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This Week’s Local Shows Picks: Best Bang for Your Buck

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Kacey Johansing Album Release Show!

I went to see Charlotte Gainsbourg at the Palace of Fine Arts a few weeks ago and it was the worst thing I’ve ever laid eyes or ears upon. She stood awkwardly with her hands in her pockets, read all her lyrics (honestly, what’s harder to memorize: monologues that you didn’t write that don’t rhyme or lyrics that you did write that do rhyme?), did heinous covers of Dylan and her dad, and couldn’t stay on key (Beck must have used a lot of pitch correction when producing IRM). To top it off, she pulled a diva move and wouldn’t allow press photographers to take any close photos. Yes, it was her first tour ever, but most people don’t get to play the Palace of Fine Arts on their first tour. If she had to play all the shitty dive bars that most aspiring singers have to play, she’d have been booed off the stage and the learned the lesson that a pretty actress does not a singer make (a lesson that Scarlett Johansson and her abomination of Tom Waits covers ought to learn as well). If those weren’t comp tickets and I’d had to pay the $40, I would have rioted.

Emily Jane White Album Release Show!

The moral of this rant is that small local shows that cost $10 (or often less!) and feature two or three rad acts are often way better than huge headliner shows that feature only one shitty actress-turned-terrible-singer. In a few years some of the local SF bands will have made it big and you’ll get to say you saw them back when they played small intimate shows. Local bands just try harder: they make beautiful posters, they hang out in the crowd, and they sure as hell memorize their goddamned lyrics.

Here are the ones you should mark on your calendars for the next couple weeks. These are amazing lineups and each features three acts for the price of one, and they’re all under $10! If you don’t have a good time I will personally refund you. No, that was a lie (because if you don’t like this music, you don’t deserve a refund!).

Wednesday, May 19th, 8pm
Kacey Johansing‘s Album Release Show
(read my SFGate preview here)
w/ Honeycomb, the Dovekins, and The Range of Light Wilderness
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell St. @ Van Ness
$10

Sunday, May 23rd, 8pm
Emily Jane White‘s Album Release Show
w/ Slow Motion Cowboys (new project by Pete Fields of Trainwreck Riders)
& Devotionals (new project by Tyson Vogel of Two Gallants)
Café Du Nord
2174 Market St.
$10 in advance, $12 @ the door

Bluesix Gallery Shows are the best!

Saturday, May 29th, 8pm
Hélène Renaut, Jen Grady, and EP Hall
Bluesix Gallery
3043 24th St. @ Treat the [Mission]
$5 (!!!)

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Chloe - Pennywise Reporter

Chloe - Pennywise Reporter

Chloe's youth was split between California and Kauai, frolicking on a macadamia nut farm in the tropics and landing finally in the Bay Area. Raised by super-Jew hippies, and the youngest of three sisters, Chloe learned early the virtues of thrift, economy, and green living. To the chagrin of her parents (who hoped, of course, for a Jewish doctor or lawyer), Chloe has put her degree from UC Berkeley to great use by becoming a folk singer. As "Chloe Makes Music" she plays shows throughout SF and beyond, donning vintage frocks, selling handmade merch, and pinching pennies as she sings for her supper. Calling Berkeley home for the last six years, you can think of Chloe as the website's East Bay Correspondent, opening your eyes to the hippie-filled, tree-hugging, organic-loving, vegan-eating, but way-overlooked and awesome assets of Berkeley, Oakland, and beyond.