I'M NOT SURE how politics and Duh-bya came up with the Neptunes'-N.E.R.D.'s Pharrell Williams, but somehow it did – and being the stylish, mesh cap-trendsetting dude that he is, ready with an opinion for every season, he went for the jugular. "Well, I don't want to bad-mouth anybody, but he wears a teal tie, and he answers almost every other question with, 'Aaah,' " said the then-hot, now-absurdly superheated producer, slouching down the street on the outskirts of San Francisco's Chinatown. "That's just not the sign of someone who's polished for the job. I'm not saying he doesn't have the capacity or the potential, but I don't know – at the same time, within a week of him being in office, we bomb somebody. That's some bold shit. We're trying to get toward peace."

This was in May 2001 – way before the big bombs really began to drop and months before In Search of N.E.R.D., "Pass the Courvoisier," "Hot in Herre," and a barrage of other pop hits touched by Williams and Chad Hugo blew up. The pair, who were already becoming names for such compulsively grindworthy and listenable tracks as "Shake Ya Ass" and "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)," were in town trying to generate excitement for their own first solo project, N.E.R.D., downing rice plates at R&G Lounge, and idly picking up CD-Rs scattered on the street and using them as Frisbees.

Now it's crazy just trying to get the time of day from the two space boys from Neptune, presently aboard that fizzy-pop outing incarnate, the Sprite Liquid Mix Tour, which stops at the Chronicle Pavilion in Concord Aug. 23. Ironic considering how omnipresent their handiwork is on the radio – and how pervasive Williams's face is on MTV. It's not too early to dub 2003 the year of the Williams cameo. Who else could sell mainstream pop audiences on variations of essentially one idea – a falsetto, old-school soul vocal line – on three singles in the span of six months: Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful," Jay-Z's "Excuse Me, Miss," and Pharrell's own "Frontin," off N.E.R.D.'s upcoming album, The Neptunes Present ... Clones. Who'da thunk, on that breezy, sunny spring day two years ago, that those pesky Neptunes would pull off such a coup?

Williams and Hugo seemed a little more original than all that, resembling, well, music-obsessed nerds rather than scheming hook peddlers. What are you listening to nowadays, I asked.

"Stereolab," Williams said.

Really?

"Yeah. Man, I just fucking love those progressions – it's crazy. Hip-hop? I go back to the old school. I go listen to 'Nobody beats the bass, nobody beats the ...' – that shit. That's what's in the ride back home – that and probably Sergio Mendes. Because honestly, that shit takes me to another level, musically. Those changes are ridiculous."

Helping hands Sometimes it takes a brush with mortality to realize how many friends you have. That's the case with singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, a former member of S.F. early punk band the Nuns, and a member of the Rank and File and True Believers. Before an Arizona performance of his acclaimed play, By the Hand of the Father, in April, he began vomiting blood. He ended being hospitalized and diagnosed with complications from hepatitis C. "I was a mess," Escovedo said on the phone from Texas hill country, where he lives. Now he's preparing for an interferon program, taking a shot once a week as well as pills to end the virus in his system that's attacking his liver, the 52-year-old Escovedo told me. "At this point now I'm just trying to get healthy enough to start the program. In three months we'll know if this works or not."

Constant touring for many years has taken its toll: His immune system is shot, he has no medical insurance and can't get covered, his medicine costs $3,000 a month, and he has another procedure in the works. So his friends and managers are banding together to help. At Slim's on Sept. 2, Dave Alvin, Jonathan Richman, Peter Case, Chuck Prophet, the Iguanas, the Court and Spark, Jesse DeNatale, and others will help raise money for Escovedo's medical costs. Benefit concerts have already taken place in Austin and Chicago. New York, Calgary, Seattle, and Minneapolis fundraisers will follow.

Escovedo won't be at the S.F. date, though the Bay Area is still home to familia like Pete Escovedo and Sheila E. But he remembers his time here, from 1975 to '78, as a wild one. "I had just started playing guitar," he recalls. "The thing about punk rock in San Francisco that's important to remember is that it was extremely creative and open to interpretation. There were a lot of women involved at the time, and this was prior to the male-dominated suburban takeover, which had a lot of anger."

End of story Storyville had its finale July 26, and its successor in that S.F. space, 1751 Social Club, is already in the works. When it reopens in mid September, general manager Jeff Horgan told me, patrons will find the bar moved from the back room and replaced with a DJ booth. It's not over for Storyville-style hip-hop, though; the club, now owned by Keith Goodman of the Cellar, plans to have at least one night in addition to live music.... The Drive's zombie DJs have finally ground to a halt. San Francisco's classic rock AOR station, the Drive 95.7 FM – known round our quarters for its bizarre promo copy ("Why should you tell your friends about the Drive? Because they're your friends," and the almost-anti-black-music slogan "Between the doo-wop and the hip-hop came the best music ever made") delivered by heavily 'luded-beyond-white-bread announcers – woke up with a piece of straw dangling from its lips Aug. 11. Out are the less-than-played-out slabs o' rock and in is something called "My Country 95.7," which mixes '70s-era Merle Haggard with '00-vintage Shania Twain. New program director Ray Massie told me that Bonneville, which owns the station, saw an opportunity to fill a void for Bay Area C&W fans. And he added that listeners can even help with the programming. "We're trying to be focused on what the listeners want out of a radio station," Massie said. "It's kind of remarkable to let listeners steer the direction the station goes."

No fan is an island Billy Bradford, leader of a Bay Area group of Bruce Springsteen fans that load onto the "This Train" Yahoo news group, invited me to 'gate with the 70 or so member-strong contingent before the Boss's Pac Bell Park show Aug. 16. But first I had to know, was there an initiation? Would I be forced at Fender Esquire guitar-point to trot out a lame-a-zoid karaoke rendition of "Thunder Road"? Or asked to let loose with my "Bruuuuuuuce" moose call? Would I have to sit through the collected solo works of Nils Lofgren?

"Nah," the Castro Valley single father said. "We're just a bunch of knuckleheads that get together and go 'Whoo whoo, Bruce!' " he added happily, comparing the group to Deadheads before immediately backtracking. "Well, you won't find us with tie-dye clothes and buses. But we're all old and gray, and we have families and careers and kids. And if we can't follow Bruce around the country, we help each other buy tickets, gossip, and see old friends."

By the other Bay Area ballpark, R. Kelly definitely got an antihero's welcome at Oakland's Arena Aug. 15, when the nearly full house spent most of the show with their hands in the air like they just didn't care ... about Kelly's child pornography charges. Kelly did his best to impress, promising Oaktown a custom-built show, straight from the Chocolate Factory, and playing seemingly everything except "I Believe I Can Fly." Yeah, maybe he can't fly – we've all realized he's not Superman, but just a man, only a man, provoking a round of Jesus Christ Superstar as we drove past the blocked exits to Alameda, post-show, and inspiring us to wonder why he stopped singing (after a patch of very poor lip-synching) at one point during the show and just sat there, looking very sweaty and kinda teary, listening to his own vocals on a backing track. Call this the Bitchin' Contrition Tour, rather than simply the R. Kelly Legal Defense Fund outing. As one frank fan said before Ashanti's surprisingly no-frills set, "We want to see him before he goes back to jail." Ye of little faith.