Be my funky Valentine, hater

Where’s Del?:
Making it through Del the Funky Homosapien’s concert at Harlow’s on Valentine’s Day was like running 10 miles: You keep pushing yourself to go just one more mile, or song, to make it to the finish, exhausted. Unfortunately, I had already run my 10 miles that morning, so I was ill-prepared for what felt like an endless series of opening acts.

Truth be told, only two artists on the bill, Agustus ThElefant and Bukue One, were needed to get the crowd revved. Instead, there were five opening acts, each playing longer than the previous.

Agustus and JustLuv opened the show and immediately had everyone dancing and bopping heads, in hip-hop mode. But after three songs, they were booted off the stage; Agustus was visibly pissed, declaring “hip-hop censorship.”

Afterward, the show entered a purgatorylike state and the crowd grew restless.

Bukue One finally re-energized the crowd, the 33-year-old brandishing a killer ability to flow, but everyone was convinced he was merely the final warm-up for Del. So when Myka 9 emerged instead of the main event, anarchy nearly took over, the crowd chanting “Del” during the set.

At half past midnight, Del finally emerged. My valentine and I listened to two songs—finally crossing that finish line—and then surrendered to exhaustion. (Jenn Kistler)

Haters and beats:
I receive more complaints about how I never write about music—“You only write about the scene,” they grumble—than I do actual CDs and digital downloads of music to review. That’s the rub.

Still, I write more about the scene because, some weeks, it feels like all I ever do is go to shows. I’d love to be the hermit scribe who spends intimate hours with each and every song that spurts out of Sacramento’s collective musical womb. But in reality, I’m too damn busy going to your damn shows.

Yet I love it. I went to five gigs this past week. And the common thread was fresh joints: Naked Lounge Downtown, Clubhouse 24 and Venue—all of them relative newbies, all of them poles apart. (Sure, there are more new clubs—Shire Road Club, Sol Collective, 16th Street Cafe—and I’ll be checking those out in coming weeks as well. And of course the “underground” sites, which I won’t write about, so as to both keep the fuzz off the stench and also not roil the ever-paranoid and touchy DIY denizens, bless them, every one.)

Open for a good few months already, Naked Lounge Downtown rests at the ground floor of a swankified former motel on 11th and H streets. The coffee is acceptable, the beer selection lacks but the amiable staff makes up for this by delivering cans o’ suds to the bands onstage mid-performance, something I rarely see but happened twice during nerd-folkers Be Brave Bold Robot’s set.

The low-ceilinged venue, which has shows this week Thursday through Sunday, can get cramped quick, I’d imagine, but still NLD does folk music right. Time will tell, however, whether the bookers will branch out to, say, maybe a techno night?

Clubhouse 24 is a private party joint in Midtown that occasionally hosts a mellow and quiet music event. On a recent weeknight, Chelsea Wolfe filled the walls with gentle, gloomy harmonies, trancelike, while three to four rows of an all-ages crowd sat cross-legged, possibly possessed.

C24 is a nice spot, but maybe—you guessed it—a dubstep lounge night would take it over the top?

The inventively named Venue, located on the now-banging R Street Corridor between 14th and 15th streets, is really just Empire with a paint job and bottle service—because evidently Goose ’n’ juice is where the cheddars be. Venue’s owners say the 10-day makeover was a $2 million face-lift. But, unlike most reconstructive surgery, perhaps the real work was behind the scenes?

Anyway, the new Venue now will be targeting the adult crowd, both with weekend dance nights and, as per ownership, 120 touring-act concerts a year. SN&R suggests—drumroll, please—an electronica night, maybe Daedelus, Four Tet, Nosaj Thing or Flying Lotus?

The crux of the biscuit? Send more CDs and put on more electronica nights. (Nick Miller)