Highlights

THE BLACK KEYS

SAT. & SUN., OCT. 2 & 3

I WENT OUT with Lauren C. for all of eighth grade, and the furthest I got was feeling her up. Not that I cared. I was just as happy holding her hand. I guess Lauren was, too-a week after I copped my first feel, she dumped me. I thought I'd moved too fast.

I was even more devastated after finding out that the weekend after Lauren ended it, you, Dan Auerbach, snuck out of your house, stole the family minivan and picked up my ex-girlfriend. You parked behind a nearby elementary school and not only went up her shirt-but sucked on her titties.

If that hadn't ended our friendship, your newfound devotion to the guitar no doubt would've. In high school, you holed up in your attic bedroom, practicing relentlessly, only coming out to play the occasional over-40 singles mixer in the Akron Art Museum's sculpture garden. When most of us went away to college, you stayed in Ohio, jumping from one band to the next, until finally hitting pay dirt with the Black Keys. A four-star review in Rolling Stone and an invitation to open up for Beck, and the rest is history.

It's 10 years later, and I'm still bitter as hell about Lauren. As for your burgeoning rock- star status, I don't begrudge you the least bit. You've earned it, and besides, look at everything you have to put up with: keeping to the road for months at a time, hundreds of miles away from your beloved hometown and a new fiancée. (By the way, congratulations!) Not to mention all those old friends in cities across the country asking to be put on the guest list.

Don't worry, Dan. I'll pay for my ticket. I'll also be sure to mention to that hottie with the bangs and horn-rims swaying in the crowd beside me that you used to play Sega Genesis in my basement. I mean, really, you owe me at least that.

Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111; call for times, $15, $13 adv.

SEAN MANNING

YERBA BUENA

FRI. OCT. 1

YOU DON'T GET to oversee last season's best compilation-the Afro funk-king Fela Kuti tribute for John Carlin's AIDS-related Red Hot + Riot-if you don't have mad chops. And chops is what Venezuelan multi-instrumentalist Andres Levin is all about, what with having played previously with quirky Tropicalistas Marisa Monte, Los Aterciopelados and downtowner Arto Lindsay.

Yet, his real line of work is making dance music a primary objective for his all-nations orchestra of percussionists, rap mongrels and whiningly high-pitched girl singers and high-life guitarists that is the Latino collective Yerba Buena. Yerba Buena is a mash-ed up, multicultural paella where each individual flavor-Cuban sons, salsa rhythms, Latin rock's roar, Afrobeat club noise-is easily detectable whilst hidden within the whole. On their debut American CD, President Alien, producer Levin takes singers Xiomara Laugart, Cucu Diamantes and El Chino through a boogaloo of dense rhythms and tightly wound horn arrangements as their guide. Like August Darnell's Kid Creole, without his mawkish lothario lyricism and overall kitsch, Yerba Buena can make pop with polish too.

Southpaw, 125 5th Ave. (betw. St. John's & Sterling Pls.), Park Slope, 718-230-0236; 8:30, $15, $12 adv.

A.D. AMOROSI

GIFT OF GAB

WEDS. SEPT. 29

THOUGH IT'S MEANT as a compliment to its most noted practitioners, calling hiphop "conscious" and "intelligent" so far into the game still seems like an insult, as if the rest of the rap you're listening to is unconscious and the people who make it, rubes and smugglers. To the righteous and the literary within the hiphop community, I'll raise a glass. But I'll toast with the happy idiots and the hustlers as well as the teachers and the preachers. Besides, the smart tag often leaves the lit-wits off in a limberless corner of the hiphop continuum-as if only words, not vibrations, can touch the soul of the poet.

Somewhere in between the semantics and funky intention is Gift of Gab, the Sacramento-raised MC who, with DJ/producer Chief Xcel, brought their beat, brawn and brainy Blackalicious to bear on the intellihop front-first with the soul-filled SoleSides label with a series of EPs-still crucial in mouthy KRS-1 fashion-then Quannum with the dreamy, dirty Nia, then to major label-dom with the potent jazzy Blazing Arrow.

