Free and Freaky Festivals... Fantastic!!!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Jazz on Grant
Various Venues in North Beach
Free

After surviving a nearly fatal blow in the form of no longer being able to serve alcohol in the park, the North Beach Jazz Festival starts tonight with a whole bunch of free jazz in clubs, cafes, bars and restaurants all over North Beach. While I can’t speak for most of the bands, it’s free. If you don’t like something, just wander around to another venue. It starts at 7:00 p.m. with a performance from the Realistic Orchestra, and then all the following shows go from 8:00 to 11:00:

• Mojito: Boca do Rio, Motion Potion (late), Brooke Michael, Aimee & Sky - 1337 Grant Ave
• Grant & Green: Urban Quintet - 1371 Grant Ave
• Blanca Cafe: Live Flamenco - 1441 Grant Ave
• Live Worms Gallery - Micha Patri - 1341 Grant Ave
• Magnet: Will Bernard - 1402 Grant Ave
• Royale: the Park - 1326 Grant Ave
• Ristorante Ideale: Gregory James - Grant Ave
• Saloon: Joe Bagale Trio - Grant @ Valejo
• Cafe Trieste: BJ Papa - Grant @ Valejo
• Savoy Tivoli: Dan Lebowitz Quartet - 1434 Grant Ave
• Tony Nic's: Howard Wiley Trio - 1534 Stockton
• Cafe Divine: Craig Ventresco - 1600 Stockton
• Columbus Cafe: DU UY Qunitet - 562 Green
• Café Roma: Josh Jones Trio - 526 Columbus Ave
• Café Figaro: Sarah Jo Zaharako - 1318 Broadway
• Trattoria Pinocchio: Andre Sumelius - 401 Columbus Ave
• Panta Rei: Chuck McKinnon Trio - 431 Columbus Ave
• Steps of Rome: Bob Crawford Quartet - 348 Columbus Ave
• Joe Dimaggio's Chophouse: Alex Budman Trio - 601 Union Ave
• Northstar: DJ Little E'Normous - 1560 Powell
• Pena Pachamama: Freddy Clark - 1630 Powell
• Washington Square Bar & Grill: John Houghton - 1707 Powell


Starting tomorrow and running through the weekend at various venues is the Edgetone New Music Summit brings us “music and sound ranging from raging new improvisation, to electronic manipulation, to harsh noise reflecting an incredible range of genre busting exploration and sonic creativity. In addition, the festival seeks to promote intermedia arts, fostering cross-pollination between music/sound art and experimental film/visual arts.” While I don’t know too much about too many of the artists performing, the few that I do know are doing very interesting things. And it’s a KUSF co-present, so you know it’ll be good!!! Check out the full schedule

Also on Thursday, old-school punk rockers with pop sensibilities, The Buzzcocks, play the Mezzanine. Citay plays 12 Galaxies. Last time I said: “You can see Citay get all 70’s rock on you, featuring Tim Green of The Fucking Champs and Ezra Feinberg of Piano Magic and (apparently) a shit ton of other folks on stage too.” And on Friday, there’s X and the return of The Rollins Band over at the Warfield.

This weekend brings us two days of free jazz at Washington Square Park as part of the North Beach Jazz Festival. Hopefully I’ll do another post on it and give you some advice on the other shows this weekend (Om, Mushroom, KRS-One, SF Opera, Brightblack Morning Light), but get out there and see some free music. Saturday is “world” music and Sunday is “NOLA” music. More on NOLA in quotes later, hopefully.