Preview Taste of Street Scene Will Heat Up the Gaslamp

Every summer, the Street Scene music-and-food festival revives one man’s vision of the Gaslamp Quarter’s future:

* The current medley of regional-American and international restaurants have proliferated to the point where the area is nationally recognized for its culinary arts.

* A system of free, “period”-style shuttles facilitates easy, safe club-hopping that also reduces vehicular crawl and parking problems.

* And, on weekends, the music that normally is heard indoors goes al fresco, with both local and touring artists performing each week at a different, closed-off intersection.

But unless such a development comes to pass, only the early-fall Street Scene bash can be counted on to shift the Quarter into overdrive. On Friday, however, San Diegans will get a midsummer taste of what should be the Gaslamp’s destiny when the same people who produce the Street Scene present “The Pre-Street Scene Blues Festival” downtown.

Ostensibly a fund-raiser for Festival Foundation Inc., Street Scene producer Rob Hagey’s nonprofit music and arts organization, the one-day event will serve as the San Diego stop on a 10-date Western swing of “Alligator Records’ 20th Anniversary Tour.” Accordingly, the concert features several artists from the roster of the Chicago-based blues label.

Performing on a stage on L Street, between Fifth and Seventh avenues, the location of the Street Scene’s Blues Stage, will be vocalist Koko (Queen of the Blues) Taylor and Her Blues Machine, guitarist Elvin Bishop, the Lonnie Brooks Blues Band and Lil’ Ed and the Blues Imperials. Local Delta-blues solo guitarist Bob Eike opens the program, which will run from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.

This miniature taste of the Street Scene also will feature no fewer than six food booths, offering comestibles from the Old Spaghetti Factory, Dick’s Last Resort, Brewski’s, P and J (New Orleans-style) Seafood, and Picnic People. Because beer will be served, this is a 21-and-up event.

Tickets are $10, and can be purchased at all TicketMaster outlets (278-TIXS), or from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Street Scene Box Office, 363 Fifth Ave., Suite B-110 (corner of Fifth and J). On Friday night, tickets will be available at the festival’s entrance gate, located at Fifth and L, behind the Cabo Cabo Grill.

Because baseball’s All-Star Game FanFest will be taking place simultaneously at the nearby San Diego Convention Center, attendees are encouraged to use the San Diego Trolley, which will run until midnight to expedite egress from this event. For more information about the festival, call 557-8490.

It’s official: mega-groups Guns N’ Roses and Metallica will co-headline a heavyweight bill Aug. 14 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The mammoth card, which also includes special guests Faith No More, will be co-produced by Avalon Attractions and Bill Silva Presents. It is the first major rock concert (other than post-Padres shows) to be held at the Murph since the Who performed there in October, 1982.

On May 12, the co-headliners announced the first six dates of their long-discussed tour of the States and Canada, but remained mum on the rest of the itinerary, which at the time did not include San Diego. The promoters and the bands’ agents have spent the last few weeks ironing out details of the local show. At press time, not even a total capacity for the concert was available, but an Avalon spokesman said that more than 42,000 reserved-only seats will be made available at a pre-fee cost of $27.50.

Tickets will go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at TicketMaster outlets at Tower Records, Music Plus, and non-mall Wherehouse stores, at Arts Tix, and at the Sports Arena box office. Priority-numbered wristbands will be distributed at 8 a.m. at the Sports Arena, and at 9 a.m. elsewhere. No tickets will be sold at the May Co. TicketMaster outlets until Sunday. The Sports Arena will not sell tickets to the concert after Saturday. There will be no sales of concert tickets at the stadium box office until July 15. As always, tickets can be charged by calling 278-TIXS.

Local acoustic performers Deborah Liv Johnson and Peggy Watson will be featured Saturday in a benefit dinner-concert for Pro Esteros, a binational organization dedicated to saving the wetlands of Baja California.

Johnson is a nominee in the Best Solo or Duo and Best Folk or Acoustic categories of the upcoming San Diego Music Awards, and her current album, “The Cowboys of Baja Have Stolen My Heart,” is nominated for Best Independent Album honors. Watson, a favorite among local folk cognoscenti for years, recently found enough time away from her full-time teaching career to release the excellent album “Knee Deep.”

