Reports from the scene

Locals Only

Andrew Robillard, long time veteran of the music scene, club promoter, bartender and drummer for a host of San Diego bands (Lady Dottie and the Diamonds, The Album Leaf, Gogogo Airheart, Rafter, Cash'd Out, Enon, etc.), is moving back to his hometown of Miami, Fla., next month and will be the guest of honor at a farewell party at 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, at Soda Bar.

"I'm moving back to for a number of reasons. I want to help my aging parents fix up the house that's in disrepair," Robillard (a former CityBeat staffer, as well) says via e-mail, adding, "As much as I love SD, financially it never really panned out for me here. I have always lived rather hand to mouth, in part because I was constantly touring the world with one band or another."

The party will feature DJ The Night Rocker, The Paragraphs, The Old In Out, The Free*Stars and Rafter. The cover charge will be donation-only to help Robillard with moving expenses. He plans to continue playing with Rafter via cross-country file exchange.

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Rockers Switchfoot will release their seventh album, Hello Hurricane, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, and will kick off a national headlining tour on Sunday, Nov. 8, at the sold-out FM-94/9 Anniversary Bash at the East County Performing Arts Center.

—Seth Combs

View from a stool

I come from a landlocked state with these things called "seasons," and seeing how it was my first Halloween in San Diego, I was a little nervous. How do you get in the mood without October's chilly fingers up your spine and no dead leaves underfoot?

So, thank Samhain for The Creepy Creeps.

Every day is Halloween for the ghoulish surf-rock outfit, so they really throw down on the actual holiday. Their unhinged performance on Saturday night at The Casbah was the antidote for the holiday blues-the razor in the candy, the trick in "trick 'r treat," the really good Crypt Keeper pun.

We got there moments before the Creeps took the stage and headed straight for the bar. While in line, I got to survey the costumes. Scary and funny trumped sexy-a good crowd. I told Napoleon Dynamite he was the best Art Garfunkel I'd ever seen.

Dressed in formal Sleestak garb from Land of the Lost, The Creepy Creeps erupted with a set peppered with songs from their new album, Fink About It, complete with go-go dancers and frontman Dr. Creepenstein handling his organ like a necromancer (take that, Crypt Keeper). By the time they were finished, everyone was beer-soaked, sweaty and wearing everyone else's Halloween makeup.

The Night Marchers ended things with a rousing set, but it's hard to top the Creeps, on their own night, after they've given you chills despite the warm weather.

—Ryan Bradford

The Enrique Experience

For some unknown reason, the disco ball that hangs above the dance floor at In Cahoots (5373 Mission Center Road) is split in half, but the action was full-throttle on Monday night, thanks to the ungodliest process of natural selection known to man: dodgeball. Dubbed "Dodgeball for a Cause," the tournament benefited the San Diego After-School All-Stars, an organization that serves 25 local schools.

"It's a way of giving back. I was fortunate enough to participate in a program called PAL [Police Academy League] when I was a kid, and that kept me out of trouble," Chargers linebacker Shaun Phillips, the association's celebrity spokesperson, told CityBeat.

After a quick "Let's get it on!" the 28 teams battled it out in a grueling display that-thanks to screaming fans perched against the second floor railing and a soundtrack provided by such crooners as Alan Jackson and Brad Paisley-gave the match a honky-tonk-by-way-of-Thunderdome feel. It all happened under the watchful eye of the joint's life-sized fiberglass appaloosa, which, after repeated asking, I learned-just like folk-rockers America's famous steed-has no name.

One by one, the colorful rubber balls were placed on the centerline, and though they bore images of snowmen, smiling reindeer and scarf-wearing penguins, the mood on the playing field was anything but jolly as teams like The Naughty Assassins and The Leroy Browns adhered to the five rules made famous in the 2004 Ben Stiller movie: "Dodge, duck, dip, dive and-dodge." A net hung around the impromptu court was sometimes effective as a barrier between spectator and ball, and sometimes not, resulting in spilled beer and one lady getting hit square in the face.

"Guys are gonna think that I'm flirting with them," she said of the uncontrollable winking she experienced after being ball-slapped.

Tantrums were thrown as well, and in the end, The Dodgefathers, with their dapper tuxedo silk-screened T-shirts and dandy Sharpied-on mustaches, took the cake, receiving a medal, an autographed ball handed over by Phillips and the best prize of all, bragging rights that come with reigning supreme.

—Enrique Limón

Sweet Beats

Our semi-regular look at the local DJ and electronic scene

Artist: Miss Lady D (aka Diana Reyes)

Sound: Reyes was born into a legendary Tijuana musical family, or so she thought. "I remember taking car rides with my father when I was a kid. He would always play Michael Jackson's Thriller cassette, and, at the time, my dad was rocking a Jheri curl, so I thought they were one and the same," the turntable vixen recalls. Her current library expands beyond "Beat It" and includes the likes of Bunny Rabbit, Brazilian electro funkers Bonde do Rolê and Peaches, who she's seen live five times and considers a big influence, though she admits that her secret weapon is a stash of cumbias-an homage to her Mexican roots that she pulls out when she wants the crowd to get "nice and sweaty."

Philosophy: Dance and the world dances with you. "It's amazing how music allows you to get into people's bodies without them even realizing it," the 28 year-old muses. "Everybody knows that I love to dance, so when I'm DJing, I just pretend that I'm in the dance floor myself," she says. "Every single song on my playlist is a song that I fell in love with the first time that I heard it, and I'm out to share the love."

Stats: Miss Lady D has been known to cause a ruckus everywhere from Thursday Night Thing to quinceañeras countywide. Regular nights include The Radio Room's Club Purple (one recent edition included a midnight Macarena contest) held on the last Thursday of every month and a new monthly venture dubbed Lights Down Low that will take over The Flame starting Nov. 12.

She even brought Club Purple to Tijuana's La Mezcalera for the first time. "The energy was incredible," she says. "My set ended at 5 a.m., and partygoers were asking for more. So, after having some chips that I found behind the bar, I took a shot of mezcal and kept on going. Breakfast, after all, is the most important meal of the day."

—Enrique Limón