San Jose Jazz Winter Fest is back with a lineup of classic and cutting-edge jazz performances from some of the world’s best-known performers, as well as some exciting up-and-comers.

Beginning Feb. 28 and running through March 8, Winter Fest will host 25 concerts at a variety of venues around downtown San Jose, including intimate clubs, like Cafe Stritch, and larger spaces, such as the historic Trianon Theatre.

The festival kicks off Thursday, Feb. 25, with a performance from Kadhja Bonet at The Continental Bar, Lounge and Patio in San Jose’s burgeoning SoFA arts district. The multi-instrumentalist and songwriter is currently touring behind her debut EP, The Visitor, released this past September. The five-song set of all-original material was described by NPR Music as “a cinematic and folky kind of psychedelic soul music impossible to pin down.”

Following Bonet’s performance, the John Scofield Joe Lovano Quartet take the stage Feb. 27 at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto. A bona fide jazz supergroup, Lovano is a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist and composer, while guitarist and composer Joe Lovano has also won Grammys and was nominated for two awards this past year.

Scofield has collaborated with jazz legends, including Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, and made a name for himself by melding traditional jazz with funk-flavored electronics. Lovano is one of the best known saxophonists working in jazz. He has garnered praise for his improvisational talents and his progressive approach to his instrument.

One of the leading jazz violinists of her cohort, Regina Carter is slated to perform at the Trianon Theatre on Sunday, Feb. 28. The jazz legend will be playing music from her 2014 release, Southern Comfort, which draws connections between two of her earlier albums—I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey (a collection of her mother’s favorite jazz standards) and Reverse Thread, which was inspired by traditional African music re-imagined and rearranged for the violin.

Winter Fest will continue the following week, picking back up Wednesday, March 2 and continuing through Tuesday, March 8. Look for more coverage of shows and events in next week’s Metro.

SJ Jazz Winter Fest
Feb 28-Mar 8, San Jose
sanjosejazz.org

Three dangling crimson bulbs trace a straight line through the hall, directing eyes to the stage at the far end of the room, while another set of orbs cast a sanguine glow on the shiny black surface of the bar. There, two men sit, sipping bottled water and surveying their brand new venture.

Corey O’Brien leans forward in his stool, forearms on the bar, fiddling with his phone. His pale hands and face float in the darkness. His black shoes, pants, long-sleeved shirt and beanie merge with the surrounding black walls, floor and ceiling. The parts of his neck not covered by the hat are largely obscured by the long, dark locks falling out from beneath the knit cap.

In two days’ time, The Ritz will open to the public, and there is still a lot of work to be done. O’Brien’s business partner, Kyle Gilmore, pulls on his cigarette as the pair discuss the repairs they’ve made to the space, what the club means to them and what it could mean for San Jose’s nightlife scene, which after a decade or more of fits and failed starts seems finally to be making a comeback.

The success of that renaissance could well depend on what happens here, inside this dimly lit expanse at the corner of South First and East San Salvador streets. Once an adult movie theater, it was converted into a music venue in 1989 by a group headed by Fil Maresca, who also spearheaded a guerrilla rebranding of the neglected three-block stretch of a key city street.

Sure, the Market at San Pedro Square is a booming hub of nightlife, and the 100 block of South First Street has picked up steam in the two years since 55 South, Original Gravity and Paper Plane opened up. And in San Jose’s arts and culture district, known since the 1990s as the South of First Area, or SoFA—things have been improving. Singlebarrel, Back Bar SoFA, Café Stritch and The Continental have all brought something to the table. But there is still a void to be filled: a theater-style venue for touring acts.

And according to Maxwell Borkenhagen, impresario of the nearby live music venue Café Stritch, The Ritz is the answer. “It really is this keystone. It’s what we need,” Borkenhagen says. “A big rock club at the heart of the district.”

Borkenhagen’s eyes light up when discussing the new venue, which occupies 400 S. First Street—former home to many previous rock and dance clubs. To him, it promises to legitimize the SoFA district and bring the kind of mid-sized indie, punk and hip-hop acts that one would usually need to drive to San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz or Berkeley to see.

“Walking in there, it was such a breath of fresh air,” he says, referring to The Ritz’s soft open on April 8. “It’s is just as cool as any place in San Francisco or the East Bay. That place has potential.”

