Music

Fall fairs and festivals

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AUG 28-30

Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival Golden Gate Park, SF; www.sfoutsidelands.com. 12-10pm, $89.50-$225.50. SF’s best alternative to That Thing in the Desert is back for its second year, with headliners Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, and Tenacious D playing for you and two thousand of your closest friends.

BAY AREA

Eat Real Festival Jack London Square, Oakl; eatrealfest.com. Fri, 4-9pm; Sat, 10am-9pm; Sun, 10am-5pm. Free. Buy from your favorite street food vendors, sample microbrews at the Beer Shed, or shop in the market for local produce at this sister event to La Cocina’s Street Food Festival.

AUG 29-SEPT 20

SF Shakespeare Festival Presidio’s Main Post Parade Ground Lawn, between Graham and Keyes; www.sfshakes.org. Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2:30pm, free. The genius of Shakespeare in SF’s most relaxed setting.

SEPT 1-30

Architecture and the City Times, locations, and prices vary. www.aiasf.org/archandcity. The American Institute of Architects San Francisco chapter and the Center for Architecture + Design host the sixth annual fest, featuring home tours, films, exhibitions, dining by design, and more.


SEPT 5-6

BAY AREA

Millbrae Art and Wine Festival Broadway Avenue between Victoria and Meadow Glen, Millbrae; (650) 697-7324, www.antiquesbythebay.net. 10am-5pm, free. The Big Easy comes to Millbrae for this huge Labor Day weekend event.

SEPT 6

BAY AREA

Antiques and Collectibles Faire Alameda Point, Alameda; www.antiquesbythebay.net. 9am-3pm, $5. California’s biggest and best antiques and collectibles extravaganza is back with 800 outdoor booths, with something for everyone.

SEPT 9-20

Fringe Festival Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy; 931-1094, www.sffringe.org. Times and prices vary. An ever-changing collection of unusual and lively experimental theater pieces will be showcased over the course of 18 days.

SEPT 12-13

Chocolate Festival Ghirardelli Square; www.ghirardellisq.com. 1pm, free. Indulge in chocolate delicacies, sip wine, and enjoy chocolate-inspired family activities at this annual event benefiting Project Open Hand.

Power to the Peaceful Festival Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park; www.powertothepeaceful.org. 9am, prices vary. Michael Franti and Guerrilla Management present the 11th annual festival dedicated to music, arts, action, and yoga. With Alanis Morrisette, Sly & Robbie, a special after party at the Fillmore, and workshops all day Sunday.

BAY AREA

Mountain View Art and Wine Festival Castro Street between El Camino Real and Evelyn Ave, Mountain View; (650) 968-8378, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. More than 200,000 art lovers will gather for the 38th installment of one of America’s top art festivals, featuring crafts, live music, food, and drink.


SEPT 13

Brews on the Bay Jeremiah O’Brien at Pier 45; 929-8374. Times, locations, and prices vary. www.aiasf.org/archandcity. The American Institute of Architects San Francisco chapter and the Center for Architecture + Design host the sixth annual fest, featuring home tours, films, exhibitions, dining by design, and more.


SEPT 17-21

BAY AREA

Symbiosis Gathering Camp Mather, Yosemite; www.symbiosisgathering.com. $180, includes camping. This synesthesia of art, music, transformational learning, and sustainable learning is quickly becoming one of NorCal’s favorite fall festivals. This year’s headliners include Les Claypool, Yard Dogs Road Show, Bassnectar, and the Glitch Mob.


SEPT 19-20

Autumn Moon Festival 667 Grant; 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm, free. Chinatown’s annual street fair features continuous Asian entertainment, lion dances, costumed artisans, cultural demonstrations, arts and crafts, and food vendors.


SEPT 27

Folsom Street Fair Folsom Street between Seventh and 12 St; www.folsomstreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. The world’s largest leather event covers 13 city blocks with entertainment, vendors, and plenty of spectacle.


OCT 2-5

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park; www.strictlybluegrass.com. Check website for times. Free. Natalie MacMaster, Emmylou Harris, Aimee Mann, Neko Case, and many more perform for free in Golden Gate Park.

OCT 3

LovEvolution Civic Center Plaza; www.sflovevolution.org. 12pm, free. The event formerly known as Love Parade may have a new name, but the music, color, and fun remains.

OCT 3-4

World Veg Festival San Francisco County Fair Bldg, Lincoln and Ninth Ave; 273-5481, www.sfvs.org/wvd. 10am-6pm, $6. The San Francisco Vegetarian Society and In Defense of Animals present the 10th annual award-winning festival featuring lectures, cooking demos, vegan merchandise, and entertainment.

OCT 4

Castro Street Fair Castro at Market; www.castrostreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. The festival founded by Harvey Milk returns with the theme "Come Get Hitched in the Center of the Gay Universe," in an effort to keep the embers burning in the fight for equal rights.

OCT 9-17

Litquake Locations vary; Times vary, most events free. To commemorate its 10-year anniversary, the storytelling festival kicks off with the "Black, White, and Read" ball and continues with nine days of lit-themed programming.

OCT 11

San Francisco Decompression Indiana Street; www.burningman.com. Break our your still-dusty Burning Man costumes and welcome hard-working BMORG staff back to "Real Life" with this BRC-themed street fair and festival.

OCT 15

West Fest Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park; www.2b1records.com. 9am-6pm, free. 2b1 Multimedia Inc., the Council of Light, and the original producer of Woodstock 1969 team up to celebrate Woodstock’s 40th anniversary with a free show featuring Country Joe, Denny Laine, Alameda All Stars, Michael McClure, and tons more.

OCT 16

WhiskyFest San Francisco Marriott, 55 Fourth St; 896-1600, www.maltadvocate.com. 6:30-9:30pm, $95. America’s largest whisky celebration returns to SF for the third year with more than 200 of the world’s rarest and most expensive whiskies.


OCT 17

Potrero Hill Festival Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 De Haro. 9am-5pm. This benefit for the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House features a jazz brunch catered by students of The California Culinary Academy and continues with a street fair along 20th Street between Missouri and Arkansas.


OCT 17-18

Treasure Island Music Festival Treasure Island; www.treasureislandfestival.com. Fri-Sat, 11am. $65-$249. The Bay Area’s answer to Coachella (minus the camping, heat, and Orange County douchebags) is back, this year featuring The Flaming Lips, The Decemberists, Yo La Tengo, The Streets, and about 100 other indie favorites and up-and-comers.

BAY AREA

Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival Main Street at Highways 1 and 92, Half Moon Bay. 9am-5pm, free. Jim Stevens and Friends will return to the world famous festival featuring music, crafts, parade, and children’s events.

OCT 23-24
Exotic Erotic Expo Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; www.exoticeroticball.com. Fri, 2-10pm; Sat, 12-6pm; $20. Part Mardi Gras, part burlesque, and part rock concert, this two-day fest is a celebration of human sexuality and freedom of expression, with its crowning event the Exotic Erotic Ball on Saturday night.
NOV 2
Day of the Dead Starts at 24th and Bryant, ends at Garfield Park; www.dayofthedeadsf.org. 7pm, free. Celebrate this traditional Latin holiday – and SF institution — with a procession and Festival of Altars.
NOV 13-15
SF Green Festival San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center, 635 Eighth St; www.greenfestivals.org Fri, 12-7pm; Sat, 10am-7pm; Sun, 11am-6pm. $15-$25. A joint project of Global Exchange and Green America, this three-day event features the best in green speakers and special events.
NOV 27-DEC 20
Great Dickens Christmas Fair Cow Palace Exhibition Halls, 2600 Geneva; www.dickensfair.com. Fri-Sun, 11am-7pm. Check website for ticket prices. Channel Charles Dickens’ Victorian London with this 90,000 square-foot theatrical extravaganza.

Itches

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markeb@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO "It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity." Actually, having just touched down from the East Coast, lemme tell ya it’s both. No matter how much I may wish I was getting down to Afro-acid in New York’s P.S. 1 courtyard, I know I’d be rabidly itching to claw off my custom polyester Isabel Toledo bunny suit if I had to deal with the Big Apple heatwave. I much prefer to get sweaty on purpose, after dark, in our own climate of nuttiness, thank you very much.

(A note: This column is dedicated to the memory of Daithí Donnelly, a mastermind behind Anu, Swig, Bourbon and Branch, and more who passed away earlier this month. We’ll sorely miss his tireless dedication to SF nightlife.)

DISCO VS. DUBSTEP

"Why the hell not?," I ask you. I’m anxious to hear the result of this new weekly 18+ club experiment at Poleng, as local and international DJs from both sides of the seemingly incongruous musical divide square off or blend their various strains. Firsts up: Kid Kameleon and Lexxus in the dubstep room, and Salva and B. Bravo in the disco room. Stand in the middle.

Wednesdays starting Wed/26, $5 for under 21/ over 21 free. Poleng, 1751 Fulton, SF. www.hacksawent.com

STAY GOLD

There’s so much going on right now on SF’s dark side that occasionally regular parties that I enjoy immensely slip through my liquor-lubricated crack. Thus, I’ve finally gotta give many snaps to the queerlightful monthly Stay Gold party, which features "hella gay dance jamz" from DJs Rapid Fire and Pink Lightning and a beauteous crowd of lezzies, fags, and in-betweens.

Wed/26 and last Wednesdays, 10:30 p.m., $3. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

HOLY FUCK

Electronic music, without those annoying synthesizers. Perfect! The Toronto-based experimental rock quartet subs in live drums and bass — plus toy keyboards, effects pedals, and other delicious analog goodies — to reinterpret edgy dance sounds. It really works, and gives rise to some surprisingly heady combinations.

Thu/27, 8:30 p.m., $15. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.independentsf.com

KEYS N KRATES

More live electro-emuutf8g shenanigans from Toronto, this time courtesy of the multi-member outfit dubbed "kings of the live remix." Discover in wonder their guitars-and-turntable versions of Justice and other dance floor juggernauts. It’s no joke karaoke, the boys mean business.

Sat/29, 10 p.m., $10. Club Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

BIG TOP

Once upon a time there was an amazing bar called the Transfer where really fun nightlife things happened. One of those fun things was Big Top, promoter Joshua J’s outrageous circus-themed drag hoo-haw. It was like Cirque du Soleil, but with less French and much more basket. Well, it’s back, now at Club Eight, with three rings of disco-tinged scandal.

Sat/29 and last Saturdays, 10 p.m., $5. Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF. www.eightsf.com

MISS HONEY

I went to the premiere of this monthly party earlier this summer, and it was too, too much. Packed with young art stars, energized scenesters, and vogueing — there was indeed a runway — it brought together many of the city’s oft-dispersed up-and-coming movers and shakers. With surprisingly little irony! Ms. Terry and Mani host, with DJs Chelsea Starr, Frankie Sharp, and more.

Sat/29, 10 p.m., $5. Triple Crown, 1772 market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

1999: RETURN OF THE RAVE

I’m so scared of this! Were you still raving in 1999? If you were, and you haven’t died of sugar-shock from all those candy necklaces, then you may want to wayback with ages 16+ to those Hot Topic-tinged days of yore.

