It is a very special night for Club 222. I’ve watched this bar grow from a small beer, wine, and pizza bar into one of the premier clubs in our noble yet crack-addled (I mean, heroin-chic) Tenderloin district. I pine for a vague vision of a vague past as I await the arrival of semi-stars Modeselektor. Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke sang on a track on Modeselektor’s last album, Happy Birthday. Maybe Thom Yorke will make an appearance! Maybe not. All the same, I’m pretty darn thrilled to be seeing these heroic Berliners in this intimate setting. The show was sold out before they even printed the flyers.
At one point in American history — when Club 222 was called “The Black Hawk” and filled an adjacent parking lot in addition to the current space — Miles Davis recorded an album here. Across the street, the famous Hyde Street Studio looms like the past; the scent of the Digital Underground, Dead Kennedys, even Tony! Toni! Toné! still hangs in the air. Even in the Tenderloin, San Francisco never fails to dazzle with relics of its rich history of cool.
By 10 PM, Club 222 is being hounded by a small mob, desperate for a ticket. Modeselektor is fashionable enough to be featured on the cover of XLR8R, and they have enough electronic music street cred to have garnered a reputation (on Wikipedia, anyway) for building their own hardware and coding their own software. I’m informed by the girl to whom I sold my extra ticket that Modeselektor titled their latest album Happy Birthday to celebrate the births of their new (respective) babies. How cute is that?!
Eventually, the house is packed to a capacity of slightly more than 120. 222’s bartenders are naughty rakes who pour my drinks with winks and giggles sexier than internet porn. Modeselektor opens their set with a thump and glitch-rich techno vamp, reminiscent of Underworld’s “Beaucoup Fish,” which loops and meanders until finally morphing into “The Dark Side of the Sun (featuring Puppetmastaz)” — a track from Happy Birthday — which they embellish with the odd skip, pause, bump, scratch, glitch, repeat while the doughy half of the Modeselektor duo lip syncs “Bitch motherfucker!” The crowd is hypnotized, wide-eyed, with heads-a-bobbing. Fans actually squeal each time Modeselektor’s laptops blurt out a kooky, new sample — like rock groupies squealing at a sexy singers rasp. As well as being composers, Modeselektor are accomplished DJs, creating new noises on the fly, and this live improvisation makes the music feel exciting.
They are playful, chaotic, enthusiastic, and full of “bump and grind.” They seem genuinely flattered and all too willing to react lovingly when adoring fans call out drunken praise to them. One yells, “This shit makes my belly wanna dance!” And into the night, the brilliant, soothing, exhilarating beat goes on, sprinkled tastefully with glitch. At one point, they cut the music and insert a horrific screech which lasts for nearly a minute — fans screeching wildly along — and then resolves into a crowd-jumping, bass-thumping, sense-erupting ejaculation of rich, beautiful beats. The brick walls sweat with the sexy dance power of the crowd. A crowd which is utterly owned by Modeselektor.
They close with E-40s “Tell Me When to Go” (better known as“Ghost-Ride the Whip”). I’m reminded of a video I saw on YouTube of someone ghost-riding their car to that song and then falling off and running themselves over.