That promise was on full display April 12 at the Reverend Horton Heat show, which drew a large crowd—despite it being a Sunday and even though The Ritz wasn’t serving alcohol, as it had yet to secure its liquor license. (The club has since obtained it’s license and the booze is flowing—both in the club’s main bar and the front bar.) The audience whooped and hollered as The Reverend and his band tore through hits like “Psychobilly Freakout.”

Still, it remains to be seen whether the new club will draw the kinds of big names many locals hope it will, and whether the SoFA District will recapture its former glory, when bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and No Doubt performed on the block. The Reverend Horton Heat, along with Agent Orange, The Faction and Dick Dale (all of whom are slated to play The Ritz in coming months) aren’t exactly risky bets in San Jose. O’Brien regularly booked successful shows with skate punk and psychobilly bands at his former venue, The Blank Club—but rarely, at least in recent years, took risks on emerging acts and new musical styles. The jury is out on whether O’Brien and his team will book the younger bands making headlines on websites like Pitchfork and Stereogum. And even if The Ritz can get those groups, will San Jose show up?

San Jose music circuit veteran Jonny Manak of Jonny Manak and The Depressives brushes aside those worries, arguing that O’Brien will be able to book buzzed-about bands now that he has the space to guarantee enough money to both pay the band and turn a profit.

“If you build it, they will come,” Manak optimistically predicts. “Corey just built it. And we have the RockBar theater too. It’s going to show national booking agents that there are two big-ass rooms where they can send their bands to play.”

The Reverend Horton Heat played the second night of the Ritz’s opening weekend. Photo by Nick Veronin.

The Day The Music Died

Just a few years ago, this debate was moot. The South First district had a handful of theaters and galleries; destinations where visitors would come and then promptly leave. What existed of a SoFA nightlife scene was fragmented, at best.

It fell apart in the late ’90s, according Sam Ramirez, operator of the recently opened Continental Bar, Lounge and Patio on South First Street. Ramirez witnessed both the rise and the disintegration of the SoFA district first hand. He cut his teeth in the bar and club industry on the street—working first as a bouncer and then as a bartender at a series of local establishments. The way he tells it, the scene was built by locals at a grassroots level and was undone by bad operators and a change of San Jose Police Department policy.

At its height, the intersection of South First and East San Salvador streets was called “The Four Corners”—a reference to four clubs: F/X The Club, The Cactus Club, Polly Esthers and Marsugi’s. Ajax Lounge, which was in the space above Cafe Stritch, was another popular live music and DJ venue. The multi-level Dimensions theme club occupied a former furniture store building that was razed to make way for a residential highrise. After F/X closed, it reopened as The Usual, and continued as a live music venue and dance club. Ajax became the B-Hive, a hip hop establishment, and later Sofa Lounge, before fire code enforcement ended its run.

With the exception of Polly Esthers, a chain, all the venues had been started by local operators with a passion for music and nightlife, and most ran on a shoestring budget.

O’Brien says he was never fond of the nickname “Four Corners.” Nonetheless, he was a regular on the SoFA scene. “It was happening,” he says of his days hanging out at Marsugi’s and F/X, and later working at The Usual. “It was for real.”

SoFA became what it was because none of the clean-nosed developers and businesses would invest in the neighborhood. The city’s redevelopment agency poured public money north of San Carlos Street and brought in new restaurants to compete with SoFA’s cluster of white tablecloth restaurants. “This whole area was worth nothing to anybody,” O’Brien says, allowing the rock clubs to come in and build businesses without much capital.

But then—as so often happens when the bohemian class turns rundown neighborhoods around with music, art and nightlife—the establishment took notice. Hopes of selling new condos to buyers unaccustomed to fights and shootings and sidewalk vomit meant padlocking the clubs that had become increasingly rowdy as rents rose and SoFA became a regional destination. “The city came in and they wanted to do everything,” O’Brien recalls. “They wanted to clean up the street.”

A string of club owners with deeper pockets had invested. After the New York-based Polly Esthers came Cabana, then Glo, then Wet. When The Usual became Spy, Pete Escovedo’s and then Angels. The investment community had little interest in rock & roll, O’Brien says. The venues hit on a formula revolving around Top-40 DJs and expensive drinks. Trouble soon followed.

The San Jose Police Department changed its policy of requiring off-duty officers to be employed directly by the clubs to one in which a parked line of patrol cars herded exiting masses to their cars as quickly as possible when 2am rolled around.

“The result was that people who wanted to avoid police interactions stopped coming out,” Ramirez says, “while those who didn’t mind contending with, and even confronting, the police, continued to show up.” Ramirez himself left downtown and opened a club in Campbell.