Sat/29, 9 p.m.–4 a.m., $40. regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness, SF. www.skillsdj.com

Electric truth

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johnny@sfbg.com

1. New wave of California painting My thoughts on the topic are still percoutf8g, but it will soon be time to take on the inspiring subject of new California painters. Amanda Kirkhuff’s superb oil portrait of Lorena Bobbitt, currently up at [2nd Floor Projects], is one touchstone. Neil Ledoux’s brown invocations at Silverman Gallery earlier this year is another. The next few months bring a blitz of lively, original paintings. Brendan Lott serves up ugly-beautiful America. (Oct.-17-Nov. 14, Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, www.baerridgway.com) Alika Cooper continues her film femme fatale fascination with some Farrah. (Sept. 3-Oct. 17, Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, www.wolfecontemporary.com) Kim Cogan pictures San Francisco. (September, Hespe Gallery, www.hespe.com) Nancy Chan sets friends floating in space and Matt Momchilov confronts weird normality head on. (Sept. 11-Oct. 17, Eleanor Harwood, www.eleanorharwood.com) But most of all, I’m looking forward to Conrad Ruiz’s sure-to-be-orgasmic debut SF solo show. (Dec. 11-Jan. 23, 2010; Silverman Gallery, www.silverman-gallery.com)

2. "When Lives Become Form: Contemporary Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present" Tropicália can’t be revived often enough, even if Os Mutantes have — shame, shame — soundtracked a McDonald’s commercial. This survey, which includes fashion and architecture in addition to visual art and music, has been traveling the globe. Finally, SF gets a chance to see the movement Hlio Oiticica built. Nov. 5-Jan. 31, 2010; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, www.ybca.org

3. "Moby Dick" After last fall’s show devoted to L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, CCA Wattis Institute’s trilogy of shows inspired by novels goes fishing for Herman Melville’s biggest catch. The range of artists taking part is impressive, with the likes of Tacita Dean placed next to local talents such as Colter Jacobsen. A number of works by filmmakers — including Buster Keaton, Jean Painlevé, Peter Hutton, and Kenneth Anger — are on deck. Sept. 22-Dec. 12, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, www.wattis.org

4. "On View: Candice Breitz" A working class hero is something to be. Breitz’s video portrait of 25 John Lennon fans singing along to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Apple/EMI, 1970) sounds derivative of Phil Collins’ karaoke vids of Smiths fans, but in pop, no ideas are original, and all ideas are meant to be stolen and transformed. Plus the musical source is so damn good. A side video, 2005’s Mother — the title of one of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band‘s best songs — mines cinema. Oct. 1-Dec. 20, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, www.sfmoma.org

5. "Wonderland" Lance Fung’s curatorial idea to bring together 52 artists (43 from San Francisco and nine from other countries) for 10 site-specific projects in the Tenderloin has greater potential than any standard museum or gallery show. Oct. 17-Nov. 14, various sites, www.wonderlandshow.org

6. Photography Decades of work by an autodidact who learned from Warhol, studied under Irving Penn and at least briefly influenced Larry Clark comes together in "Ari Marcopoulos: Within Arm’s Reach," Marcopoulos’s first midcareer survey (Sept. 23-Feb. 7, 2010; Berkeley Art Museum, www.bampfa.org) Charles Gatewood’s raw and candid portraits of celebrities — no, he doesn’t only aim his camera at naked bodies with piercings — are gathered to form a countercultural scrapbook. (Sept. 3-Oct. 31, Robert Tat Gallery, www.roberttat.com) Johan Hagemeyer turns now-endangered California nature into a subject of eternal awe. (Sept. 9-Nov. 3, Scott Nichols Gallery, www.scottnicholsgallery.com) Hiroshi Sugimoto captures the surreal beauty of lightning in a manner Jean Painlevé might admire. (Sept. 10-Oct. 31, Fraenkel Gallery, www.fraenkelgallery.com) And San Francisco itself is the subject of the first entry in the vast retrospective "An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area." Sept. 10-Oct. 31, SF Camerawork, www.sfcamerawork.org

7. "There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak" Where are the wild things this fall? On the movie screen — thanks to Spike Jonze’s adaptation of a children’s classic by Maurice Sendak — and in the museum, where this show presents watercolors, sketches, drawings and dummy books. Sept. 8-Jan. 19, 2010; Contemporary Jewish Museum, www.thecjm.org

8. "Bellwether" As New Langton Arts goes down amid dissent and criticism, the vibrant but at times diffuse Southern Exposure introduces a new Mission District home space with a 10-artist show that includes contributions by Renee Gertler and Lordy Rodriguez. Oct. 17-Dec. 12, Southern Exposure, www.soex.org

9. "The Art of Richard Mayhew" The Museum of the African Diaspora plays host to one-third of a three-part retrospective of the artist and activist’s career. The show includes work from the late 1950s through the 1970s, a time span that includes his beginnings as an artist and his work with Spiral, a group of black artists including Romare Bearden. Oct. 9-Jan. 10, 2010; Museum of the African Diaspora, www.moadsf.org.

10. Solo and duo shows a go go Ara Peterson proves once again that few people chart — and bring dimension to — color with such power. (Nov. 6-Dec. 18, Ratio 3, www.ratio3.org) David Hevel gathers hideously pretty sculptures of Bernie Madoff, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Brangelina. (Sept. 10-Oct. 17, Marx & Zavattero, ww.marxzav.com) The late illustrator Charley Harper — beloved by Todd Oldham — gets a tribute. (Sept. 24-Oct. 31, Altman Siegel Gallery, www.altmansiegel.com) Local minimalist Todd Bura presents another open puzzle. (Sept. 18-Oct. 25, Triple Base, www.basebasebase.com) Pop goes berserk in the works of John De Fazio, and Daniel Minnick reinvents the American photo booth (fall, [2nd floor projects], www.projects2ndfloor.blogspot.com) Katya Bonnenfont proves — with a light and lovely touch, and against most evidence in galleries — that design can be art. (Oct. 22-Dec. 24, Haines Gallery, www.hainesgallery.com) And last, Luke Butler brings hotness and comedy together through razor-sharp collage. Sept. 11-Oct. 17, Silverman Gallery, www.silverman-gallery.com.

No brainer

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

FALL ARTS PREVIEW Who would have pictured Green Day’s anthemic 2004 punk-rock concept album, American Idiot (Reprise), as the stuff of musicals? It took merely two unlikely kindred spirits, meeting in the fall of 2007 for the first time: the Oakland band’s lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong and Tony-winning Spring Awakening director Michael Mayer.

Armstrong — that punk-rock diehard who even now plays Gilman with his side project Pinhead Gunpowder? Turns out that as a tyke growing up in Rodeo, he serenaded the elderly and infirm in local hospitals with standards and show tunes from musicals like Oliver! and Annie Get Your Gun.

"That’s how I learned how to sing," says Armstrong, laid back and low-key in stark contrast to the manic rabble-rouser who’ll soon take command over a stage at San Jose’s HP Pavilion. He’s on the phone from his Oakland home during a brief stop in Green Day’s arena tour for 21st Century Breakdown (Reprise), the follow-up to American Idiot. "There’s a real old-school craft to it," he continues, measuring that quality against Shrek, Legally Blond, and other recent disposable Broadway musicals. "That’s kind of a corny way of doing things, but when you see something like Spring Awakening, it’s … it’s real life, and it’s something that everybody relates to, and it’s inspiring and emotional. American Idiot was really tailor-made for something like this to happen to it, y’know."

At the same time that Armstrong tried to heal the ailing with music — and ’80s-era punks everywhere greeted "Morning in America" with a snarl — the generation-older Mayer was earning his MFA on the other side of the country in theater at NYU. No surprise, then, that Mayer "felt such a surprising kind of simpatico" on meeting the Green Day leader. "Even though we come from different worlds and are such different people," Mayer says, "you know, at the end of the day, Billie Joe is such a showman! Such a theatrical guy. Not since Al Jolson have I seen someone so in love with the audience and with putting on a performance for them."

Mayer radiates a similar high-wattage intensity, one that’s fully prepared to kick out the jams. Wide-eyed and unblinking behind his black frame specs, clad in a Justice League T-shirt and floppy shorts, he’s hiding out with me in what looks like an old classroom within the downtown Berkeley building enlisted for rehearsals of the musical version of American Idiot. "I feel like where we connect is old school," he says of Armstrong, slapping the table for emphasis. "Tin Pan Alley." Slap. "Vaudeville." Slap. "That’s the music he grew up with. He became a punk-rocker — I became a theater homo!"

Together, Armstrong and Mayer are making a piece of theater that combines the musical’s narrative tradition and holy union of song and dance with a breed of feisty alternative rock fed by the streetwise political punk of Gilman Street. A musical that unites the ironclad craft of the American Songbook and the heady, arena-sized artistic ambition of classic rock. Now, in the wake of the Broadway acclaim of Los Angeles punk vet Stew’s Passing Strange (which also got its start in at Berkeley Repertory in 2006 and has just been transferred to film by Spike Lee), American Idiot appears poised for critical and popular success when it opens Sept. 4.

American Idiot arrives at a time when musical theater is going through a wave of growing pains. The genre is casting about for ideas, whether they are from films like Shrek and Billy Elliott (to cite a Tony success from last year), or — as with Spring Awakening, which spotlit music by Duncan Sheik — from rock songwriters more comfortable with the life of gritty clubs, merch tables, and tour buses than the mountain-moving, time-devouring, and costly group mechanics of putting on a full-tilt musical. Unlike singularly conceived rock operas like the Who’s Tommy, the first notable union of an established rock band and theater on Broadway, so-called juke box musicals — collections of songs by one group like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys — have met with mixed results.

"There’s a whole variety, like Ring of Fire, the Johnny Cash one, that just haven’t made it," opines Michael Kantor, writer of the Emmy-winning 2005 PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical. "It’s very much dependent on the conception of the director and the book writer who is putting together the story that’s going to encapsulate the music. I do think Broadway right now is keenly scavenging from movies or recordings — anything they feel like they can get quality material from as a launching point."

With the closing of a host of musicals earlier this year, producers are looking for the new and innovative. "Many of the most important musicals," Kantor theorizes, "have come from the most unexpected sources or most unusual approaches." And there’s the scramble for the youth entertainment dollar, as the High School Musical TV-music franchise taps into the passion so many kids have for song, dance, and drama. "Kids are always attracted to musicals," Kantor muses, "but once they get into their midteens, a lot of them lose their interest in musicals as an art form and gravitate to other stuff. High School Musical catches them at their natural inclination for that kind of entertainment. The question is, will a show like [American Idiot] capture that much-sought-after 18- to 30-year-old demographic, which is when musicals tend to lose people. Kids go off to college, it’s not too cool to like musicals, and a lot of adaptations are mainstream or traditional — and it doesn’t appeal to rebellious youth."

Young people also might have a hard time springing for costly theater tickets — yet the kids were out in force, filling the HP Pavilion last week when Green Day played to a hometown crowd with a show punctuated by pyrotechnic pillars of flames and fireworks-style explosions, gleeful costume changes, and squirt-gun shenanigans with Armstrong’s mom. It was a big-room amplification of the string of Bay club dates Green Day played earlier this spring at intimate venues like the Independent, DNA Lounge, and the Uptown.

Below a cleverly conceived 3-D urban skyscape backdrop, Armstrong fully embraced his onstage ham and flexed his crowd-control abilities à la Bugs Bunny in a Looney Tunes cartoon, taking running leaps from the monitors, stage-diving, soloing in the bleachers, donning a faux police cap and mooning each side of the audience, and entreating all assembled to raise their fists or sing along, before launching into more serious numbers like "Murder City," written about the Oakland riots that followed the Oscar Grant killing. Live, the band couples the playfully goofy, childlike comedy that tickles the 14-year-olds up front with the palpable sense of morality — driven by a beaten yet still beating anarchist heart — found on its increasingly serious-minded, idealistic recordings.

Armstrong won’t be onstage for the American Idiot musical — though the production includes a live band — and it’s not the Billie Joe Armstrong or Green Day Story. Instead, the musical is embedded in a specific time and hybridized with video-screen projections that simulate a familiar media-saturated landscape: it’s 2004, in the dark years. America has sent its idiot back to the White House, and we’re on the brink of Hurricane Katrina. Across that stage comes a series of almost archetypal characters one recognizes from the album: the Jesus of Suburbia, here dubbed Johnny for the lead actor it was written for, John Gallagher Jr., who won a Tony for his portrayal of Moritz in Spring Awakening; his antagonist St. Jimmy; and the rebel girl Whatshername.

Just about a week before the concert, the hyperactive, pogo-friendly energy of a Green Day show appeared to be finding its perfect translation at a rehearsal for American Idiot. Three weeks in, the cast — including Passing Strange‘s Rebecca Naomi Jones, here portraying the riot grrrly heroine Whatshername — tackled a round of "She’s a Rebel." In leggings and a Green Day T-shirt, Jones bounced on her toes as a barefoot Mayer dispensed hugs to cast members. A scruffily bearded Gallagher circled the group, then took his place in the desk jockey center for "Nobody Likes You." Choreographer Steven Hoggett tweaked the movements of the cast members as they tossed papers and marched up and down a moveable metal staircase

"When someone is a 20-something with all that angst and energy — where do you put that?," Hoggett said later by phone, pondering the task of "putting songs on their feet onstage." The goal of the choreographer who won an Oliver for his strong, subtle work in Black Watch and came up in the ’90s U.K. clubbing scene: create movement that serves Green Day’s songs and isn’t "too showbiz." To that end, he took in a Green Day show in Albany, N.Y., and fell in love with the mosh pit. "That was absolutely brilliant," he remembers. "Nerves gave way to absolute revelation. It’s just seeing what thousands of people do when they see Green Day — this is the world we need to do onstage."

Collaborating mainly via phone, e-mail, and text with Armstrong from 2007 through 2008, Mayer wanted to focus on a trio of friends — Johnny, Will, and Tunny — as he created the libretto. In true rock operatic form, all the dialogue is sung, using just the songs’ lyrics and text from the special edition CD of American Idiot.

Mayer and arranger Tom Kitt, whose work eventually scored him a spot creating string arrangements for Breakdown, took apart the songs — "letting them breathe in a theatrical way," as Mayer puts it — and placed the lyrics in the mouths of various characters. B-sides and new numbers like "Know Your Enemy," "21 Guns," and "Before the Lobotomy," which Armstrong offered to Mayer during the making of Breakdown last year, were inserted into the flow. Nonetheless, Mayer maintains it was crucial to him to preserve the original track order. "I didn’t want to violate the form of the record," he says. "I wanted to expand it, because the record’s only 52 minutes, and that’s not a full evening, and with these extra characters, they need more material to serve the arcs of their journeys."

