The folks behind Summer and Music put on free concerts in downtown Long Beach all summer, and as the season ends, so does their series. The shows culminate with BuskerFest—an annual competition where more than a dozen local bands make like old-timey buskers, performing on the streets and competing for wooden nickels distributed to attendees. Perhaps even more enticingly, the band that picks up the most nickels also get five days of recording at Compound Studio. The list of participating bands reads like a roster of LB notables; including 60 Watt Kid, So Many Wizards, We Barbarians, OO Soul, the New Fidelity. The prototypical “Long Beach band made good,” Crystal Antlers headline the non-competitive section of the evening, along with San Diego’s Delta Spirit and Orange County’s PawnShop Kings.
Sat., Aug. 28, 5 p.m., 2010