Wendy Goodfriend/KQED

Lyrics Born (right) makes a toast on Check, Please!

Rapper Lyrics Born is one of the amateur restaurant reviewers on the latest episode of KQED's Check, Please! The station's food blog Bay Area Bites reports that Lyrics Born (aka Tom Shimura) and two other local residents discuss Chinese spot Hunan Home's Restaurant, the locally sourced food at Radius, and Berkeley pop-up haven Guerilla Cafe. Each guest visited all three restaurants and will present their honest opinions. No word on whether Lyrics Born will offer his in rhyme form.

See Also:
* My Tunes: Lyrics Born

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Meet Justin Loans -- known to his mother as Justin Flores, and to the Internet as one-half of smooth-rapping Oakland goofballs RnB Millionaires. The Millionaires churned out a handful of tracks from their West Oakland lab in recent years, but nothing with any serious shelf life. They've been working hard, though; Justin Loans' first solo effort, the How To Fake It In America EP, is out today.

This marks the first official release from the flock of professional roving partiers known as Trill Team 6 -- if you've "expressed yourself" in the warehouses of West Oakland or haunted some of SOMA's underground rap clubs, you might have heard of 'em. The loosely associated group of DJs and their cohorts (which includes Oakland hip-hop mainstay Willie Maze) has contentedly spent the last few years throwing parties like Sick Sad World and rallying friends and family to get fucked up together. Flores' work takes this ethos and runs in a whole new direction.

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Chillin' in the grass at Potrero Del Sol

Looks like 2013 will bring another day worth raving about at Potrero Del Sol park. The Bay Bridged and Tiny Telephone just announced the lineup for their annual single-day, outdoor music gathering in that southerly grassy expanse, and it looks excellent. Headlining are local garage mavens Thee Oh Sees, but the bill also includes plenty of acts we don't see in town all that often. This third edition of the annual festival takes place Saturday, July 13, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Here's the full lineup:

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After releasing a stunning debut album and signing with vaunted indie label Merge Records, San Francisco rocker Mikal Cronin today releases his second album, MCII. The 10-song collection continues where his debut left off, with driving, hugely melodic pop-rock songs and even more instrumental subtleties. The video experts over at Yours Truly used the occasion to make one of their finest films yet, following Cronin around his adopted home of S.F. for a day, and capturing performances at his home basement. Cronin's performances are intimate and lovely, and the footage of him in the city is gorgeous. This clip is definitely worth its seven minutes:

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The first time Randy Cordero covered a Neil Diamond song, he did it as a lark, never dreaming that it would become his full time job for the next 20 years. "In 1988, I was the singer and songwriter of a regular rock band," Cordero recalls. "Sometimes I'd do open mics, playing my own songs solo, with an acoustic guitar. One night, at a club that drew a lot of punks and alternative music types, I dropped 'Sweet Caroline' into the set. I didn't think I'd get a response, except maybe to piss people off. Everybody loved it. I did it again at the next open mic and it kind of snowballed from there." Cordero did his Diamond impression with his acoustic guitar for a few years as Surreal Neil, and the reaction was always positive. In 1993, he put together Super Diamond, a full-on rock band, and they've been going strong ever since. They're still one of the top draws at Bay Area clubs, not to mention the casinos of Las Vegas, and making a comfortable living. Ahead of the band's 20th anniversary show at Bimbo's 365 Club tonight, we spoke with Cordero about how Super Diamond came to be, his approach to interpreting Neil Diamond's songs, and the time Diamond himself unexpectedly came out onstage.

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San Francisco rock quartet The Mallard are disbanding, according to bandleader, singer, and guitarist Greer McGettrick. After returning from its recent South by Southwest tour, McGettrick announced that the band -- which had slowly but steadily earned national attention on the strength of its dark, restless garage-rock -- was taking a hiatus. But she now confirms that the group is breaking up for good after two shows later this month. "I was the one that made the decision," she says, "Though I felt it was ending whether I wanted it to or not."

See also:
* The Mallard Prepares for Takeoff
* Noise Pop: The Mallard Eschews Usual Songs, Covers Throbbing Gristle Instead, 2/28/13

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White Fence's Tim Presley

And, no surprise, it's good. We're basically just assuming that with "To the Boy I Jumped in Hemlock Alley," White Fence's Tim Presley is referring to San Francisco's Hemlock Alley. (Y'know, that sketchy little alley next to Hemlock Tavern?) But since Presley is a Bay Area native who records and performs up here regularly, that's a pretty reasonable assumption. The song, the third track to be released from Presley's upcoming album, Cyclops Reap (out tomorrow), is another wonderfully damaged slab of slow, Lennonesque pop. But as initiates know well, White Fence does this stuff fantastically well. Take a listen:

See also: White Fence: A Bay Area Outpost on the L.A. Garage Rock Scene

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Michael Pedro in the Warren Hellman Museum

In an old brick building off Folsom street, down a narrow alley that runs behind Slim's 333 Club, lies the Warren Hellman Museum, a tribute to the late founder of San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Though opened in October 2012, the museum is now open to the public every Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., giving Hardly Strictly fans a more convenient opportunity to learn about the banjo-pickin' billionaire investment banker who founded the free festival, and the history of the event itself.

Visitors to the museum will inevitably meet Michael Pedro, a diehard fan of Hellman and Hardly Strictly, who drives down from his home in Vacaville every week to oversee the museum during its opening hours. Pedro, a retired accountant and operations manager, volunteers his time. Often he gets paid in dinner from the kitchen at Slim's. But mostly, Pedro does it out of appreciation.

"[Hellman] kind of changed my perspective on things, just because of the guy he was," says Pedro. "He spent all his time making this money, and then he figured out what he wanted to do with it. And because of his love of the music and his genuine passion for it, he created Hardly Strictly."

See also: The Late Warren Hellman's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Wisdom

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Hey, look! Another exercise in presumptive list-making! This edition comes from your rock godfathers at Rolling Stone, who have just declared San Francisco's Great American Music Hall the No. 6 club in America.

Great American Music Hall, you will recall, is the stunning former bordello at 859 O'Farrell St. with the ornate balconies, the long, narrowish wood floor, and the excellent sound. The club hosts both headlining sets from rising local bands, pricey fundraisers played by the likes of Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe, an lots of artists in between. (Including, to name a few, Animal Collective, Jeff Tweedy, and Jonathan Richman.)

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Chris Owens and JR White, in more unified times.

The only former member of Girls who has talked about the end of the band is singer-songwriter Christopher Owens. Until now. Over at Paste, writer Philip Cosores has a long, hard-won interview with Chet "J.R." White, the bassist/producer half of the lauded San Francisco indie rock band. And parts of it are absolutely fascinating.

White says, among other things, that the two didn't talk during the recording of Girls' magnum opus sophomore album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and that he was surprised to not receive producer credit for the record. He says breaking up Girls was Owens' idea and that while he's somewhat past it now, the break-up did hurt:

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