Kal Rudman, honcho of the Friday Morning Quarterback music industry magazine, long ago told me, "Once you're a name, you're always a threat." Maybe he was threatening me. I don't know. But what I took that to mean was, establish a name, and you can do anything with it and branch anywhere from it. Then threaten someone.

The House of Blues — the Chicago booker/promoter — has been doing more branching than Michelle. It's not only taken on the Trocadero as one its venues and a due-2006 supper club at 15th and Chestnut streets, but also a casino venture and a dance club (Worship) along the loneliest stretch of Atlantic City's boardwalk at the Showboat. The Sound of Philadelphia — Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's local label to the creamy soul of Harold Melvin, Teddy P and the O'Jays — has also found its way into themed-lounge/restaurant heaven in A.C., courtesy the Bynum Brothers of Zanzibar Blue fame.

Enter past the dizzying Mardi Gras wallpaper of the Showboat — America's corniest casino — and you'll hit the flying-circus palazzo that is the House of Blues Casino. Or enter from the beach and through the flaming-heart-topped doors that open to the HoB's concert hall where Dolly Parton and the White Stripes play.

A big brown Buddha smiles serenely from the entrance to HoB's membership Foundation Room, an immediate welcome to the room's mix of American traditionalism - the white Biltmore-style ceiling and long, hanging chandeliers - and East Indian vibe. (Annual Foundation Room memberships start at $2,250, although the public can visit on Tuesday night's Godspeed club night by paying a $20 cover.)

Elegant and wearily sexy, the Foundation Room has an intimate patchwork feel, perfect for the post-rawk gigster in you. Step through heavy velvet curtains and low ceilings, and the Foundation is awash in Indian-style sculpture with Bali/Java touches; smoking elephant Vishnus under cathedral arches, dozens of Buddhas. At its farthest left, there's a mosaic tile-and-marble fireplace surrounded by plush couches, love seats and ottomans, giving the space a library-sans-literature feel. Along both of their walls, there are Kama Sutra-themed carved relief panels, whose actions are so low-lit, you feel voyeuristic standing in front of them.

Every etched architectural accent (heavy wooden doors, detailed backlit ceiling reliefs) and carved archway is customized by Java Nola, a firm specializing in Indo-African exotica. Along with intricate sconces and toiling ivory wall reliefs that seem to leap out at you in subtle hallucinogenic ways, there is also a supple warmth provided by wall folk art (dark-toned paintings by Purvis Young and the Rev. Albert Wagner, among others). There are also Indian religious art; un-formal Madhubani paintings from the Mithila region in India with loosely formed figures often bathed in pools of browns and blues.

The center is highlighted by a mahogany knotted-columned bar surrounded by weighty brocade couches and divans topped by dozens of pillows. It's buoyed by private rooms of varying size, width and height; blue velvet sitting squares with high, rising skylights; red velvet spaces lined with couches and long benches. Before you get too sexed-up, a few rooms have a prayerful bent; a Tibetan Buddhist room features Bodhisattvas to ogle and a carved Dharma Wheel and an African room features three protector statues gleaned from differing regions of Africa as well as initiation masks and Bamana mud-cloth cotton dyed with iron-rich mud from Mali.

The Sound of Philadelphia is the newest gambol under the blue-clouded dome of The Quarter at Tropicana — also home to the heavenly delights of 32 Degrees' way-red lounge, the smoky Cuba Libre restaurant and the sweet-tooth Brûlée. Though the Bynums (Robert and Benjamin Jr.) and executive chef Al Paris provide the setting and the food (jerk-grilled rack of lamb, grilled salmon on sugarcane skewers), TSOP's groovy vibe feels like from whence it came: a tall, casual, funky recording studio/lounge circa 1972. From the second you walk through glass doors, through the lengthy flame-red corridor (one featuring a nighttime Philly-scape starring Gamble and Huff) and underneath megawatt planetary orbs, you get a warm feeling. No fooling. That's because you'll soon be up against an orange Creamsicle-colored dining room and dance floor with an oblong '70s rec-room bar at its front; all lined in banquettes and booths covered in swirls of orange brocade fabric. The two-tiered TSOP, backed with a mile-high stage, overlooked by a private balcony area, does something I haven't seen in some time — offers people not-teenage a chance to dance to a live, brass, soul-funk band pounding out familiar TSOP hits.

Hand-spinning choreographed background singers and a full nine-piece orchestra take it to the bridge of "Love Train" while couples leap from their booths to boogie. It might not always be pretty. But that's branching out.

The House of Blues Foundation Room, Showboat, 801 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, N.J., 609-343-5796, www.hob.com/venues/clubvenues/atlanticcity. The Sound of Philadelphia, The Quarter at Tropicana, 2831 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, N.J., 609-887-2200, www.tsoplive.com.