Clashes between the police and club-goers rose and by the late aughts, and both Wet and Angels closed after incidents and police enforcement actions. The SoFA nightlife scene was the quietest it had been since music replaced the sex industry as the district’s dominant entertainment in the 1980s.

In recent years, Club Miami drew a loyal but highly niche Latin dance crowd on Friday and Saturday nights. And the 300 block was bracketed by Agenda and Motif on one end and Original Joe’s on the other—with nothing, save the excellent but sleepy Anno Domini art gallery in between. 

A photo of two Wet nightclub patrons. Chuckin’ them deuces. Photo by Dave Cabebe.

SoFA’s Glory Days

For those old enough to remember South First Street’s glory days, it was an especially hard blow to watch the SoFA District deteriorate.

Manak refers to the SoFA District of the early ’90s as “the Mecca of entertainment” in San Jose. He remembers heading to the intersection of South First and East San Fernando confident that he’d find something fun going on. “You didn’t have to make plans for the night,” he says. “You just went out, and if one band was shitty (at one bar or club), you just went across the street. It was fucking crazy. There were just people on all corners. There was music coming from every building.”

Eric Victorino, lead singer of Strata, The Limousines and Gestalt, has similarly fond memories of the SoFA scene. “It’s been so sad over the years to see that building just sitting there,” he says. “It was devastating to see it turn into Angels.”

The fifth show Strata played, when they were still called Downside, was at the Cactus Club. At that show, his fledgling band grabbed the attention of a Capitol Records scout—an encounter that led to the band’s first contract and kicked off Victorino’s professional music career.

According to Victorino, the cluster of music clubs functioned as a training grounds for local acts—helping them move from their garages to state and national tours. “It was fun, because there was a hierarchy set up,” he says. “You could get a show at the Cactus and play the tiny room, and you had something to aspire to. Maybe you started at the Gaslighter in Campbell, and you’d eventually work your way up to headlining the Cactus.”

As O’Brien surveys The Ritz just days before the club’s opening night, his business partner recalls touring the venue before signing a lease. “When we first came in here, [Corey] said, ‘I got beat up right here, and did this over here.’”

That fighter’s spirit and sense of belonging that O’Brien brings to the space makes him an ideal candidate to lead the revival of rock & roll in San Jose.

Corey O’Brien on the corner of S. First and E. San Salvador streets. The Ritz is behind him. Photo by Dan Pulcrano.

From The Blank Club To The Ritz

After rock & roll died in SoFA—and unwilling to accept that California’s third largest city should go without at least some kind of alternative music club—O’Brien and zine publisher Larry Trujillo seized the opportunity to buy what would become The Blank Club.

O’Brien was at the Cactus Club the night it opened and he looks back on the day that The Usual closed. “The city wiped out all the real culture,” he says of the decline of the SoFA district. 

O’Brien came formed his definition of “real culture” as a wiley skater kid who loved going to punk shows and drinking when he wasn’t cruising the streets on his board. For a time, he would regularly make the trip up to San Francisco to see his favorite bands play at Mabuhay Gardens. But he eventually tired of making that trip and decided to try promoting his own shows locally.

The first show O’Brien organized was a big one: Social Distortion at San Jose City College. “They were our favorite band at the time,” he says of Social D. “They had no albums out yet, they just had singles and were on some compilations. We asked them to play San Jose, and they told us, y’know, ‘Rent a hall! Set a date!’” he says, chortling a bit at his former naiveté. “So we found the student union at San Jose City College and did the show there. We actually made money doing the show. Tons of people showed up. It was a big deal.”

In the early 2000s, Trujillo was managing Plant 51—a restaurant that, while popular, was just barely hanging on behind the scenes. “They were struggling…and I told Larry, ‘Let me know if they wanna sell that place, cause I’ll buy it.” He said the owners would never sell, but two months later, O’Brien got the call. “We all just scraped money together.” The Blank opened in February 2003.

During its 12-year run, the club kept the local scene alive, while providing a venue for rising touring bands and every once in a while snagging a big fish—like Dwarves, The Damned, The Ataris or ISIS.

“It was the phoenix that rose from the Cactus Club and The Usual going away,” Manak says of The Blank. “Without it we wouldn’t have had any national bands in San Jose at all.”

Borkenhagen, put it another way. “If you’re into punk rock and alternative stuff, it was the closest thing to a CBGB’s we had,” he says. “It was a black room that booked rock bands.”

