By Ben Richardson

I don’t really kick it with many “tweens,” so I was pretty slow on the uptake when it comes to the whole “Hannah Montana” thing. In fact, I had to be informed of her existence by a colleague of mine here at the Guardian: Duncan Davidson.

“What!” he exclaimed one day, sending six-odd high-gauge earrings aquiver and clenching exclamatory muscles beneath his elaborately tattooed forearms. “You’ve never heard of Hannah Montana!?”

Davidson has a daughter situated at the hot-pink epicenter of Hannah Montana’s target demographic, which explains his familiarity with Disney’s newest pop princess. As her legend grows, however, it will be the people in my situation who will have the explaining to do. With the force of Disney’s PR and multimedia machine arrayed behind her, Hannah Montana is gradually turning into a kind of cultural juggernaut, proving once again that if you reach a certain threshold of 12-year-old approval, nothing can stand in your way.

It's not exactly a Prague Spring, but hope springs eternal that there will be intriguing sounds in the house when venerable Czech underground avant-proggists Uz Jsme Doma come to SF. Cod Liver Oil (Skoda) is the name of the Teplice-based combo's new CD game - get a dose when they stop here, after what looks to be a moody tour of Praguetowns across America. It happens at the Hemlock Tavern Saturday, Nov. 3.

By Tim Redmond
I suppose Child Protective Services will come and arrest me now that I’m about to admit that I took my kindergarten-age daughter to see a rock concert in Oakland, on a school night, and kept her up until well past 10 pm without a proper dinner … But what can I say: Vivian loves Hannah Montana. She has all the CDs. She watches the TV show. She puts on her best rock-star outfits and sings the songs, over and over, and dances and tells me that she’s going to be a rock star. She was Hannah Montana for Halloween. So when I learned at 4:45 pm Thursday that there were two review tickets available, I grabbed Viv, fed her half a cheese sandwich and loaded her on BART.

For those of you who don’t follow tween-age popular culture, Hannah Montana is a phenomenon. The Chron kind of blasted her a couple of days ago -- and for good reason: The hype is out of control. So are the ticket prices.

And yes, we live in a culture where parents will do anything to please the little brats, including shelling out a fortune for a performance that lasted an hour and 15 minutes (almost to the minute; Disney runs a tight ship, and unlike any rock show I’ve ever been to, this one started and ended exactly on schedule).

So I should probably feel bad that I’ve not only allowed my daughter to be exposed to this, but actively encouraged it. I should feel terrible about the materialistic messages in the songs and the over-sexualized image of a 14-year-old girl prancing around onstage with male and female dancers who were all at least five years her senior.

I should feel rotten. I should go seek counseling from some proper-parenting group. I should be ashamed of myself.

And here’s what happened:

The moment Hannah Montana came onstage, after an utterly predictable 30-warm-up by a boy band called the Jonas Brothers, Vivian was transfixed. Her eyes opened like saucers, and she got this smile on her face that I will never forget as long as I live.

And frankly, the kid (the one on the stage, that is) knows how to perform. I’m not a big fan of the Work, as it were, but you have to admit, for a 14-year-old, Ms. Montana has astonishing presence. She sang (I think actually sang, not lip synched) her songs with plenty of energy and managed to dominate and control the stage even when she was surrounded by as many as a dozen other seasoned professional singers and dancers, most of whom looked to be in the early 20s.

At least, when she was Hannah Montana, she did.

Halfway through the show, she went backstage, ditched the wig and the TV persona, and came back out as herself, Miley Cyrus. Somehow, the energy wasn’t the same; I think Cyrus has got the Hannah Montana thing down, but hasn’t quite figured out how to be who she actually is. The last few songs reminded me that the person up on stage was too young to drive a car and barely old enough for high school. For her sake, I hope the Disney thing passes pretty soon and she can stop being a pre-packaged icon and start trying to learn to be Miley Cyrus; she might even turn out to be good at it.

But overall, I have to say, Viv and me had a blast. By a few minutes into the first set, my girl was standing on her chair, dancing madly and singing along. The earplugs I’d carefully installed to protect her young ear drums were ripped out and thrown on the floor (“I’ll put them back in when I WANT to, daddy!”). She’d kicked her cup of soda water into the people behind her, soaking the jacket on the back of her chair. When the rather uptight mom behind me warned that the chairs were tippy and my daughter was in danger and had already spilled her drink, I smiled and said, “it’s all rock and roll;” the woman looked at me in horror.

The place was packed with parents and daughters; our seats were pretty near the bar, so I was able to grab a bud light or two. The tweenage shrieking was almost unbearable, but Vivian didn’t care, and as a veteran of many, many Grateful Dead shows, I have to say it was no more obnoxious than the spaced-out dudes swaying and mumbling “Jerry, man.”

