Sizzle & Fizzle: Highs and Lows from the Last Week in S.F. Music

Sizzle

Disco lives at Go Bang!

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• Adam Yas
• Portlandia (TV Show)
• Casey Shafer
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• The beloved Go Bang! party celebrated its third anniversary this weekend, and in the process showed a packed crowd at Deco Lounge that disco is still kicking. Under a matrix of lasers and multicolored light rings, a diverse crowd shook it out to classic cuts and impeccable programming from regulars Steve Fabus and Sergio Fedasz.

• Adam Yas is a teacher at the Life Learning Academy, a school for at-risk kids on Treasure Island. He's also a longtime local rocker and finalist in the Queen Extravaganza, a national contest to build a Queen cover band produced by the band's drummer, Roger Taylor. Yas, 36, auditioned with a crisp, clean take on "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," hoping to satisfy the dreams of his inner 10-year-old. We hope he succeeds.

• Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the feminist bookstore, Portlandia stars and co-creators Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney/Wild Flag fame) announced plans to bring a live version of their hilarious hipster spoof to a few cities nationwide. Naturally, S.F. is one of them: The live Portlandia rides into town (on a fixie?) Dec. 30.

Fizzle

• Even the outspoken Jello Biafra couldn't ignore the controversy that ensued when his current band announced plans to play in Israel. After getting blasted by both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli comments online, Biafra canceled the show, went to Israel alone, and wrote about the trip on his website. He told us the issue is "the ultimate third rail" — too bad it had to stop the music.

• If you've heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act, you're probably against it. But Casey Shafer, owner of S.F. label Burning House Records, says the law would help curb online piracy. Unfortunately, Shafer says, it's being vilified by tech companies like Google, which earns revenue by helping would-be pirates find copyrighted music.

• After football fans moaned about Nickelback playing a Thanksgiving day game, the band mocked itself in a video. Which proves that frontman Chad Kroeger is less of a jerk than he used to be. He once challenged one of our former colleagues to a boxing match after finding himself portrayed negatively in print. But if the band's reaction to bad press has improved, its music hasn't.