THURSDAY, JUNE 15
Our darling Sendaero (Sun Records + Spiritualized) do a show with Santiago Steps (C86 + Rose Melberg) and Molly Jenson (Jewel + KCRW podcast) at Detroit (Ikea + Stereolab) to benefit the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter, a Costa Mesa outreach org that helps homeless families out of trouble. Can't in good conscience point you anywhere else tonight.
FRIDAY
Open secret that She Wants Revenge's Justin Warfield put out Prince-Paul-produced My Field Trip To Planet 9 in 1993, when Joy Division was just two words on a shirt at the record store and Interpol was something that only diamond smugglers had ever heard of. Paul pushes out some good dusty production (“Thoughts in the Buttermilk” even echoes a John Handy sample off Diamond D's “Fuck What U Heard,” released the year before) and the obvious druggy/psych vibe on Planet 9 (“B-Boys On Acid” starts with a sitar!) puts this in the same pharmacy if not the same aisle as Cypress Hill. Then 12 years later, Justin got Morrisseyed and a lot of girls fell in love. At the Grove for two nights.
AND: Battlewagon rock band Deccatree flank a triple-record release show with new LPs by their own band, the similarly situated Sleepless Me and the Nick Drake-ier Brett Bixby, all of whom actually share more than just release dates; they also swap band members and probably beer bottles, depending on the nature of the festivities. At the Gypsy Lounge.
SATURDAY
Mike Watt and his Secondmen sneak their kayaks in between heavyweight cruisers like U.S. Bombs (running off archival re-release on Duane's Disaster Records) and Youth Brigade, which is a nice slice of engine-room-clank rock to churn up all those other power chords. Secondmen is Watt on bass and a round-up of Pedro perennials on organ and drums—originally one of the famed Trebotic bros. and organist Pete Mazich but at other times including ex-F.Y.P-and-more Rawl Morales, Screamer Paul Roessler, maybe Petra Haden for a moment or two, and on they go. Drink and pogo for Johnny's Saloon anniversary show No. 2 at the Galaxy.
OR: Drink and disarm a s-s-s-s-s-suspect device with Jake Burns and his inflammable/unflappable Stiff Little Fingers at the HOB.
OR: Gin Blossoms main guy has a side-project with the Rembrandts guy—if I knew their names, I'd have to forget my own—which is the best set-up for efficient synergy since the guy from Judas Priest tribute band British Steel joined Judas Priest. But tonight: the Gin Blossoms themselves at the Coach House.
SUNDAY
Pop metal peeps back with Canada's Priestess, sort of Def Leppard and Thin Lizzy looking reverently at an Iron Maiden record in the store. Maybe without the radio-blowjob major-label production, this would come off as something more than the heavy hairdresser music it's kind of stuck as right now. Makes Wolfmother actually sound like Blue Cheer, which is a disheartening development in aesthetic hierarchy, but at least we'll always have Black Rose. At Glass House with the wild Riverboat Gamblers tonight and Alex's last night.
MONDAY
Light in the Attic Records—lame for releasing the cheeseball drone-poseurs Black Angels, but so good for everything else, like Bernie Purdie's porno soundtrack and Wayne McGhie's Sounds of Joy—goes world-class with a distro deal with Os Mutantes, the better Brazilian version of the Beatles: lasted longer, played prettier and heavier as they felt like, rampaged around in a dune-buggy with several collies, and (says guitarist Sergio Dias) never even touched LSD until 1973 (that's six records in, all good). One of the very top bands of the whole 20th century, and I'd convince you more but it's not my job to baby-sit skeptics into happiness.
TUESDAY
Os Mutantes!
WEDNESDAY
Cosmopolitan duo Devics blew around every resort spot in the Northern hemisphere—LA, Hawaii, Italy; it's all just stucco and Starbucks anyway—and put the experience into library-style pop as glamorous as a stewardess smoking a cigarette. “Lush” is what they come with and it fits as long as you don't listen to the “lyrics” too, too closely—Jacqueline Taeib just sang about toothbrushes and sweaters, and it was better than the Troggs, so it's not like Devics are seriously dishonoring precedent. At Detroit.
THURSDAY, JUNE 22
Living things named in honor of Frank Zappa: a gene inside the infectious bacterium proteus mirabilis (named by Bob Belas); the New Guinean goby fish zappa confluentus (named for Zappa's “articulate and sagacious defense of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution” by scientist Ed Murdy); a sexually precocious jellyfish called phialella zappai(to which Zappa once dedicated an entire concert); the spider pachygnatha zappa, which lives in the Congo and has a Zappa-moustache mark on its belly; and two guys named Dweezil and Ahmet who will be presenting an evening of Zappamusik with too many guests to taxonomically classify at the HOB.
See Calendar listings for club locations. Also: be smart; call ahead.