I mean, it was a rock show. In every way that’s right and wrong, for all the best and worst reasons …. And I knew that my daughter would be tired and crabby the next day and her ears will be ringing and she didn’t finish her homework, but fuck it: She danced all the way home.

Jimmy Page back in the day. Photo courtesy of Alex
Reisner's Led Zeppelin site.

A little message from Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, issued by Warner Bros. today:

As you all know by now I was regrettably put in a situation where I had to postpone my performance at the Ahmet Ertegun Benefit show, on Nov. 26, due to a fractured finger. We have now rescheduled this show to take place, at the same venue, on Dec. 10.

In doing so I was very conscious of the fact that many people are traveling great distances to attend. I do want to let everyone know that this decision was unavoidable. My apologies to anyone who has been inconvenienced by this change.

I would also like to thank everyone else involved for their help with making this change. Harvey Goldsmith, the trustees of the Ahmet Ertegun Foundation, and of course, the other artists who so willingly agreed to join us on the show.

I look forward to the 10th December!

Jimmy Page

By Ben Richardson

Have you ever listened to a song and thought, wow, I've definitely heard that part before, in a different song? Vanilla Ice's oft-derided thievery of the bass part from Queen's "Under Pressure" is probably the best-known example, but - surprise - it turns out that riff-plagiarism has been rampant for years, especially in the dogmatic world of heavy metal and hard rock. Thanks to the keen ear of YouTube user BaknBlack, we provide you with a nine-volume compendium pilfered, ripped-off, and thinly disguised rock: Metal That Sounds Like Other Metal.

By Anna Mantzaris

Teddy Thompson (that’s Thompson as in spawn of Richard and Linda) may be an English boy by birth, but the 31-year-old's rock-folk-country sound will make you think he’s spent years fine-tuning his sound deep in the land of the American south.

Taking on the greats - Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, George Jones - Thompson’s latest CD, Up Front and Down Low(Verve Forecast), is a thoughtful collection of interpretations of C&W classics and not-so-well-known gems, with dad Richard and pal Rufus Wainwright lending their talents. A New Yorker by residence, Thompson takes his show on the road opening for Suzanne Vega; he appears Monday, Nov. 12, at the Fillmore.

Bay Guardian: How did Up Front and Down Low come about? Why an album of covers?

Teddy Thompson: I came home after touring after the last record for a year. I didn’t have a lot to do. I started just recording some songs for fun, but I liked the way it came out and I thought maybe it would make a good side-project album.

By Todd Lavoie

Bet you didn't see this one coming. I sure as hell didn't, not even in my wildest music-nerd tag-team reveries. Yep, I might've floated off into la-la land over the what-ifs and fancy-thats of pairing such unlikelies as PJ Harvey/Del tha Funkee Homosapien or Dolly Parton/Spiritualized or even Bryan Ferry/CocoRosie, but somehow I'd never gotten around to scratchin' my noggin over what would happen if Robert Plant and Alison Krauss ended up in the same studio for a patch of time. Somehow a Neko Case/D'Angelo collab seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation from your humble Guardian blogger, but a meet-up between the sweetest voice in bluegrass-pop and Mr. Banshee-Wail himself? Ah, that's just crazy.

Or is it? Call it a lark, call it a sign of the apocalypse, call it a coup for the rest of us, but one of the greatest who'da thunks of our time has arrived: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss recently released Raising Sand (Rounder), and it's breathtaking. No kidding. It's almost as if they've always worked together - yep, it's that good.

Much of the credit should be given to producer T-Bone Burnett, he of the miracle sepia-tone touch, the man behind the rustic charms and warm glows of Gillian Welch's Revival (Acony), Elvis Costello's King of America (Columbia), and the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack (Mercury). (And no, don't let that last one put you off. Sure, maybe you too found yourself maxed-out on the banjo-and-holler-fest after every single coffeehouse and café played the sweet holy hell outta that thing back in 2000 and 2001, but enough time has passed to be able to listen again with a fresh pair of ears. Go on, give it a play. It really is a marvel.)

By Ben Richardson

November is upon us, and cult prog-emo masterminds Coheed and Cambria (Coheed for short) play the Warfield this week, touring behind their new album, Good Apollo, I’m a Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow (take that, Fiona Apple). The album - their fourth - serves as the concluding chapter in a sweeping back-story that has served as the fundament for the entire Coheed catalog, which chronicles the abstruse adventures of a pair of put-upon intergalactic badasses, "Coheed" and “Cambria.”

Hearing Coheed for the first time is a divisive experience, and I’ll confess that without something specific to latch onto I would have written them off based on the singing alone. Frontperson Claudio Sanchez favors a dulcet falsetto that often elicits comparisons to Geddy Lee, the similarly polarizing vocalist of Rush, and I was lucky to stumble upon a track on their first release that enabled me to allay my falsetto fears and gradually learn to appreciate Sanchez’s high-register crooning. The track is called “Delirium Trigger,” and it begins with this verse:

We're now / Up here alone / Terror on the intercom / Can someone save us?
Systems malfunction / Blast it this damn machine / Over and out captain.
Something lurks / Creeps on the counter top / Somewhere behind you
Parasitic cyst / I can't stand to watch / It's coming up and out of your chest.