The two will perform at 6:30 p.m. at the Tijuana Estuary Natural Preserve Visitor Center (301 Caspian Way, Imperial Beach), after a dinner provided by La Fresqueria restaurant. Other pre-concert activities include a stroll at the Tijuana River Estuary. A $15 donation covers both dinner and concert; reservations are required. Send a check or money order, payable to Pro Esteros, to: Keith Smeltzer, 6725 Mission Gorge Road, No. 211A, San Diego 92120. For more information, call 282-3110.

Watson’s charitable works won’t stop with the Pro Esteros effort. She and local musician Chris Hassett will perform together for the first time on July 17 when they headline “Friends and Lovers III: An Evening of Music and Healing,” a benefit for the UCSD Owen Clinic presented by the AIDS Task Force of the First Unitarian Church.

The combination of soprano folk singer-songwriter Watson and baritone pop stylist Hassett holds much promise. The ad hoc duo will be joined for this concert by Johnson and instrumentalists Mary Barranger, (Bongo) Bob Goldsand and Robert Mayberry.

Hassett and Barranger began the “Friends and Lovers” concert series in 1987. They have raised more than $10,000 for local AIDS service organizations. Owen Clinic provides primary medical treatment to AIDS patients in the area. The fact that Hassett’s partner, local artist and teacher Dan Lund, succumbed to AIDS complications last year adds an extra dimension of poignancy to the performance.

A $10 donation is suggested for admission to the concert, which will take place at the First Unitarian Church, 4190 Front St. For more information, call 294-6255.

All of professional baseball is aware that former San Diego Padre John Kruk is leading the National League in batting; as this went to press, Kruk was hitting an Olympian .349 for the last-place Philadelphia Phillies, who come to town Thursday for a weekend series at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. But Kruk’s ascendancy is nowhere more celebrated than among the members of the local band, Dark Globe, who named both their 1990 album and a song after the chunky first baseman.

At a local Padres-Phillies game earlier this year, Dark Globe’s John Gire eluded stadium security long enough to hand a cassette copy of “Kruk” to Phillies catcher Darren Daulton, to pass along to his teammate.

“Daulton acted like the thing was a bomb ready to go off,” a laughing Gire related in a recent conversation. “But he agreed to give it to Kruk. The next day, we went back to the stadium and asked Kruk what he thought of the tape.”

The first-baseman’s response was a model of succinct criticism.

“Y’all are weird!” opined the West Virginia-bred Kruk, who nonetheless autographed Gire’s cap.

GRACE NOTES: The Levellers, an electro-acoustic British quintet that deserves to become the rock-of-the-’90s answer to Fairport Convention, brings its high-energy show to Sound FX tonight. Apparently, that news alone wasn’t sufficient to cause a queue outside the Clairemont Mesa Boulevard club, so the band is offering the unthinkable: a money-back guarantee.

If you attend the show and don’t like what you hear, and ask for a refund before the end of the Levellers’ third song, it will be given unto thee. Seems like a reasonable risk to hear some smokin’ Celtic-rock. The guarantee does not extend to the band Uncle Green, which opens the 8:30 p.m. show. Admission is $8 at the door.

BOOKINGS: (Tickets for the following concerts will be sold at all TicketMaster outlets unless otherwise specified.) Local folk singers John Katchur and Dave Howard perform July 25 at the Spreckels Masonic Hall, 3858 Front St. Tickets are $7 (call 747-7054). . . . Singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan performs Aug. 4 at Sound FX ($10.50, on sale Saturday at 10 a.m.). . . . Everything But the Girl plays the La Paloma Theatre on Aug. 9 ($18.50, on sale Friday at 10 a.m.). . . .

CRITIC’S CHOICE: MUSIC FROM WEST AFRICA

Those interested in a pan-African concert experience would do well to attend “A Night of Africa” tonight at the Belly Up Tavern. Headlining the affair is Une-Igede, a 10-piece West African band propelled by a four-piece drum ensemble led by Nigerian master drummer Najite Agindotan. Une-Igede plays traditional African music, as well as more contemporary styles such as High Life, African reggae and Afro-Beat.

Joining Une-Igede on the bill are local bands Bitoto and Bill MacPherson and Worldbeat. Admission to the 8 p.m. show is $5; tickets can be purchased at all TicketMaster outlets (278- TIXS) or at the door. For more information, call 481-9022.