I'm a bad clubkid -- I was supposed to pump my girl Monastat's Tuesday Trannyshack island birthday extravaganza, but with all the horridly yummy Mark Foley scandal unfolding, I plum forgot. Sorry Mona -- don't scratch my eyes out! Luckily, I heard it was packed and peeps loved it. Mona rules (she's everywhere these days) -- and you better watch out for her ...

Happy birthday lady!!!

And there's lots coming up this weekend you all should be aware of ...

Tonight's your last chance to catch hard rock courtesy of Alcoholocaust at the Golden Bull, 412 14th St., Oakland. Scott Alcoholocaust is throwing a last shindig before the joint closes Tuesday, Oct. 10. Alas - and it was so fun last night, dancing to Jay-Z and Michael Jackson in the shadows. Tonight, Oct. 8, the last Alcky show at GB includes Decry, La Plebe, Infect, Troublemaker, and Snatch and the Fingers. 7 p.m. $7. Rock it and weep.

By Mirissa Neff

In the midst of excursions to NYC, Reykjavik and Paris I spent last week in Berlin... here are some posts from the experience:

10/3
Generally Berlin reminds me a lot of SF/Oakland... the thrift-store aesthetic, the experimental vibe, people are very willing to go out on artistic limbs here. The city is quite sprawling and real estate is cheap... e.g., anyone with a creative idea can afford to set up a storefront. This doesn't mean that they will be successful... things seems to be in constant renewal. If a project doesn't work out people here seem fine with picking up and starting from scratch with something else. Perhaps that attitude has historical roots... the wall coming down, etc? Hmmmm....

Last night we went to an underground party where my host's friend Manuel was spinning. The party was very literally under ground... once we paid our $4 admission to a burly Austrian who was listening to honky tonk music on a transistor, we descended into the party via a shakey ladder propped up in a hole in the cement. The subterranean scene was very cool... tunnels full of brick arches with stalagtites hanging down, projections, art installations, a dj and a makeshift bar only serving beer, vodka (no mixers) and water. We grabbed a couple of Berliner beers and sat down to hear Manuel's super eclectic set... he played everything from German soccer anthems to the Aryan equivalent of Frank Zappa.

The King Kong Klub during a quiet moment...

Manuel was leaving to spin elsewhere and we followed. We ended up at the King Kong Klub... a bar saturated with red walls, hipsters and King Kong imagery. The scene had a full cast of characters...

Check out Ron Dorfman and Peter Nevard's 1970 documentary Groupies, a fave amongst employees at at least one adventurous record shop that ain't afraid of soul.

Who doesn't love free music? Can we all agree that despite its mammoth size and the weird experience of tearing through brambles and over big dogs, small children, and oldsters reading the Sunday paper, that Hardly Strictly Bluegrass wouldn't be quite the same if it wasn't free, free, free!?

Anyway here's even more for you cheapskates: we all know pop stars are increasingly making more appearances at, of all things, cellie stories (Chris Brown showed at a San Leandro Verizon store last week), but now phone and wireless companies are also getting behind music in other ways.

Tomorrow, Oct. 11, Flash Concerts (backed by Cingular Wireless and Sony Ericsson) present Chingy, free, at the Mezzanine. The dealie is that fans have to register to “Get in and Win” and sending the text message city code “SF” to “FLASH” (35274). Registrants will receive “Alerts” including: event details, exclusive free concert invites, VIP access, meet & greets and special music prizing. Text “SF” to “FLASH” or visit your local Cingular Wireless store for more details.

Then you're "Right Thurr," as the Chingster might say. One wonders how many Sony Ericssons the dude scored with this tie-in. Ah, something to contemplate when the doors open at 8:30 p.m. at 444 Jessie St., SF.

At least you didn't have to sit through any commercials...

Guardian contributor Kate Izquierdo recently spoke to Long Winters' John Roderick – and found him to be quite the eloquent, provocative wag. Chalk it up to his Welsh heritage? Here’s the rest of her talk with the man.

Bay Guardian: Rolling Stone recently described you as a “folkie.” Does this come as a surprise to you? How would you describe yourself at this point if you had to?

