Oh dear sweet Jesus, is it finally Friday? I’m still recovering from the non-stop mania of the past week. Last Friday night I saw Nas destroy the Roxy with an amazing “secret” show (remember: Nas is the truth!). From there it was N*E*R*D* rocking the HARD festival with classics like “Run to the Sun” on Saturday. Sunday brought the white-girl gospel of Feist with the ass-kicking soul of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings at the Hollywood Bowl. The infectious disco fever of Hercules and Love Affair at a packed Echo this past Wednesday was the icing on the week’s sonic cake.

So while I go try to revive myself with a Jamba Juice and Red Bull cocktail, please enjoy the greatest music video ever, “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” by Gnarls Barkley (featuring my hero, music producer to the stars Danger Mouse, above). I do have to warn you, it's graphic in a surreal and bloody way. Proceed with caution!

Starring Aasha Davis (anyone wise enough to watch the NBC series Friday Night Lights will recognize her as “Waverly,” Smash’s girlfriend) and produced by director Chris Milk, it’s nothing short of genius.

Celebrate the brilliance of Gnarls Barkley (and their fabulous album The Odd Couple) when they headline the Hollywood Bowl this Sunday night. Remind your too-cool-for-school roommate that indie sensation Deerhoof is playing, and they’ll surely bring a case of PBR for the occasion (it is a LA Phil show, so those Yogi Bear picnic baskets are more than welcome). Discover true African music with Senagalese singer Fallou Dieng, too. See you there.

—Scott T. Sterling 

Shoestring Entertainment might be the name of Miller Uwanawich and Shan Markosyan's entertainment production company, but when it comes to opening a nightclub, they're all about extravagance! Not only are they renovating West Hollywood bar Seven with $100-per-gallon paint (it's been mixed with real gold), but the new owners are renaming the venue 24K because, they say, "it's the purest of all golds."

You can also expect gold-colored chandeliers and champagne buckets, not to mention a honey-hued backlit onyx bar and staircase when the venue reopens next month. Even more exciting (if you're a design freak like me), will be the sleek wood paneling designed to look like a Bentley dashboard. 

Like Crown Bar down the street, 24K will have one A-list night but then aim for an open-to-all vibe on all other nights. "Obviously we want it to be an upscale crowd," says the bar's marketing guy Clinton Ehrlich, who's working in-house along with Jamie Barren. "But we don't want to [...] snub people at the door." If you really want the royal treatment, though, you can splurge on $2,000 bottle service that includes car service.

What will make 24K different from Crown Bar, and every venue in the city, in fact, is that owners will also use the club as a location for their reality show (CW's shown an interest) that takes the "American Idol" concept to the next level by asking contestants to write their own songs. Since these guys also make films, they expect to use the space for Industry events as well.

24K opens August 31 with an opening bash to include girls dressed in gold body paint, midgets pouring free vodka shots, and sexpot DJ Colleen Shannon most likely on the decks.

 
And speaking of new venues…
I'm told the spot formerly known as Forty Deuce will be called Bartley and have a Brutalist design scheme. And remember Johnny's Cocktail Lounge across the street from Silverlake Lounge? Bobby Green (owner of Bigfoot Lodge, Little Cave and Saints and Sinners) is turning Johnny's into a 1970's style trucker bar. 

—Alexandra Le Tellier

There are some things that drive Events editors nuts: not having the capacity for teleportation is high on the list, but the stuff of nightmares is having an event listed with the unforgiving permanence of print— only to have it moved or canceled.

Modular, why must you do this to me?  

The Modular pool party listed in this week's Metromix has been moved from the downtown Standard on Sunday to the West Hollywood Standard on Saturday due to *very* last minute budget and scheduling problems. Yes, there will still be girls in bikinis and booze and sunburns. And yes, Does It Offend you, Yeah? will still be DJing.

Does it offend me? Yeah. But not enough to keep me from going.

See you on a lounge chair,

Is it a restaurant? Or is it a bar?

Defining the properties is only getting harder, especially with the popularity of the restaurant-lounge—a hybrid that only looks to persist as the economy is getting crappier, and owners have a better chance at recouping costs with multi-functioning spaces.

