It's gonna be Alright!
But only if you join us for part 5 of the "How To Destroy The Universe Festival".


The Bay Guardian Says...

Destroy. Renovate.

By Kimberly Chun

SONIC REDUCER

How to destroy your preconceptions of Blixa Bargeld, cofounder of still-influential and active German avant-garde post-punk group Einsturzende Neubauten and ex-guitarist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds? Simple. Meet him at the door of his SF home earlier this week, just off the jet from Beijing. He greets you with a warm smile, a black cotton kimono pulled around his stocky frame, and he seems less like a menacing noise boy or a grim-faced Bad Seed than a friendly haus ... mensch. Bargeld then disappears upstairs and, with a toilet flush, comes back down quickly restyled in a buttoned-to-the-neck black shirt, asymmetrical crop roughly styled, and his big, blunt-fingered hands tipped with dark blue nail polish.

"I'm in the confusing schizophrenic state of having three houses [in SF, Beijing, and Berlin]" he complains. "I travel without any luggage. I travel from one house to the other house, and all these things exist in three forms everywhere. It's really bizarre."

But then Bizarre could be Bargeld's middle name. For the past year and a half the vocalist, guitarist, composer, and actor has lived with his unseen partner in a dark-shingled house clinging at a sharp angle to a Castro hill. On one side, through a picture window, is a view of the city that entire sitcoms are built around; in back is a leafy, overgrown garden. In between is a living room and kitchen sparsely filled with black and white modern furniture, a flat screen turned incongruously to the Food Network, and stacks of hard drive boxes and pluggable machines. Beside me, a DVD player is perched atop a microwave on the dining room table.

Bargeld is back in the city because soon he'll finally perform solo in his somewhat-adopted hometown. The man will present his vocal piece, "Rede/Speech" at the How to Destroy the Universe – Part 5 Festival, debuting it for the first time in North America on the West Coast tour. Neubauten engineer Boris Wilsdorf will assist him in the "one-man pseudoimprovisational, pseudoscientific" performance.

Festival founder Ethan Port, who plays alongside Bargeld in F-Space and Savage Republic (in LA only), persuaded Bargeld to perform "Rede/Speech," which was developed a decade ago to appease admirers who would ask the musician to give readings at European literary and poetry festivals.

"I don't really like poetry. So I decided to develop a performance I could do with the most minimal setup onstage," Bargeld says. "It has something to do with language, obviously, but it is by no means a spoken-word performance.

"It is helpful to get out of my image and my artistical output and perform this for the first time because, most of the time, people are simply shocked." He grins like the 47-year-old boy he appears to be.

After the How to Destroy the Universe tour, Bargeld plans to head to Europe to rejoin Neubauten to make an album for their label, Mute, and one for their supporters, who sponsor by presubscription recordings, among other destructive delights. "It is much better for us to work like that than to work with a record company," he explains. "You can make a very simple economical equation there: If you have 2,000 supporters that you can make a record for, we would make more money out of that than we would get from a record company." After spending most of the past four months in China, Bargeld says he hopes to start a "legal record company with the aim of producing some Chinese artists, not just for China, but also for the rest of the world because there is a hell of a lot going on there. It's fantastic."

Till then he must harness the anarchy in and around his bit of SF architecture. "Lots of things are chaotic here, as you see," he mutters. "Renovations that were meant to be done have not be done, and the water was turned off, and the irrigation system went berserk in the garden."

So, I wonder, heading down the stairs to give Bargeld a chance to grab a few more z's, how does one destroy the universe – and save the world, as the festival's literature goes. "No advice at all – just be careful," he advises, bowing at the hip like a captain of the Castro, at the door. "Thanks for saving me from sleep."

GOT 'WOOD? The sweet-and-saucy naughtiness begins with Morningwood's very name and continues with almost every word that falls from the lips of vocalist Chantal Claret. Clearly the girl can't help it, I think, talking to Claret from London, where she demanded a run to Top Shop to buy striped shirts during the band's 24-hour stopover. But she can multitask, ogling cute boys in Oxford Circus while defending the band's Gil Norton-produced, catchy-as-hell, pop-rock self-titled Capitol debut.

