Surplus 1980
"If you know Moe Staiano's solo percussion act — relentless energy, loud and fast but high-precision — you have an idea where this music is coming from. The word that comes to mind is “manic.” Even when the tempo isn’t that fast, Moe F-I-L-L-L-L-S the space with drums. Fast, loud, madcap drums. He also packs the room with guitar blasts and some evil, rubbery bass. As mentioned before (see links below), Surplus 1980 is a rock band, the second coming of the instrumental punk band Mute Socialite. Surplus 1980 is a thicker brew, this time with vocals, horns, and strings added here and there, courtesy of a host of Bay Area talents. It puts an out-jazz touch on the punk ferocity, but this is still a high-energy rock band at heart."

Tied To The Branches
This show is a Bay Bridged live pick of the week for 3/15/12.

Drawing influence from intersecting musical tastes (The Jesus and Mary Chain, Black Tambourine, The Cramps, My Bloody Valentine, Magik Markers), Tied to the Branches creates often gloomy, usually loud, shoegaze garage rock with feedback and simple beats.

The Yes Go's

Range of Light Wilderness
"Range of Light Wilderness (ROLW), a local trio that makes beautiful beachy surfy folk music. With a badass girl drummer (love it!), lush three-part harmonies (my weak spot!), and catchy sing-along-inducing melodies, this is the new shoegaze band to listen to. I don’t actually know what “shoegaze” is, but that adjective sounds fitting." - Broke Ass Stuart.com

Shrouded Strangers
"Transplants to the East Bay from Harrisonburg, Virginia by way of Washington, D.C., the Shrouded Strangers are a fuzzed-out, psych-pop outfit peddling hillbilly hallucinations, sea shanties about mutinies gone wrong and catchy ditties steeped in indie furor."

Get Dead
GET DEAD is an electric/acoustic lyrical punk rock band, forged in the furnace of San Francisco, CA in 2007. A culmination of the remains of Lewee and The Regals, The Ballistics and Splitting Seconds.

The Rabbles

feedtime (Australia, Sub Pop)
It starts around ’78 or ’79 in Sydney, Australia. feedtime evolved from this point. There was no “formation,” it just crept through a few people who believed in the same purpose. Rick and Allen met each other in February 1970 and became friends through circumstance and necessity. Both shared a connection to music: Allen with the Sydney hard rock of the ’70s; Rick with Cajun music and bluesmen such as Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Both recall seeing live performances by (Australian) X and Rose Tattoo, bands who outlined the fundamentals of what would become “good feel”—the term coined by the band to articulate the sonics of feedtime. Allen chose bass duties, Rick opted for electric slide guitar. Both chose motorcycles.

Dave handled drums until 1981, though very real threats of violence from irate punters (who expected to hear tame barroom fare) saw him split with the band. Allen’s sister Nella filled the drum stool until around 1982, eventually she also left the band due to the hostile atmosphere within the Sydney underground rock scene.

Tom was already playing in several bands in Sydney in the early 1980s and knew feedtime through friends. He’d seen them live a few times and was duly impressed. An all-round musician, he joined feedtime on drums in 1982. The band’s classic line-up was complete and three years of relentless live performance and rehearsal began. Early set-lists consisted of originals which would appear on their first two albums and covers of songs by X, The Rolling Stones and Flipper. Covers remained in the feedtime oeuvre with the band eventually releasing an LP of their favorite interpretations.