It’s been a very personal journey for lead actor Gallagher, who confesses that he’s been a huge Green Day fan since fourth grade, when he’d wait eagerly for the trio’s "Basketcase" video on MTV. His character is Johnny, the Jesus of Suburbia, or as he describes it, "the son of rage and love." Raised in a broken home. Johnny is on "this path, caught between self-improvement and self-destruction, which is something I think we can all relate to," says the actor, who until not long ago had a band of his own. He and Mayer came up with the notion to deepen and intensify Johnny’s descent into drug addiction. "When the chips are down, it’s always easier to just implode on yourself rather than explode outward in a positive fashion that might be helpful for others."

Countering that is the positive process, littered with emphatic yesses, according to Mayer, of putting together American Idiot. In contrast with the difficult but rewarding eight-year gestation of Spring Awakening, Mayer — who has worked on such disparate productions as Thoroughly Modern Millie and the national tour of Angels in America — sees this musical’s trajectory as absolutely charmed. The spell has been in place from the day he proposed his idea to Green Day’s management in 2007, to the moment he was allowed six months to put together a libretto (a process that flew by in six weeks because Mayer says he was so "charged" by meeting Armstrong), to the instant last year that he and coproducer Tom Hulce decided to stage the musical at Berkeley Rep, a company he’d been wanting to work with for years, with his friend, artistic director Tony Taccone.

It’s all coming strangely, beautifully, together — like a punk-rocker besotted with pop hooks and a theater-infatuated one-time Julliard instructor. "It makes me very, very nervous," Mayer confesses, chuckling. "Oh, it’s terrifying! There’s something wrong with it — it’s too joyous. It’s been too easy in terms of everything falling into place."

AMERICAN IDIOT

Sept. 4-Oct. 11

Tues., Thurs.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Wed., 7 p.m.;

Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.

(no matinees Sept. 5–6 and 12–13); $16–$86

Berkeley Repertory

Roda Theatre

2015 Addison, Berk.

(510) 647-2949

www.berkeleyrep.org

Stage four

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

You Can’t Get There from Here Prized Bay Area performer Anne Galjour’s latest solo play suggests you are where you live, while unearthing the real class and cultural divides underneath American feet, in this intensely researched and sharply amusing mapping of the nation 2009 courtesy of Z Space. Sept. 10-27, Theatre Artaud; www.zspace.org.

Brief Encounter American Conservatory Theater’s new season opens with a wildly successful British import, Kneehigh Theatre’s inspired production of Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, a mashup of film, theater, and song adapted by Emma Rice from Coward’s own words and music. This limited engagement coincides with the 100-year anniversary of the former Geary Theater’s legacy as a movie theater, and is something of a must-see (Nota bene: ACT is offering a limited number of $10 sweet and vertiginous second-balcony seats for this show). Sept. 11-Oct. 4, American Conservatory Theater; www.act-sf.org.

Ghosts of the River The mysterious, insubstantial and quintessentially human realm of shadows and borders come together in a uniquely poetical, politically charged evening of "Twilight Zone–like vignettes" set along the snaking Rio Grande. The world premiere of Ghosts of the River re-teams leading SF-based playwright Octavio Solis with Larry Reed’s Shadowlight Productions in a theatrical experience combining Balinese shadow theatre technique, the scale of film, and live performance accessible to both Spanish- and English-speaking audiences. Oct. 1-11, Teatro Vision; Oct. 28-Nov. 8, Brava Theater Center; www.shadowlight.org.

Dead Boys The world premiere of a new musical by writer-director-choreographer Joe Goode leads off the new main stage season at UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, where Goode is faculty by day (and otherwise artistic director of famed SF dance-theater company Joe Goode Performance Group). Collaborating with Portland-based composer-songwriter Holcombe Waller, Dead Boys is billed as "a freak folk musical about trust, gay activism, gender identity, talking to the dead, and the privileged culture’s pursuit of happiness." Oct. 9-18, Zellerbach Playhouse; http://events.berkeley.edu.

South Pacific Speaking of musicals, the big fat Rodgers and Hammerstein luau revived to critical acclaim last year — and for the first time since its 1949 premiere — comes to the Pacific Coast this fall, courtesy of SHN’s Best of Broadway series. Celebrated director and SF homeboy Bartlett Sher pilots this Tony winner for Best Musical Revival 2008, set on a frisky but fraught tropic isle during WWII with classic themes in the air, including the baldly asserted "There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame." Sept. 18-Oct. 25, Golden Gate Theatre; www.shnsf.com.

The Creature SF playwright Trevor Allen has created a monster. It began in 2006 as a staged reading and a live radio play, then a podcast. Now The Creature, a fresh take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is a full-blown walking, talking, play-thing making its world premiere in time for Halloween. Stitched together from some prime parts, including direction from Cutting Ball Theatre’s Rob Melrose and no less than venerable Bay Area actor James Carpenter in the title role, The Creature promises to be lively, to say the least. Oct. 23-Nov. 7, Thick House; www.thickhouse.org.

The Future Project: Sunday Will Come This first-time collaboration between Intersection for the Arts’ two resident companies, ESP Project and Campo Santo, explores popular and idiosyncratic conceptions of the future in an existentially rich and rollicking series of "mini-plays, songs, dances, and ‘moments’" in conversation with the not-yet. Oct. 15-Nov. 7, Intersection for the Arts; www.theintersection.org.

Boom Peter Sinn Nachtrieb offers his own conception of the future in a new play about the end of the world that, true to form for this award-winning SF playwright (Hunter Gatherers, T.I.C.), takes the form of a scathingly funny comedy in this Bay Area premiere from Marin Theatre Company and director Ryan Rilette. Nov. 12-Dec 6, Marin Theatre Company; www.marintheatre.org.

Appetite: The masterminds behind SF Chefs.Food.Wine

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By Virginia Miller of www.theperfectspotsf.com. See her previous installment of Appetite here.

Re-capping SF Chefs.Food.Wine.: In conversation with Andrew Freeman and Dominic Phillips, masterminds behind the event

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Andrew Freeman (left) & Kevin Westlye (bottom center) with the Mayor and friends Photo courtesy of Andrew Freeman & Co.

Imagine your favorite bartenders, chefs, and wineries under one massive tent in Union Square serving unlimited amounts of food and drink. Envision your favorite writers or TV personalities leading classes or cooking for a gala. Picture Grand Tastings where one never has to wait for a bite or a drink (a rarity, I know) and one can even talk to chefs, bartenders and winemakers while sampling their wares. Throw in evening parties (with DJs like Chef Hubert Keller) where music, food and drink flow into the night. Pack it all in to one weekend and you have an idea of what rollicking good time was had at SF Chefs.Food.Wine., which took place August 6-9.

Talking with the masterminds behind this event gave me a deeper appreciation for how smoothly this first year event ran. Without a clear vision, endless hours of planning and work by a team of dedicated experts, this would not have been the case. Two years in the making, SF Chefs.Food.Wine. was the first ever urban food and wine classic. Those who’ve been to other food and drink events know you often come away hungry from so-called "tastings", spending more time waiting for food to appear than eating it. Here, everyone stayed well fed, satiated and aglow. I talked to person after person who said they couldn’t wait to go again next year or that it was a better value than a number of cheaper (and less exciting) food events combined.

It takes a village to raise a child and a very strategic, well chosen village to create such a weekend. Kevin Westlye, the Executive Director of Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA), has long had a vision for a major event showcasing San Francisco as the world class food and drink city it is. To execute this vision, he gathered together a team par excellence. Capturing the energy and scope of our region and our local talent, the event showcases the Bay Area’s key place in the culinary world while maintaining a conscious focus on giving back, both in its green approach and to the charities benefiting from all ticket sales (Project Open Hand, Meals on Wheels, Feeding America, and Golden Gate Restaurant Association Scholarship Foundation).

Andrew Freeman and Co., the PR firm handling marketing and programming for the entire weekend, is a passionate group of individuals who assembled a schedule of no less than the best. Andrew and his team built a multi-day program from the ground up… as each name was added, interest grew, until eventually there wasn’t room to hold them all. Classic TV personalities like Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook, cooked dinners and led sessions along with current big names from Top Chef (Jamie Lauren) and Top Chef Masters (Michael Chiarello and Hubert Keller). Led by authorities in each area, classes covered subjects as broad as mixology trends, sommelier secrets, sushi, chocolate, tomatoes and so on. Participants consistently commented on how smooth things ran and the camaraderie felt by all involved. Andrew said the phrase he heard most about the event was: "It’s about time".

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Dominic Phillips of Dominic Phillips Event Marketing. Photo by Justin Lewis

Dominic Phillips, of Dominic Phillips Event Marketing, took on the massive role of producing the event, handling logistics that could have easily gone so wrong without his hard-working team’s adept strategy. Dominic’s "ridiculous amount of planning" paid off with the use of 820 volunteers (‘compensated’ by being able to attend various sessions or tastings). A thoughtful layout placed tables at angles to keep the Grand Tasting tent feeling full but not crowded, spaced to avoid traffic jams or lines hovering for food (and thanks to the chefs, cooks and servers for keeping food fully supplied at all times!) His green approach was truly impressive with everything from the use of succulent plants rather than cut flowers, recycling all bottles and paper, donating wood signs to Habitat For Humanity and uneaten food to Food Runners following the event, with the goal of diverting at least 75% of the weekend’s waste from landfill.

In the capable hands of this stellar crew, an event that is a high price tag for some ($95-$150 for most events), ends up being well spent and worth saving up for. I’ve rarely seen a better one to splurge on, whether for an evening, day, or weekend. SF Chefs.Food.Wine. should easily gain its place among the great food and wine events in the nation, celebrating the Bay Area’s truly awesome culinary influence and community.

Outside Lands Night Show: Gang Gang Dance

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PREVIEW Comparable to a mystical experience involving contact with a transcendent reality, Gang Gang Dance forges a celestial, almost cultlike sound fitted with primal drum beats that elevate listeners to the beginning of time while electro chimes simultaneously fast-forward to an unknown era.

Instead of utilizing a typical verse/chorus pattern, GGD constructs freeform songs focusing on the fusion of juxtapositions. The quartet relies on a rhythm-driven foundation as it integrates a diverse range of influences: dubstep, dream pop, reggaeton, hip-hop, grime, and art rock. Its percussion-laden sound is topped by Lizzie Bougatsus’ intense, idiosyncratic vocals.

Keyboardist Brian Degraw and drummer Tim Dewit met in 1993 at a Tower Records in Washington, D.C. — Dewit was stocking shelves and Degraw was shoplifting CDs. The pair immediately started playing together in a spaz-punk band called the Cranium. By the end of the decade, that group had disbanded and the two had moved to New York City, where they began experimenting with Bougastos, vocalist Nathan Maddox, and guitarist Josh Diamond, and were reborn as Gang Gang Dance.

In ’02, Maddox was fatally struck by lightning on a rooftop. Taking this as an omen, the remaining members began focusing all their energy on GGD. On the cover of God’s Money (The Social Registry, 2005) Maddox’s eyes peer out from behind a mask, as if watching over them.

At first, GGD improvised during rehearsals and performances. This improv approach has gradually become fundamental to GGD’s writing process. The band members play for several hours, listen to the rehearsal recordings, pick the sounds that work best, then conjoin them. Saint Dymphna (Social Registry, 2008) creates the illusion of a perfect jam session — it plays like one continuous song, with revelatory midperformance noodling sessions ("Vacuum," "Dust") interspersed between catchy hooks ("Desert Storm," "Princes").

Paradoxically, improv is no longer as integral to GGD’s current performances. But the group still transforms mood into matter. As emotive states are molded into music, they become real.

GANG GANG DANCE With Amanda Blank, Ariel Pink. Sun/30, 8:30 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011. www.rickshawstop.com

Outside Lands: Tom Jones

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PREVIEW/INTERVIEW Though he may be one of the oldest performers to take the stage at this weekend’s Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Tom Jones will undoubtedly be one of the best. For more than four decades the Welsh singer’s rich vocals and electric stage presence have propelled a career that continues to produce hits even as he is less than a year away from turning 70. As he proved to a full house at the Warfield earlier this year, Sir Tom (he was knighted in 2006 by Queen Elizabeth) still has the goods when it comes time to entertain a crowd, singing old favorites such as "It’s Not Unusual," "She’s A Lady," and "What’s New Pussycat?" along with more recent hits like "Sex Bomb."

Jones pulls in a wide variety of people to his shows, ranging from kids in their early 20s to original fans near his own age. The singer still loves connecting with an audience, be it at a Vegas nightclub or an outdoor festival like Outside Lands.

