Report: Jigsaw Seen/Allen Clapp Live SF

The Jigsaw Seen and Allen Clapp & His Orchestra enthrall a small mob with uncommon tales of California at the Hotel Utah on December 2.

By JUD COST

You may think California's all about swaying palm trees and endless summer. But the Jigsaw Seen, representing greater Los Angeles, and Allen Clapp & His Orchestra, wearing the colors of the San Francisco Bay Area, are here to tell you to think again, pal. Both aggregations have new albums (Jigsaw's Winterland on Vibro-phonic and Clapp's Mixed Greens on Minty Fresh) that rank among the best material they've ever recorded. And there's not a surfboard, go-kart or pair of in-line roller skates anywhere in sight. Their music is more about taking a long walk in foul weather with your hands jammed into your windbreaker to keep warm. And you've probably just lost your girlfriend, too.

Because they have a grinding drive ahead of them before tomorrow night's pit stop in San Diego, the Jigsaw Seen are slotted as the evening's opener. With their longtime rhythm section of bassist Tom Currier and drummer Teddy Freese back in harness, singer Dennis Davison and guitarist Jonathan Lea, the perennial core of the group, have never played a better set. And, believe me, I've seen plenty of their live performances over the past 20 years. "This is our career retrospective," Davison says only half-kidding over a beer upstairs in the tiny minstrel's gallery of the Hotel Utah. "You know, that means the only big musical event left is your memorial," I tell him. "Hopefully, not for a while yet," he smirks.

The set is composed mostly of material from their last three albums-Zenith, Bananas Foster and Winterland-the stunning trilogy that's put the band back on the map just when it seemed it might be time to play out the string. "We just finished a short east coast tour," says Lea, "and we had large crowds of young kids everywhere we played. Totally unexpected."

Jigsaw jumps right into the fire with "Where The Action Isn't," one of their rockers that everybody loves whose title is a play on a ubiquitous Dick Clark TV show from the '60s. "What About Christmas?" replaces traditional Yuletide icons like Santa Claus, sleigh rides and Frosty the Snowman with loneliness, isolation and depression. The cryptically titled "Snow Angels Of Pigtown" is Davison's mythologizing of a working-class district of Baltimore, his hometown. "Fiddlesticks" once again exhumes the story of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who, unfortunately, was not a vegetarian.

They wind things up with a devastating one-two punch to the jaw and you're down for a mandatory eight count. "My Name Is Tom" is the manic tale of a sinister peeping tom making his midnight creep, done up in a bone-rattling raga-rock style that's never been topped. It's such a great vehicle, you can close your eyes and hear John Coltrane wailing away on it with his soprano sax for at least half an hour. Freese on drums is a revelation all night long. He's not Elvin Jones, but he may be the closest thing I've seen to Keith Moon since I first witnessed the real item back in 1969 at Fillmore West.

Keeping the holiday season in mind, "Tom," the usual set-closer, is followed by a rousing, yet accurate, reading of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," featuring Davison's patented, slightly evil choirboy vocals and Lea's ripping sitar-like fretboard work.

Kudos are due to the Hotel Utah, who apparently have upgraded their sound system recently. But the curb appeal of the joint, not so much. As the boys are loading their gear into the van on the Bryant St. side of the club, the garbage from six large refuse cans, stuffed to the brim and lined up on the sidewalk like giant tin soldiers, is blowing over our heads. "Hope you enjoyed your trip to San Francisco, and have a safe drive home," I tell Davison and Lea after a stiff gust pelts us all with an oil-stained paper bag full of styrofoam peanuts. "Hey, don't feed the monkeys!" says Davison in a parting shot.

I get back inside the Utah just as Allen Clapp, dressed in a festive orange, brown and white-striped bulky sweater, is trying to get a decent soundcheck for his new, seven-member combo, now re-christened Allen Clapp & His Orchestra. This is where I came in with Clapp, 17 years ago at an off-the-map S.F. venue called 21 Bernice, a place that hasn't been heard from since.

The soundcheck, as Clapp is finding out tonight in the new band's debut Bay Area performance, is easier said than done. Large chunks of what sounds so good on the band's new LP, Mixed Greens, are not making it into the mix. Clapp looks nervous most of the night, making uncharacteristic onstage remarks that aren't quite up to his usually buttoned-down Bob Newhart stand-up style. Perhaps he's expecting too much from a live show that still has to shake a few kinks out of the garden hose.

In addition to Clapp and his wife, rock-solid bassist Jill Pries (the only Orange Peels holdovers) the Orchestra features co-front person/ukulele-wielder Karla Kane, lead guitarist Khoi Huynh, baritone guitarist KC Bowman, William Cleere on piano and Charlie Crabtree on drums. All but Clapp and Pries also serve time in squeaky clean rockers the Corner Laughers and its psychedelic alter-ego the Agony Aunts. They do not throw TV sets out hotel windows when they are on tour. Which they may be doing shortly if Clapp's plans to buy an old school bus for cross-country jaunts pan out. All they'll need to complete the plan is a few snapshots of "Furthur," Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters bus, and a battered old copy of the Who's Magic Bus LP for inspiration, along with a few cans of dayglo paint.

To ease into uncharted waters, Clapp opens with the familiar. "Mystery Lawn," one of his earliest numbers, was a staple of the Orange Peels, the outfit that's flown his autumnal flag for years. But then he's off and running into the lovely new stuff: "Downfall No. 3," "All Or Nothing" and "Treeline." They're representative of Clapp's daring venture into a bold new world of soulful sound dominated not by guitars but by keyboards, with most of the set finding him perched behind a bank of ivories that includes a Fender Rhodes electric piano, an organ and an iPad Mellotron.

Clapp's added a good half octave to the top end of his vocal range, and the total effect is something like Brian Wilson wailing away late at night, hunkered down in front of his piano, pouring out his heart a la Stevie Wonder. Or Todd Rundgren from his "Hello It's Me" days with the Nazz and later solo ventures like Something/Anything? It feels like a direction he's always meant to take: walking through virgin forests, half-blinded by New World sunsets of uncommon beauty.