Pogonometry...

...is the art and science of sculpting facial hair, or so I've been told. I'll have to accept my informant's assurances about it since I can’t find that word in any dictionary.

What beard and moustache sculpting had to do with the "Pogonometric Revue," which featured three bands, a belly dance company, and an acrobat, at the Cell Space in San Francisco's warehouse district on March 12, I have no idea. Kit, the guitarist-vocalist for the Inkwell Rhythm Makers does have two long tendrils descending from his beard (they look sort of like a squid's tentacles), but I doubt they were the inspiration for the revue's obscure name.

The Inkwells -- guitar, gutbucket and washboard -- were up first, and set the tone for an evening of unorthodox and truly alternative entertainment. IRM plays an old-timey, ragtime 'n' blues sound -- what you might call jug band music without the jug. They travel and play a lot on the west coast, do street busking in their hometown of Eugene when they're not traveling, and generate tremendous amounts of energy for an acoustic trio, especially one with only a single conventional instrument. Be sure to see them if you have the least appreciation of that kind of music, but avoid them if you loathe it, because they don't play no REO Speedwagon.

The Toids (unfortunate name) came next, a musical act with tremendous music and no act. An odd blend of violin (Lila), accordian (Dan), Arabic tabla (or doumbek) (Tobias), and various stringed instruments (Ryan), there’s no way to categorize this group’s sound. “World music” is a vague and inadequate descriptor; “Arabic-flavored eclectic western fusion” is a little closer but still doesn’t really convey what the Toids do.

All four are world-class musicians, but also world-class music scholars and wonks, so completely concentrated on what they’re doing that they tend to ignore the audience. So the Toids are best consumed when they’re fronted by another act, and that’s where the Indigo belly dance troupe came in.

I don’t want to review the Indigo because I’d be reviewing my daughter, something I don’t like doing. I’ll limit myself to saying that she’s an innovator who uses a traditional form as a point of departure, and has a talent for finding and developing like-minded performers.

After a brief interlude featuring an exciting and highly skilled Cirque-de-Soleil-style acrobatic aerialist, the evening concluded with the Brass Menagerie, an odd collection of ten or so young to middle-aged local horn players and percussionists who have learned, against God knows what odds, to play the melodically bizarre and rhythmically complicated traditional music of the Balkans. Why they’ve taken the trouble to learn this (for most Americans) obscure form is anyone’s guess, but the result is exciting, different from anything you’re likely to hear anywhere else in this country except maybe at an ethnic wedding, and very danceable. We cleared away the folding chairs, the Menagerie set up right on the dance floor rather than the bandstand, and everyone ended the night with some exuberant stomping as the acrid smell of marijuana (it wouldn’t be a San Francisco concert without it) wafted throughout the cold, cavernous, cinder block-and-cement warehouse building.

And yes, a good time was had by all, or to put it a little more succinctly and actively, everybody had a good time.