"If there are people out there and they’ve come to see me, I’m going to give it the best I can — whether it be 5,000 people or 10,000, or 100,000," Jones says.

"I don’t change the show from Las Vegas to a festival because I don’t do a ‘Vegas’ act anyway. I don’t use any dancing girls — it’s a concert I’m doing. My show is basically the same, [though] I maybe make sure I cover the stage a little bit more," he laughs.

Jones, who released his latest album 24 Hours (S-Curve) last year, is already gearing up to work on a new record after he completes another tour through the U.K. and Europe. As for the tradition of female fans flinging their undergarments at him while on stage, the man known as "the Voice" looks at it from a couple of different angles. "It depends on what song I’m singing at the time. If I’m singing a serious ballad, it can break the mood," says Jones. "But I don’t think it’s for an entertainer to dictate to an audience what to do — the entertainer does what he or she does, and hopefully the people get it."

TOM JONES At Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival. Fri/28, 6:50 p.m. Golden Gate Park, SF. $89.50–$225.50. www.sfoutsidelands.com

Liss Fain Dance Company

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PREVIEW In music, silence has a purpose similar to that of the negative space in sculpture: it heightens your awareness of the artist’s material. So perhaps for a choreographer as musically adventurous as Liss Fain, it should be no surprise that the two new works in her latest Yerba Buena Center for the Arts concert carry the word "silence" in them. Both pieces are American premieres. At the very least, the two works should offer different perspectives on the concept of stillness. For the first part of Out of the Silence, Fain again turns to the idiosyncratic Gyorgi Ligeti, whose music she used for 2004’s Unknown Land, also on this program. She supplements the Ligeti in Silence with music by the Argentinean Osvaldo Golijov, whose cultural roots are also in Eastern Europe. The second local premiere, 2002’s Towards the Good Silence (to Bruno Schulz), is a 20-minute duet for Ruth von Mengersen and choreographer Ryszard Kalinowski, both from Poland’s Lublin Dance Theatre. (Schulz, who died in 1942, was a solitary writer and graphic artist much admired in Poland). Fain met Kalinowski this summer while her company was touring Eastern Europe and found herself impressed "by his use of narrative as a springboard for physical theater." In her own work she tends toward the abstract and the cool and the incorporation of elegant visual designs. The weekend program is completed by Fain’s almost new Resolved, a rethinking of another Steve Reich score from last year.

LISS FAIN DANCE COMPANY Thurs/27–Sat/29, 8 p.m. $35. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater, 700 Howard, SF. (415) 978, 2787, www.ybca.org

Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival

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PREVIEW The poop on surviving and thriving at Outside Lands: After you bike or find parking on the avenues around 36th Street, trek into Golden Gate Park toward Polo Field, being careful not to kick any of those adorable pop-up gophers in the head. Don’t lug a cooler: believe it or not, you’re not camping, the grub is fairly affordable, foodie-oriented (Three Twins Ice Cream! Hog Island Oysters! Dosa!), and diverse, and you don’t wanna be lugging crappage around. Do bring sunblock, a hat, a blanket to sit or lie on, reading material or something, anything, for the dull acts, and — yup, the SF mantra — layers, layers, layers. Now relax and scan the schedule. Here’s how your humble princess of the pen would negotiate Outside Lands.

Friday: I’d start slow with shoegaze Autolux, then pick up the hippie-hipster steam at Akron/Family. Then I’d be torn, Solomon-style, between Built to Spill, Zap Mama, and Los Campesinos! Off to the Dodos, though I’m interested in checking out Zee Avi before Silversun Pickups. I’ll feel divided at 5 p.m.-ish, thanks to the National and Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. Maybe an ear cleansing Q-Tip, but otherwise I’m calling it an early Friday. Yawn.

Saturday: Starting it with Zion I and the Dirtbombs. Wanna see Extra Golden, then maybe Raphael Saadiq and definitely Boots Riley and Tom Morello’s Street Sweeper Social Club. I’ll check out comedians Brent Weinbach (soon with a new CD), Sherry Strof, and Kevin Camia, playing daily at the Barbary tent along with gypsies like Yard Dogs Road Show. Mastodon will be good for a pleasant ear bleed before Bat for Lashes and Os Mutantes knock their pretty heads. TV on the Radio next, then I’ll see how I feel — starkly art-rockin’ (Deerhunter) or electric-folk-friendly (Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band). The Mars Volta wipes it all up at the end.

Sunday: Breakfast with Darondo with Nino Moschella, then Bettye LaVette. The rest of the day at the Lands End stage looks solid: Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Modest Mouse, M.I.A., and Tenacious D. But Dead Weather, Morning Benders, Matt and Kim, Heartless Bastards, John Vanderslice, Calexico, and Band of Horses tempt me to stray. Still, as Sunday rolls in with the fog, whatever’s left of me just may park it in one grassy spot.

OUTSIDE LANDS MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL Fri/28, 12:40 p.m.–9:50 p.m.; Sat/29, noon–10 p.m.; Sun/30, noon–9:20 p.m., $89.50–$225.50. Golden Gate Park, SF. www.sfoutsidelands.com

Music listings

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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Tia Carroll Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Carta, Shuteye Unison, Form and Fate Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Casy and Brian, Bad Friends, Dadfag, Ornithology Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

David Thorton Blues Band Rasselas Jazz. 8pm, free.

Dodos, Spencey Dude and the Doodles Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Dredg, RX Bandits, As Tall As Lions Fillmore. 7:30pm, $20.

Funeral Pyre, Early Graves, Elitist, Cestus, DJ Rob Metal Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $7.

Middle Distance Runner, Aushua Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Goh Nakamura, Tomo Nakayama, Odessa Chen Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

100 Suns, Circle of Eyes Tyrant Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Phenomenal Handclap Band, Bart Davenport, Tempo No Temp Knockout. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $5-10.

"Marcus Shelby Jazz Jam" Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Les Nubians Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26.

Odes Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Jon Bennett Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Jazz Session Amnesia. 8pm, free.

Leigh Gregory Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Club Shutter Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Goth with DJs Omar, Nako, and Justin.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Lonestar Sound, Young Fyah, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 27

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Akron/Family, Howlin’ Rain Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Fresh and Onlys, Box Elders Knockout. 10pm.

Goddamn Gallows, Frankenstein L.I.V.S., Mutilators, Horror X Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $7.

Have Heart, Ceremony, Cruel Hand, Shipwreck, Bitter End Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $12.

20 Minute Loop, Famous, Billy and Dolly Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Rats, Back CCs, Pipsqueak Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Sex Type Thing Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $10.

"Weezer Tribute Show" Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10. With Trophy Fire, Judgement Day, Matches, and Silian Rail.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Al Coster Trio and jam Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

Beep! Trio Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Nathan Clevanger Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Lloyd Gregory Shanghai 1930. 7pm.

Michael Gold Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Paul Kimura Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

"New Frequencies @ YBCA: Musicians Respond to Wallworks" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. 6pm, free with gallery admission ($5-7). With Chris Brown/Mason Bates and David Arend Duo.

Les Nubians Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Tri-Cornered Tent Show, AnyWhen Ensemble Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF; www.luggagestoregallery.org. 8pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass and Old Time Jam Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Dunes El Rio. 9:45pm, $5. A North African Dance Band.

Flamenco Thursday Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30; $12. With Carola Zertuche and Company.

"Roots and Ruckus" Hotel Utah. 8pm, $6. With Chloe Makes Music, Samuel Doores, Alynda Lee, Feral Foster, Willy Gantrim.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Trainwreck Riders, Kerosene Kondors, Autumn Sky Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, and B Lee spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Bingotopia Knockout. 7:30-9:30pm, free. Play for drinks, dignity, and dorky prizes with host Lady Stacy Pants.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Toppa Top Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, $5. Jah Warrior, Jah Yzer, I-Vier, and Irie Dole spin the reggae jams for your maximum irie-ness.

FRIDAY 28

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

ALO, Counter Clarkwise, Newfangled Wasteland Mezzanine. 10pm, $20.

Five Eyed Hand Connecticut Yankee, 100 Connecticut, SF; www.theyankee.com. 10pm, $10.

Good Enough for Good Times Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $15.

*Hammers of Misfortune, Ludicra, Amber Asylum, DJ Rob Metal Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Insomniacs Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

DJ Lebowitz Madrone. 6-9pm, free.

Limbeck, Stitch Up, Mini Mansions Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

LuckyIAm and Scarub with Conscious Souls, Xienhow, Enzyme Dynamite, Tantrum vs. Fredo Elbo Room. 10pm, $15.

Marilyn Manson Warfield. 9pm, $51.50-71.50.

Mayyors, Lamps, Christmas Island, Wounded Lion Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

"Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival" Golden Gate Park, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 1pm, $95-595. With Pearl Jam, Incubus, Thievery Corporation, Tom Jones, and more.

Joe Pernice, John Cunningham Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $15.

*Personal and the Pizzas, No Bunny, Ultra Twist, Pipsqueak Annie’s Social Club. 10pm, $7.

Street Sweeper Social Club Independent. 10pm, $25.

2Me Ireland’s 32. 10pm, $5.

Velvet Teen, Ghost, Drowning With Our Anchors, For.The.Win. Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Yellow Dress, Foxtails Brigade Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. 8pm, $6.

Wave Array, Goodbye Nautilus Café du Nord. 10pm, $10.

BAY AREA

R. Kelly, Keyshia Cole, Plies, New Boyz, Dorrough Music Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum Wy, Oakl; www.ticketmaster.com. 7:30pm.

Turbonegra, Death Valley High, Distance From Shelter, Loudness of the Brethren Uptown. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Equinox Trio Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Mint Condition Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

Susanna Smith and band Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $8.

Terry Disley Experience Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Seth Augustus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30; $15. With Fito Reinoso, and Eddie and Gabriel Navia, and utf8 dancing Buena Vista style.

Culann’s Hounds Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Tippy Canoe SoCha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Go Bang! Deco SF, 510 Larkin St; (415) 346-2025. 10pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Eddy Bauer, Flight, Nicky B., Sergio and more.

High Times in Low Places Slim’s. 9pm, $20. With Opio and Pep Love, Aesop and Bicasso, DJ Fresh Cambo, Understudies, JB Nimble, Venture Capitalists, Poe Jangles and Ro Knew Influence, and DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

Lucky Road Amnesia. 9pm, $6-10. Balkan, Bangra, Latin, and Gypsy party with DJ Sister Kate.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Mob Life Rock-It Room. 10pm, $15. With Yukmouth, Gr and Phee and Rhyson Hall, Hugh E MC, and more.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

Suite Jesus 111 Minna. 9pm, $20. Beats, dancehall, reggae and local art.

Teenage Dance Craze Party Knockout. 10pm, $3. Teen beat, twisters, and surf rock with DJs Sergio Iglesias, Russell Quann, and dX the Funky Gran Paw.

SATURDAY 29

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

GG Amos and the GG3 Riptide. 9pm, free.

Blue Sky Black Death, Boy Eats Drum Machine, Boy in Static Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

*Boxcar Saints, Kira Lynn Cain Make-Out Room. 7:30pm, $7.

*Calexico, Sergio Mendoza y La Orkesta Independent. 10pm, $25.

*Clipse Mighty. 8pm.

Quinn Deveaux Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Dirtbombs, Sermon, Ty Segall Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10.

Eric Friedmann and the Lucky Rubes, Highway Robbers, Small Change Romeos Hotel Utah. 9pm, $8.

Good Enough for Good Times Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $15.

Heavy Hindenberg, Mongoloid, Sex Presleys El Rio. 10pm, $7.

John Lee Hooker, Jr. Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Monsters of Accordion feat. Jason Webley, Stevhen Iancu, Mark Growden, Geoff Berner,

Eric Stern Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

Mt. Vicious, Ifihadahifi, Pegataur Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band Mezzanine. 10pm, $25.

Olehole, Anchor, Atom Age Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

"Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival" Golden Gate Park, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. Noon, $95-595. With Dave Matthews Band, Black Eyed Peas, Mars Volta, Jason Mraz, and more.

Rancho Deluxe, Cowlicks, 49 Special Café du Nord. 8pm, $15.

SF Blaze Crew Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $10-12.

Short Fuse, Deadringers, Tyrannosaurus Christ Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Slender, Trevor Childs and the Beholders, Corruptors Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $7.

2Me Ireland’s 32. 10pm, $5.

BAY AREA

*Death Angel, Skinlab, Kaos Uptown. 9pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Big B. and His Snakeoil Survivors Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.tuesdaynightjump.com. 8:30pm, $10.

"Bird and Beckett Bash" Miraloma Clubhouse, 350 O’Shaughnessy, SF; (415) 586-3733. 1pm, $10. With Jimmy Ryan Trio, 77 El Deora, Woe Legion, Chuck Peterson Quintet, Jonathan Richman, and more.

Pascal Bokar and band Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Jessica Johnson Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm.

Mint Condition Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Candela Ramp Restaurant, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm.

Carnaval Del Sur Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, $12.