“You pay your respect to the stuff that got you going and you respect that stuff that keeps you going.” —feedtime, 1985

The sound of feedtime was like nothing else in Australia: a vintage blues swagger via roots rock and the late ‘70s that didn’t come from an established clique, a pure strain of rock and roll with a relentless mechanical propulsion. It was the perfect symbiosis of syncopation, minimalist rock that carried a thunderous atmosphere of reckless intoxication and intense personal pain but with a self-assured “ease” amongst the chaos. The sound was both Zen-like transcendence and a form of self-defense from psychic scum. Impenetrable, yet welcoming. Guitar noise you could dance to with lyrics cut straight from experience, tradition and dead crazy urban confusion. Repeating in cycles over and over and over again. (bio)

Dead Meat

Comedy SuperPAC: Promoting Good Comedy & Great Causes Since 2012!
Two of the Bay Area’s best and most renowned comedians, Nato Green and W. Kamau Bell, have come together --- OK, who are we kidding? They‘re not that often apart from each other. --- to present a new weekly comedy showcase at The Hemlock Tavern. The show is called Comedy SuperPAC. And kinda like any SuperPAC, its mission is to foist unlimited good comedy on San Francisco audiences and then to funnel unlimited money (or at least a portion of the proceeds) to a great cause. For the first run of weekly shows from March 12-May 7, this huge bag of cash is going to the Applied Research Center known for its online magazine, Colorlines.com

Tonight's special guests: Mike Drucker, Janine Brito, Sean Keane, and Natasha Muse.

Punk Rock Sideshow

Dustin Wong (Thrill Jockey, ex-Ponytail)
The second solo release from the guitarist from Ponytail (RIP) is constructed from loop pedal machinations, mostly using his guitar with various effects. A distant cousin to Robert Fripp’s flowing, surging Frippertronics, ‘Dreams...’ is coarser, staccato riffs stuttering into infinity. - NME

Woodsman

Moonbell

Dimples (Mexican Summer)
Dimples presents a marrow-deep comprehension of rock’s most striking moves, strips them of their parts and leaves them up on blocks, as a warning. “I Can Feel You”� chugs and chings through a nervy, slicked-down run through West Coast punk delinquency; “Heaven Blotted Regions”� throws out the band and leaves Parme alone with a guitar and a drum machine, ripping out the sort of sleazy, Leisure Suit Larry-esque, yet highly personal ballad that sticks to the wall with effortless attitude. Two great goddamn songs. - Mexican Summer

Outer Minds (Hozac)
Chicago’s explosive and underrated Outer Minds have finally come to the surface after simmering in the underworld in several different incarnations over the past few years, and with unbelievably great results. Sharpening their sound into a legion of 60s pop/psych textures and nuances normally reserved for the baroque set with their impeccable glockenspiel-laden arrangements, Outer Minds weave a rich web of sound around impossibly perfect hooks and deliver an impressive EP worthy of your immediate attention. Lead by Zach Medearis (Black Beauties, Lover!) and A-Ron Orlowski’s (Baseball Furies, Lover!, Dirges) fine assemblage of rough-cut harmonies, the band has gone through more name and roster changes than most, but once the current lineup coalesced into the tight-knit unit performing today, everything fell into place to create this sumptuous wall of sound that will blow your little mind to bits. (bio)

Radar Eyes (Hozac)
This debut album is more of a pinnacle of modern noise pop than just another invigorating album to get warmed up to on a cold morning. Soaring guitars and heavenly vocal interplay, all screaming along with such interstellar melody and power, you’d think they were on the brink of signing to Creation Records. They have been quietly building an explosive array of hits for the past few years, and now their incredible shine has become unavoidable as they crush together spacey noise with pop hooks so devastating, we just had to ask them to put out their debut album. Here, finally on the LP format they’re best suited for, they’ve aligned their angelic guitar transcendency to come to full fruition, heralding a fresh new layer of palpitating excitement to their timeless sound they’ve honed to such a fine point. This is a band that understands how to control themselves under all the constraints, firing off powerfully direct, gigantic synthesized pop anthems that twist and turn with the best of their influences and lock themselves deep inside your head. - Hozac

The Wrong Words
All of its best elements of power pop, punk and a dab of flower-psych.

“Sounding like the best moments of The Quick and maybe even a little Shoes thrown in...a vintage blast of power pop soul that's sunny with just the right dose of syrup on top.”