These lyrics combine with an eerie, plaintive 6/8 groove to create an atmosphere of dread, and, on the strength of that last line, start to sound a hell of a lot like the original cast recording of Alien: The Musical. As a huge fan of the Ridley Scott movie and its attendant sequels, I found my attention immediately piqued. Sure, the whole chest-bursting thing was a little derivative, but if you’re going to crib, shouldn’t you crib from the best?

By Erik Morse

Grand Ole Opry mainstay and sartorial icon Porter Wagoner, one half of the great duet Porter and Dolly team, died of lung cancer in Nashville on Oct. 28 just days before Halloween.

The country musician was the epitome of the “hard workin’ man,” whose declining health in recent years failed to sideline a career that continued to entertain young and old through 50 years at the Opry. In addition to the critically received comeback Wagonmaster (Anti), a darkly psychedelic album released this summer, Wagoner made a one-time appearance in July at Madison Square Garden opening for the White Stripes. On his death bed he was surrounded by family, musicians and friends, and his one-time singing partner Dolly Parton. According to an Associate Press article, Opry vice president and general manager Pete Fisher said of Wagoner: “His passion for the Opry and all of country music was truly immeasurable.” Wagoner’s funeral ceremony was appropriately at the Grand Ole Opry House this past week.

Much like another recent passing musician, Lee Hazlewood, whose incredible career was often reduced to a footnote in the rise of partner Nancy Sinatra, Wagoner was similarly touted as the man who discovered Parton in the late 1960s. In truth, his work in country-western extended to the post-WW II days of Louvin Brothers-style folk with a local Missouri band, the Blue Ridge Boys, and on TV’s Ozark Jubilee.

By Chris DeMento

One can't help heaping expectations upon a show like this - the Nov. 2 appearance by Brother Ali, Ghostface, Rakim, and the Rhythm Roots Allstars at Mezzanine: three big-name emcees, a 10-piece backband, a sold-out venue. It turned out to be fairly low-key evening, what with all the civility, the smoky supplication of so many mature hip-hop fans.

Brother Ali opened with a lot of righteousness, hyped Rakim and Ghostface, validated himself, then closed with a very clean, very tight freestyle. Ghostface made the most of his well-recognized Fishscale material and turned out some welcome oldies: 30 seconds of "Daytona 500" satisfied a craving that had been gnawing at me ever since some asshole ate my Ironman disc like eight years ago. Likewise, Rakim's third-act performance called up more memories for me: the fragment of "Mahogany" he played was a real treat, same with versions of other decades-old rhymes like "Microphone Fiend" and "Don't Sweat the Technique." I was sated, but I can't say I was exactly inspired by the music. Despite the spot-on efforts of the Rhythm Roots Allstars, who did a thorough job of imagining all the live tracks for each of the three MCs, it sounded like the same old hip-hop you knew and loved - the same old hip-hop that you still know and love, but at a greater distance.

Not to say old is bad... just old. Ghostface himself asked the crowd how many thirty-somethings there were in attendance, and the crowd returned a roar that probably shouldn't have come as a surprise. Then he encouraged all to remember the late ODB, taking pause to reflect on the "'All I Got Is You' days." This sort of nostalgia helps preserve the history of the art form. Indeed, much of the show seemed suspended, freshly dipped (thanks to the band), in a glass jar of formaldehyde labeled "hip-hop classic."

Cannibal Corpse really does cross all boundaries.

The Washington Post’s website has good news for hipsters everywhere. After all these years of crying “sell out!” everytime a band – particularly an obscure, culty, indie band – lends a song to a TV commercial, music purists can now quantify exactly how much their act of choice has strayed from the path of righteousness.

It’s all thanks to the Moby Quotient calculator, named for the electronic artist (arguably) most famous for lending his songs for commercial endeavors (and subsequently making us all sick of them, and him). This simple, yet brilliant online calculator uses an equation that measures the disconnect between the product and rock’n’roll’s principles, the sacredness of the song, the origins of the band Are they a notoriously anti-establishment punk group? Or are they a boy band created by a reality show?), the artist’s artistic reputation, how much the artist needs the money, and how long it’s been since the artist’s heydey. This is, of course, all subjective, since readers rate the bands themselves and there’s no way to determine exactly how sacred John Lennon’s “Imagine” is, or how underground Imogen Heap is considered.

Rocket scientists have nothing on these mathematical geniuses.