"We've never really been a part of the hipster indie scene – we get a lot of backlash," the 23-year-old New Yorker drawls. "People can't comprehend there is a rock band making sort of poppy rock music. They think it's contrived. But what kind of marketing meeting would that be? 'We're going to take men in their 30s and put them with a Jewish girl who sings about sex – it's going to sell millions!'<\!q>"

Morningwood is her first band. Before she met ex-Wallflowers drummer, current Morningwood bassist, and Claret's songwriting partner in pop Pedro Yanowitz at the 2001 birthday party of Sean Lennon (who went to school with Claret's brother), the film school student only sang for her mom – or in the shower. Claret and Yanowitz (who are not a couple; "No! Omigod, no!" she yells. "He's like my brother. We'd be a couple if I liked vomiting after having sex!") are currently looking for a new guitar player and working with Beastie Boys percussionist Alfredo Ortiz after the departure of former Spacehog guitarist Richard Steel and ex-Cibo Matto drummer Japa Keenon.

The Berkeley-born bad girl doesn't miss her film studies – though she would like to make a "really good Emmanuelle porn with amazing music and really hot people and definitely plot and penetration. There's a huge trade-off, either you go for penetration and no plot, or vice versa, and rarely do people look good."

What's "good"? "I'm personally into a skinny, pale, and tall boy. Or shaggy. Actually all shapes and sizes – I'm equal-opportunity. Girls with curves are beautiful. I'm not a fan of the twig – skinny, but not breakable. And no guy-liner!"

She gets plenty of opportunities to check out bit players when she sings her "lust" song, "Take off Your Clothes." Increasingly, that's the audience's cue to get naked and, if they're lucky, climb onstage. "When I pick out someone, there's usually this sea of sad, topless people, all these frowning, naked people," Claret quips. "I do get upset when they don't do anything. Please get off my stage! I hate it when people don't put out."

HOW TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSE – PART 5 FESTIVAL with Blixa Bargeld, Jarboe, Red Sparowes, F-Space, and others Sat/28-Sun/29 Bottom of the Hill 1233 17th St., SF StudioZ 314 11th St., SF Go to www.mobilization.com for time and price. MORNINGWOOD Thurs/26 8 p.m. Slim's, 333 11th St., SF $13 (415) 522-0333


The SF Weekly Says....

Saving Your World
By Maya Kroth
I knew it was over when the perky, khaki-clad blonde in the next cube chirped over the partition, "Are you going to Burning Man this year? It's going to be, like, sooooo insane!" If the playa's become a little too mainstream for your taste, check out the How to Destroy the Universe Festival. Now in its fifth year, the industrial noise/performance art/mind-expansion blowout uses the outsider music of artists like Einstürzende Neubaten founder and Nick Cave guitarist Blixa Bargeld and Swans member Jarboe to "challenge and tear down mainstream assumptions about what is culture," according to founder Ethan Port. A cousin of the earlier Beyond the Pale events, How to Destroy the Universe has featured sensationalistic exhibitions in its previous incarnations — think flaming propane sculptures, humans suspended by hooks sunk into their skin, and suchlike — but this year's event tones it down a little, focusing on the music. In addition to Bargeld's interactive one-man show, performers include locally sprouted Sixteens, playa regulars F-Space, throat-singing sensation Soriah, and ´80s post-punks Savage Republic, whose last encounter with Bargeld happened more than 20 years ago at a proto–Burning Man event called Dessert Auszug.

You can bet that yuppie cubicle queen won’t be in attendance when How to Destroy the Universe brings the noise. Sat., Jan. 28, 7 p.m.
Studio Z, 314 11th St. (at Folsom) , San Francisco.

SAT Jan 28 - San Francisco - Studio Z
BLIXA BARGELD, F-SPACE, SIXTEENS, BLACK ICE, SORIAH


SUN Jan 29 - San Francisco - Bottom of the Hill
Jarboe/Red Sparowes/SubArachnoid Space

SUN Jan 29 - San Francisco - Studio Z
F-SPACE, Soriah, Richard Bitch
FREE festival after party!!

More at www.mobilization.com/

See you there!