rock-steady, bluebeat influenced tunes (good album but we suspect due to his many Hollywood red carpet appearances that the artist formerly known as Lint is now an Angeleno). And while we’re talking punk, let’s jump all the way back to the very first wave of California punk: Penelope Houston who formed the Avengers as a 19 year old SF art student in the late ’70s, now makes the East Bay the command center for the activities of her reunited and reinvigorated band. Speaking of East Bay punk, let’s mention The Matches who could very well be Penelope’s spiritual (if not natural) children.

And just around the corner and up the street from Penelope’s house is Saturn Records, the shop where the romantically inclined couple who started The Lovemakers were employed or somehow otherwise entangled. Remember early ’80s dance rock? No. Well, then check out The Lovemakers. We hear their shows are long on both skin and danceable ’80s sounds (two things of which most people apparently never tire…).

And before we finish our by-no-means exhaustive look at the East Bay, let’s check in on Rogue Wave. These tuneful indie rockers represent Oakland. We’re not sure, but they’ve probably played LoBot (AKA Lower Bottom Gallery), the hipster nexus of West Oakland (where another perfectly good ghetto is being overrun with artists, musicians, warehouse conversions, live-work spaces, and soon stockbrokers, market analysts and biotech office drones).

But before we hop across the Bay Bridge to The City, let’s give a quick shout-out in the direction of the South Bay, once the home of such giants of rock such as the Doobie Brothers. Xiu Xiu were formed in San Jose, but now call Oakland home. We call Xiu Xiu spooky. Kids, don’t spend too much time in your bedrooms alone.

As we cross the bridge on our way to Baghdad By The Bay, The City That Never Parks, we see below us Treasure Island, the home of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, a former seaplane port with flights to China, and soon to be venue for a festival put on by those Noise Pop fellars…

SF just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, but none of the music artist types about which we’re going to be talking were even BORN then, except maybe Chuck Prophet. Chuckles got his start back in the ’80s with LA-based, ’60s-influenced band Green On Red, but the telecaster-twanging Prophet has always made the Bay Area his home.

Speaking of artists with sixties-damage, let’s swing by and say “hi” to Kelley Stoltz, who could very well be the bastard offspring of Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett. The bards at UK magazine MOJO think Kelley is at least the Second Coming of Nick Drake. And a quick nod to psych-rockers Oranger, who are celebrating the completion of their first decade in existence this year.

Now, we hope you’re getting your second wind because we’ve got a lot of territory to cover. San Francisco is not especially big as cities go, but it has a buttload of musicians. Let’s give a tip of the hip hop hat to Aesop Rock, an East Coast rapper who transplanted himself to SF a couple years back and to Gold Chains, another Easterner gone west who’s made a name as a rapper for the indie rock crowd.

And speaking of indie rock, where do we start? Every hipster in every bar in SF’s Mission District has a band. Let’s give you some highlights. Standing out in the twee pop division are Deerhoof and Aislers Set (though we hear they’ve moved to Brooklyn) and in the senior division: Imperial Teen who are back with a new album The Hair the TV the Baby & the Band after taking some maternity leave.

And representing for the garage rock contigent, we have Vue who managed a couple albums for Sub Pop before moving onto RCA and then apparently falling off the face of the Earth sometime mid-decade.

And on the ’80s influenced track, we’ve got the Every Move A Picture whose mothers were charter members of the Duran Duran fan club and Numbers who must have all been conceived backstage at Gang Of Four or Erase Errata concerts.

And where would San Francisco be without a duo? Smothers Brothers, anyone? Nope, we’re talking Two Gallants and their folky lo-fi distillation of indie rock.

And there you go, an exhausting (if not, exhaustive) look at the SF Bay Area music scene. Call it “lazy journalism” but we’re tired.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.