In celebration of this year's LGBT Pride Month and as a warm-up to next weekend's mega SF Pride Parade & festival celebrations the ever-active bookers at Bootie SF are presenting The Monster Show tonight at their DNA Lounge weekly party. "We are totally ready to get our gay on as Pride nears, and it doesn't get much gayer than The Monster Show," said the promoters of the popular, long-running weekly mashup party earlier this week.

At tonight's Bootie SF Pre Pride Party, in addition to the 11pm mashup drag extravaganza on the DNA main stage, Cookie Dough and the rest of the fun folks (who know how to party) from The Monster Show will also take over the upstairs area of the DNA when they will transform it into the Monster Electro-House Room. Described by the folks at Bootie as "unlike other drag shows, with breaks between the numbers, this is just one non-stop, mega-mixed show with a whole series of drag queens lip-syncing. You can watch the show and dance at the same time" The Monster Show at Bootie tonight should be hella fun.

Yesterday I reached out to The Monster Show's Cookie Dough to ask what to expect tonight at Bootie SF and for more insights into The Monster Show and its San Francisco history. "The Monster Show started in the Summer of 2004 at Harvey's in the heart of The Castro. At the time there were no other drag shows residing in The Castro, so we filled a much needed void of drag in The Pulse Of Gay Mecca," Cookie Dough told me. "What we have become known for are our non-stop continuous mixed shows; a sort of an assault-to-the-senses, created by co-founder and my DJ husband DJ MC2." Tonight DJ MC2 will be getting busy in the upstairs area of the DNA drawing from his three decades of turntable mixing history that Cookie Dough promised will be "a beat matched mix of house beats with some of todays hottest artists and remixers, along with a light show of lasers, fog, and dance lights moving with the energy of the room." Monster Party friend DJ Guy Ruben will also be spinning upstairs (set time 10:45pm to midnight). Meanwhile downstairs on the main stage from 11pm to 11:30pm, Cookie Dough said "We will give the Monster Bootie fans our 7th Annual Pride Show with Bootie; an in-your-face mash up of electrifying drag queens from all around San Francisco."

Hey Bay Area! June is LGBT Pride Month and in San Francisco that means it's time to party! Amoeba Music is a proud Pride sponsor of Hard French Hearts Los Homos Pride 2012 on Sunday, June 24th at the SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. This year's celebration is an inter-generational extravaganza that pays homage to soul music and ushers in a new era of queer performance.

Featured on the main stage will be Bay Area's living  soul and rhythm legend Sugar Pie DeSanto, indie Queer electric darling magic weirdo SSION, and bounce magician BeyondaDoubt!

Throughout the day, groove to sets by some of the hottest queer DJ’s and parties from San Francisco and up and down the west coast. And plan on all the regular Hard French fixings like sweating it out to hours upon hours of your favorite 45s from our house DJs  Brown Amy and Carnita, smoking-hot dance moves from the Jiggalicious Dance Babes and Magic Capturing by notorious Photo Booth, which will be benefiting a local queer non-profit.  

Noise Pop and Amoeba Music are excited to announce our new biweekly vinyl party, the Noise Pop Record Collective. Welcoming music and vinyl lovers of all ages, fans are invited to bring a record to be played at each Record Collective event. Our carefully selected cast of host DJs will collect and assemble all of these records each night, and play them over the course of the evening. 

The series starts at Bloodhound in San Franciso's SOMA on June 12th with Andy Cabic of Vetiver,and on June 26th at Prizefighter in Emeryville with Zach Rogue and Pat Spurgeon of Rogue Wave.There will be drink specials and chicken and waffle sandwiches from the Soul Groove crew.

Be sure to RSVP HERE and get an exclusive Record Collective coupon for $5 off vinyl at Amoeba Music San Francisco and Berkeley!

DJ Sol Rising, the winner of last month's Bay Area Regional DMC DJ Battle - the first Bay Area DMC battle to be held locally in six years, may have thought his battling days were long over: his last battle been eight long years ago. Back in both 2003 and 2004 the DJ, formerly known as Skwint, made it as far as the DMC US Finals, placing 2nd in the US Supremacy in 2003, Vinyl Kombat US Finals in 2004, and winning Scribble Jam in 2002. In fact the DJ had absolutely no desire nor any intention of ever returning to the DJ battlefield; at least was not until fellow Bay Area turntablist. Snayk Eyez invited him, in March of this year just a few weeks before the April 7th DMC Bay Area Regional battle, to showcase at Skratchpad - the monthly scratch party that Snayk Eyez is a part of along with founders Deeandroid and Celskiiii and others.

"I was really hesitant as I hadn’t practiced routines in years. But I guess it planted the seed," he said of DJ set he did at Skratchpad just weeks before the DJ battle that most entrants practice for all year long beforehand just to enter and do their short well-studied routines.

But still the Oakland based Sol Rising, who was born in Canada and grew up in the MidWest before relocating to the Bay some years ago, said he had absolutely no intention of entering the DMC battle this year. But then he changed his mind because of a dream - literally. "A week before the battle I had this crazy vivid dream about battling at the Bay Area regional. The next morning I woke up earlier than usual and just started messing around on the turntables before work. The whole day at work I couldn’t wait to get home and practice. In the evening I created two scratch routines and then came up with a beat juggle a few days later. So I came up with three usable routines in less than a week which would have taken me several months if not a whole year in the past," he said of the winning routines that qualified him to travel to the DMC US Finals in New York in August to represent the Bay Area. "Everything was super accelerated. I honestly can’t say that competition is the path I’m on but I feel the universe guided me to compete for a reason that has yet to be revealed." After this intriguing sharing I felt compelled to follow up and interview Sol Rising further for the Amoeblog on his career as DJ and his take on the Bay Area DMC battle that he won (second place was DJ Cocheze from SF and third was Primo from Santa Rosa) in which in the first round he did a two-minute routine and, in the final round, he did a six minute routine.

   
On May 31st and June 1st, Cinema SF and folkYEAH present the first two installments of their new series, City Scenes, that invites local musicians to curate a night of music accompanied by a screening of their favorite San Francisco movie.  

On Thursday, May 31st,  local indie-folk darlings Vetiver present beloved comedy-caper Foul Play (1978), starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. Next, on Friday, June 1st troubadour Chuck Prophet, whose recent SF-inspired album Temple Beautiful has been storming the nation, brings us Francis Ford Coppola’s paranoia masterpiece The Conversation. Both screenings will be preceded by a 40 minute acoustic performance by the evenings curators. These unique events offer audiences a rare and wonderful chance to hear some of the Bay's most exciting new music while celebrating the history of San Francisco’s city scenes on the silver screen.