By Todd Lavoie

Looking for something sass-alicious to wrap your ears around? Something deep and soulful and dripping with attitude? Former Moloko vocalist Roisin Murphy has just released her second solo disc, Overpowered (EMI), and it's a floor-burner. What a way to spend an hour and work off some cold-weather calories - looks like Murphy is several steps further into divahood.

I'm picky about my divas. Sorry, but a set of bottomless lungs and an octave-leaping vocal range ain't always a sure-fire point-of-entry into Divaland for me - otherwise, I'd have to include the likes of Mariah Carey as part of the soundtrack to my quest to get in touch with my more feminine side. Nah, the Glitter girl can keep her bird-squawks to herself, and while we're at it, a great big pass on J-Lo and Whitney (is it even relevant to bring the latter up at this point, I wonder as her shame-spiral/ future Lifetime movie fodder lifestyle keeps her careening further and further from the mic). All style and no substance - and even the notion of style is up for debate in these cases - makes for a pretty lousy diva recipe, the way I see it. Where's the depth? Where's the soul? Don't we deserve more than just mere artifice?

And don't even ask me about Fergie.

By Benedict Sinclair

Sometimes there’s a mood. One where dessert must coat the human drama. You need a pleasure, perhaps a guilty one. The kind of sublimity you’ll find in the songwriting of Dan Wilson, Grammy Award-winning craftsman behind the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” and frontperson for alt-rockers Semisonic. Wilson once penned the Grammy-nominated radio classic “Closing Time” with the band. Nowadays he’s mechanically churning out sweet, catchy, safe, comfortable songs about the ladies of his pop life.

His latest release, Free Life, is mixed in the direction of lite Nigel Godrich: its clean and balanced sonic landscape focuses on a sparse set of pleasing soft-rock ballads about relationship politics. There's a dash of lush country, a sprinkling of candy chords, a hint of Coldplay, and a smidgen of chorus harmonies. For better at times and worse at others, Wilson also reveals a '90s alternative attitude beneath his polished top layers.

As traditional as the album is there’s something to be said for its professionalism. Wilson’s a born performer, as he will surely prove on Sunday, Nov. 11, opening for the equally lush folkalist Sondre Lerch at the Swedish American Music Hall, above Café du Nord. Yet Wilson’s lyrics aren’t written or placed in a terribly evocative way - definitely his weak spot here. “Runnin, all around all around / all kinds of beautiful,” he sings between verses composed of toss-away free advice on “All Kinds."

By Todd Lavoie

Breaking up, breaking down, pulling yourself together, and plunging back into the dating scene to start all over again - sound familiar? Most of us have trod down that road before - the avenue leading us through the entire tumultuous cycle of doomed romance. Oh, the drama! While there certainly are stops along the journey that can be a real hoot - the thrill of discovery, the razzle-dazzle of courtship - later on, many of the landscapes can turn rather damn ugly for a while before things start looking up again.

Eventually, with a bit of persistence, the road will loop right back to the beginning, up with the pretty scenery which lured you within in the first place. Canadian popsters Stars are the audio-tour equivalent of this trek, but here's the thing: these guides tend to skip right on through the picture-postcard stuff in favor of focusing on what lay farther down the road. The tussles, the tugs-of-war, the tongue-lashings, and then ultimately the breaking up and breaking down and moving on - that's their turf, their area of authority. So how the hell do they make all of that strain and strife so appealing, so breathtakingly rip-roaring? How do they convince so many hopeful romantics to hop on such a bumpy ride? Get your answers this Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 13 and 14, when Stars storm the Bimbo's stage and explain it all.

As a longtime member of one of those oh-so-sickening "happy loving couples" Joe Jackson sneered about all those years ago from his new wave bachelor pad, maybe I'm no longer an expert on the peaks and troughs of the dating scene - if I ever possessed that sort of wisdom, I gave it up long ago when I met my match. It's been quite a while since I've been single in the city, and yet a spin of a Stars album can send me back to those days quicker than anything, and - here's a bonus - without resorting to banal chick-flick-isms and the like. Honestly, why does so much so-called "sensitive" art (and maybe I'm being generous here by calling it "art" in the first place) sacrifice intelligence in the process? Me, I'd much rather dip my ears into something a bit more substantial. And that's the draw of these Montrealers: we're talking about clever, heartfelt, literate indie-pop here, hurtling from their five fiery souls with such urgency and conviction that even little old domestics like yours truly can pump their fists along to the "love is war" manifestos without feeling the slightest bit out of place. If you've ever loved - or, hell, tried to love, even - than any of their four albums will surely speak to some wounded corner of your heart, given the chance. Best of all, you'll feel better afterwards - a good 'n deep scrubbing of the insides ain't ever a bad thing. Whose heart couldn't benefit from a metaphorical enema now and again?

By Todd Lavoie

Oh, I got me some religion Sunday night, Nov. 11, let me tell you: Spiritualized slipped into town for a stop on their North American “Acoustic Mainlines” tour, and the visit was nothing short of revelatory.

