Flickr/Fabio Venni

The next two weekends in San Francisco feature parties in tribute to the late James Brown, who would have turned 79 on May 3. The entertainer had a long history performing for multiple generations in the Bay Area, perhaps most frequently at San Carlos' legendary (and now defunct) Circle Star Center, and his enduring legacy has continued to transcend age groups and genre boundaries.

Rapper Lyrics Born makes a surprising and rare appearance behind the DJ decks to lead a JB birthday celebration on May 5 at Mighty. The event, which begins at 10 p.m., also features DJs Motion Potion, DJ Mancub, and the team of Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante; admission is $10 at the door. This is a particularly sentimental occasion for organizer Sunset Promotions, which was the last local company to book Brown before his passing.

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slaughterbythewater.com

Witchaven headlines MetClub's 30-year celebration.

If you aren't a member of Metallica's fan club and didn't succumb to a scalper, chances are that you aren't going to catch the Bay Area metal titans' 30th Anniversary concerts at the Fillmore this week. But even if you can't make those, you can still soak up the headbanging spirit at a couple smaller Metallica-related shows in S.F. Here's a quick guide to the festivities.

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Juan Data

DJ Platurn.

Last week, we reported on Mighty's successful efforts to mobilize its patrons to oppose the threat of all its nearby parking spaces becoming tow-away at night. Now, the club has announced a free party on Dec. 2 to thank people for their support -- about 800 letters that ultimately led the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to withdraw its proposal to eliminate the parking spaces.

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In the days when beer was 5 cents: the Saloon circa 1870, with the elder Wagner in the center.

Sex sells, but in the case of S.F.'s oldest bar, sex also saves -- buildings, that is.

The way owner Myron Mu tells it, the Saloon -- a North Beach watering hole established in 1861 -- was a bar on the first floor of the building, but its single rooms on the second and third floors operated as a small whorehouse that counted the city's firemen among its frequent customers.

And as the building stood burning in the fiery aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, those firemen kept their priorities straight and "made a point of coming and saving their whorehouse" from the flames, Mu says.

He's not sure it's even a true story, but the spirit underlying the bar's 150-year history has kept the Saloon locked in the tour guides of the city and in the hearts of its regulars, most of whom come to hear the live bands that shred heavy blues every night of the week.

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DaVinci

Hey, we're throwing a party!

With the Treasure Island Music Festival coming up, we just couldn't resist having a little opening night bash at the T.I. Pop-Up Shop at the San Franpsycho store in North Beach. So tomorrow night (Wednesday, Oct. 5), we're throwing a free get-together with S.F. rapper DaVinci -- whom you've seen us raving about lately -- and DJs Prince Aries, Ammbush, and our own columnist Derek Opperman.

Oh yeah, and there will be FREE BEER, too.

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Need another reason that San Francisco is awesome? The San Francisco Board of Supervisors just proclaimed Sept. 13, 2011, to be Jimi Hendrix Winterland Day in honor of six concerts Hendrix performed at S.F.'s historic (and now long gone) Winterland Ballroom in October 1968.

Okay, so Hendrix was from Seattle, not San Francisco. We aren't gonna argue.

The supervisors decided to recognize the guitar god in honor of a four-disc box set called Jimi Hendrix Experience Winterland that will be released on that day. To celebrate, Amoeba Music will be hosting a party with Hendrix's sister, Janie, and legendary bassist and Hendrix fan Bootsy Collins.

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The Clash City Sirens

A 10th annual tribute to the late great Clash frontman Joe Strummer takes place this Saturday, Aug. 13, at S.F.'s Bottom of the Hill. While it's always a benefit for Strummerville (The Joe Strummer Foundation for New Music), this year the event doubles as a fundraiser for Save KUSF.

"It is appalling how the university pulled the rug out from under the station after 30-plus years of community service," says event organizer Mike Anguera, who says he is honored to split the proceeds between Save KUSF and Strummerville. "I did not know that this was a trend across the country until I started being enlightened by the Save KUSF website. I am really hoping KUSF can survive this and be back on air."

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We'll be the first to admit that we have a serious crack problem. And, frankly, we take our crack black. We'll find refuge with people who are also addicted tomorrow night at the very first Vinyl Appreciation Society Mixer at Record Pressing, an S.F. company that specializes in manufacturing vinyl recordings.

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So, guess what happened the other day? John Mayer announced to an audience of students at Berklee College in Boston that he was addicted to Twitter, prompting the sympathy of, we imagine, literally nobody. "I was a Twitterholic," he announced (possibly sobbing). "I had four million Twitter followers and I was always writing on it ... and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller and I couldn't write a song anymore."
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Beats, Rhymes, and Life -- the long-anticipated documentary about the seminal hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest -- opens in the Bay Area tomorrow. (Check out our review.)

You can celebrate this tonight at a party in San Francisco hosted by the film's director, Michael Rapaport, and a "surprise special guest." And while we don't know for sure who that special guest will be, we have a pretty good guess -- and we think it's a person very, very central to the story of A Tribe Called Quest ...

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