Saturday:

A.A. Bondy, Fences, Widower at Tractor Tavern, 9:30 p.m., $8

Both Fences and Widower are good bands, which means you should come on time. However, here's Michael Alan Goldberg on headliner A.A. Bondy:

In a different lifetime, Auguste Arthur Bondy (under the name Scott Bondy) fronted Alabama's hard-rockin' Verbena, and of all the '90s Nirvana-bees, they might have been the best. Dave Grohl, who produced Verbena's 1999 album Into the Pink, once told CMJ magazine: "Dude, that guy is so fuckin' Kurt Cobain it's not even funny." Fortunately, Bondy didn't pull the plug on his life in the early '00s when Verbena disintegrated; instead, he unplugged the amps, changed his handle to A.A. Bondy, and completely reinvented himself as a brooding, acoustic-guitar-wielding indie-folk troubadour obsessed with God and the devil and Bob Dylan and neck-harmonicas. There's no shortage of those kinds of singer-songwriters in the world, but Bondy's go at it - as heard on his stark solo debut, American Hearts - comes off natural, intimate, affecting, and sincere. From the sound of things, he's finally settled into his true self. MAG

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Joaquin Phoenix started a bad trend. Now it looks like Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live fame is trying his hand at rap. Naturally, T-Pain is involved. I know this is all for a comedy album to be released later this year but I've got to say, this is one of the funniest music videos that I've watched in awhile.

Last night, I was lucky enough to get my hands on Toni Hill's debut solo album, Only Love, and so far I'm highly impressed. She's a talented double threat that has been rapping and singing in Northwest groups for years (Hungry Mob/Sirens Echo/Oldominion) but this new album is both her solo debut, and her soul debut. You won't hear her rapping on Only Love but you will hear lot's of smoothed out R&B/soul music that's perfect for the grown and sexy crowd. If I had to briefly put it in a box, I'd say the album sounds like Jill Scott meets the Jazzyfatnastees with a touch of old school Michel'le thrown in for good measure.

She shows a lot of range as a singer/songwriter on the project and I think people are going to embrace this album when they here it. These days, Hill bounces between Portland (her hometown), Seattle, and New York but currently she's here and having a listening party at Hidmo tonight. She'll be there with the album's producer Amos Miller playing the record in it's entirety and DJ B-Girl Mia will be spinning as well. The listening party starts at 7:30 p.m. and they'll also be debuting a music video for the song, "Rose." If you're a fan of Hill's music, come out and support.

Here's a sad bit of news. The West End Boys, Seattle's notorious Pet Shop Boys cover band, have broken up. The electro-pop duo performed at last year's Pridefest covering songs by the likes of Pet Shop Boys, Dead or Alive, and Kim Wilde. They've since fallen off the radar so I called up lead vocalist Giulio Pellegrini to find out what the deal was. (He's the guy with the hot bod on the right.) He informed me that he and his friend Sonny Dunes have gone their separate ways, but that he hopes to find a way to keep performing Pet Shop Boys music in the future.
...Until then Giulio, you are always on my mind.

Last year I declared myself a boy band connoisseur, after seeing the holy trinity (New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, Hanson) all perform live within a span of six months. Well, it turns out I'm not as knowledgeable about my musical men as I thought.

This boy band quiz is way trickier than I expected. Here's an example question:

Which band has not had a member on Dancing with the Stars?

New Kids on the Block
98 Degrees
N'Sync
Backstreet Boys

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British R&B/rapping sensation Estelle is coming to Seattle on Monday, March 2nd and we've got a pair of tickets to giveaway. I've seen Estelle twice in concert and I can attest that she was amazing both times. There's something about a hard West London accent singing Americanized R&B that sounds soulful in all the right ways. That's partly why she just won a Grammy at the beginning of this month for her collaboration with Kanye West on the song, "American Boy."

Couple that singing voice with her solid rap skills and hilarious stage banter in between songs (she likes to pick on the guys) and this is a concert that shouldn't be missed. Especially since our own soul diva, Choklate, is also on the bill. If you want to go, shoot me an email at jcunningham@seattleweekly.com with Estelle in the subject line, and a winner will be chosen at random. Good luck! And if you're not familiar with Estelle, check out another one of her songs after the jump and decide for yourself if she's worth a few hours of your time.

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Renee McMahon

Tilson, left, of The Saturday Knights, with DJ James Pants

I might as well just throw this out there and get it over with: I am not entirely sure who "won" last night's DJ battle, which was not really much of a competition anyway. I think I either missed the announcement when I was in the bathroom, or it never really happened. If you know, let me know. But as far as I'm concerned, our DJs (Las Vegas' John Doe, our own Supreme La Rock and Jake One, and James Pants from Spokane) all picked great party music-- mostly funk and soul-- that got everyone to dance all night long. Which was the evening's real reward.

Though it doesn't look like it when you first walk in, Trinity is a pretty sizable club with two stories and a huge dance floor, and the place was still jampacked. And yet, people were still shoving their way through the crowd to get to each DJ's table (there was one DJ set up in each corner) to watch them pick their 45s; basically, the DJ on the hot seat would put on a record, then frantically dig through his collection to find the next jam and put it on before the current one ended. I'm not sure if I had a favorite, but I think it's safe to say that Jake One killed it. Which should not surprise anyone. And of course, DJ Nu-Mark of Jurassic 5 spun a great set after the "battle" was over.

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Jeff Lorber plays Dimitriou's again tonight; there's also Police Teeth's CD release at the Sunset, if you're looking for some rock and roll in Ballard. It starts at 10 p.m. and costs $7.

Kinski, AFCGT, Treetarantula at the Comet Tavern, 9 p.m., $7

When you write about music in Seattle, Chris Martin is one of the best dudes to run into at shows. With his arms crossed and beer-in-hand, Martin will happily lean over and tell you everything he knows about whatever band happens to be onstage at the time, what new band in town is worth checking out, and what records he purchased recently. But his uber-music fan tangents often deflect attention away from his own great band, Kinski.

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Snow from the Blakes

In my post yesterday about local music I'm in love with at the moment, I was seriously remiss in not mentioning the Beads, the new project from Snow of the Blakes (with help from brother and Blakes bandmate Garnet). It's much darker and more personal than the Blakes feel-good jangle-fests and it just might be even better on some levels--and this is coming from someone who has been a long-time champion and occasional defender of that band. Sounds like the painfully introspective product of bad breakup to me, and if I'm right about that, his pain is definitely our gain. I recommend the track "Evil" (the source of aforementioned breakup theory), which you can check out at the top of their Myspace page right now.

Tonight, four of the areas finest DJs are squaring off in a battle for 7" record supremacy. Jake One, DJ Supreme La Rock, DJ John Doe, and James Pants are going at in tonight's Red Bull 45 competition held at Trinity Nightclub. The battle starts around 9 p.m. and it's free to the public.

I chatted with Supreme La Rock yesterday and picked his brain on his strategy going into the competition. He's fairly relaxed about tonight's battle and insists that he's just in it to have fun and swears he's not fixated on winning at all. Don't be fooled though. He's still got a few trump cards in his back pocket that he'll undoubtedly pull out tonight. Check out more from 'Preme on his record collecting history after the jump, plus more on his latest digital mix.

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