Jordan Carp Caffe Trieste, 1667 Market, SF; (415) 551-1000. 7:30pm, $10.

Toshio Hirano Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Erston Pearcy Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Ashley Rains Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Sean Smith Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Wholphin DVD Release Party Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10. With live music performances by Jeff Manson and the Lonesome Heroes, and Wholphin DVD magazine screening.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx. Colombia y Panama Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Cumbia and Latin with DJs Beto, Vinnie Esparza, and Vanka.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm-2am, $5. Hip-hop from the 90s with DJs Jamie Jams, Emdee, and Stab Master Arson.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Keys N Krates Club Six. 9pm, $10. With DJs Franchise, Sake1, and Double A spinning hip hop.

Knocked Up Knockout. 6-9pm, free. With DJ Touchy Feely.

Minimal Dose Jelly’s at Pier 50, 295 Francois, SF; (650) 533-9048. 10pm, $20. With a live performance by Seuil and DJs Alland Byallo, Clint Stewart, and J. Philip spinning techno and house.

TekAndHaus Anu, 43 6th St., SF; (415) 543-3505. 10pm, $5. With DJ Zenith and special guest Brett Johnson spinning house and techno.

Villainy DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10. DJs Party Ben, Tomas Diablo, Dangerous Dan, and Donimo spinning electro, dance, new wave, and indie.

SUNDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Chris "Kid" Anderson Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Alyse Black, Aly Tadros Retox Lounge. 8pm.

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $42.50.

Cuban Cowboys, Cordero, Carne Cruda Café du Nord. 7:30pm, $12.

Dungen, Woods, Kurt Vile Bottom of the Hill. 8pm, $14.

Gang Gang Dance, Ariel Pink, Amanda Blank Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

*"Grind for the Green" Yerba Buena Gardens, Fourth St at Mission; www.grindforthegreen.com. Noon-4pm, free. With Dead Prez, Mistah F.A.B., Fiyawata, and more.

"Indie Abundance Tour" El Rio. 1pm. With Chantelle Tibbs, Deborah Crooks, and Emily Bonn.

Mike Dillon’s GoGo Jungle Boom Boom Room. 10pm, $10.

Minus Five, Baseball Project and Steve Wynn IV Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16.

*Os Mutantes, Extra Golden Independent. 9pm, $25.

"Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival" Golden Gate Park, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. Noon, $95-595. With Tenacious D, M.I.A., Ween, Modest Mouse, and more.

Space Waves, Dreamtiger, Heavy Water Experiments Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lucid Lovers Harris’ Restaurant, 2100 Van Ness, SF; (415) 673-1888. 6:30pm.

Mint Condition Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $35.

Savanna Jazz Trio and jam Savanna Jazz. 7:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $12. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Forro Brazuca Ramp Restaurant, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm.

Jack Gilder, Kevin Bemhagen, Richard Mandel, and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Salsa Sunday El Rio. 4:15pm, $8. With Mazacote.

Uptones, Coup De Ska Amnesia. 8pm, $7-10.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep and guests Maga Bo and DJ Chicus.

45Club the Funky Side of Soul Knockout. 10pm, free. With dX the Funky Granpaw, Dirty Dishes, and English Steve.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Quinn Deveaux and the Blut Beat Review, Con Brio, Dirty Boots El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Indianna Hale, Old Believers, Red River Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Quartet San Francisco Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Gino Napoli Simple Pleasures, 3434 Balboa, SF; (415) 387-4022. 8pm, free.

Paulo Presotto and the Ziriguidum Orkestra, Tribaletricos Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Krazy for Karaoke Happy Hour Goes All Night Knockout. 7pm-2am, free. With host Deadbeat.

Mainroom Mondays Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Live the dream: karaoke on Annie’s stage and pretend you’re Jello Biafra.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Punk Rock Sideshow Hemlock Tavern. 10pm, free. With DJ Tragic and Duchess of Hazard.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bridge, Allofasudden Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $8.

Casualties, Krum Bums, Mouth Sewn Shut, Static Thought Thee Parkside. 8pm, $12.

DeatHat, Peculiar Pretzelmen, Corpus Callosum Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Tim Easton, Brandi Shearer Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

*MDC, Poison Control, Bum City Saints Knockout. 10pm, free.

Duke Robillard Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Smile Brigade, Bunny Numpkins and the Kill Blow Up Reaction Kimo’s. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

Everest Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $14.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Mucho Axe, Fogo Na Roupa Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJ What’s His Fuck, Taypoleon, and D-Runk.

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, free. Rock ‘n’ roll for inebriated primates like you.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx. *

Events listings

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Events listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 26

Lincart Summer BBQ Lincart, One Otis, SF; RSVP to hope@lincart.com. 6pm, free. Celebrate Lincart’s new location (down the block from their old location) with a thought provoking group show, live flamenco dancers, and old fashioned BBQ on the roof deck.

Pecha Kucha Autodesk Gallery, 2nd floor, One Market, SF; pechakucha-sf.com. 7:30pm happy hour, 8:20pm presentations; $5 suggested donation. Meet designers from many creative fields, share ideas, and watch as 8 – 12 participants present 20 images of their work. This month’s theme is "substance."

THURSDAY 27

The Adderall Diaries Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF; (415) 970-0012. 7pm; $20, includes copy of book. Author Stephen Elliott will read from his new book, The Adderall Diaries: A memoir of moods, masochism, and murder, with Tobias Wolff, Bucky Sinister and others.

12 Hot Dates, 1 Fun Night El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.bca12.com. 5:30pm, $20 suggested donation. Bid on potential dates with 12 smart, sexy, fun men and women of various ages, sexual orientations, and ethnic backgrounds. All proceeds benefit Breast Cancer Action.

FRIDAY 28

Art for AIDS Bonhams and Butterfields Auction House, 220 San Bruno, SF; artforaids.org. 5:30pm, silent auction, 6:45pm, live auction; $75 includes local food and wine. More than 135 modern and contemporary works of art will be auctioned off to benefit the UCSF AIDS Health Project.

SATURDAY 29

Commemorate Casper Banjo Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; (415) 643-2785. 3pm, free. Celebrate the life of Oakland artist Casper Banjo, who was tragically shot to death by a police officer last year while carrying a replica gun, with guest speakers and musical performances. Banjo’s work is currently on display as part of the MCCLA’s current exhibition 3 Worlds.

Save the Streets Summer Jam Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 245 Valencia, SF; (510) 888-9890. 8pm, $20. This event aims to help stop gun violence amongst Bay Area youth, featuring hip hop artist San Quinn and host KMEL’s Chuy Gomez. All proceeds go towards spinal chord research.

SUNDAY 30

Bride Mob ATA, 992 Valencia, SF; (415) 824-3890. 5:30pm, $5 suggested donation. Celebrate your inner bride with DJ Brawlio, a wedding party cover band, a bridal fashion show, raffle, and more at this event hosted by Saltwater, an local independent film production. After the party, the bride mob will descend on Valencia!

Plate to Plate Start and finish line at McCovey Cove, behind AT&T Park, across the Lefty O’Doul Bridge on Third St., SF; (415) 447-2316. 9am, $39 to register. This 5k run and walk starts at McCovey Cove, goes along the Embarcadero, across home plate in AT&T park, and back to McCovy cove. All proceeds to benefit Project Open Hand, which provides meals for people living with serious illnesses and seniors.

MONDAY 31

EAT 111 Minna, SF; eatat111minna.blogspot.com. 5pm, free admission to the grand opening with RSVP to eatat111minna@gmail.com. In the burgeoning tradition of guerilla gourmet dining, this new weekly event is a cross between dinner, happy hour, and a night club with $5-10 small plates, artwork, and live music.

*

Appetite: The masterminds behind SF Chefs.Food.Wine.

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By Virginia Miller of www.theperfectspotsf.com. See her previous installment of Appetite here.

Re-capping SF Chefs.Food.Wine.: In conversation with Andrew Freeman and Dominic Phillips, masterminds behind the event

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Andrew Freeman (left) & Kevin Westlye (bottom center) with the Mayor and friends Photo courtesy of Andrew Freeman & Co.

Imagine your favorite bartenders, chefs, and wineries under one massive tent in Union Square serving unlimited amounts of food and drink. Envision your favorite writers or TV personalities leading classes or cooking for a gala. Picture Grand Tastings where one never has to wait for a bite or a drink (a rarity, I know) and one can even talk to chefs, bartenders and winemakers while sampling their wares. Throw in evening parties (with DJs like Chef Hubert Keller) where music, food and drink flow into the night. Pack it all in to one weekend and you have an idea of what rollicking good time was had at SF Chefs.Food.Wine., which took place August 6-9.

Talking with the masterminds behind this event gave me a deeper appreciation for how smoothly this first year event ran. Without a clear vision, endless hours of planning and work by a team of dedicated experts, this would not have been the case. Two years in the making, SF Chefs.Food.Wine. was the first ever urban food and wine classic. Those who’ve been to other food and drink events know you often come away hungry from so-called "tastings", spending more time waiting for food to appear than eating it. Here, everyone stayed well fed, satiated and aglow. I talked to person after person who said they couldn’t wait to go again next year or that it was a better value than a number of cheaper (and less exciting) food events combined.

The Guardian Drug Issue: a baggie full of links

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The Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi crew — Rocker T, Irie Dole, I-vier, and Jah Yzer — photographed for our cover by Jeffery Cross.

Editor’s Note: People like getting high. Whether to just shake off the busy day with a joint or cocktail, or to break free of normal sensory reality and explore the wild beyond, drugs have always been part of the human experience, shaping our societies for good, ill, or a complex and fascinating mixture of both.

Media portrayals of drug use tend toward the extremes, telling either dark tales of dysfunction or else celebrating some counterculture. But we at the Guardian take a more nuanced view, recognizing the often-subtle role that narcotics and their related hysteria play in a wide variety of human endeavors.

That’s why the Guardian‘s Drug Issue isn’t contained in a single section, but laced throughout the paper, from Paul Krassner’s op-ed on the early acid pioneers all the way back to Dennis Harvey’s list of the top freakouts on film.

In the news section, we explore the growing movement to decriminalize marijuana, rising meth-related emergencies among women, and drug use at Burning Man. Super Ego takes a muddled journey to the bathroom stall, flashing back to the alphabet soup of yesterday’s dance floors, while in Lit, we hunt for shrooms and hallucinatory reading, and take a hard look at addiction in Bayshore. And in music, Shady Nate shares the purple you can drink.

Enjoy the trip, and we’ll see you on the other side. (Steve Jones)

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>> Chronic debate: Marijuana decriminalization moves forward on several fronts

>> Fewer young people using drugs: When it comes to illicit substances, SF’s kids are alright.

>> Cranked up: Are party girls starting to catch up with the boys?

>> Packing for the trip: The art of taking drugs to — and at — Burning Man

>> LSD as gateway drug: Paul Krassner reflects on acid pioneers

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>> Confessions of a Bo-Fessional: Leanin’ on codeine and promethazine with Shady Nate and Livewire

>> Alphabet soup: A brief meditation on the recent history of club drugs

>> The elephant in the shroom: It’s time to start being realistic about magic mushrooms

>> This land is Methland: A new book tracks a drug through America’s cracks and faultlines

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>> Drunk on words: 12 hallucinogenic novels and 8 inebriated memory pieces

>> Made in USA: Under the overpass, Righteous Dopefiend finds a different kind of San Francisco drug story

>> Mothership connections: George Clinton has used, not abused, drugs

>> Letts dance: Tracy Letts’ play August: Osage County makes family dysfunction fun again

>> Time passages: Taking a listen to Coil’s music to take drugs to

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>> This is your film on drugs: One film critic’s top movie freakout scenes

>> Hittin’ the tube: A&E’s Intervention — do junkies ever watch it?

>> Intoxicated rhythms: Recordings by musicians under the influence

Ewok talk

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER You might not expect it or detect it — listening to the beautifully interwoven fingerpicked guitar, viola, and flute of "Actaeon’s Fall (Against the Hounds)" and dark, sparkling, solemn drone of "Enemies Before the Light" off the new Six Organs of Admittance album, Luminous Night (Drag City) — but Ben Chasny is a pretty fun guy. I haven’t laughed so long and hard during a chat with a musician since forever, that is until the Six Organ-ist began riffing on a recent guilty pleasure: Lindsey Buckingham and in particular Law and Order (Warner Music Group, 1981).

"It’s the one where’s he’s naked, super-tanned, and glistening with oil (on the cover)," enthuses Chasny by phone from Seattle, where he’s trotting out to Trader Joe’s for a single can of black beans. "Man, he’s a fucking mad genius. That was on repeat on my turntable for a while."