Playing to a full house (and perhaps the most attentive, appreciative crowd I’ve seen in eons, for that matter), Jason Pierce/Spaceman and his companions in post-millennial gospel may have never left their seats during the entire show, but that didn’t keep them from lifting us all into rarely realized states of bliss. And yes indeed, while we were all given chairs as well - and a Bimbo’s filled with candlelit tables always sets the tone for a perfect night out, as far as I can tell - I seriously doubt very many of us could say for certain that we were actually sitting down the entire time. I’m not even sure we remained earthbound, to be honest.

After all, this is the band who declared Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Arista) on the cover of their third album (and universally accepted masterpiece), so the idea of keeping so humdrummingly terrestrial for too long feels like a losing prospect. Don’t fight it - feel it, right? The thing is: up until now, Pierce and co. have mainly relied upon a decidedly rockist approach, fashioning dense layers of sound into narcotic-and-feedback-flavored sanctity.

Oh, you need another reason to go out tonight, Nov. 14? How about Pink Reason, who I missed at this year's SXSW but who royally tore schitte up, from what I heard. They play along with, for the first time ever in the Bay Area, Psychedelic Horseshit, at the Hemlock Tavern, on the bill with Goldies winners Wooden Shjips. Horseshit, I saw down in Austin, Texas, and they were superfun: cantankerous late '70s-styler NYC rock-punk with plenty of good stage patter -- me thinks at this point in the evening, Mr. PH announced, "This song is about Deerhunter and their samplers." Snark!

There's been a rash of Warholia on the club scene of late: A number of art-party installations, an attack of Joe Dallesandro clone-looks among the gay, and, of course, big sunglasses and drugged-out looking stares everywhere. Thank goddess the whole screw-on fright wig thing has yet to take off, but I bet someone's tryin'! Could it be our continued spiral into decadence caused by political powerlessness? Maybe. Or maybe it's just another generation discovering the silver-clouded joys (although hopefully not the overdoses) that fueled the Factory.

Whatevs, it's a joy. And the funnest manifestation is Club Heat, a tribute to the giant influence -- and even gianter "personalities" -- that Warhol's superstar system effected on modern club life (and art, and politics, and means of production ... ). Heat's a new monthly at the Stud -- last month's was off the hook, and this Friday is electro-stud DJ Donimo's b-day, which will most likely be scandalous -- that combines all the arty with the party to bring back the golden early years of Clublandinalia. Plus -- this one's got an '80s/kind of post-Studio 54 theme going on, which is a little mixed up, timeline-wise, but hey -- post-postmodern!. Pour one out for poor Edie, darling.

PS. I WANT MY MONEY! JUST GIVE ME MY MONEY! (Sorry, you can't call something Heat without me quoting the movie!)

Oh, Little Joe

Guardian Class of 2007 members King City have three new videos posted on YouTube.

Check out "Road to Madrid" below, and the rest here!

Excitement! '70s-kid, Gen-X (and very probably gay) excitement! Charlotte Rae, aka Mrs Garrett from The Facts of Life is coming to the Empire Plush Room to perform cabaret versions of tunes from her album Songs I Taught My Mother.

What??? From her Broadway debut as Mrs. Peachum in The Threepenny Opera to her carrot-headed brooding over Jo, Blair, Natalie, and Tottie Tootie for most of my childhood to her current incarnation as cabaret vixen, Charlotte is tuly ... a Renaissance woman!

Tue, Nov 27 - Sun, Dec 2, $40
Empire Plush Room
940 Sutter, SF
(415) 885-2800
www.theempireplushroom.com

PS: OMFG Sally Kellerman is there Nov 23 & 24 ....

By Ben Richardson

The spotlight will be on Isis this Sunday, Nov. 18, at Slim’s, and deservedly so - surviving as a band for a decade is quite an accomplishment. While many concertgoers will wonder if the retrospective mood will inspire the group to trot out some of their older material, I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the opening band, who have the unenviable task of greeting somebody else’s party guests.

If anyone’s up to the challenge, it’s Big Business. Having cut their teeth this summer opening for Tool, the LA-by-way-of-Seattle pair is poised to burst out of the avant-garde annex of underground metal and make their butt-rumbling mark on the world. Bassist Jerry Warren and drummer Coady Willis are a dynamic duo of low-end, hewing huge riffs out of slabs of E-string and floor tom.

Warren and Willis have been moonlighting in the Melvins, surely a dream come true for any fan of heavy music, and they appeared on A Senile Animal, the seminal sludgemasters’ most recent disc. Their own material hasn’t flagged, however, and Warren’s distinctive, frenzied vocals were recently joined above the hard-grooving fray by the guitar and Minimoog stylings of David Scott Stone, who joined the band for the recording of their second album, Here Come the Waterworks.

