Fresh off of a less than stellar SNL performance followed by an actually quite lovely Letterman appearance, Lana Del Rey — the lippy chanteuse with a flair for vintage California — breezed through San Francisco last night for a free show in a former bowling alley. more ›

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar. more ›

Each Tuesday we will feature new music that should (or whatever) be on your radar. Standouts: This week is worst than last week. Really though, there's nothing (except the Original Cast Recording of Lovemusik). Even on the Amoeba Records website, they only have two, we repeat, two records on their list. With the holidays approaching, one would think that there would be an avalanche of CDs being released but again, there's only a few. Please... more ›

-- Interiors (1978): Woody Allen's tribute to Ingmar Bergman seems to have gotten lost in the fold over time (it came out between Annie Hall and Manhattan), but it really is one of his best films, ever. Not a chuckle to be found during this beautiful movie focusing on three sisters and one suicidal Martha Stewart-esque mother. Screens at 5:10 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. (with Love and Death at 7 p.m.) at the Castro Theatre; $6-9. more ›

John Vanderslice is someone you can truly count on. Aside from his incredible talent, we're always impressed with his indie rock work ethic. He keeps his studio Tiny Telephone open as an incubator for top quality recordings, he's always good for a genuine smile and a hug when we run into him, and about once every 18 months or so he releases another incredible album through Seattle-based indie Barsuk Records. His latest release Emerald City offers a somewhat gentler take on his always-unique melodies and music and a move towards even more intricate and adventurous lyrics. In the first song alone, he sings about the kookaburra tree, frangipane, bundestag and terabytes. He builds and inhabits fantastical tales and delivers them in such a convincing way as to make you believe he lived through them. In honor of John playing a free show at Amoeba Records at 2pm on Saturday, we're giving away a copy of Emerald City to two lucky winners. Listen to "White Dove" and enter to win. (Contest ends 8/14; winner will be notified via email.) more ›

more ›

Tower Records is officially donezo as it's closing up it's stores in the area. That's the bad news. The good news is that all of this means EVERYTHING MUST GO! THESE PRICES ARE INSANE!!!! Which is another way of saying they're having a liquidation sale. more ›

Won't you join us in our love for The Constantines? Their album Tournament of Hearts made our Top 12 of 2005, and we're not sure if this makes us pretentious or just lazy, but we're going to quote ourselves: "The Constantines first two records were dark, raw and sophisticatedly aggressive, with songs that were down in the mouth and determined at the same time. Grit, rasp and stubble remain on this record, but a softening has happened. The lover just left; the bedsheets are still warm and you can smell stale cigarette smoke on the pillowcase. It’s unclear if you’re wrecked or relieved." more ›

SFist interviews John Vanderslice. Repeated for the Feist/ Vanderslice show at Noisepop 2006 more ›

SFist inteviews musician John Vanderslice more ›

It's never too late to let us know what you're listening to, local politicos! You may remember that we posted just last week something gently mocking our mayor's middle-of-the-road musical tastes, and that we'd also asked all the San Francisco supervisors what they were listening to on their portable music devices. But only Chris Daly had responded at the time we went to press! (in case you were wondering: the Replacements, the Boss, U2, and mainstream hiphop when blogging, among others). Is no one else running our city tragically hip enough to sport the white earbuds? Well, fret no more! And we should have expected no less from the man who reps Amoeba Records' district -- we got a very nice note from everyone's favorite Greenie, Ross Mirkarimi! Check out what Ross is listening to, after the jump. more ›

We knew that bag of 100 IKEA tea lights would come in handy one of these days! Yet another fire at that same PG&E substation that keeps bursting into flames blacked out 22,000 customers in San Francisco on Saturday night. You may remember this substation as the same one that caught on fire on the last shopping day before Christmas in 2003, was left to burn for 2 hours as PG&E went into denial about the whole thing, caused a huge blackout throughout the city for over 24 hours, and was blamed for single-handedly ruining merchants' sales for the entire year (at a cost of $4 million)? PG&E claims they've learned from the past and called this one in as soon as the smoke alarm went off. (Can't slip anything by those folks.) However, the SF Fire Department is annoyed that PG&E told them it was okay to fight the fire with water, claiming that the fire was not water-safe, the water caused a huge explosion and increased the scope of the power outage, and fire fighters might well have been killed. PG&E, after first saying that this sort of thing should be expected when you're fighting fires in the first place, is now claiming no explosion actually happened. Hm. Any good blackout stories? We can report that we were in the Haight, where we didn't notice a single thing out of the ordinary because Amoeba Records was lit up like Christmas. Does Amoeba have its own generator or something? Picture of PG&E substation from ABC 7 more ›