Noise Pop Tarts

What else, what else ... well, I'd tell you how Tuesday's Ted Leo show was, but I was too busy trying to talk to this cute girl to notice. (Here, by the way, is her take, e-mailed a few days later: "We're all getting older and Ted isn't playing in our Midwestern basements anymore. But hitting big couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, and I couldn't be happier to raise a Jameson to the man, now older, but still respected and profoundly inspiring. Plus at the show some writer asked for my digits.")

Mates of State at Slim's on Wednesday? That duo gets too much credit for being married and cutesy. The most interesting thing about the No Doctors, Hospitals, and Comets on Fire show on Thursday at Café Du Nord was the number of bicycles ridden to the gig. Up and down Market, one-speeds were locked to parking meters, as if freaky psych-rock were the new Britrock, bikes the new Vespas. San Francisco: saving the Earth one hipster at a time.

The final thing I'll mention is 2005's Best Noise Pop Discovery. Kids, here is the group you've been waiting for: Still Flyin' is a 15-member reggae band composed of current and former indie rockers. Here is a list of bands that share at least one member with Still Flyin', given to me by the group's drummer, the very pedigreed Yoshi Nakamoto: the Aislers Set, Scenic Vermont, Masters of the Hemisphere, Track Star, Maserati, Red Pony Clock, Kissing Book, Mosquitoes, Ladybug Transistor, Girlfrendo.

In addition to having four female backup singers, Still Flyin' boasts a saxophonist, a xylophonist, a trombonist, a full-time dedicated onstage dancer (which I haven't seen since the days of the Happy Mondays), and frontman Sean Rawls, who, if he's not high out of his fucking mind at least had me convinced that he was during the band's two Noise Pop shows, the first at Slim's opening for Mates of State, the second for the Friday happy hour at Thee Parkside. According to Nakamoto, songwriter Rawls formed the band just by asking his musician friends to show up to practice; before he knew it he had to cut the number off at 15. And since it's a side project, Nakamoto explained, there's no telling how long the Still Flyin' bus will keep a-rocking. Until it pulls over, however, get on it, because it is one ganja-filled, magic jalopy kind of experience, where catchy hooks bounce through your brain as your ass, mysteriously, finds itself bobbing up and down. As Nakamoto put it, "I don't think my grandmother would like the Aislers Set, but I could see her becoming a huge Still Flyin' fan."

Someone get Jimmy Kimmel on the phone.