THURSDAY, JUNE 29
Whitestarr likes Kinks and Gary Numan, but this sounds more like Wings and mmmmmmmmmaybe Kiss when they're really tired out, but it's so sealed in '70s groovy-guy cluelessness that it belly flops back over into a certain uncomfortable authenticity: out of touch, but somehow more in tune for it. They come from Malibu, they're touring with Candlebox, and they put the soul back in soul patch—truly, it's only rock N roll. At the Galaxy with handjob glam king Mickey Avalon, detailed below.
PLUS: Detroit has a new Brazilian-themed night residented by Sambajah, a samba band from Huntington Beach clearing the last improbable cultural obstacles for the inevitable Tuvan throat-singing band from Huntington Beach.
FRIDAY
Beefy, screamy Massachusetts hardcore band Bane books two days at Chain Reaction—junior preview for the two days of Gorilla Biscuits at the Glass House in August—for the kind of hero's welcome reserved only for . . . Gorilla Biscuits. Like another band from Boston asked: How much art can you take? Ninety minutes before curfew two days in a row, and then we're done.
PLUS: Zebrahead are still around and they still sound exactly exactly the same and look exactly the same and . . . man. There's a famous record review that goes in total: “I put on the record. Then I lit a cigarette. By the time the cigarette was done, the record was over.” I don't smoke, but you can see what I mean at the HOB.
SATURDAY
Before they put him through the Ramone-o-tron, drummer Marc Bell (“Marky Ramone“) was some kind of teenage prodigy, pitter-pattering the cymbal bells for New York band Dust, who were touted as being heavier than Black Sabbath even though they weren't and didn't need to be, either. Their early '70s albums are some of the best never-broke American hard rock of the early decade, coming in a lot closer to harmonizers like Euclid than battering-ram blues bands like Blue Cheer with songs like “Chasin' Ladies” (Marky's reverbed drum break quick-rolling into some seriously venereal guitar lines) or pinch-me-quick cock-rockers like “Love Me Hard.” Later he was in the Voidoids but Bell's Dust still might have blown out most of the rest of his career. A glory mark of shit rock revisited at Club Bellagio in Garden Grove.
PLUS: Mike Love deploys his Beach Boys for an oldies show at CSUF; sad that between Carl and Dennis, the Beach Boys are leading rookies like the Germs, the Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones and the Doors in the deadliest-band sweepstakes. Still behind the New York Dolls, but this is gonna be a really hot and stifling day so hold your betting slips close.
AND OF COURSE: The Hootenanny kept a rollin' at Oak Canyon Ranch.
SUNDAY
Softie Handies back at Alex's for jangle-bangle Urinals/Spoon pop and what a respectably conservative band. They made some songs that aren't boring, and then they play them, pack up and leave after smiles and handshakes. You'd think that would be common, but the only people who still do that are guys on parole who use their drink tickets on tomato juice. Everybody else just gets on stage because they aren't allowed to breastfeed anymore.
MONDAY
Handjob glam king Mickey Avalon—the Jobriath of rinky-dink robo-rap, or maybe dude Peaches—gets to play Chain Reaction, but will he disturb/smooch/activate the buried desires of nearly as many teenage boys as Hot Rod Todd? His backstory—dealt drugs, jerked off dudes, scum—is okay if you have not yet hit handjobdrugscum saturation point, and his stage presence reportedly stokes out the wildest of mortgage brokers and 15-year-olds. Now let me go light a cigarette.
PLUS: Smoke Radiohead if you got it with Detroit's new Monday residents Kiev.
TUESDAY
New release means old release: UK's DC Recordings reissues Alain Goraguer's legendarily warped Le Planete Sauvage soundtrack, which could have/should have been attached to Jodorowsky's Dune or David Lynch's Star Wars but ended up instead on a creepy French film—animated film!—that plays like Philip K. Dick's Fantasia. Or if you ever read Heavy Metal magazine—or considered Can heavy metal music—then I can spare you the rest of the primer. Europe's headiest film score not by Goblin.
PLUS: America: fun while it lasted!
WEDNESDAY
Club VSOP makes 15-year-old mortgage brokers' paradise with kitschy has-been rock and big radio hip-hop—Yacht Rock plus maybe Tupac and some kind of cocktail hangover the next morning. Can I bum a light? At Detroit.
THURSDAY, JULY 6
Echo Park's Monsters Are Waiting rip Blondie to shreds and salt the meat with the usual post-ponk pilldust. In 10-second pieces, this could almost pass for the Pixies, but elsewise it's got all the pre-boxed effects that get pressed into every band's hands post-Interpol or something, one of them “dark,” “angular,” “melodic” thingers except this one has a girl singer with a very radio catch in her voice. Up in flames at Detroit.
See Calendar listings for club locations. Also: be smart; call ahead.
