Kilimanjaro Is Gone, But Beat Goes On

Club Kilimanjaro is history.

The Pioneer Square restaurant and nightclub quietly closed its doors last week. Plans for a Cuban-themed night spot reportedly are already in the works.

Kilimanjaro featured African and reggae music, and while the P.S. venue is gone, the music will continue at Under the Rail. Tonight Boom Tali Posse plays the Rail; tomorrow it's Lion Of Judah! with Sisterspeak and Ababajoani. -- They can't stay away.

The Nuerotic Boy Outsiders - Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum of Guns N' Roses, Sex Pistol Steve Jones and John Taylor from Duran Duran - played Seattle just two weeks ago and they're already coming back. The mighty sidemen will be at the Off Ramp Sunday.

Casually assembled last year at L.A.'s Viper Room, NBO is a solid little bar band that draws on material from each player's former group - Jones plays a lot of Sex Pistols - and favorite covers from artists like Iggy Pop. When the band played the Crocodile last month, the audience was a strange cross-section of head-bangers, bikers, yuppies, cross-dressers and John Taylor fans who still scream and swoon. The RKCNDY show the next night was more of a straight-ahead rock crowd.

Tomorrow at the Off Ramp Lazy Susan, Kitchen Radio and Give play. -- While Jorma Kaukonen was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his former band, Jefferson Airplane, it's as a solo player and a member of Hot Tuna that the singer/guitarist has mostly worked in the past two decades. Kaukonen, a sublime acoustic guitarist, has a new release, "The Land Of Heroes," and returns to the Fenix Sunday night for one show. -- Most of Seattle's Laundry ventured in a van to Park City, Utah, last week to play a one-night stand. Unfortunately, the band's bass player got stuck in the snowbound Salt Lake City airport, and the group's journey was for naught. Laundry is scheduled to play a free show at the OK Hotel tomorrow night. Surely the same fate can't befall the band twice? -- It was standing-room only at the Crocodile Cafe last Saturday for the Grammy Showcase, a battle of the bands. While Inflatable Soule, Jackie On Acid, Ondine and Super Sonic Soul Pimps all competed, it was free-form jazzers Kilgore Trout that took the prize. The Presidents of the United States' Jason Finn, Egg Studio-man Conrad Uno and Goodness manager Barbara Dollarhide were among the judges.

-- Is there artistic life beyond Poetry Slam? Hamish Todd, poet, ringleader, and reformed slammer, is sure of it. Tonight Todd, along with artist Mike Romoth, the Young Composers Collective, the Smutnicks and others, presents "Letters From a Decadent Rome" and "Bigger Than God," a revival or extension of "The God Issue." Todd says it'll be a collection of readings, performances, writings, art and game shows, a poetic pastiche of extreme ideas. "We're going to do it all," says Todd. "There's no telling what will happen." Things get under way at the Crocodile Cafe at 7 p.m.

-- The Austin Lounge Lizards, self-proclaimed clowns of country, are at the Backstage tonight. The band's set list, which includes numbers like "Life Is Hard, But Life Is Hardest When You're Dumb" and "Gingrich The Newt," pretty much says it all.

Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza is at the Backstage tomorrow night.

-- Gruntruck is back: Moe's, 9:30 p.m. Saturday.

-- And don't fear the reaper, Blue Oyster Cult plays the Ballard Firehouse tonight and tomorrow, the Strangers play there Saturday, and Steve Pearson, Steve Aliment and Jack Johnson play Sunday.