The Blank was not without its faults, and O’Brien is the first to acknowledge it.

“We’ve done a lot of big shows here, like huge production shows,” O’Brien says. Still, he continues, “bands would come here and just not be happy, and we could see it when they walked in. We need a bigger place; we need a room that has everything we need.”

At 8,000 square feet, The Ritz more than triples the size of The Blank. It has a capacity of 537—versus The Blank’s 188. It’s about the same size as Slim’s or The Independent in San Francisco. And as such, O’Brien says he will be gunning for the level of bands that play those venues.

In response to critics who dismiss his risk-adverse booking history, O’Brien first concedes, then goes on the offensive. 

“I agree with them!” he exclaims, saying he is well aware that The Blank Club rarely booked a band that would have been covered by the likes of Pitchfork—a website he says he reads every day.

There were lots of reasons why he didn’t book many of the bands popular in indie rock circles, he says—chief among them being cash. Bringing in bigger names costs money, and with only 188 people at a sold out show—even when he raised ticket prices above the $5-$10 range—the club would barely break even and sometimes lost money.

“X sold the place out,” O’Brien says, referring to the the time he booked the late-’70s punk icons. “It was a $30-$40 dollar ticket and we lost money.”

There were other factors that held back The Blank, too. “It was a destination,” Manak says, pointing out that for many years there was nothing in its vicinity but The Caravan Lounge and the Greyhound bus station. “You didn’t go to The Blank unless you planned ahead of time to go to The Blank.”

All of this combined with the club’s poor layout—a small stage, no backstage, no parking for bands—led to band complaints.

But “excuses suck,” O’Brien says, explaining what his plan to bring bigger and better bands into The Ritz.

“We looked at every detail when we built this club up, because it has to be perfect, so when the bands leave, they speak well of The Ritz,” he says. “That’s the only way we’re going to get people here.”

Everything from the custom-built subwoofer to the monitors and on-stage mixing board, to the two green rooms backstage—complete with a private bathroom, a shower and a washer and dryer—is aimed at wooing bands, O’Brien says.

Gilmore says that he and O’Brien are going to do their best to bring the best music— “from jazz, to hip-hop, to rock & roll to punk”—and that the only thing left is for “San Jose to show up.”

‘Stepping Up’

Upon securing the keys to what would become The Ritz and walking into the building where he worked as a bartender and drank as a patron, O’Brien was met by an olfactory assault. “It smelled,” he recalls. There were dead rat carcasses lying about the place, holes in the roof had allowed water to leak into the hall and collapse portions of the drop-down ceiling, and parts of the floor were rotted out.

In a way, the interior of what is now The Ritz could be seen as a metaphor for the entire downtown scene. In just a few months time, using connections he built over a lifetime living, working and skating in San Jose, O’Brien was able to transform the building. Similarly, in just a few short years, the local nightlife scene has been revitalized—by craft cocktail and beer bars and new restaurants. 

“I’ve been one of those people who has been super pessimistic about downtown San Jose for a long time,” Victorino says. “But then Stritch kinda made me change my mind and turn things around, and now I think The Ritz is going to solidify that.”

Manak is decidedly more enthusiastic. “I’m so fucking excited,” he says. “This is the best news I’ve heard for the scene in 10 years. This is going to light South First on fire. There are people who are 20 and 30 years old in San Jose who have never experienced this. They’re going to lose their fucking minds.”

Borkenhagen, himself in his mid-20s, is hopeful that Manak is right. “The Ritz is a beautiful blank space and a fresh start,” he says. “People have their expectations, but The Ritz is not The Blank.”

The artistic director of Cafe Stritch—the current go-to venue for the freshest sounds in local indie rock—says was once very skeptical of San Jose. In fact, he says, he “hated” the city for turning its back on the kind of music he loved. But these days, he is far more hopeful.

“My hope is that The Ritz embraces the fact that there is a lot of different programming that’s now possible that has a big audience here,” he says. “And I hope that audiences are ready to step up, just like Corey is stepping up.”

For more info on upcoming shows at The Ritz, visit the venue’s website. Jody Amable contributed to this story.

Last week, as soon as I saw Corey O’Brien standing on the southeast corner of First and San Salvador—right outside the former F/X The Club—I knew what was happening. Through the open doors workers could be seen cleaning up some old debris and hosing things off. It was clear. After nearly 12 years of operating The Blank Club with his partners, O’Brien was about to begin a brand new live-music adventure with some new investors inside the old F/X building, which had been the Pussycat Theatre before, and The Usual, the Spy and Angels in the years following F/X’s closure.