John Roderick: Well, obviously Rolling Stone continues to be the most culturally relevant arbiter and go-to "paper of record" for all things pertaining to American music, but in this particular case they were referring to a live, solo, acoustic performance I did recently in New York, and so I think they can be forgiven for mistaking me as a folk singer. After all, who else would stand alone playing an acoustic guitar? Lesbians and Communists! I'm lucky they didn't call me a Trotskyite. In truth, as everyone knows, I'm not a folk singer but a wily gypsy/klezmer trickster and balladeer in the great tradition of my people, the Welsh.

Club BOOTIE is a San Francisco club treasure -- as our fabulous young intern Justin Juul was to find out last weekend. Read below of his wondrous adventures with the queens of monthly mash-up nightlife -- even if he didn't cross-dress like I told him to. Hmph. -- Marke B.

What Justin didn't wear

I have danced exactly five times in my life. Once, at a rave in Los Angeles, the designer drugs took control of my body and simply refused to let go. I cut a goddamn rug that night, dancing for hours, oblivious to dirty glances from the jungle-kid/breakers on a mission to ridicule those with comparatively bad moves. The other time was at a rave in the Inland Empire when my illegal substance cocktail made it impossible for me to sit still. I climbed up on a speaker and shook myself rotten for six hours straight. It was glorious. Then there was that other time at an outdoor rave in the high desert when... you get the picture.

Don't hate Bay Area singer-songwriter Matt Bauer because he looks like a lost, somewhat menacing member of Neurosis. Hate him because he's so damn good: the Kentucky native's 2004 disc, Nandina, was frickin' amazing, and his latest EP, Wasps and White Roses, featuring Jolie Holland, is equally excellent. Nick Drake, Iron and Wine's Sam Beam, and all ye guitarsmiths, look out.

Bauer performs with Tarnation and Peggy Honeywell on Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 9:30 p.m. at Hemlock Tavern, SF. $7.

New fabulous intern Chris Cooney hit up DJ Bearded Lady's new Tuesday night shindig, Chilidog (named after the Guardian's second favorite sex act) at the Transfer in the Castro, and came back covered in buns. Check it out. All pics of cute gay boys by my favorite local artist "the legendary Darwin Bell" a.k.a "grandma with a camera" a.k.a "the Polaroid hemorrhoid" (just kidding, lover!) -- Marke B.

Who could have predicted that by fall ‘06, the Transfer Bar would own the freshest lineup of dj nights in the Castro?

Bearded Lady puts on the dog

Most nightspot makeovers in the neighborhood end up a little like bad collagen shots, all shiny and soulless and musically cloned. There are plenty of new choices if you’re looking for a place to throw down cosmo’s and lipsync to the Black Eyed Peas on a video loop, because everyone loves a good pop remix, especially when the lyrics are easy to remember for drunk people. But too many bars packed with tv screens and boys singing about lovely lady lumps can be discouraging.

Oh, Hump Day - what would we do without you, positioned perfectly between weekend bliss and workday toil? And who would expect so many intriguing shows to crop up in this humdrum time slot (to think we all wrote it off as Project Runway's)?

In short, check magnifico, metal-some Japanese guitar overlords Boris at Slim's tonight, Oct. 18. Why? A humongoid gong, smoke machine, Tokyo-based loudness par excellence, and the most kick-ass lady distortion peddler around: Wata.

Elsewhere, if you're not getting down with SF's premier glitch mavens and noise-makers Matmos at Great American Music Hall, trot over to Bottom of the Hill tonight for London's Archie Bronson Outfit - out and about with a new disc, Derdang Derdang on Domino. Some compare 'em to Pere Ubu, Son House, Monks, and Faust -- all at the same time! Whoa, Nellie, watch them outta-hand allusions. Still, isn't your curiosity stirred - and shaken?

And if there's anything left of you by Friday, Oct. 20, and you're not already planning to check out Yo La Tengo at Fillmore or have tickets to Beirut at Great American Music Hall in your hot lil' ham fists, you might want to mosey down to the Rickshaw Stop for an early show with the Village Green from Portland, Ore. As you'd expect, these doods display much respect to Anglo rock forebears - and they add a dash of contempo jitteriness. Different drugs, you say? Get outta here.

