BOOK
Kathan Brown: Magical Secrets About Thinking Creatively
(Crown Point Press)
While traveling in Scotland in 1959, Kathan Brown found an etching press that some artists had hidden in the backyard of a rooming house so it wouldn’t be melted down for scrap during World War II. She took the press back to San Francisco by freighter and used it to set up an etching workshop called Crown Point Press. In the half century since, working with such artists as Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, and John Cage, Brown has learned a fair amount about how artists make art, and she’s distilled those lessons into 13 “magical secrets.” The result is a delectable hybrid of etching primer, art essay, and creativity manual, brimming with photographs and descriptions of the artists at work, along with color reproductions of the pieces in question. There’s a DVD of Brown lecturing on the subject, too. While the lessons apply most easily to the visual arts, the book is a thrilling window onto the creative process, and a potent inspiration to go out and make some art of your own. A-
DASHKA SLATER

CD
Various Artists: Berkeley Guitar 2006
(Tompkins Square)
For the most part, folk music is considered a lyric-driven genre. Back in the ’60s, though, some of the most impressive acoustic guitarists—John Fahey, Robbie Basho—forsook the verbal altogether. Last year, a new label called Tompkins Square released Imaginational Anthem, highlighting similarly minded 6- and 12-string guitarists from past and present. Berkeley Guitar goes one step further, offering multiple tracks from three current East Bay–based practitioners: Adam Snider, Matt Baldwin, and album producer Sean Smith. Snider’s tracks are the prettiest, touching on delicate folk and country patterns (“The Anger of God” recalls Dave van Ronk’s original version of “House of the Rising Sun”), while Baldwin’s tunes (especially “Split (Part 2)”) stick the closest to traditional blues, offering the most tension and movement. Smith’s numbers are ethereal and meditative, meandering in circular patterns like an Indian raga. All three wrest the acoustic guitar away from the coffeehouse warbler, proving that sometimes you can say more
without words. B+
DAN STRACHOTA

BOOK
Peter Schrag: California
(UC Press)
Old news, quite possibly tragic: California has over the past 25 years been as badly governed as a wealthy, humming nation-state could possibly be. New news, courtesy of Peter Schrag, the state’s underappreciated answer to Garry Wills: we haven’t completely screwed it up yet! In a book worthy of wide attention—the provocative subtitle calls California “America’s high-stakes experiment”—the intellectu­ally limber author takes stock of the forces remaking the state into a test case of a teeming, postindustrial, insanely diverse democracy. Those forces include epic Third World immigration, of course. But also the willy-nilly ballot initiative system, “restrictive and fearful” backlash policies, an ever-fracturing citizenry, and growing ignorance of the issues at hand. Professorial and sweeping, Schrag’s book poses intricate questions about political dysfunction and demographics. His starkest insight: as much as we might bemoan our lost paradise and fantasize about a Pat Brown-esque plan to return the state to glory, most Californians don’t really want forward-thinking government because that would force them to accept a multicultural future. Will the hesitancy last forever? No one knows, not even Schrag. A-
BRUCE KELLEY

CD
Brightblack Morning Light: Brightblack Morning Light
(Matador)
The Bay Area has become ground central for the new “freak folk” scene, with locals like Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, and Vetiver making it cool to wear bandannas and play harps again. On its sophomore release, Brightblack Morning Light—Alabama transplants Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes, plus whatever friends they can corral into jamming—proves freakiest of them all. “Everybody Daylight” and “Star Blanket River Child” sound like late-night deconstructions of the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler,” floating along on Hughes’s languorous organ patterns and Shineywater’s laconic, druggy vocalizing (his closest relative being Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval; both sound as if they never met a Quaalude they didn’t swallow). Other songs, such as “A River Could Be Loved,” bare a murky, pristine beauty, as if the band were recording in some isolated swamp shack. In the past, Brightblack songs tended to run together into a same-sounding morass, but Morning Light’s guest action allows for more variety, whether
it be an exultant (if lazy) trumpet solo or some freaky, Tom Waits-ish percussion. Brightblack splits the difference between the rednecks and the hippies, delivering a bucolic form of rhythm and blues that you can smoke out to. B+
DAN STRACHOTA

BLOG
Municide.com
Municide is defined as a “slow and painful death due to the extreme annoyance and utter inconvenience caused by the worthless public bus system of San Francisco.” If you think
you may have experienced Municide, check out this bitter but hilarious site and its horror stories from two disgruntled riders, Doug and Jonas, who share your pain. In a particularly funny post, Doug calculated the average speed of a recent bus ride and compared it to the cruising speeds of various animals. Apparently our buses are faster than slugs and sloths but less swift than the “lightning-quick manatee” (which moves at a blazing 3 mph). The faint of heart may want to avoid the pictures and video of the Muni “bus” (shopping cart) running over “victims” (friends spewing fake blood), purportedly at this year’s Bay to Breakers; others will applaud the site’s dark humor. Next time you find yourself waiting for a bus, anticipating the pleasure of being sandwiched between an obese teenager and a toothless derelict, take solace in knowing that you can log onto Municide when you finally get home and can laugh off your frustration. All aboard! A-
BYRON PERRY