Looking for things to do in the Bay Area this weekend? The Do List has you covered with concerts, festivals, exhibitions, plays, performances and more.
You can listen to this week’s episode with KQED’s Gabe Meline and Sam Lefebvre above, or read about our picks below.
Built to Spill: This band plays their album Keep It Like a Secret in its entirety this week in Sonoma. Here’s a story about that album: Gabe was working at a record store when it came out, and after picking up the shipment, he walked four blocks across downtown to the store, carrying copies of it—and he sold four copies to friends and strangers on the street, before the store was even open. It’s only gotten more beloved since, and this weekend, the band plays it inside a 100-year-old wooden barn, on a hill above a vineyard. That’s Saturday, Nov. 23, at Gundlach-Bundschu winery outside of Sonoma. Details here.
Mozzy: At the end of Black Panther, when the Wakandan royalty visit Oakland, the slow-rolling, reflective music playing is “Sleep Walkin,” by Sacramento rapper Mozzy. This song placement, on a soundtrack executive-produced by Kendrick Lamar, was a major moment for an artist that’s been street famous in Northern California for years. Mozzy is a really inventive vocal stylist: he borrows sounds from the streets to create new words, and then uses these coinages for clever internal rhymes, all in a gangsta rap context reminiscent of the Jacka. While it remains to be seen to what extent his profile grows nationally, Black Panther accurately captured how Mozzy’s music is a constant refrain in the Oakland flatlands. He plays Saturday, Nov. 23, at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma. Details here.
‘The Traitor’: The Cinema Italian Style festival kicks off this weekend with The Traitor, a film about the implosion of the Sicilian mafia in the 1980s. This is a timely one, pegged pretty obviously to the recent release of Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman. But whereas Scorcese often has a romanticized, admiring stance on the mafia, The Traitor takes a bold look at the damage it’s done to Italy and its people. The rest of the festival includes some great films too, and runs Friday–Sunday, Nov. 22-24, at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco. Details here.
