San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
NEW ALBUMS
FKJ, “Vincent” (Mom + Pop):
Short for “French Kiwi Juice,” FKJ is the moniker of French multi-instrumentalist and producer Vincent Fenton. His often dizzying compositions are serene tunes that can make you feel like you’re floating above crystal-clear waters in a faraway land — album opener “Way Out” is especially transporting.
“Vincent” is his most ambitious release to date, as it features collaborations with Little Dragon on the peacefully tropical “Can’t Stop,” Berkeley’s Toro y Moi on the downtempo “A Moment of Mystery” and even local legend Carlos Santana on the stirring “Greener.”
Sam Gendel, “Superstore” (Leaving Records):
Known primarily for his work as a saxophonist, Los Angeles experimental jazz musician Sam Gendel is a tireless creative multi-instrumental force. Since the start of 2021 alone, his notable releases have included a collaborative album with Japanese guitarist Shin Sasakubo, the “Rio Nilo 66” album created in Mexico City with composer Ethan Braun, the 52-track “Fresh Bread,” the second installment to the popular “Music for Saxofone and Bass Guitar” series with bassist Sam Wilkes, and extensive appearances on Pino Palladino and Blake Mills’ excellent “Notes From Attachments” album. He even has a collaborative album with his partner’s preteen sister, singer Antonia Cytrynowicz, titled “Live a Little.” Suffice it to say there is no end in sight with Gendel, and “Superstore” brings a new batch of 34 tracks into the fold.
Gendel continues to stretch the limitations of what sounds he can get out of the sax and the many other instruments and players that he surrounds himself with. And while his off-kilter music is a bit peculiar, it’s uniquely soothing.
Julius Rodriguez, “Let Sound Tell All” (Verve Records):
When Brooklyn drummer Kassa Overall toured through San Francisco in 2019 and stopped by the Black Cat jazz club, his fantastic performance was matched by the young pianist onstage with him, Julius Rodriguez.
A jazz prodigy who attended the Juilliard School, the 23-year-old Rodriguez also toured with star rapper ASAP Rocky and is now releasing his debut, “Let Sound Tell All.” The album’s ethos follows a mission statement of sorts from Rodriguez: “You can’t get tied up in tradition, you gotta expand.” What results is music that is clearly forged in jazz music’s building blocks, but with a decidedly youthful bravado.
Rodriguez’s piano dazzles on “Blues at the Barn” alongside drummer Joe Saylor and bassist Philip Norris. The track’s production filter slowly morphs the song from a faux vintage live recording in front of a crowd, into a rich, clear session. Then on “Gift of the Moon,” Rodriguez employs studio tricks that he picked up on while fawning
crew, AG Club are poised to skyrocket as the next Gen Z stars from the Bay Area. Born in Oakland and now splitting time in L.A. as their careers surge, the crew is made up of multidisciplinary rappers, producers, visual artists and singers who have put out a trio of cult-favorite mixtapes. But gone are the days of flying under the radar, as their major label debut album, “Impostor Syndrome,” is due out on June 24.
Recently released single “Tru Religion” is an unapologetic pop-punk take on what’s becoming a multigenre approach by the group. De facto leader Jody Fontaine emphatically sings with colead vocalist Baby Boy as they practice being humble amid an impending blowup: “To try to make sense, you gotta stay patient to really make it. And it can go to your head,” before exploding into the emo chorus: “It feels so good, so good, don’t it? It feels so good to feel wanted!”
Watermen and waterwomen are revered figures in Hawaiian culture. These individuals not only excel at such sports as surfing, diving and swimming, but also have a mastery of the ocean — currents, tides, navigation and, by necessity, shark behavior.
If the tradition reaches far back into Hawaiian history, for the most part it had no counterpart on the U.S. mainland until well into the 20th century. While these days we take beach culture for granted, and learning to swim is a childhood rite of passage, during the late 1800s, few Americans could even dog-paddle. And the ocean wasn’t a destination for hot fun in the summertime but a brooding place of danger and mystery.
A pair of new books trace the emergence of swimming as a sport and leisure-time recreation by examining the lives of George Freeth, the Hawaiian waterman who helped bring surfing and lifeguarding to the West Coast, and Olympic gold medal swimmer Charles Daniels.
The more successful book is Patrick Moser’s “Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture.” It details Freeth’s Hawaiian upbringing (he was born on Oahu in 1883) and his days in California, where he popularized what he called “the lost art” of surfing and pioneered lifeguard techniques that greatly reduced the dangers of a day at the beach.
Sadly, Freeth died when he was just 35 during the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Moser, a professor of writing at Drury University in Springfield, Mo., who edited “Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing,” certainly puts Freeth’s considerable accomplishments during his brief life into perspective — even if Freeth, as a personality, remains remote.
