WE ALL KNOW XBXRX bring the rawk chaos every time they climb the stage – remember how they got everyone in the audience to really "get down," right down to the floor, at their April 5 Bottom of the Hill show? So you can imagine the tales they have to report after their recent national tour.

Chris Touchton, a.k.a. Da Hawnay Troof, a.k.a. that maniac on the mic in XBXRX, was more than happy to spill the "juice" via e-mail.

Their trail of tears includes a broken nose for Troof's bro Steve Touchton at the first show of the jaunt. Bouncers and soundmen, four times the lead singer's size (disgruntled ex-members of Tad, perhaps?), in Seattle threatened to beat up the band and then had the audacity to tell them to "wait outside after the show," according to Touchton. In Hollywood their parked rental van was run into by an SUV, and in ultraconservative Anaheim, "a 13-year-old girl who was super-psyched smashed our shit onstage." As for the Troof: "I got chipped teeth while the audience bum-rushed the stage in San Diego" and fell through a wall in Phoenix while performing. "There's more but I am walking out the door," he writes, doubtlessly wandering smack-dab into yet another adventure.

Give us a taste

Former Bay Guardian cover boy Tommy Guerrero has been plenty busy since reporter A.C. Thompson chased him down last year. The 36-year-old artist-musician-former pro skateboarder-co-owner of Deluxe skateboard company has just released his second album, Soul Food Taqueria (Mo' Wax/Beggars Banquet), and it's as laid-back and coolly groovy as he is.

So what is a soul food taquería? Do you get a side of collard greens with your menudo? "It's just this funny idea I had, growing up in the city – it's so diverse," says the former punk rock enfant terrible of S.F.'s Herbert Hoover Middle School (according to my Sunset District sources). "The city itself is just down-home, down-to-earth, blue-collar, full of everyday kind of people. My music is along the same lines, just being simple – I just try to be honest in what I do." There are also lots of leftovers. The prolific Guerrero apparently put together 30 or 40 songs by the end of recording.

No matter. His relaxed ability to slouch into any situation serves the soft-spoken Guerrero well. As he speaks on his cell, driving from his self-described cinder-block garage home in Oakland ("I got my own piece of dirt!"), he has a catalog deadline for Deluxe on his plate, as unavoidable as refried beans, and he's in the midst of an ongoing recording project with his band Jet Black Crayon and a collaboration with Prefuse 73.

You can catch the whole enchilada May 16 at Cafe du Nord when he joins his longtime homes, Toph One, Gadget, and Gresham, who has his own new solo album, It's Always Been There. Their Rubber Curtain event, which includes live and DJ sets, promises to keep everything eclectic, uniting such Guerrero favorites as Hank Williams and Public Enemy.

The kicker – the flan, if you will – is the new store, 8Letters, that Guerrero and girlfriend Melissa McRaney opened a few months ago at 1004 Jefferson Street in downtown Oakland. The space serves up the occasional music soiree, affordable works by Bay Area artists, 8Letters-only recordings by Guerrero and others, and bargain vintage furniture. A design showcase focusing on tent interior decor, including Guerrero and McRaney's vintage camping lounge, is on exhibit.

OK, my Mexican soul food platter doth runneth over. How does he do it all? The guy makes the term Renaissance man sound like faint praise.

"I wonder how I do it!" he admits. "How do I work on three of four projects without going insane? I just put my nose to the grindstone and get on with it."

Up from the flames

Meanwhile, up the hill, Bottom of the Hill seems to be bouncing back from its recent brush with flames. The upstairs area is covered with tarp outside, and there is little evidence of any water or fire damage. Whew! Backflip successor Bambuddha Lounge opened last week at the Phoenix Hotel, with a redesign and a giant Buddha reclining on the roof. A remodeled Paradise Lounge has flung open its doors once more, sans the stage that once hosted Dieselhed, Sister Double Happiness, and the Birdkillers. Rancid guitarist Lars Frederiksen was recently sighted working up a sweat, doing Bikram yoga, at Funky Door in the Haight. San Francisco filmmaker Joslyn Rose will see her documentary on hip-hop culture and spirituality, Soundz of Spirit – which includes local conscious souls such as Blackalicious, Mystic, Pep Love, and Planet Asia – screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts May 21.

Taking you down to Chinatown

Lipo Lounge has been hosting shows in its basement, including an April 24 date that found eXtreme Elvis sporting a surgical mask – SARS, anyone? – "pissing off" a U.K. TV crew, and ending the show outside, sitting on the street, as a source puts it, like a "big baboon." Next up, in the bowels of Lipo May 16, a CD-release party and bon voyage bash for local heroes Thrust Reverser and SubArachnoid Space, respectively. Speaking of the SubArachnoids, later that weekend, on May 18, at the Hemlock Tavern, S.S. band member and longtime Japanese rock aficionado Mason Jones and friends will help put on a performance by Tsurubami, an ambient noise side project of guitarist Makoto Kawabata, drummer Emi Nobuko, and bassist Hiroshi Higashi of the legendary Japanese psych ensemble Acid Mothers Temple. Jones says he recently retired as a touring member from the group so he can delve further into solo and collaborative work such as his magazine, Ongaku Otaku, and a database-driven Web site on Japanese indie music.

Six degrees of Erase Errata

Who'da thunk Grandpa Jones would have any relevance to the S.F. noise rock scene. March 12's Sonic Reducer made the connection between Cat Power's familial creep-show tune, "Nude as the News," and old chestnut "I'm My Own Grandpa." Turns out the writer of that song, a hit of sorts for Gramps Jones, is Moe Jaffe, the very own grandpa of Erase Errata guitarist Sara Jaffe, who laid the news on me in a recent e-mail. Judging from the wonderfully bizarre, inbred nature of the tune, I'd assume Moe must have been a hoot at family functions. But Sara says, "Sadly, I never knew Moe Jaffe. He died before I was born. I guess there is some question whether or not he and his songwriting partner were the total originators of that song, it might have been floating around in a folky tradition for a while and they just standardized it."