Flickr/Simon Fernandez

Happy Birthday, Sly! Wherever you may be.

On this day in 1943, Sylvester Stewart was born in Benton, TX. He was later raised in Vallejo, introduced the Bay Area to soul songs on San Mateo-based radio station KSOL, and helped to put San Francisco on the international music map with his groundbreaking interracial funk group Sly & The Family Stone, which spawned Top 5 hits and millions in record sales for now classic songs like "Dance to the Music," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)."

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Beats Antique -- see 'em at Snow Globe!

Wait... who says festival season has to end just 'cause it's winter? They've clearly never heard of SnowGlobe Music Festival, a three-day musical gathering in South Lake Tahoe starting Dec. 29 that features the worldly rhythms of Beats Antique, Deadmau5, Wiz Khalifa, Big Gigantic, Polica, Zion I, and many others performing for a party-lovin' crowd.

SnowGlobe sounds like just the thing to get you rabid music fans over the hump from Treasure Island to Noise Pop or Coachella, so we're giving away two three-day passes to one lucky All Shook Down reader! Wanna win? Here's how:

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The contest is over. Sorry, folks.

Update, 2:56 p.m.: After tickets to the Feb. 16 S.F. show sold out in one minute, Swedish House Mafia has added three additional shows on Feb. 13, 14, and 15 at Bill Graham Civic. The Feb. 14 and 15 shows sold out within the hour, according to an announcement today, but the Feb. 13 date remains onsale.

See also:

* Swedish House Mafia Announce San Francisco Stop on Farewell Tour

Original post: Starting yesterday, we here at All Shook Down held a contest for a free a pair of tickets to Swedish House Mafia's farewell S.F. show at Bill Graham Civic on Feb. 16. The rules were simple: Write us something funny and creative about why you should be the winner. Well, we got A LOT of entries -- and while reading them all (yes: all) we found some funny ones that didn't quite make the cut. (Also, we learned a fair bit of traumatizing sexual/drug-related/too much information.) So in the spirit of transparency hilarity, we're posting the top five funniest entries we received here -- including the winner -- but with the names removed.

With that, let these five Swedish House Mafia fans tell you why they should be the one to win tickets...

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This man will tell you the future.

King Khan, everyone's favorite body-fluid-obsessed, Berlin-based psych-soul misfit, is not content merely to come to play a show in San Francisco. Even when that show may involve antics that would cause all your mothers to weep. So before King Khan and the Shrines bring their hot-sauce-slingin', party-starting musical chaos to Great American Music Hall on Sept. 4, Khan is holding a contest for fans, the winner of which will get to have his Tarot cards read by the King himself.

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Bob Minkin

Tri Studios.

Earlier this year, we told you about Grateful Dead member Bob Weir's state-of-the-art recording facility in San Rafael, Tamalpais Research Institute (TRI). TRI is furnished with a Meyer Sound Constellation system, which allows the acoustic properties of the room to be altered with the touch of a button. This means that if you want the room to sound like a cathedral or a basement, it can.

The folks at TRI call their studio "the ultimate playpen for musicians" -- and now, they're holding a contest where one lucky winner will get to work there. The Race to TRI invites acts of all ages and genres to submit music for a chance to win a day of recording at TRI. Here are the rules:

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Over two shows last night and Monday, The Voice finally concluded and crowned a winner. As already discussed, we're weren't thrilled with the choices for finalists this year, but loved one of them (Juliet Simms) so much, we were willing to watch four hours of this thing to see how things turned out. Here's what happened:

Blake's finalist Jermaine Paul is up first on Monday's show, performing "I Believe I Can Fly," which plunges us into American Idol territory immediately. Still, Cee Lo Green gets all homoerotic about it afterwards: "You looked strong, like a handsome man with a beautiful voice," he says. This is a bit much, even for Cee-Lo. Which is possibly why Jermaine Paul has difficulty making words with his mouth five minutes later.


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The last few weeks, we've been DVRing the shit out of the second season of The Voice to ensure we wouldn't miss a second. There is something thoroughly riveting about that show -- partly because of the concept (waiting to see if the judges will turn their chairs around for the contestants) is totally engrossing, partly because we like seeing underdogs succeed (looks don't matter here!), and partly because of the judges' amazing chemistry. There's The Nice One (Blake Shelton), The Diva With a Heart (Christina Aguilera), The Creepy Sweetie (Cee-Lo Green) and The Car Salesman (Adam Levine). We can't stop watching -- and viewing figures would suggest we're not alone (the season premier had 37.6 million viewers). 

But, as much as we love The Voice, we couldn't help but sigh and roll our eyes when ABC announced this week that, this summer, it will be launching a new singing competition, titled Duets. The concept is a desperate bid to do something no other singing competition is currently doing -- making the judges do duets with the contestants each week. Kelly Clarkson, Lionel Ritchie, Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles, and Robin Thicke are the stars taking part.

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We here at SF Weekly know that every up-and-coming band's ultimate aspiration is to play a huge festival -- while getting blasted in the face with overripe, crushed tomatoes.

Well, every group in the Bay Area has a shot to have its dreams come true -- the Tomato Battle is coming to the Alameda Fairgrounds on Oct. 1, complete with a beer garden, a battle of the bands, and, oh yeah, a 10,000-person tomato fight.

Technically, bands won't be performing during the actual ketchup craziness, but if you're talented, ambitious, and a big fan of getting your daily dose of fruits and vegetables, hit the jump for details on how to enter for a chance to play in the battle.

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via @LowerHaight

Your path to fame and fortune?

So you know those "Rap Contest $2,000 Grand Prize" flyers you've seen popping up all over town? We've been wondering about them, Mission Mission's Vic Wong has been wondering about them, and so has Haighteration's Andrew Dudley, who finally put in a phone call to the number on the flyer and figured out what the hell's going on.

Despite the rather sketchy appearance of the flyers, it turns out this is a legit-sounding competition put on by an S.F. rapper.

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Welcome to February, the runt of months. Just four weeks until March -- four boring, bitter weeks of Valentines and Presidents and groundhogs and Sri Lankan independence. Thanksgiving and Christmas and National Novel Writing Month are all more than half the year away. If only there was a way to use this shiftless month for good!

Well (bet you didn't see this coming), there is. thanks to the dedicated New Hampshirites behind The Wire (not the TV series or the UK magazine), February is RPM, or Record Production Month, a call to action to all you would-be troubadours and rock stars waiting for an excuse to commit your ideas to tape, "just because you can."

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