ROCK
After getting royally screwed for CMJ in New York this year due to a series of double bookings that left the Ipecac bands out in the cold, Mike Patton and Co. have taken the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle to the Great American Music Hall in SF for two nights of performances featuring the Melvins, Dälek, Mondo Generator, Maldoror, Captured! By Robots, and more. The events take place on December 30 and 31, with the Melvins playing both nights. 415-885-0750. (Katy St. Clair)
NOISE/EXPERIMENTAL
Davis Redford Triad, playing at the Hemlock in SF Friday night, is largely a solo outlet for occasional Faust guitarist and former booby-hatch occupant Steven Wray Lobdell. DRT’s first record was released shortly after Lobdell himself was, in 1997, and he’s been pretty prolific ever since. He’s recorded one more disc of his wet hot psychedelic guitar noise, led Sufi Mind Game, collaborated with Baseball Astrologer, recorded a solo album under his own name, and produced two albums by fellow Portlanders Hochenkeit. 415-923-0923. (Stefanie Kalem)
PSYCHEDELIC WORLDBEAT
Chhom Nimol, once a pop star who performed regularly for the King and Queen of Cambodia, now calls Long Beach home and fronts a sextet called Dengue Fever. Come to the Make-Out Room in SF on New Year’s Eve and watch her throw down the old-school Khmer dance moves while the band — comprising members of the Radar Brothers, Dieselhed, and Beck’s backing outfit — plays a tantalizing hybrid of Ethiopian jazz and Cambodian psych. 415-647-2877. (Stefanie Kalem)
BODY MUSIC
A musical visionary, the East Bay body percussionist Keith Terry is the bandleader of such pre-Stomp world music-dance outfits as Crosspulse and Body Tchak. His new project, Slammin’, makes its debut Saturday at the Freight & Salvage. Blending a cappella singing, beatboxing, and body music, the band features Terry, Tonight Show singer-percussionist Vicki Randle, SoVoSó’s Destani Wolf and Joey Blake, Kenny Washington, and beatboxer Steve Hogan. 510-548-1761. (Larry Kelp)
CLASSICAL
This New Year’s Eve, the spotlight shines on the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. Musical director Benjamin Simon brings soprano Miriam Abramowitsch, cellist Sharon Bogas, and pianist Roy Bogas to Berkeley’s First Congregational Church for Haydn’s Symphony No. 50, Mozart’s great concert aria Ch’io mi Scordi di te and his Piano Quartet in G minor, plus music by Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, and Porter. 415-495-8608. (Jason Serinus)
SALSA
If tearing up the floor to hot Cuban salsa is your idea of a good time, New Year’s Eve at La Peña presents Fito Reinoso y Ritmo y Armonia. The Havana-born singer is a treasure of the Bay Area salsa scene, with two self-produced records and a band that includes his daughter Genesie on vocals. 510-849-2568. (Jesse “Chuy” Varela)
