Nice, but Not Naked

"We were the first band to play at Dreamgirls," says bass player Chuck Holiday. His band Two Word Name played at the Kearny Mesa topless bar last month.

"We just were looking for sponsorships. We went in and talked to the manager, and he asked us if we wanted to play that trial gig in September.... The dancers couldn't actually strip when we were playing," says Holiday, because the four band members had to share the same stage as the women. "They could dance when we were playing, but they couldn't take off their top [because they were within six feet of proximity]....

"We have a lot of friends who dance there. We thought the strip-club image would be good for us. We're going for the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll thing."

Two Word Name has original songs, but half the songs they played at Dreamgirls were covers.

"The covers are mostly stock strip-club stuff, like AC/DC and Guns 'N Roses. We got to throw in Weezer's 'Say It Ain't So' and Radiohead's 'Creep.' The coolest part was playing one of our slow originals and seeing the girl get on the pole."

When Two Word Name plays Dreamgirls next week, Holiday says 100 percent of the proceeds from the door will go to a missing-persons charity called Gina for Missing People Foundation (411gina.org).

"There are definitely a lot of runaways in the adult industry," says Holiday. "When girls run away, they have limited resources. They need money quick, so they do what they need to do to survive....

"[The organization] was started by this lady Janel Rap from Orange County, whose sister Gina Bos went missing in 2000. Gina was a singer/songwriter who played [a] show and then was never heard from again. They found her car but they never found her."

Two Word Name appears Halloween night at Dreamgirls in Kearny Mesa.