Full given name: Donald Patrick Miggs

Hometown: Home, hometown? Bay Shore, NY. I have a home in beautiful Montclair/Oakland I'm selling but now I live in Malibu and Tampa.

Relationship status: Incredibly happily married to Lisa DeBartolo (yes, daughter of THAT DeBartolo)

MAC or PC? MAC all the way.

Favorite post-show meal: Usually, something with chocolate.

Pre-show rituals: Corny vocal warm-ups that the band laughs at me for.

Worst onstage mishap: We've done over 70 shows since July alone; we get plenty of mishaps. In Arizona, we had cops come in and stop us mid-song to question people about a domestic disturbance that took place outside of the venue! I've fallen over monitors, which doesn't make me look too cool and we just had the power go out in front of a large audience. So I grabbed an acoustic and went into the crowd and sang "American Girl" by Tom Petty with Brian Totten (drummer) on shakers. My Dad always taught me to be prepared for anything!

For more on Miggs' favorite places to hang out in SF, special skills and more, take the jump...

More to the point, can you see these cars? Yeah, hard for us, too. (Go here to see the shocking! riveting! scandalous! footage that borders on tepid here.)

But these two American-made automobiles -- an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Chevrolet Malibu Wagon, respectively (chortle) -- are believed to be involved one of the 101 shootings that took place on September 30. If you have any info on these fine cars, you're urged to call the Burlingame Police Department, 650-777-4100.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Dimitri Shostakovich's birth (1906-1975), the Symphony played an all-Shosty program with an all Russian guest list. The connection between Shostakovich and Rostropovich goes much deeper than just nationality: Rostro was a student of Shostakovich and a friend, and we'd say a muse too, but it makes it sounds totally like not what it was. Anyhow, they hung out together, Shostakovich wrotes some pieces just for his buddy, who then premiered, for instance, the two cello concertos as the soloist. Nowadays, Rostropovich still plays the cello, but he mostly conducts, turning a spry 79yo this year.

And what a pleasure it was to have him conduct the orchestra. We'll skip talking about the first piece, the Festive Overture, from 1954. It was a bombastic little marching piece, brasses a-blaring both on stage and up on the side terraces behind the stage. We felt really bad for the guys up there with a horn wailing in their ear: did their hearing recover in time to enjoy the rest of the show, or did they go deaf for the rest of the evening? This is the Shostakovich that we do not appreciate particularly: writing in a neo-classical style which some would call post-Stalinist. They'd be historically accurate, but we actually believe the piece to be more fitting to the style of a composer writing from a beach house in Malibu for next summer's pompous blockbusters.

Picture courtesy of Time Magazine