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The Chapel Hosts Night Of Twisted Video Comedy And Post-Rock

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Offering up an unusual mix of bizarre synapse-frying videos, comedy and cutting edge music, this Saturday the Chapel hosts TV Carnage Live! as twisted visual mixtape mastermind Derrick Beckles shares the stage with post-rock favorites Trans Am.

While Beckles got his earliest performance experience as a teen playing with punk bands in his native Toronto (including the group Black Jello, which was reportedly best known for being banned from nearly every venue in the city), he began dabbling in film editing as a high school student. Early experiments setting Tex Avery cartoons to music by the Stooges and making documentaries would lead him to the creation of TV Carnage in the early '90s.

A mind-bending mix of found footage, infomercials and bad '80s movies, Beckles started producing his stream-of-consciousness video fever dreams as bootleg VHS tapes in 1994. He would refine his approach, building the mixes (later issued on DVD) around themes and earning TV Carnage wide acclaim for its warped juxtapositions and surreal, short-attention-span edits that in many ways prefigured Internet trash-culture worship and the later rise of Adult Swim programs like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and Robot Chicken.

Not surprisingly, Beckles would end up working for Adult Swim, contributing to The Eric Andre Show, creating the pilot Totally For Teens (a parody Christian teen program) and the network's current mock entertainment magazine show, Hot Package. He also wrote for VICE Magazine precursor The Voice of Montreal and helped launch Vice TV, working as a producer and correspondent as well as exploring stand-up comedy. For this presentation of TV Carnage Live! fans can expect a mix of classic video footage and live onstage comedy mayhem in addition to a performance from post-rock veterans Trans Am.

Founded in Bethesda, Maryland, when junior high friends Phil Manley, Nathan Means and Sebastian Thomson  decided to form a band in 1990 while attending college. They refrained from recording until after they graduated, but by their 1996 Thrill Jockey Records debut they had established an eclectic, mostly instrumental sound that drew on '80s electro funk and synth pop, pulsing krautrock and the arena-sized guitars of classic '70s rock with a liberal sprinkling of tongue-in-cheek humor.

While members would get busy with other projects -- most notably Manley, who played with powerhouse band Golden before relocating to the Bay Area and becoming a member of noted instrumental juggernaut the F---ing Champs -- Trans Am has consistently reconvened to record new material and hit the road to deliver their synth-driven, virtuoso robot rock to its enthusiastic fan base. The band's tenth and most recent release, 2014's appropriately entitled Volume X, continued Trans Am's entertaining tightrope walk between blistering riffs and '80s keyboard kitsch. Notable local musicians Kelley Stoltz and Allyson Baker (of Dirty Ghosts fame) fill out this TV Carnage Live! variety show with DJ selections before and between acts.

TV Carnage Live! with Derrick Beckles and Trans Am
Saturday, June 18, 8 p.m. $10
The Chapel

 

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