Patton office

Ipecac Records' annual New Year's party/loud music orgy just gets bigger and more unwieldy every year. Now in its fourth go-round (its first at the Great American Music Hall), the party has been expanded to two nights this time out to help accommodate the label's ever growing roster of heavy, noisy, obnoxious, eccentric, and/or just plain weird bands.

It wouldn't be an Ipecac New Year's Eve without the Melvins, and just to drive that point home, they're on both nights' bills. For their Dec. 31 show, they'll be playing adopt-a-lead singer in the tradition of their confusing 2000 release, The Crybaby. This time they'll add estranged Dead Kennedys vocalist-onetime Green Party presidential hopeful Jello Biafra to the lineup. In addition to playing some old Dead Kennedys songs, Biafra and the Melvins will preview material from an upcoming album they're working on together, due next spring.

Speaking of Ipecac mainstays, label cohead Mike Patton appears Dec. 30 as one half of Maldoror, his collaboration with Japan's Masami Akita, the man behind hyperprolific Japanese noise standard-bearer Merzbow. It's a strange choice for a holiday headlining act, but then again, strange decisions are nothing new for Patton.

Joining Maldoror and the Melvins Dec. 30 are Boston hardcore sludge-epic wielders Isis, fresh off a headlining show at the Bottom of the Hill in September, and local man-machine marvels Captured! By Robots (the only non-Ipecac signees playing in the course of the two nights). Rounding out the New Year's Eve lineup, meanwhile, are Mondo Generator, the skuzzball hard-rock outfit fronted by Queens of the Stone Age bassist Nick Olivieri (also formerly of the Dwarves and Kyuss); New Jersey's Dalek, who tore up the same Bottom of the Hill show Isis headlined with their hard-ass, turntable stylus-wrecking hip-hop assault; and Ministry (yes, Ministry) bassist Paul Barker's new band, Pink Anvil, which Ipecac's Greg Werckman describes as "weird-ass noise in the Fantômas vein." Maldoror, the Melvins, Isis, and Captured! by Robots play Dec. 30, 9 p.m.; Melvins, Mondo Generator, Dalek, and Pink Anvil play Dec. 31, 9 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $20-$25 Dec. 30, $40-$45 Dec. 31, $50 for both nights. (415) 885-0750. (Will York)

Sucking big-time

Bring me the head of Axl Rose. Since I don't get to make fun of the New Year's Eve Guns 'N Roses stop, I'm obligated to make my own fun with the next best thing. And when it comes to rock 'n' roll schizophrenia, the Supersuckers are up there. The former would-be grunge stars never could make up their minds whether they were a country or punk band, so lately Eddie Spaghetti, Rontrose Heathman, Dan "Thunder" Bolton, and Dancing Eagle have decided to be both, breezing through town and playing a C&W set here and a rock show there. About a year ago, the band also decided to "suck" on their own and start a label, Mid-Fi. Consider this a wake-up call for their first studio album on the label, Motherfuckers Be Trippin' – it's scheduled for an April release. Local rock vets Zen Guerrilla and the Crosstops also play. Dec. 31, 9 p.m. Slim's, 333 11th St., S.F. $25-$30. (415) 255-0333. (Kimberly Chun)

Soullive if you want it

If you like your jazz doused with a jam-funk sensibility, then you probably know all about Soulive. You already have a tattoo of the NYC trio etched on your ankle. In any case, you have to admire a group that's trying to inject danceability back into jazz – straight into venerable Blue Note Records – because that instinct, naturally, is bound to stave off any imminent genre ossification. Hammond B-3 player Neal Evans, guitarist Eric Krasno, and drummer Alan Evans's latest album, Turn It Out, captures them live, punchy, and playing with guitarist John Scofield and bassist Oteil Burbridge, before they ventured out with the Dave Matthews Band last spring and were asked to open for the Rolling Stones, the only instrumental band to be plucked from the crowd. DJ Logic and Krasno's band Lettuce also play. Dec. 31, 10 p.m., DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., S.F. $100. (415) 626-1409. (Chun)