After raving about an amazing Fleetwood Mac show he attended not long ago — "after every song [Buckingham] rips his guitar off and holds it up, as if he’s won a gold medal in the Olympics" — he pulls out a nugget related to Buckingham ex Carol Ann Harris’ book, Storms (Chicago Review Press, 2007), which describes the Fleetwood Mac-er holding his head at night, screaming about all the music running through his noggin. "Ethan [Miller of Comets on Fire] said, ‘He probably had that song "Holiday Road" in his head, and it was driving him fucking bonkers,’" Chasny quips. "I can image if you had that going on, you’d go fucking crazy."

I’m still chuckling when Chasny admits that he’s stolen many a lick from Buckingham as the guitarist for the now-dormant Comets on Fire: "I was running them through tons of distortion, so no one picks up." It’s all good — and it’s even better to catch up and talk early influences (the Stray Cats!?) and current musical loves (the Flower Corsano Duo) with the man, now firmly relocated in Seattle along with girlfriend Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers, who, as it happens, isn’t in Six Organs at the moment (instead they’re collaborating on another still down-low project). The couple moved out of my Mission District hood just as the shootings were escautf8g last year — and Chasny’s landlord raised his rent. "It was like, ‘Are you fucking reading the newspaper?’," he marvels. "You know how the Mission goes through periods of craziness? I was just, like, ‘Fuck this,’ and we rolled out because it’s cheaper and a little less violent where we are now."

The new Luminous Night seems to reflect Chasny’s peaceful transition to higher, northerly ground. For the first time he worked with a producer, Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth) and in the process has woven new instruments like tabla and synthesizers, as well as viola by Eyvind Kang, into the mix. His own soundtrack writing — and listening to, say, the music of Seven Samurai (1954) and Cosmos (1977) — have imbued Luminous Night‘s sound with vivid emotional arcs and an ever-widening scope that incorporates classical elements, synthesizer ruminations, and wanted-man Western-movie scores.

Nothing to feel guilty about here — but then Chasny would never not cop to an geeky early influence like the so-called "Ewok Song." "I know it by heart," he says, then semi-jokes, "and it’s the precursor to all these kids with wizard hats. It all comes down to the Ewoks singing around the fire. Akron/Family ain’t got nothing on the Ewoks, man." *SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCESun/23, 8 p.m., $12Independent628 Divisadero, SFwww.theindependentsf.com

SKYWALKIN’

TUSSLE AND GRASS WIDOW

Nathan Burazer of the SF instrumentalists just launched a monthly party, O.K. Hole, at Amnesia, whereas the all-femme Bay Area combo recently saw its Make a Mess 12-inch sell out. With Psychic Reality and Royalchord. Fri/21, 9 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

JAY REATARD

Garage rock’s Energizer Bunny embarks on a full-tilt freebie attack at Amoebas on both sides of the Bay, in honor of his spanking Watch Me Fall (Matador). Sat/22, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. Sun/23, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 2455 Telegraph, Berk. www.amoeba.com

J TILLMAN AND MOORE BROTHERS

J assault ’09 continues, in a more sedate, folktastic ‘n’ Neil Young-ly vein, by, this time, the Fleet Foxes drummer. With Pearly Gate Music. Sun/23, 8 p.m., $11–$13. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

BOX ELDERS

In town at the same time as Reatard, the nekkid, garage-rockin’, lo-fi youngsters throw on a new ‘un, Alice and Friends (Goner). With Traditional Fools. Tues/25, 6 p.m., $5. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF.

‘Time’ passages

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DRUG MUSIC "We attempted to dissolve time." That’s how the late John Balance, half of the now disbanded British experimental musical duo Coil, described the aim of their 1998 release Time Machines (Eskaton). Balance said this with such matter-of-factness that you hardly notice the ludicrousness of his claim. No mere sensation-hungry dabblers when it came to tearing down the doors of perception, Coil certainly had reason to stand behind their assertion. Having logged countless hours drifting in the lapping tides of Time Machine’s slowly unraveling synthesizer drones, I can tell you that Balance and musical partner Peter Christopherson definitely succeeded in their attempt.

Coil’s m.o. with Time Machines can be best summed up by the title of Spacemen 3’s 1990 demos compilation Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To (Bomp). Starting from the premise that hallucinogens can remove oneself from one’s temporal reality, Balance and former Throbbing Gristle member Christopherson (with assistance from William Breeze and Drew MacDowell), set out to synthesize music that would catalyze and tease out the temporally-disruptive effects of specific chemical compounds.

If that sounds a bit dry, there is indeed an aura of scientific self-seriousness to the release. Each composition is titled with the chemical name of the substance it has been designed for — track one, "Telepathine" (an earlier term for the compound found in Ayahuasca or yage, popularized by Burroughs and Ginsberg); track two, "DOET/hecate"; track three, "5-Me0-DMT"; and track four, "Psilocybin." But for Coil, science was another form of magic, something driven home by the album’s cover design: a black, glossy oval that alludes to the obsidian "scrying mirror" of Renaissance magician and astronomer John Dee, who supposedly used the stone to conjure spirits. (A limited number of albums also came with a set of stickers that when placed on top of each other depicted Dee’s sigil, the Hieroglyphic Monad).

I should confess, with much embarrassment, that for the many times and many different contexts in which I have listened to Time Machines, I have yet to experience any of the tracks while on the substances for which they were specifically engineered. That said, the album’s transportive effects are noticeable even while listening sober (and are certainly heightened by strong doses of THC). My experience has largely been subtractive: it is hard to do anything or to think about anything with much success, or even "actively listen," while Time Machines is playing. It is the aural equivalent of an isolation tank, in that you don’t even notice the vessel falling away, you’re so immersed. Turn it on, tune in, and dissolve.

Mothership connections

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

DRUGS If, while flipping through TV channels, you happened upon the episode of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab in which George Clinton appears, you might be forgiven for assuming that the Godfather of Funk, whose drug use reputation precedes him, was under Dr. Drew’s rehab care. In actuality, Clinton was not seeking any guidance from the good TV doctor. Rather, he was working alongside him in helping Rehab subject Seth "Shifty" Binzer get back on the straight and narrow road to sobriety by producing new music for the fallen Crazy Town singer.

According to those familiar with the 68-year-old funk ambassador and his lifelong body of work — which includes the catch phrase and Funkadelic album title Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow (Westbound, 1970) — George Clinton doesn’t lie or hide the fact that he has dabbled in mind-altering substances, using them to enhance the experience of the funk. "When you think of drug abuse, you immediately think of something you can’t handle, something that takes you over. So he [Clinton] is into drug overuse, but that is not the same as drug abuse. In one interview he [says he] never got religious until he took acid," explains Ricky Vincent, the Berkeley journalist, college professor, KPFA DJ, and author of the acclaimed music history book Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of The One (St. Martin’s Press), which includes a forward penned by Clinton.

"He indulges, but he manages it," says Vincent, who has interviewed Clinton numerous times. "Yes, he got arrested [once] for cocaine. But you don’t hear of him going in and out of the hospital because he overdosed and couldn’t control it. He is one of these people that has turned recreational drug use into a part of his lifestyle, and he doesn’t try to pretend that he doesn’t do drugs. George just says, ‘Hey, I get high all the time!’."

Clinton’s party ways are legendary. In Ice Cube’s early 1990s video for "Bop Gun (One Nation)" which heavily features the Godfather of Funk and reworks the title track of Funkadelic’s 1978 One Nation Under A Groove with the refrain "So high you can’t get over it," Cube at first shuns an invite to a party Clinton is throwing, saying, "I don’t know man. Your get-togethers are kind of wild." As anyone who has ever attended a Parliament-Funkadelic or P-Funk All Stars concert can attest, things tend to get crazy onstage as an ensemble numbering a dozen or more players wanders on and off stage. Most of the musicians are in costumes, including the diaper-clad guitarist/musical director Garry Marshall Shider. Donning his trademark fluorescent rainbow wig, lead funkateer Clinton is happy to be at the center of this organized chaos.

From the get-go in 1970 when the group released its first two albums, Funkadelic’s lysergic-drenched psychedelic funk noise was influenced by the rock music happening around it in Detroit and beyond. Clinton admits to taking acid to fuel his and his band’s early recordings at a time when LSD was still primarily a white person’s drug, not one widely accepted by the black community. Without it, Clinton’s pioneering psychedelic funk pioneered might never have happened. "I can’t think of any other way that you could conceive making music about going to the furthest edge of the universe and then turn around and take it to the bottom of the ocean and actually make it a musical party journey … I mean, you got to be a little altered to do that," says Too $hort, who has long drawn influence from Clinton’s music, and whose collaborations with Clinton include the title track of his 1996 album Gettin’ It (Jive).

George Clinton has been around long enough to witness this country’s changing public attitudes toward drug use and abuse. He’s smart enough to see through the hypocrisy of America’s so-called "war on drugs," and is never too shy to loudly address it. A couple of years ago, he wowed a young Def Poetry audience when he read the "poem" "Dope Dog." In actuality, its words are the lyrics to the song "U.S. Custom Coast Guard Dope Dog," from the Parliament-Funkadelic/P-Funk All Stars album Dope Dogs (P-Vine/Hot Hands/Dogone, 1994), which also features songs titled "Help, Scottie, Help (I’m Tweaking and I Can’t Beam Up)" and "Pepe (The Pill Popper)." Clinton left the audience at that HBO studio reading with an observant final line about "the deal on dope": "There’s more profit in pretending that we’re stopping it than selling it."

GEORGE CLINTON AND PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC

Aug. 30, 9 p.m., $38

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.georgeclinton.com

Alphabet soup

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markeb@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO ADDICT "That techno shit ain’t nothing but a bunch of clowns tripping their balls off to car alarms," the old saying goes. And it’s almost exactly right! If we’re still in the 1990s — which, by the way, also saw over-tattooed punk and swing revivalists nodding off to black tar and a swarm of bronze-bleached gays mething out to Bryan Adams circuit remixes when they could pry away from AOL chat. (You thought it took forever to download a naked JPEG in 1997? Try doing it on crystal.) Plus: candy-flipping Burners, K-holed zombie househeds, and reams of GHB newbies shitting their pants and dropping half-dead at the unfortunately ambulance-ridden EndUp.

Glancing back with a delicious shiver, the ’90s were a shadow-peopled heyday of designer nightlife drugs, an alphabet soup raining down in clubbers’ peripheries. But, really, from opiate-stoned flappers and Benzedrined mods to the Factory’s orange Obetrols and MDA at the Paradise Garage — when haven’t drugs driven the wee-hours subcultural?

Yes, the music plays into the drug of each scene’s choice, a Pan flute solo wafting over the Valley of the Dolls. You do need to drop E on a crowded dance floor to "get" most strains of techno, or smoke out bigtime for reggae to wobble you to Jah. And drugs drive the music: I’m currently rereading one of my fave tomes, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Penguin, 1997), and it blows my Swiss cheese brain the sheer piles of drugs everyone was on in the ’70s rock scene. I guess that’s why they got so bloated in the ’80s.

Which leads us, squinting in dawn’s foggy light, to the present. It’s odd that the same prescription drugs kids use to stay well-behaved in math class are the ones most clubbers pop while getting dressed, with a key-snort of terror-funding coke to keep the edge off. But if ’00s electro and fidget house were the sound of Adderall and Ritalin, dubstep derived from hydroponic stank, the disco revival uncorking fresh poppers (see www.homochic.com for your designer bottle), and minimal techno just OCD writ large (a self-consciously undrugged movement?) then the illicit substance center, though cut with baby laxative, at least still holds. And always the liquor flows and flows….

STEVE BUG

Brain-teasing techno label Pokerflat presents a rare showcase of its stable, including deep mentalist Bug and smooth criminal John Tejada.

Fri/21, 10 p.m., $20, Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

DERRICK CARTER

Do-the-doo house is making a shining comeback, thanks in part to the Chicago master’s tireless touring. Shimmy and shake, boogie child.

Fri/21, 10 p.m.- 4 a.m., $10. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

KRADDY

"Cybernetic breaks with asymmetrical dub delays" from the former Glitch Mobber, with "global slut psy-hop" queen Ana Sia opening up.

Fri/21, 10 p.m., $10. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

RONSKI SPEED

Your progressive-trance Burner warmup begins with the Euphonic Sounds tunes of this dapper space octopus.

Sat 22, 10 p.m.- 4 a.m., $15 advance. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

JEGA

Wherefore art thou, Ambient Romeo? All around us, of course, as pioneer Jega drops his excellent double-disc Variance (Planet Mu) after nine long years.

Sun/22, 10 p.m., $10. Li Po Lounge, 916 Grant, SF. www.nastysonix.com

The elephant in the shroom

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

DRUG LIT The psychedelic experience is perfectly, if unintentionally, expressed in a poetry collection: Too long I took clockwork as a model instead of following the angle my inclinations make with the ground. So writes Rosmarie Waldrop in A Key into the Language of America (New Directions, 1994), a book based on Rhode Island founder Roger Williams’s 1643 guide of the same name. The most "meditative" poets, from Milton and Blake to James Merrill and Denise Levertov, are often those who have reworked historical texts. The same could be said about scholars of psychedelics. Forget about Aldous Huxley’s exaggerated diatribes and everything by Carlos Castenada. The "doors of perception" aren’t opened by self-indulgent rambles of the "I’m a spiritual person" variety.