It is with a tinge of sadness, that I report The Blank Club will close for good on Jan. 31, 2015. The name will be retired and O’Brien’s new, yet-to-be-named club will open by the beginning of March. It was not a sudden decision. While the Blank has been the only venue of its kind in San Jose for years, everyone knows it simply isn’t big enough. While it’s miraculously managed to host many legendary shows over the years, there was no real backstage, no real place to load-in and the stage itself was way too small for national touring bands. Looking back over the last 12 years, I was very lucky to see Lemmy Kilmister, the Damned, GBH and the Buzzcocks on that stage.

After awhile though, with production costs going through the roof, and with more and more national touring bands expressing grief over the less-than-ample conditions, O’Brien says he finally came to a decision. The era of the Blank Club was not going to last much longer. It must eventually come to an end and he needed to move forward on his own to find a more suitable venue. The old F/X building has been empty for seven years, and while it will be expensive, O’Brien says it will be worth it.

I had to get the skinny in person, so I showed up at The Blank Club on the afternoon of Dec. 4, during non-operating hours, to ask O’Brien what was going on. He said the place simply wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

“We don’t have what we need here,” O’Brien told me. “The stage is too small, there’s nowhere to stage gear, the green room is back behind the bar, upstairs. If we want to do major touring bands, we needed a bigger room. San Jose needs a real, mid-sized club. We don’t have one here.”

Opening a new live music venue in the SoFA District—in the same building where alternative music fans saw countless bands 24 years ago—will add a much-needed component to the street. The area is already making a serious comeback and opening the F/X building again is going to work wonders for music-based nightlife.

The former F/X is the only building still empty at the intersection of South First and East San Salvador—an area once referred to by San Jose nightlife junkies as “The Four Corners.” Original F/X owner Fil Maresca said a new rock club in that space will be transformative: “To see that marquee lit up again is going to make a serious difference in the neighborhood.”

When 400 South First Street was called F/X, from 1989-1995, it regularly jammed that building with numerous national touring acts. No Doubt, Helmet, the Melvins, Jesus Lizard and countless other bands gigged there, back when they were nobodies. This unfolded in-between huge dance nights, themed events and all sorts of performance-based revelry. It’s an amazing space for all sorts of events in addition to live bands, which is why O’Brien is looking forward to opening its doors in 2015. Especially since he was one of the original regulars who drank at F/X when it first opened 25 years ago. He even DJed there.

But even though he now has over a decade of memories at 44 S. Almaden Ave., O’Brien reiterated that he is not relocating the Blank Club to another venue. The new club will be just that: a new club.

“The Blank Club is here, at this location,” declared O’Brien, as we continued to stand there during non-operating hours. “To do something else, it isn’t the Blank Club. The Blank Club’s here. It’s going to be different over there, so it needs a different name.”

Nightlife lovers living in downtown San Jose will have plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, as the seventh annual Black Friday party, hosted by F/X The Club founder Fil Maresca, will be held at the brand new SoFA venue, The Continental Bar, Lounge & Patio.

A venture of Sam Ramirez, owner of The Cardiff and El Guapo’s in Campbell, The Continental is so new that the F/X Club party—which will feature four DJs, spinning ’90s alternative and house music—is being billed as a “sneak preview” of the new club, which is slated to open officially sometime in December.

The party will feature sets from DJs Brian Raffi, King Raffi, Julius Papp, and Harry Who?

When The Continental does open its doors, it will be a welcome addition to the SoFA district, according to Maresca, a long-time San Jose resident, a member of the SouthFirst Action Committee and founder of F/X The Club, which once occupied the theater on the corner of South 1st and San Salvador, most recently occupied by the Angel’s nightclub.

“I’m really excited,” Maresca says of The Continental’s opening, which he views as yet another sign of the SoFA district’s resurgence—along with opening of Café Stritch, the soon-to-be-completed South First Market and the return of the SoFA Street Fair—not to mention the new housing springing up in the area.

“It’s becoming more of a community again,” Maresca says. “There’s a lot more people in the neighborhood who care about what’s happening.”

Ramirez certainly falls into the category of people who care about the district, and the opening of The Continental is a return to his roots.

