Guided by rage

I ADMIT I'VE been able to ignore the news lately, being heartbroken and sickened by the goddamned presidential election, but I wasn't able to do the same with the jackass next to me at the Nov. 13 performance by Guided by Voices, now on the final lap of their last tour, "The Electrifying Conclusion." Let's say it wasn't exactly a Limp Bizkit retrospective of Rapestock 2000's greatest misdeeds, but my final memories of GBV are definitely going to be colored by my dust-up in the so-called mosh pit at the Fillmore.

WTF?! What did I do to deserve this? as the kids once said in Sunday school. I've been led around by GBV since Vampire on Titus and my first glimpse of the group, stripes and all, in the early '90s at the I-Beam. I've had some of my best concert experiences at GBV shows, pogoing with those other maniacs in front, but I've never quite gotten as close to poking another GBV freak in the puss, or felt so outta place.

But then maybe I should have paid more attention to the lay of the venue. If the reviewers' boxes are designed for poverty-stricken music writers in search of their next press junket, the occasional aging rock star, and testosterone-laden A&E functionaries and their stripper girlfriends, then right in front of the stage is for number-one fans, ladies who love roadies, and the deafened with poor eyesight who just want to hold on to a plank to get a feel for the beat. The back of the joint is for pussies – probably because of the need for quick and easy access to a litter box.

For old times' sake, I couldn't stay put in a box. And the sad thing about this final GBV tour (do we all believe this is so?) is that pussy is probably an insult to the dudes near the stage, enjoying the current degenerate phase of GBV. Resident songwriting genius-vocalist Bob Pollard was rockin' the Dockers as best as he could while slurring witticisms about "alt-cunt" and how "rock is hanging on by the skin of its ass." But he couldn't quite swing the mic as he or Roger Daltry had in the past, and his slurred rants about Michael Stipe ("He's so weird!"), Willie Nelson ("Fuck him" for praising Matchbox 20), and Texas (general gripes about Duh-bya and Lyle Lovett) were garbled. When guitarist Nate Farley finally took Pollard's mic in hand and gently rewrapped it with tape, the gesture seemed both kindly and kinda depressing. "My friend who lives in Ohio says everyone in town thinks of Bob as their drunk uncle," a friend said, watching Pollard parcel out bottles of Bud from the band's hamper.

Fun-loving, rock-out drunks are one thing – angry, intimidating drunks bring out the fightin' side of me. I was just minding my own business, taking notes, when some preppy jackass knocked me on the head with his elbow, after some zealous pogoing. He apologized and attempted a bear hug. I told him to get his hands off me. He pogoed into my personal space. I pushed back. He started arguing. I argued back. He continued grousing. I thought about clamming up, considering he was a foot taller than me and I never quite got around to taking those kung-fu classes, but instead I kept it up.

My female friend wisely got in between us, and as he towered over her shouting at the stage, and maybe at us, I decided I'd had enough, looked for security, and got him thrown out. And then I felt guilty for ruining his, uh, fun. Was I being a bitch? Was I totally overreacting, for believing I could see a band and not get yelled at? Was I wrong to think I had a right to stand in one spot, unmolested by the neo-frat boys who've adopted my once-adored GBV, a band that's probably chosen the perfect moment to throw it in, as their leader and their minions teetered on the brink of thuggish parody?

Still, I loved hearing songs like "Propeller," "Hot Freaks," and "I Am the Scientist," and even guilty hi-fi pleasures such as "Girls of Wild Strawberries," "Teenage FBI," and "Glad Girls." Just save me from my fellow fans. And I mean fellows, because of the quotient of beefy bruisers who just wanted to get bombed and collapse in a pile – like the dude who climbed onstage to say he'd be honored to pass out there, before doing just that. Again, maybe it was me, but it was depressing to see sundry fans scramble onstage just to grab a beer – as if they were making performance art out of wobbling to the fridge for a late-night snack – until the stage-climbing reached its apex as more than a dozen surrounded Pollard. He looked small, wizened, and paranoid when the mob was finally ordered to disperse. "The club's closed, the club's closed," he droned, staggering around and looking like a scientist horrified by the monster he'd created.

Burning up Bonfire Madigan, otherwise known as Madigan Shive and a winner in last year's Bay Guardian hot contest, is still on fire, touring with Laibach. And when that antifascism juggernaut is over, the San Francisco resident begins recording with producer Hal Willner in New York City, and there's a chance a few of Willner's many collaborators – including Laurie Anderson – will appear on the album. "Hal's great. He's like, 'We need to make the record that will introduce you to the rest of the world, because you got street cred for days!' " Shive said with a laugh, from Boston.

Cat food for thought MF Doom, a.k.a. Daniel Dumile, a.k.a. Zev Love X, has cooked up a new concept album, MM, Food? (Rhymesayers), by switching up the letters of his name. Extending the metaphor through "Rapp Snitch Knishes" and "Fig Leaf Bi-Carbonate," Doom stops just short of his current food obsession, Mexican shrimp corn chowder. "Just wanted to go back to basics, y'know," Doom told me. "I always add a little old-school formula to my joint, so this is in the same vein as, like, Operation Doomsday stuff, which is really like old-school b-boy favorites, slightly flipped a little bit different." He might blend Stetsasonic drums with an old Sesame Street sample ("Right before Spider-Man came on like 'Blaaah!' ") as he did on the closing track, "Kookies." It's a trick his recent collaborators De La Soul would appreciate. Meanwhile Doom swears the mask will never come off. "This was the way that the character could kind of get the message across that it don't matter what you look like, yo, it's all about the skills," he explained from his home in Atlanta, where he said he lays as low as an average Joe and a married father of two. Plus, "I think a lot of people can relate to the villain like he's the one that didn't always get the girl or the one who wasn't the coolest guy all the time.... That's why I said, 'Lemme wear the mask. So I speak for any one of those cats.' "

Wannabe club owners, hear ye, hear ye Lisa Nola, owner of Oakland's Mile High Club, is selling either the property and the business – or simply the business. Take your pick. Though the club's growing at a decent rate, she said, she underestimated her funding and she found she needed help running the venue. Meanwhile the club will honor the scheduled shows through the end of the year, including the last Speak Easily event on Nola's birthday, Dec. 7. "We won't be going out on a quiet note," she told me. "I'm incredibly sad, but on other hand I'm really overworked, so it's twofold." BTW: RIP, ODB.

Bonfire Madigan plays Tues/23, 8 p.m., DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., S.F. $20. (415) 626-1409. MF Doom performs Thurs/18, 9 p.m., Slim's, 333 11th St., S.F. $15. (415) 522-0333. Feel tipsy? E-mail kimberly@sfbg.com.

Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.