By Todd Lavoie

The saddest music in the world? I still haven't finished watching the 2003 Guy Maddin film of the same name - wherein legless beer-company baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) hosts a contest to find the single most sob-inducing melody in the world - but if such a match were to be held, I'd reckon Robert Wyatt would leave his competition sweating. He's been practicing quite a bit: the recently released Comicopera (Domino) carries enough emotional heft to even send the bitter, joyless Lady Helen herself whimpering underneath her platinum wig.

Lest I give the wrong idea, Comicopera - as sweeping and ambitious as it is in its depictions of the human experience in the era of the so-called War on Terror (copyright 2001, Bush/Cheney Mafia) - offers much more than just sadness and loss. Any such meaningful analysis of life in the 21st century would be seriously limiting itself by failing to consider the rest of the emotional spectrum, and so Wyatt has injected the album with a considerable amount of whimsy and wide-eyed wonder at how heart-stoppingly beautiful the world can be. It's a quality he's brought to his recordings ever since his 1971 solo debut, The End of an Ear (Sony Import) - and even before then as the drummer and occasional vocalist for jazz-art-prog fusionists Soft Machine and Matching Mole - but it's perhaps on his latest that these juxtapositions are best-articulated. Comicopera is a laugh, a cry, a wince, a raised fist, and awestruck sigh all at once. I'm not sure how many other albums this year can say the same about themselves.

But back to that "saddest music in the world" tag: the first thing you're bound to be hit by on a Robert Wyatt record is his voice. It's the sound of a disappointed angel, perhaps - still capable of shining a bright light upon all that is worthy of wonderment, but tempered by a sense of world-weariness and frustration with how we mortals never seem to get it right for too long before messing it up all over again. His frail tenor frequently cracks and wavers around the notes, and can be quite devastating. And the falsetto? Even the most jaded of hearts would have a rough time fighting off the ache induced by a Wyatt falsetto. Exhibit A: "Shipbuilding," a moving Elvis Costello-penned lament. As much as I adore Elvis - and his version which came out afterwards was mighty fine as well - I've always been partial to Wyatt's interpretation, which became a small hit in Britain. Here's a performance from BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test:

All us krautrock lovers have been hurting for far too long - no more: this weekend will see the launch of a new krautrock and cold wave club, Sauerkraut, at Retox Lounge. Expect Erase Errata's Jenny Hoyston - a creative powerhouse if there ever was one - to take the stage as Paradise Island and Weed Wolf on Sunday, Nov. 18. Also up: DJs AC (Donuts, Klaus to the Edge) and Rob Spector (Spector Protector, Bronze). Expect drink specials and free weiners for all you hot dawgs out there - as well as visuals by Cliche Molestations.

Retox Lounge is at 20th Street at Third in SF; the door is $4. Wallow in the schnitzel.

O Caetano. Photo by Fernanda Negrini.

By Benedict Sinclair

Despite his age, Caetano Veloso refuses to slow down. Showcasing his latest album, Cê (Nonesuch), on Nov. 17 at the Masonic Center, Veloso clattered around on stage - dancing between verses, jogging in place, invigorating each section of the audience with jumping and waving. You’d think he was younger than his bandmates, none of whom appeared to have passed the 25-year mark.

And maybe that’s the best possible thing he could have done: surround himself with a trio of hot young musicians, positively seething with chemistry and chops, clearly still having fun, still discovering music and the world it inhabits. His trio - a drummer, an electric guitarist, and a bassist who doubled on a twinkly old Fender Rhodes - navigated from delicate bossa to surf-infused pop, bouncing across minimalist polyrhythms.

Back in the day, Veloso mixed traditional Brazilian samba sounds with the most adventurous strains of American and British '60s rock and pop, and in the process, he carved out - and fused - a new genre: tropicalia. He hasn’t stopped working on it since he started in the mid-'60s. Songs linked swiftly to each other throughout the show, further exploring a mood or abruptly changing styles. The group went from rockier tunes to those with softer arrangements: mallets on drums, hushed keyboard textures.

Scoff if you must. Call the new Misfits a cover band, or aging has-beens. And feel free to call me a poseur for even wanting to see them live. But I went to the Misfits show at DNA a couple weeks ago and I liked it.

So what if Danzig wasn’t there? So what if the sound was so bad that you wouldn’t have been able to tell if he were? There were huge skulls on the stage, and fancy lights, and dudes with devil locks (presumably at least one was an original member of the Misfits, though too-young-to-have-seen-them-in-their-heydey me wouldn’t know which), and really fucking loud music, and the best mosh pit I’ve been pushed into since I lost my favorite flannel at an illegal show in a windowless venue in high school.