So if you're not rambling down to LA for Arthur Nights - I'm still contemplating making the drive down for Sun Ra Arkestra, White Magic (!), Watts Prophets (!!), and Ruthann Friedman, special n'all - you really oughta check out Oxford Collapse. Dudes make raucous jagged indie rock of a fine order - and the NYC trio have a new album out on Sub Pop, Remember the Night Parties. Sounded just swell to me. And there's a pic of a partially clothed human on the cover. Make what you will of that.

Oxford Collapse play with those harmonizers the Jogges Saturday, Oct. 21, at Hotel Utah. I'll take any excuse to scamper across the freeway exit like a frightened deer...

The teen star of John Sayles' Matewan, Will Oldham could have ended up like Macauley Culkin - home alone, something of a charicature. Instead he became a model for, one imagines, Jenny Lewis -- as well as, in some ways, members of a freak-folk/out-folk/whatever-folk movement, folks that go their own way in a somehow communal spirit. And perhaps that’s because Oldham is so in touch with a spirit -- call it synchronicity or divine providence -- that allows him to thread together Old Joy, his 1997 Will Oldham album, Joya (Drag City), Madonna, Emily Dickinson, and latest Bonnie "Prince" Billy full-length, The Letting Go.

I spoke to Oldham about The Letting Go and his new film, Old Joy, and wrote about it in "Sonic Reducer." Here's the rest of the interview.

Bay Guardian: How did The Letting Go come about?

Will Oldham: I met the man who recorded it, Valgeir [Sigurosson] when I toured with Bjork a few years ago, and ran into him again last summer, and we just discussed doing something together, and at the time I was finishing up this set of songs. Every set of songs are a little bit special, but these had, I guess, a little bit more drama and gothic horror than in the past.

I also started to speak with Paul [Oldham] and Dawn McCarthy about doing some work on the rcord. And Valgeir had some experience with capturing beautiful, dramatic experiences on record.

Visual art curator and Angeleno contributor Carol Cheh snagged the final dregs of Arthur Nights 2006 in LA on Sunday, Oct. 22. Here are her brief impressions of art and architecture:

Kyp Malone stands alone.
Courtesy of Arthur magazine online.

I arrived at the downtown Palace Theatre just in time to catch TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone, Fiery Furnaces, Comets on Fire, and as much of Ocrilim as I could stand (about five seconds).

Malone offered a soulful and utterly compelling a cappella performance. The Furnaces did their groovy, organ-based, '70s-styled thing…and Comets on Fire lived up to their name (although the axes-of-the-gods jam sessions were really not my cup of tea - at least not on this night). All three delivered very good sets.

I think the star of the evening, however, was really the Palace, an old-fashioned Hollywood movie theatre built in 1911. Its ruinous grandeur and air of faded opulence, along with cool period features like a crank elevator and a deluxe powder area in the ladies room, delivered ambiance galore for this knighted gathering of the über-hip. The free ice cream rocked, too.

By G.W. Schulz

Old Man Gloom first formed as a side project for members of the Boston bands Converge, Isis and Cave In. In some senses, OMG was bigger and more destructive than anything its members had done with their primary outfits.

Nonetheless, Old Man Gloom has made few live appearances over the years (including a rare and devastatingly loud visit to Bottom of the Hill a couple of years ago) despite four colossal records that sway dramatically from haunting ambience to absolutely vicious breakdowns complete with full, crunching guitars and guttural screams that will shred your face off. The problem is, no one in Old Man Gloom has really had time to take the band further (or, as I've heard, the band thrives on its rarity.)

Guardian intern Aaron Sankin checked out the Incubus show put on Verizon Wireless on Oct. 20; here's what he thought:

Incubus + Verizon Wireless = Synergy!

The LG VX8500 Chocolate phone is available from Verizon Wireless for $149.99. It has an iPod-style touch wheel, Bluetooth compatibility, a digital music player, and a 1.3 megapixel digital camera that can take both pictures and movies.

I assume it can also make and receive cellular telephone calls, even though it’s capacity to do so isn’t really advertised anywhere.