Lounge? Bar? Restaurant? Yes, yes, um…sorta when it comes to Culver City’s new Rush Street. Despite the early hours and Friday traffic, the huge, industrial-esque space was packed for last week’s launch party.

The bar impressively takes up one side of the dining room—it was supposed to be the longest bar in CC until Father’s Office came along. De rigueur horseshoe-shaped booths line the other side for groups who don’t want to perch at the tall communal tables in the center. A stylish lounge is set up in the loft with a not-so-stylish stripper pole (class-ay!).

Two gorgeous ladies, who totally looked like twins,

manned the upstairs bar while servers—all girls—stood by in, it’s got to be said, some of the most unflattering, body-hugging uniforms.

I was getting the picture. It was becoming increasingly apparent that this restaurant editor didn’t belong—especially since I was only able to score some pretty sad-looking sliders as samples.

Then, as I was making my final notes and taking my last pictures, a guy sidled over. After finding out my raison d’etre, he exclaimed, “I know you haven’t been to the best Italian restaurant in the city!” Uh, where would that be? “My kitchen!” Yep, I didn’t belong.

—Jiyeon Yoo

Robin Antin pulled a Britney Spears on Friday. (No, she didn't shave her head!) On Friday, the infamous Pussycat Dolls founder took over NoHo's Millennium Dance Complex, where Ms. Spears practices her moves and teaches kiddie classes, to host auditions for the next group of Dolls who'll perform at Antin's new WeHo club, slated to open at the end of August. Our intrepid reporter Jane Pham braved the scene where, she says, it was hard to tell the difference between professional dancers and strippers. (Some might argue strippers are professionals…) The one thing they all had in common, besides big boobs and long legs, was an urge to show their skin. One girl even took off her jeans before walking into the audition, hoping that her buttocks would help sway the judges. Click here for a photo gallery from the event, which includes interviews with some of the sexiest girls who showed up. You’ll see the finalists are as diverse as Brangelina's growing family.

—Alexandra Le Tellier

“They convinced fifty thousand people to shove sand up their buttcracks for NOTHING!”

A man is screaming into his cell phone with the furor of someone who has been robbed or wrongly imprisoned. He sounds irate and violated. He is at Glow on the Santa Monica pier.

It’s 3 a.m. and I’m standing on the beach with several thousand people, looking for a reason to be here. The first ever free “Glow” event is mid-swing, and scheduled to last until 7a.m. The planned art installations, which were promised to be mind-blowing, trippy, luminescent and well, glowy, are conspicuously missing. Other than some grunion mating in the moonlight, the light-based attractions consist of little more than scattered Burning Man alumni with glowsticks wedged down their pants and the pier’s ferris wheel blinking in seizure-inducing patterns. We wander over to see some “volcanoes” only to find that they’re a dozen or so foot-high mounds of sand topped with Ikea votive candles. Really, people?

(At least there was a ferris wheel?) 

The scheduled DJ sets have apparently been cancelled due to a brawl breaking out earlier in the night, and now there’s not much to look at, other than other people. The crowd clogs the pier’s entrance, the shoreline is clustered with tens of thousands of people, and the line for funnel cake is staggering. I take an informal poll to find that approximately 50% of my surveyed subjects answer affirmatively when asked “Are you fucked up right now?” The other 50% shake their heads no, with a pang of sober regret.

Shuffling down Pico at 4 a.m., my cohort says in mock wonder “Maybe we were the art.”

What did you guys think: was it a poorly planned mess or an experiment in the futility of art? Or were you just too effed up to notice?

Nas, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey—we’re talking legends, baby. All three were in Los Angeles over the course of a 24-hr period, and I was lucky enough to experience them in settings far more intimate than usual.

First came an invitation to the MTV/Harmonix party for their mega-popular Rock Band video game at the cozy Orpheum downtown. The promised “surprise special guests” were none less than the Who. With general admission free-for-all seating, I landed about 12 rows back from the stage, dead center. It was a casual set that occasionally revealed the band’s raw power between good natured-bantering, insider videogame industry humor and old-fashioned flubs. A moment when Townshend (above) launched into another chorus of “5:15” as the song was ending to the bemused smiles of the band was priceless. I could go on (and on), but I’ll leave it at something any Who fan would’ve truly appreciated.  And I did.

