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Millions around the world are blowing off work today to stay home and groove on Gary Wilson’s new Tip Records album, Feel the Beat, available at iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Spotify, Google Music and a digital outlet near you. Evidently, Gary Wilson Day was first proclaimed by the City Council of Escondido, CA, but the movement soon spread to El Cajon, Santee, Chula Vista, Elfin Forest and Pueblo Siding, among other San Diego area municipalities, as well everywhere else on the planet.
The year’s Tipmas finds devotees at Duncan/Channon celebrating the First Annual Tip Records Holiday Extravaganza on Friday, November 4. This solemn/utterly ridiculous day marks the official launch of Tip Records and official release of the new Gary Wilson album on Tip Records, as well as the official annual celebration of the entire Tip Records roster of superstars. It also marks the official release of a bunch of whoop-dee-do involving food, fire, booze, hotpants and rubber gloves. Due to overwhelming demand, 2011′s Tipmas observances will be taking place at the Public Works venue in San Francisco’s swingin’ Mission. A happy Tipmas in advance to all!
For reals. The man about whom Beck sang, in “Where It’s At”: “My man Gary Wilson rocks the most.” The man whom the New York Times called “odd” and “wonderful.” The man about whom they made the documentary You Think You Really Know Me, which premiered at Lincoln Center. The man who performed on Jimmy Fallon last year because ?uestlove is one of his big fans (another one is Matt Groening).
And on November 4, 2011, Tip Records — yeah, thatTip Records, an otherwise inexplicable division of Duncan/Channon — is going to release Gary’s next album, Feel the Beat, which happens to be the same day he headlines the First Annual Tip Records Holiday Extravaganza at Public Works in San Francisco. True story (unlike some of the stuff on this site).
It may have been all-acoustic, but it rocked, massively. Our first rooftop Tunes of the Tip was nothing short of – dare we say it – beautiful. When Rachel launched into her accapella rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” it appeared several guests were doing just that.
It’s not about turning back the clock. It’s about a smoking little band from Portland, signed to the Dandy Warhols’ Beat the World Records label, that just played its first-ever acoustic set at a smoking little bar in San Francisco called the Tip. It seems clear these stylish 19-to-21-year-olds are looking at a future so bright. Which means that, someday soon, the fired-up crowd of about 40 friends and fam will be able to say they saw them when they were still cool. After 1776′s 45-minute show, their label-mates, the Upsidedown, dropped by for a brief, rousing set, with Altoids tins and a cash box as percussion. Above, a video fragment from 1776.
At last it can be told: Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, from hip-hop’s seminal and legendary Run DMC, officially and completely blew the roof off the Tip at a secret birthday party this past Saturday night. The recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, performing with local DJ Sol, rocked the mic for four tunes, including an incendiary “Walk This Way,” and then posed for pics with everybody and their brother/mother/cousin — including not a few gobstruck D/C creative directors. Word.
One audience member no doubt summed it up for many when she said that Craig Finn performing his Hold Steady songs, alone on acoustic guitar, for 100 lucky invitees, gave her “goosebumps.”
This past Friday evening at the pseudo-legendary Tip, Hold Steady singer and lyricist Craig talked onstage with D/C’s de-frocked rock critic, Bob Duncan, for close to an hour, and revealed, among other tidbits: he had at one time hatched plans to become a comedian; his parents had attended the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 and somehow missed Bob Dylan; he is just as witty in person as on record. He interspersed his thoroughly engaging chat with haunting, stripped-down versions of “Arms and Hearts,” “Certain Songs” and “Magazines.”
That’s what the media has said about Jen Chapin. But aside from the “addict” part, they’re not words you’d normally associate with Duncan/Channon’s rollicking penthouse lounge, the Tip.
Nonetheless, there it was.
D/C’s second-ever Toast of the Tip event on July 8 featured the exquisitely nuanced, impeccably crafted “urban folk” (her words) of singer-songwriter-activist Jen Chapin and her extraordinary backing band, Rosetta Trio, featuring Liberty Ellman, Stephan Crump, and Jamie Fox (one X). A combination of both Jen originals and unusual covers (e.g., Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots)”), the private concert truly lived up to its advance billing and triggered instant demands from the wildly enthusiastic crowd for a repeat performance in the future.
Right before the musical portion of the event, Jen, who is a past chairwoman and longtime board member of the innovative anti-poverty group WhyHunger (formerly World Hunger Year), was interviewed onstage by D/C’s Bob Duncan about the world food crisis and hunger in America and how WHY approaches these issues. (Duncan/Channon is proud to have WhyHunger as its primary pro bono client.) She proved just as smart, articulate and passionate in her conversation as she was in her music. Encore, indeed.
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