Come Get Some

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26
Don't worry guys, 'cuz I haven't changed a bit: I went away for a while and saw things—attack ships on fire/C-beams/Tannhauser gate . . . would you believe that the entire scene was extemporized? And I made sure to learn absolutely nothing because otherwise how would we relate so well? We got a good rut and I for one plan to take a nap in it.

ANYWAY: Madman Moon gives Ello Grilo her little touch of Nilsson in the night and Loma Lynda—that band who shot their own films then played their own music in front of the films which they themselves had shot; what a triumph of the individual's capacity to create—are back and evidently pissed at a lack of critical appreciation because they changed their name to PHILISTINE! and officially attached that exclamation mark to the end of it. Like a guy once said: No one understands my art pain! At Detroit.

FRIDAY
Very Be Careful loves every torrid place: sings in Spanish over accordion corridos from south of Our Wall and then rhythm section/chicken-pickin guitar from Sound Dimension at Studio One. This is reggae/roots/and Spanish-alliterative-starting-with-'R' from the LA-area party band so accomplished at fun that they bung—rung + booze—in the new year at the most hardcore Ramada Inn lounge up in Hollywood, where the most intense shenanigans tend to transpire. Your dad still drinks beers and barbecues? Bring him out, too. He would like this. Plus, rumored kissing booth with DJ Dennis Goodfoot and bros. Chicks, bring gloss, and dudes, have the courtesy to shave, please. At Alex's with bucks off if you come in costume.

AND: Tash of the Alkaholiks soaks it up at The Roc, which used to be the Tiki Bar but which is now booking some pretty convincing hip hop; they sell Devo costumes at that Halloween store on the 5 and I bet you'd make a lot of new friends not really worth befriending if you wore that to the show at the Grove.

SATURDAY
Halloween's real weekend and I am gonna send you out to see the Thermals. They haven't been the same since their first drummer took a constitutional, but Hutch Harris still makes a band that sounds like the Swell Maps stuck on the Nervous Breakdown 45 and that makes a band that has some righteous hate (whole new record is a curse-opera about Amerikkka done with more care and literacy than I could convey) and some true lil heart, too. I will never forget when I saw Thermals blow out on the last night of crummy SXSW and a whole ugly leather tangle of industry space-wasters remembered for about fifteen minutes how they used to be human and think the Ramones were romantic. At the Glass House with Cursive.

PLUS: Abstract Workshop and L_ephunk plus Leprechaun in the Hood for the traditional HELL_EPHUNK hip hop/soul/funk/beats trick or treat at Detroit. Jud Nester goes live surely with some impressive costume—I could see this guy pulling out some seriously good and obscure '80s pop culture reference—and then it's Night Of The Living DJs with every name you'd want to see all in a long line. Recommended.

AND: Z-Trip at the Vault for beat people too beat to drive to OC; Spindrift does spaghetti/psych with top shelf instro band the Antarcticans and post-Mainframe New Order back-orderers Repeater at Prospector.

SUNDAY
Poet and rocker and literate chick-bait Derrick Brown was so OC famous and then he left and a thousand polysyllabic females felt their hearts melt—no, wait, felt their hearts DELIQUESCE! His John Wilkes Kissing Booth/All Black Cinema/Sparks-meets-Sprockets Glock Und Spiel made the musical c.v., and he makes books too—word books—that made astute-r critics than this one say things like, “Derrick Brown, as every thirty-something woman in the county is aware, is yummy and he is fine. And his poetry is stupid-sexy,too.” What up, Becca—come get some at Open in Long Beach.

PLUS: Ms. Fits at Alex's!

AND: If you want to see people wearing even more face paint and makeup, then you can go to Ladytron at the Glass House.

MONDAY
Delta Spirit are San Diego rock N soul controllers like the Dogs with more authority as they invite people to testify, or like the Make-Up without the irony or the makeup—but I do have to point out: although this name may innocently be intended to suggest the spirit of a place in the American south to which rock N soul music owe so much, it also sounds like one of those budget regional airlines where you see the pilots drinking in the bar while you're checking your baggage. And we already have Pilot Scott Tracy to do that. At Detroit.

TUESDAY
How much horror for you today, gals and ghouls: the dead live again with the unfortunately scheduled Sublime Remembered troupe at the Galaxy, which is already in bad taste so it might as well go all the way to hideously injurious taste and have people in zombie get-up singing “Santeria” and auctioning off the deceased's personal effects for a good charity. The Germs and the Doors of 21st Century (sounds like the scammy pyramid scheme that books its sales reps on Delta Spirit) and the Sex Pistols should all get in on this too, and we'll finish with a big groupie sance just to make sure nobody is getting too much rest even if they are dead.

AND MORE TERROR: The pride of Oceania: Australia's top Pink Floyd tribute plays the Grove and wonders why all these Americans are dressed so crazy, or doesn't because they're an Australian Pink Floyd tribute band and too drunk and numb to even notice. We don't need no education and we never did, neither!

AND YET MORE: 45 Grave is better than anything the Misfits are doing now so spot Dinah Cancer or dinah boredom from your own fault. At the Vault with Veruca Salt for some oddly scheduled reason.

WEDNESDAY
Marianne Faithfull is more permanently associated with chocolate bars than Willy Wonka but ain't that unfair because she was better than Nico: sadder when she was sad and winsome-r when she was winsome and even as disco-credible as Yoko for that post punk late '70s comeback, too. This girl's life, man—other than that not-herself detour with Metallica, it's about enough to make your heart deliquesce. Lady sings the blues at the HOB.

AND THE LONG NIGHT NEVER LIFTS: John Tesh sucks your blood—vlah!—at the Cerritos Center, which he does once a year around this time as terms of the bargain he had to make to get the life he got. Vlah!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2
Swedeos make Blondie safer—it's the Scandinavian impulse to safen up their cars and their furniture and their wholesome credulous womens—and call it the Sounds, and it is the kind of dance party the fancy-haired people around here just love to love, dahling. At the Galaxy. Don't ever change, OC.