I awoke to a text message the next morning from my man KC. “I got Nas at the Zune gallery tonight. Be there.” Since Nas is among the greatest rappers of all-time, and that day being only two after the release of his highly incendiary Untitled album, I was so there. Wifey Kelis watched from the wings as Nas stopped opening song “Hero” after only a few bars. Handing the controls to DJ Green Lantern, he tore through new songs (“Breathe”) and classics (“One Love”) like a prizefighter warming up for a title bout. With an adoring crowd up close and personal in the stark space, Nas seemed to genuinely enjoy getting the hip-hop industry amped with his undeniable skills. Ironically, it was when he dropped an a capella of a certain song from his new album that the show came to an abrupt end. Let’s just say it rhymes with a word that made Elizabeth Hasselbeck cry. With Nas set to take the stage at the Roxy tonight for an exclusive Myspace gig, this could very well have been just such a warm-up. Stay tuned—details at 11... 

—Scott T. Sterling 

I love James Brown’s music just as much as the next motherfunker, but I must admit that his flamboyant sense of style played a significant role in maintaining my interest in him as I grew older. I mean, what musician today could pull off a fox fur coat, a gold jumpsuit and a white leather belt with a rhinestone encrusted buckle that has the title “Sex Machine” emblazoned on it?

               Silver Fox Coat                                                  Kennedy Center Honor 

Okay, so, maybe Snoop Dogg, P. Diddy, Pharrell, and Kanye could (and in some cases have), but probably wouldn’t feel as free to do so had James Brown not blazed the lamé-laced trail before them. More than a year after his death, Christie’s Auction House is selling off some of the Godfather of Soul’s personal memorabilia—including a collection of clothing louder-than-Rosie O’Donnell. Some of my favorites—which I’m adding to my Christmas list—include a cobalt blue cape with the words “My Name Is Godfather of Soul,” a Kennedy Center Honor, and a black mink coat. It’s not animal cruelty if it’s vintage, right?         

          Sex Machine Belt                             Blue "Godfather of Soul" Cape 

“Do you think she’s on ecstasy, or just really nice?

My friend Victor raises a good question. A bubbly blonde in a sundress has approached three of us at Barker Block downtown and she’s a little too… friendly. The new loft space in the middle of an otherwise industrial wasteland is establishing itself as a hangout hub by throwing a summer full of free parties offering sunsets, rooftop views, a cozy Jacuzzi and gallons of free alcohol.

It’s Saturday night and the crowd includes a healthy mix of men wearing too much musk, dreadlocked hipsters and a few wizened, platinum blond cougars. Megan-in-a-Sundress bears the innocence of someone who was on the student body council in high school, but is hovering by our lounge chair with saucer eyes, asking us questions that are laughably clichéd: Do we come here often? Are we having fun? Don’t we like the view? As she bounces away, we’re left debating if she wants to sell us a million-dollar loft downstairs, if she’s rolling on pharmaceutical grade aphrodesiacs or if she’s just hammered on free rum.

Regardless, the view of downtown and the July breeze is worth fiddling with the GPS to find. We wave goodbye to Megan as two of her friends are splayed out on a poolside lounge, making out with the fever of prisoners on a conjugal visit. Perhaps they’re just happy to be here?

Any shred of coolness left in the diseased, rotting carcass known as “DJing” has been pretty much killed off for good, thanks in part to UK celebrity car crash Amy Winehouse.

Winehouse has started a club night called “Snakehips” at the Monarch pub in Camden, England. For the club’s first night, she arranged a “DJ battle” between herself and one DJ Bioux. So while fans and photographer crowded around the decks, Winehouse did what she does best: drink, stumble around and cause a scene. What she did not do was play a single record. Sigh. Remember when she was good at singing?

Between Serato (which celebrates 10 years of existence this year) allowing even a monkey to beat-match (it’s true!) and dubious celebrities standing around getting wasted being constituted as a “DJ gig,” calling yourself a DJ in 2008 (unless you’re a true ninja like A-Trak or Diplo) is just not hot, people. And this is coming from someone who calls himself a DJ, so don’t trip.

All of which is why I’m in the market for a new guitar. As scary as it sounds, even middle-of-the-roadsters like John Mayer will always be cooler than 99% of most DJs or computer-powered “bands.” Talent trumps trendy every time. Spread the word...

—Scott T. Sterling