Kevin Brown

Secret Chiefs 3 at Cafe Du Nord. All photos courtesy of Kevin Brown

Better than: The day before mother's day has any right to be.

To say Secret Chiefs 3 have been lately absent from the musical landscape is to ascribe a regularity to their release and touring schedule that's never really existed in their 17 years as a band. Of course, this "band" moves exclusively to the watch of guitarist/composer/producer Trey Spruance, formerly of Mr. Bungle, whose conceptual ambition along with the high overhead of the band's lush records leads to sporadic output.

But while Secret Chiefs 3 haven't played locally in a while, they have been busy, alternately performing before enthusiastic festival crowds in Europe and the Middle East, and working on the long-awaited follow-up to their 2004 LP, Book of Horizons. So it came as a welcome surprise when, a little under two months ago, fans of their Facebook page were treated to news of recording progress and a US mini-tour to make up for the absence. As the Bay Area has been Spruance's lifelong locale, Saturday's homecoming gig at Cafe Du Nord promised to be a barnburner.

Bonobo at the Warfield on Friday.

Better than: Watching a DJ fiddle with Serato or Ableton.

Electronic dance music, when paired with live instrumentation, can have disastrous results: a tenor sax player, wearing Tevas, soloing endlessly over a pre-programmed keyboard pattern; a live drummer struggling to stay in sync with looped beats; a confused audience. But joined onstage at the Warfield on Friday by brass, woodwinds, string players, and vocalists Szjerdene and Erykah Badu, the musician, DJ, and producer Bonobo (aka Simon Green) carefully avoided these pitfalls.

Gil Riego, Jr.

Armin van Buuren at the Fox Oakland Sunday night.

Better than: Fumbling for your keys

The Bay Area raised a glass to famed Dutch trance producer and DJ Armin van Buuren last night night at the Fox. Cinco de Mayo came on a Sunday this year, but that didn't stop this crowd from going hard for every second of the show. Of course, van Buuren is pretty inspiring alone: He's won DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs fan poll five times, four of them in a row.

Killing Joke at the Fillmore on Friday

Better than: Seeing New Order, the Cure, or any other British post-punk contemporaries of Killing Joke still in operation.

In terms of sheer breadth of influence, few bands from the post-punk era can approach the reach of Killing Joke. The brooding, apocalyptic death disco conjured by the quartet since they first came together in London In the late '70s has resonated with a host of punk, metal, dance, and industrial outfits. Killing Joke has been covered by Metallica, plagiarized by Nirvana (Kurt Cobain famously nicked the guitar riff from "Eighties" for "Come As You Are"), and hailed as an inspiration by artists like Trent Reznor, LCD Soundsystem, and Jane's Addiction.

Despite having reunited the original line-up after the 2008 passing of longtime bassist Paul Raven and issuing two solid albums -- 2010's searing Absolute Dissent and last year's equally potent MMXII -- Killing Joke remains something of a cult band in the States. A healthy but far from packed crowd gathered at the Fillmore on Friday night to hear a career-spanning set from singer Jaz Coleman and company.

Jason Moran and skateboarders at SFJAZZ last night.

Better than: A skate video soundtrack, especially one that isn't jazzy.

Midway through the final night of his residency at SFJAZZ Center, pianist and composer Jason Moran stood before a crowd of well-heeled San Francisco and North Bay Boomers and waxed nostalgic about his introduction to skateboarding in the 1980s.

'"I'd watch these [guys], and I'd be like, 'Oh shit, oh-kay," he snickered, remembering a trip from his home in Houston, Texas to San Francisco, where he was bedazzled by the dudes gliding across park benches at Embarcadero Center, baggy pants billowing in the wind. Moran, who is 38 but looks like an overgrown teenager, says he watched from afar and then went home to practice piano. But he never got over that initial enchantment.

Christopher Victorio

The Rolling Stones at Oracle Arena last night.

Better than: Bands that don't bother building an aura in the first place.

The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band is fallible.

In theory, the Rolling Stones may be perfect. But onstage in Oakland last night, they were not. On the second stop of their 50 and Counting Tour, the Stones played 23 songs, most them hits, like "Gimme Shelter" and "Brown Sugar." They brought out Tom Waits to duet on an old Willie Dixon tune with Mick Jagger, and let former member Mick Taylor show off his superior guitar skills on "Midnight Rambler."

In many ways it was excellent. The Stones supplied another night of reliable classics, Jagger moved like Jagger, and the crowd got a couple of semi-surprises. But the show also made it clear that the Rolling Stones' most valuable product right now is the idea of the Rolling Stones -- and that's what fans paid stratospheric sums to consume last night. The idea of the Stones is certainly more important and special than the band members' actual performances, which were loose bordering on sloppy, sometimes irretrievable, and often swamped over by Oracle's boomy acoustics.

Prosumer at Public Works on Friday.

Imagine a feeling of gut-wrenching existential dread -- the negative sensation that only arises when things are about to go incredibly wrong. If you can picture that then you're fairly close to experiencing the emotions I felt when local producer Vereker took a turn behind the decks at Public Works' OddJob Loft on Friday. While many artists in dance music work to provoke positive feelings, his set traveled through the dark side, helping make this one of the more thought-provoking nights at Public Works in recent memory.

Snoop Dogg at the Fillmore on 4/20. Photos by the author.

Better than: Becoming mired in the carmageddon that surrounded the east end of Golden Gate Park all day Saturday.

1. Four large men near me spend roughly two hours waiting for Snoop thusly: While cradling a cocktail in his arm, one packs and rolls a blunt to approximately the thickness of an index finger. He then holds a lighter up to the brown thing and sparks it, blowing a long flume of smoke through the flame. The four men wordlessly pass around the blunt, each taking a long, luxuriant pull. Every dude gets to hit every blunt perhaps twice, but with no hurry. When it becomes too short to smoke, whoever is holding the thing drops it on the floor. Then the first man cradles his cocktail again and begins rolling another. This process continued for at least three or four blunts. How they remained standing and drinking and rolling and chain-smoking like this, I do not know.

Better than: Passing out after an Adult Swim marathon.

It was 12:36 a.m. The iPod had been playing on an empty stage for 20 minutes now, and the restless crowd shifted uncomfortably, clearly impatient that the members of TNGHT, producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice, were taking so long to appear. After a drug-addled day for many, the sold-out Mezzanine audience was clearly eager for an injection of energy. Suddenly, the dark stage lit up, almost painful to the many reddened eyes looking on. A slow rumbling began.

"It's those trap guys!" a bikini-clad girl exclaimed, as TNGHT finally took the stage and the crowd erupted in a roar.

Missy Buchanan

Johnny Marr live at The Fillmore on April 13.

Better than: Waiting for Morrissey to reschedule.

While health issues have prompted singer Morrissey to continually cancel a string of shows in the Bay Area, Johnny Marr, his former partner in the Smiths, came to San Francisco over the weekend to deliver much of the music that fans have been missing. In an 18-song set at the Fillmore, Marr not only served up most of his new solo album The Messenger, but five classic songs by The Smiths.

See also:
* Johnny Marr on Making a Solo Album and Not Caring About His Age