If my phone were to break suddenly, such as if I were to absentmindedly drop it in a toilet during a heated conversation with my bookie (I never said to bet on the Mets!) or have it accidentally fall from my pocket while running from the zombie hordes (they’re everywhere!), I would seriously consider taking a look at this phone.

The people at Verizon Wireless should be happy because they worked like hell to put this idea in my brain. The other group of people who should be very pleased with themselves are Incubus because they joined with Verizon Wireless to have a special private concert at Bimbo’s on Oct. 20 in the most epic feat of techno-musical cross-promotion since Bono realized that Apple loved iPods almost as much as he loved himself.

First, a disclaimer: My relationship with the band Incubus is fairly complex. I first heard about them through a friend when I was in eighth grade. This was during their early period when all they wanted to do was be like Primus and years before any modern rock radio station would touch their stuff.

From the first moment I heard their music, I loved it. It was funky and spazzy and, most importantly, it was mine. Incubus was the first band that I unconditionally loved that no one else had heard of. It made me feel underground, important and cool (the last one being especially important to an uncoordinated middle-schooler looking for angle to talk to girls).

Once they broke into the mainstream, I started liking them less and less. With their albums Make Yourself and Morning View, they seemed to loose some of what made them exciting and distinctive, and got lost in the slop of the myriad or post-grunge alt-metal bands. Two years ago, they came out with Crow Left of the Murder and it was the first new Incubus album that I liked even half as much as the first time I heard them way back in eighth grade.

Anyway, this event was a private party held Verizon Wireless in support of the LG Chocolate phone, which was just released in America last month. When people bought the phone, they could enter a contest to win tickets to this show. If they were one of the lucky winners, they got an email on their phone that contained a bar code. This bar code was their ticket into the concert. Instead of scanning a piece of paper, the security guard at the door scanned the phones.

My phone cannot do this. It can, on the other hand, play Journey’s “Wheel In The Sky” whenever someone calls. While this has never gotten me into a concert, it did once get my into a bar conversation with drunk 35-year-old investment banker who later bought me a rum and coke because, “Journey is awesome!” Yes, yes they are.

Once inside, the real silliness began. There was a screen next to the stage where people could send text messages from their phones and see them on the screen. The messages ran the gambit from “Incubus rox” to “I love my new phone”. Joe Strummer rolled in his grave, and Gene Simmons wished he thought of it first. I tried texting, “Once Incubus killed a pirate in support of the Basque separatists,” but it didn’t make the cut. Why must the telecom industry continually spit on the proud Basque people day in and day out? It truly crushes my heart.

But running up people’s cell phone bills with needless text message charges wasn’t the only goal of the night. Incubus was also there to shoot the video for their upcoming single, “Anna Molly”. Much like Verizon did with its customer service, Incubus decided to outsource the production of their video. They told everyone there with the new phone to take videos of the band playing and send it in to them and they would eventually painstakingly edit the clips together to make the band’s video. I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is probably terrible. But hey, at least they’re trying.

Incubus opened the show with, “Anna Molly." It sounded like Pearl Jam. In fact, it sounded a lot like Pearl Jam. This is neither a coincidence nor is it a bad thing. They recorded their new album, Light Grenades, with Pearl Jam’s longtime producer. Vocalist Brandon Boyd even pounded a bottle of red wine onstage like Eddie Vedder seems to do at every show.

Their set was incredibly solid. Their newer stuff sounded great, particularly “Sick Sad Little World,” and everyone there appeared to know ever word to every song, which always bodes well for a band. And when they played a couple songs from their first album, I wasn’t the only person there who got noticeably excited (there were at least three others).

I guess the whole thing was pretty successful. It made me want to buy a phone I have no real need for and made me remember what I loved about this band when I was a pimply-faced eighth-grader trying to appear hip. I believe, in the business world, they call they synergy.

Andrew Hill's quintet was amazing the other night - too bad you weren't there on that sleepy Sunday night to catch 'em. Of note in particular were trumpet player Charles Tolliver and drummer Eric McPherson. Hill himself was frail, reedy voiced, but relentlessly inventive.

On a completely different note, check out Madeline on Orange Twin Records at the Stork Club Nov 7. A Cat Power-esque folkie to watch for.