Best Local Spirit Caught on DVD

When laptop hip-hopper Gold Chains' first full-length comes out this year on PIAS, a lot of listeners are going to wonder what Topher Lafata, the man behind the golden ropes, is all about. They need look no further than Gold Chains' Live at the Beta Lounge V.1 DVD, which captures the gravel-voiced troublemaker in particularly inspired form. Recorded one spring night in 2002 before a boisterous audience at the Internet-broadcast studio in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood, the release offers seven musical performances, two brilliant music videos ("I Come From San Francisco" and "The Game"), and a segment with Lafata reeling off rhymes in the hallway of a wild house party. "I'm just the MC of this punk rock show," protests Lafata, but he sells himself short: His rabble-rousing rhymes will have you stage-diving off your sofa in no time.