Moser points out that Freeth was uniquely suited to serve as an ambassador for surfing and the beach lifestyle. Of native Hawaiian heritage on his mother’s side and the son of a father born in England, Freeth lived the pure Hawaiian beach life while growing up in Honolulu and at a largely undeveloped Waikiki. He also spent time on the distant Pacific outpost of Laysan Island, where his father supervised a guano mining operation. But as Moser writes, once on the West Coast, Freeth’s Anglo appearance allowed him “to maneuver through racial hierarchies in California that relegated darker-skinned residents to the social and economic periphery.”
He was a true waterman. Freeth once said, “I cannot remember the day when I couldn’t swim,” and his friend Ludy Langer, a silver medalist at the 1920 Olympics, later recalled, “To see him in the water — well, I can’t describe it. He had absolutely no fear of it. It was his natural place.”
Moser ably assembles the events of Freeth’s life and brings alive the excitement of early California surfing demonstrations and a long litany of lifeguarding heroics. There are estimates that Freeth saved as many as 300 people. And in one famous incident during a December storm, Freeth rescued seven men and spent two hours in the frigid water; then, while being treated for hypothermia, returned to the ocean for yet
By Michael Loynd (Ballantine Books; 416 pages; $30)
The California Historical Society presents a webinar with Patrick Moser: Virtual event. 5:30 p.m. July 19. Free. Register at californiahistorical society.org
another lifesaving attempt.
Moser’s book will bring renewed attention to Freeth, whose contributions to surf and beach culture in California have typically been overshadowed by those of his fellow Hawaiian waterman and protege Duke Kahanamoku. Because Freeth didn’t leave a collection of letters or journals, we mostly hear from him in secondhand accounts, and Moser largely avoids the temptation to freely speculate on Freeth’s state of mind. So if Freeth’s achievements are well-chronicled, the man himself is still somewhat unknowable.
Michael Loynd’s “The Watermen: The Birth of American Swimming and One Young Man’s Fight to Capture Gold” resurrects the story of Charles Daniels, winner of four swimming gold medals at the 1904 and 1908 Olympics. Daniels held the record for total medals by an American swimmer until Mark Spitz overtook him in 1972 and is credited with originating the American crawl. He set world records in the freestyle at every distance from 25 yards to 1 mile. The guy was no slouch.
Daniels managed all of that while battling serious anxiety issues, as well as a scoundrel of a father who abandoned him and his mother. Not to mention trying to learn to swim during a time when, as Loynd points out, there were only 600 competitive swimmers in the entire country and instruction techniques were rudimentary at best; Daniels nearly drowned the first time his father brought him to a pool for a lesson.
Daniels’ tale is certainly worth telling, and Loynd’s extensive research illuminates everything from the social pressures of Buffalo, N.Y. (the Danielses were a prominent family in what was then one of the country’s wealthiest cities) to the origins of the modern Olympic Games. But if the book aspires to the page-turning, underdog heroics of Daniel James Brown’s “The Boys in the Boat,” it’s often slowed by details and metaphors that get in the way of a compelling story that doesn’t need so much embellishment.
A bit of tough-love editing would have helped. One swimmer is described as “looking carved from steel” and “ironchested, yet still slender,” before the passage continues: “His neck stretched like a periscope. His muscular arms fanned out with an impressive wingspan. His powerful grasshopper legs stretched forever.”
And someone might have flagged, “Swimming wouldn’t even constitute the proverbial road less traveled.” Considering this is a book about a revolutionary time in the sport of swimming and would make for an inspiring beach read, there’s sometimes a whole lot of chop to wade through.
Matt Jaffe is an award-winning journalist and author who has spent much of his career writing and reporting on the environment and culture of California, the Southwest, Mexico and Hawaii.
KPFA and the Cartoon Art Museum present Brian Doherty with Ron Turner, Trina Robbins and Jay Kinney: In-person event is also a benefit for KPFA Radio. 6 p.m. July 14. $15 in advance. 781 Beach St., S.F. kpfa.org
uncertainty, waiting and vulnerability of life in this nevernamed dystopia as experienced by these two unnamed friends on opposing sides of a conflict: The female character is known only as “De-Programmer” from That Place, an empire where she is trying to bring about change; and the male character is known as “Protest Designer” from This Place, an occupied land where he engineers demonstrations. He is skeptical of her goals, despite their growing attraction.
At times the intense focus on single moments within the experience of conflict can make the book feel claustrophobic, and we yearn to “see” the two friends better, to be immersed
Virtual event. 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 14. Free; registration required. citylights.com
This Place That Place in their world rather than see it at an intellectual, aesthetic distance as Dinesh compels us to here. But there are also dreamlike moments that unfold almost as a fable, and other forms of writing find their place in this boldly inventive mix: journals, text messages and almost anthropological oral histories (reminiscent of the “scholarship” introduced at the