Frisco Vista

What do these folks — Randy Newman, Dave Brubeck, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and Arturo Sandoval — have in common? They are all part of the lineup for the 26th Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival. The festival runs from October 3 through November 9, and tickets go on Sale July 13.

Okay, Miles Davis won’t be there (maybe in spirit; that’s one of my Illustrator artworks over at the right). But Miles from India will.

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He’s Toshio Hirano, originally from Japan. He teaches in San Mateo by day. But at night another dimension emerges, as he plays his guitar and sings in south of Market clubs — and what he most often sings are the songs of Jimmie Rodgers.

He became fascinated with Rogers as a college student. After graduation, he toured Appalachia. A few years later, he worked at a restaurant in Nashville, where he met some country stars. He has lived in San Francisco since 1986.

For the full story, see the SF Chronicle article by Joel Selvin. Or visit the singer’s website. Just be sure to listen to this clip of his rendition of peach picking time in Georgia.

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I’m excluding old music hall / movie songs like “Hello, Frisco” and “O Susanna” (I’m allowing old blues and country tunes though). I’m also excluding contemporary songs like all the hip hop and rap that have “Frisco” in the lyrics.

10. Bob Dylan, “Roving Gambler”

I gambled up in Washington, gambled over in Spain
I’m on my way to Frisco town
to knock down my last game

9. Merle Haggard, “Here in Frisco”

They say it’s raining in Chicago and it’s cold and clear in Denver
Been windy all night long here in Frisco
Trolley cars are clinging the big Bay Town’s swinging
And I’m still all alone here in Frisco

8. Frank Zappa, “Who Needs the Peace Corps?”

What’s there to live for?
Who needs the Peace Corps?
Think I’ll just drop out
I’ll go to Frisco

7. The Youngbloods, “Grizzly Bear”

I used to love to watch her dance that Grizzly Bear
I guess she’s gone to Frisco to dance it there

6. Cab Calloway, “Frisco Flo”

Frisco Flo was just as sharp as a tack;
Frisco Flo, for a fellow would give the shirt right off of her back.

5. Memphis Minne, “Frisco Town”

You can toot your whistle, you can ring your bell
But I know you been wanting it by the way you smell
I’m on my way to Frisco town

4. Jesse Fuller, “San Francisco Bay Blues”

I got the blues when my baby left me
down by the Frisco bay

3. Chuck Berry, “Sweet Little Sixteen”

They’re really rockin in Boston
In Pittsburgh, P. A.
Deep in the heart of Texas
And ’round the Frisco bay

2. Johnny Cash, “Give My Love to Rose”

He said they let me out of prison down in Frisco
For ten long years I’ve paid for what I’ve done
I was trying to get back to Louisiana
To see my Rose and get to know my son

and the top classic Frisco tune, yes, that old chestnut

1. Otis Redding, “Dock of the Bay”

I left my home in Georgia
and headed for the Frisco bay

So what songs am I forgetting?

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Honorable mention: Waylon Jennings, “Frisco Depot” (Frisco’s a mile long away / You can afford to fly / But it might as well be the moon, / Lord, when you’re as broke as I); George Strait, “Give It Away” (Like that picture from our honeymoon, / That night in Frisco Bay: / She said: “Give it away.” / Well, I can’t give it away); Arthur “Big Boy” Cruddup, “Mean Ol’ Frisco” (Well, that mean old Frisco, and that low down Santa Fe / Well it carried my baby away, and it’s blown right back on me); Hoyt Axton, “I Aint Got a Worry” (Well I ain’t got a worry, you know I ain’t got a care. / ’m going back to Frisco, all my friends are there); Grateful Dead, “Casey Jones” (He turned to his fireman and this is what he said / “Boy, we’re going to reach Frisco, but we’ll all be dead”).

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The toughest guys on the old SF waterfront, neither rubes nor tourists, called it Frisco, and no effete journalist would have tried to correct them. – Herb Caen

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According to Global Deejays it is. Apparently the sound of San Francisco is sort of techno retro pop, while the visuals associated with the city show the influence of Playboy circa 1972.

Abstract Rhythms: Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart is the title of an exhibition at SFMOMA that will feature a performance by Banhart. He will perform 8:00 p.m., January 17, in the Phyllis Wattis Theater. The event is sold out, but the museum is selling tickets for a live simulcast of the performance. Banhart will also perform Jan. 19 at Amoeba Records. From the museum’s website:

Music was a consistent source of inspiration for Paul Klee, spanning the arc of his career and informing much of his practice. This exhibition features works by Klee that reveal his affinity for music, as well as new drawings by Devendra Banhart, a musician and visual artist, made in conjunction with his most recent album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Part of an ongoing presentation within Matisse and Beyond, the exhibition highlights the synesthetic relationship present in both artists’ works on paper, drawing on Dr. Carl Djerassi’s gifts and extended loans to SFMOMA of more than 150 works by Klee.

