Oakland/LA/NYC-based music marketing company Terrorbird turned four last week, and to celebrate, their Oakland office threw a party at SF’s Milk Bar with an impressive bay area line-up including Man/Miracle, Baths, The Splinters, and Sister Crayon. George from Terrorbird had run into Crash a while back and decided to give him a call to invite Ice Cream Man out for the festivities. Unfortunately the drive from LA was a bit far for Crash (although he has done crazier/further before) so he rang up the San Francisco branch of ICM (pretty much me and intrepid photographer Paige Parsons at the moment, but we’re always looking for more help). Camera in hand, I headed over to the Milk bar on Haight St. to check out the bands, and meet some of the folks from Terrorbird and local indie website epicsauce.com who were also supporting the event.
The Milk Bar sits at the west end of eclectic Haight St across from Amoeba music. I arrived early and the crowd was still building so I ordered a pint of the Trumer Pils on special for $3 and began chatting with a couple at the bar. The couple turned out to be Nate of Terrorbird and his guest. We discussed among other things, the Terrorbird SXSW party, the nasty free shots being passed out by girls in Daisy Dukes, future Terrorbird/Ice Cream Man ventures, and the three scale- models of Star Wars AT-ATs mounted above the door.
The evening’s music kicked off with Sister Crayon, a four piece band centered on lead singer Terra Lopez’ hypnotic vocals. I really liked Sister Crayon’s largely electronic sound (no guitars) when I checked them out online, but their performance just didn’t fit the mood/atmosphere of the evening for me, and left me thinking that it was music best listened to on a good pair of headphones.
Next up was audience favorite The Splinters. Amidst shouts of “we love you!” and “you guys are awesome!”, the four girls from Oakland set up their instruments and lurched into a non-stop set of garage punk that left the crowd sweaty. I particularly enjoyed when the girls swapped instruments and singer Lauren Stern was a blast to watch as her face wavered from solemn concentration to giant smile and back throughout the number she played on drums.
Baths followed, Will Wiesenfeld’s falsetto vocals over wicked Akai/Apple generated beats created a sound that reminded me of one of my favorites, RJD2. The Baths set was probably the highpoint of the night, energetically speaking, because the crowd peaked before thinning for Man/Miracle’s late set. If you left early you missed a great set.
I was not familiar with Man/Miracle’s sound before the show but one thing I can tell you is that they sound nothing like Colorado bluegrass/experimental jam quintet String Cheese Incident. Hence the weird looks when lead-singer Dylan Travis read aloud a note which had been thrown on stage from a fan that said “You guys rule! Totes reminds me of String Cheese Incident”. I took a picture of it afterwards just to confirm. The word “totes” drives me crazy BTW! Man/Miracle continued to blaze through a great rock and roll set that sounded nothing like any of the 15+ SCI shows I have been to, and sent me out the door wanting to go straight home and download some of their music.
Keep an eye out for more great music from the folks at Terrorbird this summer, and as ICM/SF gets established expect to be scoring some frozen treats at more smaller events from the likes of Terrorbird, Bricks and Mortar Media, and Epicsauce as well as our usual yearly escapades at Noise Pop, Outside Lands, and Treasure Island.