Long before Twista was tongue twisting his words in a helium-hyped rush of linguistic co-mingling, the handsomely voiced Gab was racing from start to finish with his well-heeled verses on communal strife, evil booze and language itself done up in baritone sing-speak and frank freestyles. Those same concerns are part of his first solo CD, the return-to-independence, 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up. Like a friendlier Tipping Point with all the rootsiness of old-school flat-line hiphop, Gab rhapsodizes about a day's trifling difficulties with the same heft he reserves for immigrant nationalism. Most of all, Gab battles, on the masterpiece theater of "Writz," with all the dancing dynamism of the Ali-Foreman thrilla-in-Manila.

Southpaw, 125 5th Ave. (betw. St. John's & Sterling Pls.), Park Slope, 718-230-0236; 8:30, $15, $12 adv.

A.D. AMOROSI

DIPLO & ROB SONIC

SAT., OCT. 2

HALF OF THE crate-digging DJ duo, Diplo and Low Budget, Low has ripped out two recent mirthful mixes as of late, Pawrty Music (B-More club classics) and Crunk In Yo System, that give it up on the dirty dirty tip. But now it's Diplo's time to shine with his own all-artist debut, Florida. While Flava blends the bounce of Miami moto-phunking bass with lovely Latin freestyle house, Brazilian raps and the Verve in one half-hour rubdown, his solo is a psychedelic soul-shack of sizzling acid rock and pork-fried hiphop. Named after the state from which he was birthed, literally and figuratively, there's a tin-roof-rusted quality to its echo-plexed, rub-a-dub rocker's delights as on "Money Power Respect" and "Into the Sun."

Also on the need-to-funk list is Telicatessen, the solo Def Jux debut from abstract hiphopper Rob Sonic. By keeping it as underground as he does cerebral, Sonic has found a way to get to audiences who want smarts without feeling talked down to. Telicatessen is a more raw sonic product than we're used to hearing from Rob; it's music that swallows your stomach with rough-hewn electro and phlegmy beats and rhymes as equally jarring as they are jovial. For a label that some seemed to find in a rut, this is Def Jux's best moment in years.

Northsix, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103; 8, $15, $13 adv.

A.D. AMOROSI

JOSH WEINSTEIN

FRI., OCT. 1

THIS YOUNG QUEENS-born pianist/vocalist had about quit the music business and taken up a "real" job in publicity until the World Trade Center tragedy convinced him that he was not living the good life. As a result he walked away from the nine-to-five and dedicated himself to the music he'd once neglected. He hasn't looked back since.

I first noticed Weinstein at his regular appearances at the Bitter End. On Friday, he returns for an extended set to celebrate the release of his new CD, Coming Home Hungry.

Weinstein knows how to work a crowd well, with an open smile and laid-back demeanor, and his pop/jazz tunes have a catchy groove that moves the audience. Expect to hear songs such as "Big Bad Me," an uptempo funk song that tells us of a man who repeatedly jeopardizes every relationship he's ever been in and "Just to Lead You Home," a mellow tune dedicated to his father and also to the city.

"The material will lean heavily toward the new release, of course, most of which was written in the last 10 months or so," Weinstein explained via email. "But we'll also be debuting new material, and opening up the songs a bit over the course of an extended set. The goal is to give you much more at the show than you could ever get simply by buying the CD. We'll also be playing that night with the largest configuration of the band to date: in addition to the five core members of the group, we'll have another horn or two and back-up singers."

The Petty Alchemy Band backs him, both in the studio and live. Formed by musicians who have performed with the likes of Freddie Cole, Dave Brubeck, Tito Puente and others, their work alone is worth the ticket.

Release parties often feature special guests on stage. When asked about this, Weinstein replied, "We might have an additional body or two passing through the rotation that night. There's only one way for people to find out..."

The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker St. (betw. Thompson & LaGuardia St.), 212-673-7030; 8, $10.

ERNEST BARTELDES