Here is a video of a performance by Banhart.

San Francisco’s long-standing tradition of free music in the park continues this weekend with the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Some of the artists who will appear include Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band, Earl Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Jorma Kaukonen, Los Lobos (?!), Michelle Shocked, T Bone Burnett, and many more. Dowloadable programs and more information here.

By Jesse Fuller.

A few excerpts from the press conference, including questions like “How wasted is really wasted?”

Via San Fran Voice.

Thanks to Eruthros for pointing out these two Bay Area-related videos. They may at first seem unrelated, but both are calls for respect. First, a music video for Zion I‘s “The Bay.” In the video the hip hop group drives around the Bay Area, through many of the locations referenced in the song.

The second video is dedicated to the Golden State Warriors’ long-suffering scoring guard Jason Richardson, who has finally made the NBA playoffs for the first time this year. Nice sound track. There’s a bit of hip hop in this video too.

There’s a laundromat in the city’s Hayes Valley called the Don’t Call It Frisco Laundromat. The name quotes an admonition you will hear often from a certain generation of locals, who will tell you the word grates like chalk on a blackboard. The taboo started, or at least took hold, in 1953 with the publication of San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen’s first book, entitled, well, Don’t Call it Frisco. Caen is much beloved but the truth is he was a bit of an elitist; he had a dogmatic and imperious streak. (I know — back in the day I sometimes had lunch with his power claque.)

“Not Frisco but San Francisco,” Caen prescribed. “Caress each Spanish syllable, salute our Italian Saint. Don’t say Frisco and don’t say San-Fran-Cis-Co. That’s the way Easterners, like Larry King pronounce it. It’s more like SanfrnSISco.” (No one pointed out that the command to caress each syllable and to elide them was contradictory.)

And a generation of independent and free-spirited San Franciscans meekly complied with the columnist’s mandate. Perhaps they were motivated by the suspicion that their city might not in fact be in the same league with New York City after all, so they sought to sweep their underclass underpinnings under the rug, to turn their back on their rough-and-tumble past.

But there’s a long tradition of calling the city Frisco. (The term frisco, meaning a port where ships could be repaired, goes back to Middle English.) Immigrants during the Gold Rush sang:

I soon shall be in Frisco and there I’ll look around,
When I find the gold lumps there I’ll pick them off the ground.
Oh, California, that’s the life for me . . .

Even in Caen’s day Otis Redding sang that he was leaving his home in Georgia and heading for the Frisco Bay. The Youngbloods sang:

I used to love to watch her dance
That Grizzly Bear
I guess she’s gone to Frisco-o-o
To dance it there

The poet Kenneth Rexroth, another contemporary of Caen’s, called the city Frisco, and the beat poet Bob Kaufman wrote a series of “Frisco” poems. Sal Paradise, Jack Kerouac’s alter ego in On the Road, says he is heading for “Frisco.”

Today a lot of people are looser and less uptight that about the city’s handle than was once the case. There’s a tattoo parlor in the Mission district called Frisco Tattoo. A CD of local bands is called Frisco Styles. The Notorious B.I.G. rapped that he was “Sippin’ Crist-o with some freaks from Frisco.” Columnist Stephanie Salter uses the term Frisco regularly. A Barry Bonds fan t-shirt is emblazoned with the slogan Frisco Grooves.

The local hiphop movement called Yay Area hyphy uses Frisco as a “term of endearment.” For example, Frontline’s Now You Know contains these lyrics:

Wah wha wha wha, thats Oakland
Yee yee yee yee, thats Richmond
Hey, hey, thats Frisco
And if you aint from the bay now yo ass know

Letting go of silly, tight-assed prescriptions like Caen’s is a sign that the city is coming into its own, confident enough in itsself not to have to monitor how people refer to it. Those who disapprove of Frisco are trying to own the city,” says screenwriter Theo McKinney. “People should be able to call the city what they wish.”

Do I call it Frisco? Well, no, not really, except sometimes in fun. Which I hope is the spirit of this site.

So don’t call it Frisco. Or do call it Frisco (but be prepared for some rolled eyes). Or, as some folks do, you could just call it “the ‘Sco.” That way you’re covered — you’re cool.

The choice is yours.