In 2007, sick of the ingrained pop mythologies surrounding psychedelics (and realizing, it seems, that such pseudoscience isn’t helping make the case for legalization), British scholar Andy Letcher published Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (Harper Perennial, 384 pages, $14.99). Though he spends quite a bit of time debunking myco-myths that I’d imagine are only actually believed by people while tripping — Santa Claus is a giant, speckled variety of the Amanita genus; Stonehenge was like a Dead show without the music — the double-PHD Letcher gives a solid sense of magic mushrooms as they moved through history, and we moved with or tripped over them. Letcher uncovers how little we can possibly know.

Because mushrooms can "simply be picked and eaten," Letcher explains, there is "not a single instance of a magic mushroom being preserved in the archaeological record anywhere." Drugs and apparent representations of magic mushrooms that have been found have had other, nonintoxicating uses, from food to insulation, or have been doctored up to appear trippy, as with one example of Neolithic rock art widely distributed through self-declared visionary Terence McKenna’s books — McKenna’s then-wife, Kat Harrison, actually made the drawing from a photo, adding her own interpretation.

I once heard prankster Paul Krassner relate the tale of his first psychedelic escapade. After his mind returned, he said, it seemed like a good idea to call his mother and express his elation (the rational part of his mind must have still been distracted). Her hilarious response was perhaps culled from the jumbled logic of the war on drugs: "Watch out," she pined into the phone. "I’ve heard that LSD can be a gateway drug to … marijuana!"

Letcher shares this realistic sense of humor about the life of drugs. Before picking apart proponents of the otherworldly "ancient mushrooming thesis," he offers them room to breathe. He is ultimately interested in the cultural evolution of the West’s "yearning for enchantment" in response to changes that have occurred since the industrial revolution. "That we in the West have found value in those remarkable mushroom experiences, where almost all others before us have regarded them as worthless," he notes, "means that in a very real sense we could claim to be living in the Mushroom Age." He explores how McKenna’s death in 2000 left the psychedelic movement without an "obvious figurehead" and how the need to paste our modern sensibilities onto "a pre-historic religion or tabu" (as shroom-popularizer Gordon Wasson wrote in a letter to Robert Graves in 1950), is just an urge.

Post-McKenna, what is the destination of the psychedelic movement’s next trip? A new book, Mushroom Magick (Abrams, 144 pages, $19.95), is respectable for its clear motivations and gorgeous, thorough design. It’s a little too much fun, consisting of over 100 lush, full-page watercolors by Arik Roper, whose shrooms "grow from the tip of my pen without much effort." Incomplete but clear field notes by Gary H. Lincoff and an essay by Erik Davis offer tasty morsels, and the short bibliography points to useful resources such as Paul Stamets’ field guides. But Daniel Pinchbeck’s foreword follows the same trajectory that Letcher so carefully deconstructs. I’m afraid that Mushroom Magick ultimately presents as recreational something that, with or without New Age revisionism, clearly has a deeper, revelatory role to play in human affairs. And that’s not furthering the discussion, that’s a little irresponsible.

Confessions of a Bo-Fessional

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

That Bo & Sprite, I mix it up and tip it every day and night

— Shady Nate, "Bo & Sprite," The Bo-Fessional

DRUGS I’m in the backyard of Shady Nate’s aunty’s house on 28th and "Zipper" (Chestnut Street) in West Oakland, watching Lil Rue of Livewire pour four ounces of purple syrup into a liter of Sprite, which turns the hue of pink champagne. With the residue, he coats a cigarette, Shady coats a Black&Mild, and Jay Jonah coats a blunt, which sputters and foams as it burns. When Rue licks the syrup cap, however, Jonah protests this breach of etiquette, though the dispute dissipates as the bottle goes around.

The syrup in question is promethazine-codeine cough syrup, known variously as "lean," "sizzurp," even simply "purple" (wreaking linguistic havoc since "purple" also means weed). "Lean" derives from its characteristic side-effect: if you drink enough, you need to lean against something to stand. West Oakland’s term of choice is "Bo," as in "Robitussin." Bo first oozed into rap in the late ’90s via the South, associated with the slowed-down chopped and screwed sound invented by Houston’s DJ Screw. One of Shady’s OGs, Big Mayne, assures us Bo’s been in Oakland forever, though formerly cheap liquor was its vehicle. (Drinking it straight is called "raw.") Soda is a comparatively recent innovation, indicating Bo’s increasingly youthful demographic, which extends to middle school.

"In ’95, I ain’t seen no one sippin’ syrup but OGs," Shady recalls. "We didn’t know what it was. Around 2000, it started to pop — couple motherfuckers knew about it but not everybody. But now, it’s like a fad. Like Mac Dre came with the thizz, it’s syrup now."

As Shady notes, Bo has supplanted Ecstasy as the hood’s must-do drug. But Bo is more likley to kill you; promethazine causes extreme drowsiness and potentially, in large enough doses, heart attacks or respiratory failure. DJ Screw himself died of respiratory failure at age 29 in 2000. In December 2007, six months after his post-prison triumph with UGK’s No. 1-debuting Underground Kings (Jive, 2007), Pimp C, 33, succumbed to a lethal combination of syrup and his preexisting sleep apnea.

The possibility of death has, of course, never deterred drug use except in individual cases; even so, as a trend, Bo is a risky high. Addictiveness aside, the best part of the high, I’m told, occurs on the brink of nodding off. (Jonah claims that nodding off at the wheel, not overdose, is the leading cause of Bo-related death in West Oakland.) But the target — "catching your nod" — seems easy for the inexperienced to overshoot, particularly when the delivery method is a beverage that tastes like it was designed for kids.

Tastes? Well, yes, I took a few pulls from the bottle, purely for journalistic purposes. Four ounces among four people isn’t enough to make you lean or nod, but it’s enough to get the idea. I was pretty lifted for three hours, then mildly so the rest of the day. The promethazine considerably enhances the codeine: my head felt pleasant, like a halo extended a few inches between me and the world, yet the sensation was crisp, not foggy, at least at this dosage, peaceful rather than giddy. This was a one-time trial for me, but I could easily see wanting to extend the high.

Indeed, extension is the point; Shady’s ideal is to nurse four or more ounces over the course of the day. In terms of rap hedonism, Bo has ushered in a new vibe. You don’t guzzle, you "tip" or "kiss" it. Instead of ballin’, you brag on stinginess, "I ain’t sippin’ with you" being a common refrain. Generally I’ve found people in the ghetto generous with weed — the blunt’s a preeminently social event — so Bo’s antisocial element is striking. "I done seen fights over the lacers," Shady laughs, referring to the use of the residue. "It almost just went down — Jonah almost took off Lil Rue!"

On this day in July, Shady has a pair of projects in Rasputin’s rap Top 20: an album, Gasman Unleashed (PTB/Clear Label/SMC); and a mixtape, The Bo-Fessional (DJ Racks), on which every song is devoted to Bo. As we drink, I ask about its effect on his creative process.

"I can rap all fast," he says (an understatement), "but when I’m on syrup — I’m singin’, I’m harmonizin’. It slows me down."

The difference is palpable on "Bo & Sprite," his mixtape take on Kid Cudi’s "Day and Night." The choice itself is uncharacteristic, as is the weird thickness of his Bo-soaked delivery, discovering melodic filigrees only implied in the original as he spins an amusingly mundane tale of scoring — classic drug music. Most of Shady’s vocals on Gasman are lean-free by necessity, in order to achieve full speed, but Bo-Fessional serves as an inspired b-side, documenting what, in Oakland, may be the Summer of Bo.

But Bo’s already grown scarce; the members of Livewire say the police have cracked down and doctors aren’t prescribing it due to the widespread abuse. Already expensive — roughly $15 an ounce — Bo’s street price is ever increasing due to the drought, which limits Shady’s indulgence to roughly once a week. This might be frequent enough, given Bo’s potential dangers. I very much understand the attraction, but at the same time, Shady and Livewire are talented dudes with a lot to live for.

Kurt Vile

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PREVIEW Walking around the streets of his hometown Philly, Kurt Vile is on the other end of the phone talking about his various fixations and some of his musical dopplegangers.

"I was obsessed with Springsteen," he says, after pausing to ask for a pack of Camel Lights at a corner store. "I still love Springsteen. I love all the greats. I don’t love everything, but usually I get obsessed with everything. And Neil Young! I’ve always liked Neil Young, but a few years ago I read his biography Shakey [by Jimmy McDonough; Random House, 2002] and I was a psycho fan afterwards."

The first rumblings most of us heard from Vile, apart from his work with throwback psych-rockers the War On Drugs, were earlier this year, when he released God Is Saying This To You? (Mexican Summer) as well as a reissue of his 2008 debut Constant Hitmaker (Gulcher/Woodsist).

These lo-fi albums were compiled from home-recorded songs dating back to 2005. They are rife with woozy sound effects, gossamer instrumentals, and electronic drum beats. Vile’s voice resonates through vignettes about operating forklifts, conversations about red apples, and a scene devoted to riding on a yellow Schwinn while "blasting classic rock in spring." He evokes the isolated melancholy of Nick Drake, and Young’s dulcet-toned, raconteur-esque acoustic numbers.

But Vile isn’t fingerpicking himself into any niche. Constant Hitmaker‘s ecstatic opener, "Freeway," is a beacon of light, shimmering in ’70s pop glory but dosed with Vile’s wizened lyricism. On the March 2009 release The Hunchback EP (Richie Records/Testoster Tunes), Vile and his band the Violators hold nothing back. All amps are cranked to 11, resulting in reverb-laden songs so epic, it’s clear Vile is ready to walk far away from his lo-fi roots, at least for a while.

"On stage, Kurt Vile and the Violators are a serious force," says Richie Charles, the EP’s producer. "I suppose they take their cues from Kurt, but they operate as four dudes whose blood is being pumped by a single heart. The Violators should not be underestimated."

Vile’s facility for writing winsome, bare-bones fingerpickers and wailing Crazy Horse jams is a testament to the intensity of his ideas. "My mind’s always wandering," he says. "Theres so much on my mind about my music right now that it’s taking up all my brain."

These obsessive tendencies are finally paying off. In late May, Matador Records signed Vile, calling him one of the more important figures in modern-day American music. "Signing Kurt was the easiest decision we’ve made since we sponsored a seniors’ Jai Alai league in the early ’90’s," says Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy. "The liability risks are much lower this time around, and the music’s far better, so everyone’s a winner."

Vile’s next album, the cunningly-titled Childish Prodigy, is due out in autumn. "It’s the closest thing I have so far to my masterpiece," he says. "It’s not super-clean or anything, but it’s most definitely not lo-fi. You can keep uncovering stuff in there. It’s my first album album."

KURT VILE With Dungen and Woods. Aug. 30, 8 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-1615, www.bottomofthehill.com

Music listings

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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Crocodiles, Pens, Graffiti Island Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Forget About Boston, Flamingo Gunfight, A Victory Nonetheless Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Freekbass Boom Boom Room. 9:45pm, $10.

Have Nots, Stigma 13, Flatout Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $5.

Horror X, Boats!, Spurts, Pranks Thee Parkside. 8pm, $6.

Mother Mother, HIJK Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $10.

Partyline, Hawnay Troof, Shebeast, Schwule El Rio. 8pm, $8.

Prids, Swann Danger, Butterfly Bones Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Freddy Roulette Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Stone Foxes, Lonely H, Buxter Hoot’n Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

BAY AREA

Jackson Browne Paramount Theatre. 8pm, $39.50-59.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"B3 Wednesdays feat. Patrick Greene Organ Combo" Coda. 9pm, $7.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Cat’s Corner Savanna Jazz. 7pm, $5-10.

"Marcus Shelby Jazz Jam" Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Jonathan Poretz Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Tin Cup Serenade Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; (415) 931-3600. 7pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Gaucho, Michael Abraham Jazz Session Amnesia. 8pm, free.

Steve Taylor-Ramírez Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Fame Bar on Church. 9pm. With rotating DJs.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Qoöl 111 Minna Gallery. 5-10pm, $5. Pan-techno lounge with DJs Spesh, Gil, Hyper D, and Jondi.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Lonestar Sound, Young Fyah, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St.; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bare Wires, Fergus and Geronimo, Teenage Cool Kids, Vows Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

*Blowfly, Blag Dahlia Rock Legend, Mad Macka Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Calmodee Coda. 9pm, $7.

Daughtry Fillmore. 8pm, $20.

Eyedea and Abilities, Kristoff Krane, Justus Bends Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Bill Magee Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Jason Movrich SNOB, 1327 Polk, SF; (415) 440-7662. 8pm, free.