And most importantly, I made my favorite new discovery: The Nutley Brass, a band whose album "Fiend Club Lounge" the DJ spun between sets. Think Disneyland’s Electric Light Parade meets the Manhattan Transfer, and you have some idea of the way this band covers Misfits tunes. In fact, if The Misfits opened a hotel, this is the Muzak that would be playing in its elevators.

D'yer Rademacher?

Yes, we never have enough black-and-white-and-read-all-over print matter to fill with all the music we wanna catch. So welcome to Sonic Reducer Overage - the stuff deemed extremely fit to print, but alas, I failed to cram in the allotted space. Why not check these worthies out, when you're not stuffing your turkey hole with holiday grindage?

Old Grandad
These days the fearsome SF metal daddies are bringing the magik on a monthly basis. With Dickdusters and Walker Brothers. Wed/21, 9 p.m., $8. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market St., SF. (415) 861-5016.

Phenomenauts
The costumed Oakland super-punk fire-starters are always a rowdy good time. And who can forget their guerrilla take-over at Vans Warped Tour so many kicks ago? With Sore Thumbs and Helper Monkeys. Wed/21, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $8. (415) 621-4455.

By Justin Juul

If the horrible song-selections and corny atmospheres found at most karaoke bars have always stopped you from jumping on stage, you might want to check out Punk Rock Karaoke. It sounds like a simple twist on a tired activity, but Punk Rock Karaoke isn’t an event; it’s the name of a band. PRK’s all-star line-up includes members of NOFX, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and Agent Orange, which would be a decent lineup if any of these particular dudes could sing. This is where you come in.

Rather than post a singer-wanted ad on Craigslist, the members of PRK have decided to say fuck it and ask their fans for help instead. It works like this: you drink until you feel comfortable in front of the crowd and then pick a song from their list of fifty classics. Drink a little more as you wait around for your name to come up, and then when it does, you can either run out the back door or bust a move on the M-I-C. Actually, that does sound a lot like regular karaoke doesn’t it? Whatever…it’s still punk, right? Right?!

Punk Rock Karaoke
December 5th @ The Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakland
(510) 451-8100
$13 / Doors at 9pm

By Todd Lavoie

Yeehaw for more twang-age! At last! Detroit's delightfully skewed goth-country crackerjacks Blanche have finally seen album number two receive an American release, nearly a year after its European release, nearly a year after their former label V2 shut its doors suddenly and left its roster in the lurch. Happy endings have never been synonymous with these folks - murder ballads, yes, and odes to wronged love, certainly, but good news? Hardly!

But here we are, endless months after they got screwed over by Mister Record Company Man, and Little Amber Bottles (Original Signal) is finally available in the States. The wait's been worth it: no "sophomore slump" for this nattily attired mob of medicine-show revivalists and Flannery O' Connor torch-bearers. Dare I say it? Aw, shucks, why not? Little Amber Bottles is a quantum leap forward for the band - hell, it had quite firmly settled into my Top Ten of 2007 within its first half-dozen spins, even. Christ knows how many times I've listened since, but I remained just as intoxicated by it as I was the day I'd skinned it of its shrinkwrap and handed myself over to its many gauzy, dusty charms. Truth is, I could probably get drunk just from looking at it. Won't you join me, then, in some good old-fashioned inebriation?

I'll pour the first drink: Blanche is a quintet of old-school country-devotees who think like punks, write like O'Connor or William Faulkner, and sing like snake-oil salesmen, saloon floozies, and end-of-the-road auctioneers. Frequently performing in early 20th century vintage-wear, they very much look and sound like a mob of country-folk who high-tailed it to Birmingham or Chattanooga or Lynchburg and got themselves "citified," so to speak. And it's all entirely convincing, I should add. No mere dress-up here, Blanche manage to inhabit the world of 78 records, magic elixirs, and old black-and-white Sears & Roebuck catalogs straight from the printing press. It's as if they just hiked down from Walton's Mountain and hit the studio - only these folks are less John Walton/Olivia Walton and more Ike/Corabeth Godsey, the fancy-schmancy owners of the general store who left the mountain more than once every couple of months.

By Todd Lavoie

It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land - a dead-on appropriate proclamation, indeed, for Britain's pre-eminent emissaries of unsettled downtempo electro-soul and whiskey-and-gin street corner spirituality, Soulsavers, whose breakthrough Red Ink/Columbia release glows like divine inspiration wafting out of the darkest gutter. Consider the title a riff on the whole "it's not the journey, it's the destination" mantra - only in this case, the daily affirmation comes from a rough-and-ragged 12-step program that says failure is inevitable but redemption is possible. Redemption with style - ah, even better.

