From beginning to end, the old wooden floor at the Fillmore Auditorium undulated with the steady current of dancing and jumping feet Friday night as 311 played the final show of their sold-out 3-day stint in one of San Francisco's most intimate and historic venues.

With a different set list each night culling from songs on all seven of their major label releases, the positive and spiritually directed message of 311 remained intact. The short and tight performances in every show proved that there is still an eager audience for their uplifting lyrics and pop hooks that set them apart from the mid-90s generation of rap/metal acts.

"Each set went really quickly," said Tara G., a resident of San Francisco's Glen Park who attended the show all three nights.

It is her only critique of their performance, and now after seeing them on 17 separate occasions she said she does not hold the brevity of their set against them, "this is like vacation for them, they're beautiful and having a great time."

The band spent most of their final night in the city dipping back into their older catalogue of crowd pleasers from their breakthrough self-titled Blue Album, released in 1995, and the lesser known 1994 release, Grassroots, including their first two hit singles "Down" and "Don't Stay Home."

The hard rocking breakdowns and rapid fire dancehall reggae rhymes that have become the defining sound of 311 and are always guaranteed to get the entire crowd moving in unison like a massive human pogo machine, gave way to a gentler sound halfway through the show.

In more recent numbers like "Beyond the Grey Sky," "Uncalm," and classic down-tempo numbers like "Purpose," and "My Stoney Baby," the relaxed feeling of acid jazz-funk blending into dub and ska rhythms showcased the band it its finest and most harmonious moments.

"After 15 years or so this quintet remains true to their message of being true to yourself," said Doug Krisch, after seeing the shows on Wednesday and Thursday night.

Krisch embodies 311's loyal fan base, "loners of sorts, people mindful of being positive influences in the world and therefore find the normal categories of social groups too restrictive."

Just as their fans tend to demand freedom from being labeled in society, so too does 311's music insist on being unbound to any one genre.

To Krisch, the best way to describe them is "part Salvador Dali and part MC Escher."

A special brand of metal-grind with reggae timing teamed with psychedelic jazz exploration by way of hip-hop and funk grooves. It is a fusion of mediums much akin to the artists Krisch is referencing, developing the creative quality of the avant-garde within a perfectly organized framework to a group of devoted followers. It is music to skank, pogo, thrash, mosh and even dance seductively with a partner to, often all in the same song.

The pogo-inducing chorus and epic drum solo of "Applied Science," the only song they played on all three nights, became the moment when both the band and the crowd turned into one organism - the four lead men standing in front of drummer Chad Sexton's extensive kit playing their own drum and cymbal in such syncopation they could be a beat machine.

Maintaining their image of hip and blessed rebels, the words of the encore's final song going back to their bad-boy days of the early 90s in Omaha, Neb., "Fuck the Bullshit, it's time to throw down," was countered with lead singer Nick Hexum's enduring last salute "keep it on the positive."