I was up in San Francisco for a few days last week, and drove up to the lovely town of Petaluma to be on Tom Merritt & Veronica Belmont’s videocast “Sword and Laser.”  S&L is a great show.  In our tweeting, social-casting, video-enabled age, it’s actually about BOOKS – specifically, fantasy & science fiction.  They interview a different author in each episode, talk about new releases, have a book club, and so forth.  Here’s my episode:

Tom and Veronica have a great little set.  I particularly liked their F&SF bar:

And yes, they do serve drinks in smoke-foaming goblets.  Bummer I was driving, or I’d have had a double.  Their show is part of Felicia Day’s YouTube channel (Geek & Sundry), and is well worth tuning into.

Also while in SF, I caught one of my favorite new bands, The Stepkids.  They were opening for the Mates of State, who are also damn good (going to a show for the opening act always feels a bit like rooting for the visiting baseball team – but both things are fun, right?).

The Stepkids have simple, but incredibly powerful visuals.  They dress all in white, have white guitars, a white drum kit, and white sheets draped over all their gear.  So they’re a living blank canvas.  Then they have this incredible light ninja make lush, gorgeous projections on top of everything throughout their set.  So amazing, it even looks great on a crap cell phone camera.



It was a Mates of State audience, but a LOT of people showed up super-early (like we did) to catch the full Stepkids set.  And they really wowed the crowd.

I suggest you catch these guys if you ever get the chance.  That, and buy their damn album.  It’s the best psychedelic rock I’ve heard since XTC faked it as the Dukes of the Stratosphear (and THAT experiment, my friends, was perhaps the finest psychedelic rock ever made).  They’re from my home state of Connecticut, but I swear I’m not biased.

Like I said, the Mates of State are a fine band as well – and they REALLY surprised me with their mad energy!  From their albums, I thought of them as a sort of 21st century Mamas and the Papas – but they’re a flat-out rock experience when they perform.

My novel comes out tomorrow and I should probably be focusing on that!  But it was a great show last week (at the Independent) and I couldn’t help but write it up…