And what style it is. Producers-electronic wizards-consummate tastemakers Rich Machin and Ian Glover cook up languid rhythms, rawboned organ arrangements, and ominous string samples - along with bringing in some evocative lap-steel guitar and weepy six-string twang from session musicians - to create brooding, occasionally post-apocalyptic soundscapes that could speak plenty of lurid truths all by themselves, as evidenced on their mostly instrumental debut, 2003's Tough Guys Don't Dance (San Quentin). The recipe's been improved on their latest, thanks to the lead-vocal contributions of Will Oldham, Jimi Goodwin (Doves), and - the greatest coup of all - the gravel-wrapped-in-velvet baritone Mark Lanegan, whose eight contributions inform the album's duality of forbidding menace and soothing sanctity.

Even better, they've upped the ante with the addition of gospel heroics from backing vocalists Wendy Rose and Lena Palmer - perhaps best known for setting fires behind Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds on their last album and tour. The result is a potent futuristic-gospel - witness opener "Revival," a thundering transmission from the River of Jordan, Lanegan leading Rose and Palmer in a tearful baptism while the flames rise around them. Cover-lovers, begin your rejoicing: Lanegan's and Oldham's duet on Neil Young's "Through My Sails" is pure lip-biting heartbreak. Soulsavers, you've made a believer out of me.

Soulsavers, with Mark Lanegan, appear Saturday, Dec. 1, 9 p.m., at the Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. Great Northern opens. $18. (415) 771-1422.

Cute, cute, cute UK indie dance -- they call it "Oxford step" -- band Foals has captured my heart and ears the last few weeks with their giddy, insectoid, high-fret guitar hooks, their way-too-catchy angst, and their Frisco Disco-ready looks. Too bad they haven't captured my iPod -- their tunes are UK-only at the moment (though you can download several here), but latest single "Balloons" is being released early next month, and once they score the Mercury Prize next year an American tour and album surely must be in the works for these Transgressive Records-stabled hotties. Plus they blew away the CMJ this year, so there. Foals on the floor!

Hummer

Mathletics

Balloons

The man needs no introduction, really.

He’s Rob Halford, and he’s coming to town tomorrow for an in-store at Rasputin Music downtown and a screening of a new film about his first post-Judas Priest band, Fight. I have a few rules to live by, and one of them is: if you get the chance to interview a god – much less the Metal God – you absolutely take it. Our phone conversation follows.

A cuppa Cafe Tacuba.

It's the most insane time of the year - but why not stop and, er, smell the big sweaty rock bands coming through town. I kid because I love the way the next week looks: so busy and full of intriguing sounds.

CAFE TACUBA
Whoa, if there was a more shockingly inventive, stylistically agile, and altogether impressive LP this year, I can't think of it. Sino (Universal) may translate as "But Instead," but there was no stopping the range of pop styles coursing through this musically multilingual recording en esponol as the Mexican rock vets decided to start dreaming in epic U2-y radio rock textures, Beach Boys-style Cali-choir harmonies, and grand Nascimento-esque overtures.
With Bengala. Wed/28, 8 p.m., $36.50-$49.50. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 775-7722.

FAUN FABLES
The SF medieval proggists join Gong/Soft Machine vet Daevid Allen for a certain unquantifiable magik.
With Daevid Allen and Wymond and his Spirit Children. Wed/28, 9 p.m., $10. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.

YOUSSOU N'DOUR
The Senegalese master surges beyond the traditional music of his homeland with his hybrid, Rokku Mi Rokka (Nonesuch).
Fri/30, 8 p.m., $25-$75. Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF. (866) 920-JAZZ.

Local rap imprint SMC is going strong, picking up all kinds of action in Atlanta: they recently signed Killer Mike. A new album is expected in February or March. Pretty big fish for SMC to land, for sure - and rumor has it the OutKast-afilliated rapper has broken his ties with that camp in addition to Sony. Southern hip-hop group Trillville also recently got together with SMC, so look for more noise in general from the label soon.

By Todd Lavoie

Cue the strings! Fire up the mellotron! Roll out the timpani! There's always room for more melodrama in my life - just as long as it's strictly of the musical variety - and lucky me, new discovery Nicole Atkins is making everything pretty blood-and-thunder in my house, thank you very much. It's all smoke and fire and shadows and oh-so-devilishly noir, and I don't ever want to leave. How could I, when she makes the darkness so damn romantic?

The self-described Jersey girl just released her debut, Neptune City (Red Ink/Columbia), and I'll be damned if it ain't one of the most compelling, thrillingly promising first albums on a major label this year. I could easily offer a dozen different points-of-comparison for the full-throated chanteuse - and chances are, I probably will by the time I'm done here - but Atkins seems to be out there on her own with this one. And yeah, that's a compliment - of the highest order, in fact.

Neptune City is an ambitious piece of wide-screen-seeking theatrical pop, offering an alluring re-interpretation of '50s/early '60s sounds: Phil Spector, Roy Orbison, and Patsy Cline rolled into one, then sent packing on the coldest night of winter into the cruel neon of a heartless city. They might be mean streets, but she sure manages to make them seem inviting nonetheless.