San Kazakgascar, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Scranton, Luvhed, Ol’ Cheeky Bastards Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Strip Mall Architecture, Love X Nowhere, Silian Rail Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Toy Soldiers, Battlehooch, Horde and the Harem, Buttercream Gang Slim’s. 8pm, $13.

BAY AREA

"Vans Warped Tour" Shoreline Amphitheater, One Amphitheater Pkwy, Mtn View; www.livenation.com. 11am, $26.75. With NOFX, 3oh!3, Less Than Jake, Underoath, Devil Wears Prada, Chiodos, Thrice, Silverstein, and (seriously) over 40 more.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Al Coster Trio and Jam Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

"Brass, Bows, and Beats: A Hip Hop Symphony by Adam Theis and the Jazz Mafia Symphony" Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10:30pm, $24.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 7:30pm, free.

Kelly Park Trio Shanghai 1930. 7pm, free.

Marlina Teich Trio Brickhouse, 426 Brannan, SF; (415) 820-1595. 7-10pm, free.

"New Frequencies @ YBCA: Musicians Respond to Wallworks" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. 6pm, free with gallery admission ($5-7). With Jackeline Rago and Steve Hogan Duo/Kev Choice and Jennifer Johns Duo.

Jesse Scheinin Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Sony Holland Duo Café Divine, 1600 Stockton, SF; (415) 986-3414. 7pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Flamenco Thursday Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, 9:30; $12. With Carola Zertuche and Company.

Four Inch Pony Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Hillstomp, Slowfinger, Brothers Comatose Annie’s Social Club. 8pm, $8.

Mission Three Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Jason Movrich Blarney Stone, 5625 Geary, SF; (415) 386-9914. 9pm, free.

Saddlecats Atlas Café. 8pm, free.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-6. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, J Elrod, and B Lee spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St; 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St., SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Popscene 330 Rich. 10pm, $10. Rotating DJs spinning indie, Britpop, electro, new wave, and post-punk.

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Ships in the Night Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Queer dance party with DJs Durt, Black, and Jean Jamz.

Toppa Top Thursdays Club Six. 9pm, $5. Jah Warrior, Jah Yzer, I-Vier, and Irie Dole spin the reggae jams for your maximum irie-ness.

FRIDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Attitude Adjustment, Beowulf, Deface, Killing California, Superbuick Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson Independent. 9pm, $25.

Tracy Chapman Fillmore. 9pm, $50.

Christmas Island, Mantels, Jonesin’, Splinters Amnesia. 9pm, $8.

Cuban Nights Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8:30pm, $15. Latin dancing Buena Vista style with Fito Reinoso, and Eddy and Gabriel Navia.

Diego’s Umbrella Café du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Excuse the Blood, Hudson Criminal, Cycloptopus, No Need Retox Lounge. 8pm, $5.

*"House of Voodoo 10th Anniversary" Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $5-7. With Awakening, Saints of Ruin, and DJs spinning goth and industrial.

New Up, Company Car, Run Run Run Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $12.

EC Scott Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Set Your Goals, Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks Slim’s. 8pm, $15.

*Tussle, Grass Widow, Psychic Reality, Royalchord Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Brian Belknap Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

"Brass, Bows, and Beats: A Hip Hop Symphony by Adam Theis and the Jazz Mafia Symphony" Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10:30pm, $26.

Duo Gadjo Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Jim Butler Quartet Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

Natasha Miller Coda. 10pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Aphrodesia, Bayonics, DJ Jeremiah Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Bluegrass Bonanza Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Jessica Fichot Red Poppy Art House. 8:30pm, $10-12 suggested donation.

Devon McClive Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

"A Moment in Time" Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $30. With Beres Hammond with the Harmony House Singers and Musicans, and Culture.

Rob Reich and Craig Ventresco Amnesia. 7pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Alcoholocaust Presents Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. DJ What’s His Fuck spins old-school punk rock and other gems.

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Zax, Zhaldee, and Nuxx.

Deep Fried Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. DJs jaybee, David Justin, and Dean Manning spinning indie, dance rock, electronica, funk, hip hop, and more.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Go Bang! Deco SF, 510 Larkin St; (415) 346-2025. 10pm, $5. Recreating the diversity and freedom of the 70’s/ 80’s disco nightlife with DJs Eddy Bauer, Flight, Nicky B., Sergio and more.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Punk Rock and Shlock Karaoke Annie’s Social Club. 9pm-2am, $5. Eileen and Jody bring you songs from multiple genres to butcher: punk, new wave, alternative, classic rock, and more.

Voodoo Ballroom Annies Social Club. 9pm, $7. With live performances by Awakening and Saints of Ruin and DJs voodoo, Purgatory Mischief, and more spinning goth, deathrock, glam, and darkwave industrial.

SATURDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Tracy Chapman Fillmore. 9pm, $50.

Ex-Boyfriends, My First Earthquake, Vitamin Party Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

*Flipper, Triclops!, Turks, Alaric Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, $10.

*Forbidden, Kehoe Nation featuring Gene Hoglan, Death Pilot Slim’s. 9pm, $20.

Jedi Mind Tricks, MC Esoteric, Reef the Lost Cauze, Bound by Honor Independent. 9pm, $17.

Kev Choice Ensemble Elbo Room. 10pm.

Lady Bianca Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Low Red Land, Appomattox Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $5.

Matches Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

No Hope for the Dead, Overdrive AD, Hot Heresy Thee Parkside. 2pm, free.

La Plebe, Pop Bottle Bombers, Master Volume, DJ Alberto Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

TITS, Plastic Crimewave and the Wicked Wicked Ways Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Valerie Orth Band, Rachel Efron Ensemble, Mia and Jonah Café du Nord. 9pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Pascal Boker and Band Savanna Jazz. 8pm, $5.

"Brass, Bows, and Beats: A Hip Hop Symphony by Adam Theis and the Jazz Mafia Symphony" Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10:30pm, $26.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

"New Frequencies @ YBCA: Next Wave of Global Landscape" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. 8pm, $25. With Juana Molina/Amy X. Neuburg and the Cello ChiXtet.

Proteges of Hyler Jones Shanghai 1930. 7:30pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Coda. 10pm, $12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Absynth Quintet Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Julio Bravo y Orquesta Salsabor Ramp Restaurant, 855 Terry Francois, SF; (415) 621-2378. 5pm, free.

Cabinet of Curiosities, Toby Dick, Hyperpotamus Amnesia. 8pm, $7. Fundraiser for SF Zine Fest.

Carnaval Del Sur Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 8pm, $12.

Ricardo Lemvo and Miakina Loca, DJ Emmanuel Nado Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

JL Stiles Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Thick Soup Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bar on Church 9pm. Rotating DJs Foxxee, Joseph Lee, Zhaldee, Mark Andrus, and Niuxx.

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $5-10. Eclectic 80s music with Djs Damon, Phillie Ocean, and Mod Dave, plus free 80s hair and make-up by professional stylists.

DatA Mezzanine. 9pm, $10. With DJs Sleazemore, Sick Face, Alexander Frederick, and Eli Glad spinning futuro-disco and space electro.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Shine the Light Shine. 10pm, $10. With DJs Cheb I Sabbah, Mighty Dub Killaz, Janaka Selekta, and El Diablo spinning global electronic.

SUNDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Arnocorps, A Band of Orcs, Untapped Fury, Dagobah Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Cult Warfield. 8pm, $38.50-100.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Hank IV Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15.

Maggie Morris, Ghosties Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

Chuck Prophet and friends Knockout. 8pm, $10.

Six Organs of Admittance, Master Musicians of Bukkake Independent. 8pm, $12.

J Tillman, Moore Brothers, Pearly Gate Music Café du Nord. 8pm, $13.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lucid Lovers Harris’ Restaurant, 2100 Van Ness, SF; (415) 673-1888. 6:30pm.

Zachary Richard Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7 and 9pm, $20.

Stanley Coda. 9pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Fiesta Andina! Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; (415) 646-0018. 7pm, $12. With Eddy Navia and Sukay.

Sacred Profanities Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Salsa Sundays El Rio. 4:15pm, $8. With Orquesta D’Soul.

John Sherry, Kyle Thayer and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

Tippy Canoe, Five Cent Coffee, Mikie Lee Prasad Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

DANCE CLUBS

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJs Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guests Roy Two Thousand and DJ Quest.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Jock! Lookout, 3600 16th; 431-0306. 3pm, $2. This high-energy party raises money for LGBT sports teams.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Religion Bar on Church. 3pm. With DJ Nikita.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

BAY AREA

Culture Club Oasis, 135 12th, Oak; (510) 763-0404. 10pm, free. Funky, deep, soulful, tech, house music with DJs Kincaid, Nesto and more.

MONDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Jeff the Brotherhood Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15.

Pins of Light, Libyans Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $5.

Chelsea Wolfe, Helene Renaut, J. Irvin Dally Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Pete Yorn Fillmore. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lavay Smith Trio Enrico’s, 504 Broadway, SF; www.enricossf.com. 7pm, free.

Mitch Marcus Quintet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $10-12.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Barefoot Nellies Amnesia. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more — all on 45!

Going Steady Dalva. 10pm, free. DJs Amy and Troy spinning 60’s girl groups, soul, garage, and more.

King of Beats Tunnel Top. 10pm. DJs J-Roca and Kool Karlo spinning reggae, electro, boogie, funk, 90’s hip hop, and more.

Mainroom Mondays Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. Live the dream: karaoke on Annie’s stage and pretend you’re Jello Biafra.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Spliff Sessions Tunnel Top. 10pm, free. DJs MAKossa, Kung Fu Chris, and C. Moore spin funk, soul, reggae, hip-hop, and psychedelia on vinyl.

TUESDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Box Elders Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $5.

Catholic Comb, Downer Party, Scott Allbright Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Fruit Bats, Death Vessel Independent. 8pm, $14.

Pharmakon, R. Jencks, Orhima Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $5.

Spoon + 10, Shark Speed El Rio. 8pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dave Parker Quintet Rasselas Jazz. 8pm.

Dogman Joe Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $12.

Euliptian Quartet Socha Café, 3235 Mission, SF; (415) 643-6848. 8:30pm, free.

For Corners Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

"Jazz Mafia Tuesdays" Coda. 9pm, $7. With Felonious.

RJ Ross Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 6:30pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Song Session Plough and Stars. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Drunken Monkey Annie’s Social Club. 9pm, free. With DJ Voodoo.<\!s>*

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Rock Out Karaoke! Amnesia. 7:30pm. With Glenny Kravitz.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

*

Editor’s Notes

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0

steve@sfbg.com

People like getting high. Whether to just shake off the busy day with a joint or cocktail, or to break free of normal sensory reality and explore the wild beyond, drugs have always been part of the human experience, shaping our societies for good, ill, or a complex and fascinating mixture of both.

Media portrayals of drug use tend toward the extremes, telling either dark tales of dysfunction or else celebrating some counterculture. But we at the Guardian take a more nuanced view, recognizing the often-subtle role that narcotics and their related hysteria play in a wide variety of human endeavors.

That’s why the Guardian‘s Drug Issue isn’t contained in a single section, but laced throughout the paper, from Paul Krassner’s op-ed on the early acid pioneers all the way back to Dennis Harvey’s list of the top freakouts on film.

In the news section, we explore the growing movement to decriminalize marijuana, rising meth-related emergencies among women, and drug use at Burning Man. Super Ego takes a muddled journey to the bathroom stall, flashing back to the alphabet soup of yesterday’s dance floors, while in Lit, we hunt for shrooms and hallucinatory reading, and take a hard look at addiction in Bayshore. And in music, Shady Nate shares the purple you can drink.

Enjoy the trip, and we’ll see you on the other side.

Brown truth: Bird Names sing it loud and proud

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0

bird names sml.jpg

BIRD NAMES
Sings the Browns
(Upset the Rhythm)

By Kimberly Chun

Who likes to mix Captain Beefheart blues-skronk cacophony and ADD-driven, jazzy razzle-dazzle, with a strong dollop of Deerhoofian experimentation on the side? Chicago’s Bird Names, that’s who — say their name. Rag-tag and rough-edged, this crazy quilt of a quartet swaps instruments live and in the studio — and swaps musical ideas in and out just as confidently and punkily. It’s as if the members of Bird Names all busily moonlight as carnies at madcap dadaist carnival, and their night job has merrily bled over into their music. Teetering guitar lines tumble against manic tambourine, fading into a dazed middle distance, on “Scandinavia,” and out-folk woodwinds peal against a backdrop of forest-critter chimes and child-like rhymes on “Natural Weeks,” both off the band’s fifth full-length, Sings the Browns. England’s Upset the Rhythm, a big supporter of Bay Area underground combos, got behind the group’s Brown album. And with such cock-eyed yet dulcet paeans to altered states as “Oh, Narcotopic Fantasy,” Bird Names manage to maintain a level of pleasing, if swampily documented, subversion.

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