May 26 through June 2 in live music
THURSDAY,MAY26
•Play the PhilShane/AgentOrangedrinking game! Every gig that either the local lounge crooner or the seminal OC punk band plays this week, you take a shot. Tonight, Phil's at Original Mike's in Santa Ana, while Agent Orange leave bloodstains—heh, heh—at the House of Blues. Ready? Drink! And . . . drink again!
•Meanwhile, there's PunkRockKaraokeat Alex's Bar in Long Beach, with a live band made up of . . . um, some guy, some guy, some dude, some BadReligionguy, and Living, Breathing Punk Rock Icon SteveSoto.Yeah!
•We've no idea what exactly this OneManStarWarsTrilogydeal at the Grove is, but we're cynical enough to believe that if RevengeoftheSithwasn't opening this month, the guy behind this show would be pulling off his usual One Man Look Who's Talking Trilogy at the Best Western Laguna Hills.
FRIDAY,MAY27
•Last Friday of the month? Must be PhilShanenight at La Cave. Drink!
•The RoadtotheWarpedTourBattleoftheBandscontinues at Hogue Barmichael's, with the deliciously named EdGeinFashionShow.
SATURDAY,MAY28
•Just because PeterMurphyarrived onstage at Coachella dangling upside down from a chain at the start of Bauhaus' set doesn't mean he's gonna pull the same stunt when he plays solo at the House of Blues. The songs, however, will be a vast improvement over the catalog of his gloomy gothster brethren.
•Got this e-mail last week: “NEW YORK Wednesday, May 18, 2005—Friday's (May 20) ACurrentAffairairs video whose owner claims JimMorrisonof the Doors is very much alive and living in cowboy country in the Pacific Northwest. 'In 1998, Jim Morrison had showed up at our rodeos, here in southern Oregon, and we discovered him living on a ranch, raising show-quality Arabian horses and paint horses. And I shot some footage of my friend. Jim got in the motion picture film. One thing led to another,' says the cowboy filmmaker Gerald Pitts, who says he accidentally caught the rocker on tape and then offered him a contract to act in one of his movies.” But what we really need to know is, does this mean WildChildis still playing the Coach House?
•Agent Orangeat Diablo's Rockin' Cantina in Lake Forest. Drink!
SUNDAY,MAY29
•Buy RichKanea birthday card, as he turns an age equal to the number of points scored by the Dallas Cowboys in their win over the Chicago Bears in the '78 NFC playoffs. Attempt to hand-deliver card to Rich as he experiences a full-on midlife crisis, first dancing shirtless to the white-hot funk of Mission Viejo's own Slapbakat the Block in front of the AMC theater, then later up the street at the Grove with the GAPBand,where Rich hops aboard the “Party Train,” leading the room in a particularly bawdy “Oops. Up. Side-yo-head. Say oops upside yo head” singalong. From there, follow Rich—phone cameras in hand to preserve the evidence—as he hitches a ride down to Diablo's Rockin' Cantina in Lake Forest and dances pantsless to an extra-estrogeny take on “Run to the Hills” by the IronMaidens.
MONDAY,MAY30
•Memorial Day. A day to remember the sacrifices made by our brave men in uniform so that we can all live in a free, celebrity-obsessed, Republican-voting, money-worshiping country. Drown the pain by getting blotto to the sounds of DeccaTreeat Detroit Bar.
TUESDAY,MAY31
•Ancient fuckwad Rich Kane actually paid money—good $3.35-an-hour money—to see SteveWinwoodin concert, but he swears it was mostly to hear him do old Trafficand SpencerDavisGroupsongs, and not be forced to sit through all that “Lookee me! I'm Steve-Don't-Call-Me-Stevie Winwood, and I'm dancing around onstage like you'd guess a pasty Englishman would dance in my hideous Chess King blazer, and I sing like Ray Charles, woo-hoo!” crap. “Higher Love,” too. And the song that became a Michelob commercial, which he'll probably do tonight at the House of Blues.
•Kane also saw Cubensisin the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show once, but now they've graduated from asphalt to whatever the Marlin Bar stage is made of.
•He also saw JaneWiedlinin a Borders bookstore, but not the rest of the Go-Go's,who'll all be at the Vault 350.
•Phil Shane,again at La Cave. Drink!
WEDNESDAY,JUNE1
•We won't whine about how there are no original members of the LittleRiverBandleft. We assume people seeing them at the Coach House know this well enough. But what we do find disturbing—even more disturbing than their squish-rock hits of the '70s and '80s like “Man on Your Mind,” “Help Is on Its Way” and “Lonesome Loser”—is that, according to the band's allmusic.com biography, JohnLennonused to have sex to “Reminiscing” while he was separated from YokoOno.And another legend is brought tragically crashing down to earth.
•One-hit-wonders SwingOutSister—theyof “Breakout,” and the video with the chick singer in the black Melanie-Griffith-in-Something-Wild hair—at the House of Blues. Weirdly, though, it's like they never even went away—if you live in Japan, where they're still huge. Like Weezerhuge.
THURSDAY,JUNE2
•The HelmutSteinExperienceis at La Cave, while “punk legends”—that's what it says in the ad here—Eddie &theHotRodsplay the Galaxy. Uhh, even though their big hit (in England, anyway), “Do Anything You Wanna Do,” is nothing like a punk song, neither then nor now?
•Phil Shaneat the House of Blues' Voodoo Karaoke Lounge. Drink!
SeeCalendar listings for club locations.