Born and raised in San Jose, Ramirez learned the ins and outs of the nightlife business working for Maresca at F/X, throwing parties at the Cactus Club and working at Agenda. After cutting his teeth in the SoFA district, he opened up the highly successful Cardiff Lounge.

“It’s very exciting for me to be able to come back,” Ramirez says. “I feel like I’m coming back home.”

Ramirez has transformed the inside of what was once Brix and Hunters—going for a rustic look and using reclaimed wood, salvaged metal and exposed cement floors. Much like he does at Cardiff Lounge, the bar will feature DJs spinning electronic music, including acid jazz and rare groove beats. He also plans to occasionally host live music.

There will be leather couches and arm chairs and a back patio area, Ramirez says, explaining that he wants the place to have a “lounge feel.” The full name of the establishment will be The Continental Bar, Lounge and Patio.

He is training his bartenders to make craft cocktails and plans to stock mostly high quality and small-batch spirits, micro-brew and craft beers, and fine wine—with a few exceptions: “I might do a Coor’s Light, or something like that,” he says.

Overall, however, he wants The Continental to be a classy—but not stuffy—place, where young people can “come in, enjoy their time, have conversations and enjoy great cocktails.”

Bottoms up!

The party starts at 8pm tonight, Nov. 28, at 349 S. 1st St. There is a $10 cover after 9pm.

The San Francisco-bred indie-psych droners, Moon Duo, drew a sizable crowd to Cafe Stritch in San Jose’s SoFA district on Saturday. The show, booked by the “boutique music and events curator and presenter,” (((folkYEAH))), featured retro, acid test-esque light projections courtesy of Mad Alchemy Liquid Lights and ambient opener Matt Baldwin and the slow morphing synth and guitar grooves of Seventeen Evergreen.

Check out these photos from Metro photographer Greg Ramar:

The artsy chaos on South First Street at Subzero makes for great spectacle. At the 2012 edition on Friday, there was once again plenty to see, starting with the return of Art Alive Gallery. This body-painting collective debuted at the 2011 festival, but they really upped their game this year. Semi-nude women decked out head to toe in body paint as everything from mythological creatures to art masterpieces inspired by Botticelli and Dali would be enough to stop traffic in any city, but on this night in SoFA they were just one of many unbelievable things to see and hear.

So yes, Subzero continues to be the South Bay’s coolest street festival, and the sensory overload is its most obvious appeal. But to me, Subzero is really about discovery. The reason people look forward to it so much is that it’s become the place for artists from across a wide range of subcultures to show off what they’re working on the rest of the year. There is eye-opening stuff happening around us every day in the South Bay, but it’s hidden inside San Jose’s industrial warehouses or behind the shiny gleam of tech offices.

A perfect example this year was Dru, the masked headliner on the William Street Stage. Here’s a guy who was making music and games in his South Bay bedroom, releasing albums mostly in Internet obscurity, and suddenly he’s headlining the biggest street festival of the year? He even had three of the Art Alive painted ladies dancing on stage through his set—which was, by the way, the craziest electro barrage I’ve heard in quite some time. His unique take on the Star Wars cantina band theme was particularly inspired.

That’s the genius of festival organizers (and Anno Domini owners) Cherri Lakey and Brian Eder. They pay attention to all of the subcultures around us, and have an irrepressible drive to connect them to each other, and to themselves, and to us. I didn’t get to see nearly as many of the bands as I’d planned to, just because there was so much art to look at, plus excellent randomness like the Oversocial Mofo Revue. But I did get to hear a few of the weirder stage offerings, like the Minibosses ripping through some of my favorite Nintendo themes. Unlike almost all the chip bands that have made arcade retro cool in the last couple of years, these guys play with a straight rock band set up, and their sound is a lot heavier and more powerful in person. I loved how people were yelling out video game names the way “Freebird” would get yelled at other concerts: “Contra! Connnnnnntttttaaa! Mega Man 2!” The band delivered both, by the way.

My favorite discovery of the night wasn’t even from the South Bay, but L.A. (granted, this is probably because I had seen most of the local acts before): the indie-folk outfit Monsters Calling Home. They floated ornate arrangements with intriguing lyrics across the eastern end of the festival, while cryptic messages like “Once I was a dolphin and you, you were a manatee” flashed several stories up on one of the buildings behind them. Apparently it was quite an experience for the band, too, as lead singer Alex Hwang explained that in their hometown, most crowds tend to watch them for a minute before looking down to their iPhones. “We really like you,” he told the crowd. “You guys are a lot more clappy than Los Angeles is.”