THURSDAY, JAN. 12
Hot Buttered Rum String Band at the Coach House, who have traded down a bit from Incredible, but these are times that crave hotness and butteredness much more than incredulity anyway.
PLUS: Late notice for the shapeshifters Akuria at Que Sera.
FRIDAY
Cute-cute-cute-cute-to-pieces instro post-rock (no loud parts, unless they're slow parts) duo called El Ten Eleven does an Explosions in the Sky thing at half-speed and half-dynamic—these songs pour as sleepy as syrup, and although it'd probably make an audience sit down, there's a kind of trippy serenity to their little recorded loop pieces. Eno in the way Eno wanted to make songs as furniture, something people could set up in a room and let settle into the feng shui, but without any Eno subtlety—these are pop songs put together in easy pieces, but it's soothing and quiet and nice in that pop song way. Should totally open for Sunn 0))) at the Gypsy Lounge.
AND: Good Foot soul club back up for '06 at the Que Sera; Visionaries member LMNO plus LD N Ariano and more nail down the corners at the Blue Caf.
PLUS: Goldfinger and Zebrahead at the 10-year reunion that was as necessary as it was . . . evitable. HOB.
SATURDAY
Steven Adler didn't get to be in the Fartz (go Duff!), but he does get to be in Adler's Appetite, a bar band's bar band, able to invest welcome standards—saw them in Hermosa and were they doing “Ruby Tuesday,” and if they weren't, why not because washout blondes love to hoist a shot to that?—with knowing enthusiasm and rightful originals—from Steve's old band, Guns N' Axl—with staggering gravitas. Ah, but tonite is some auld-lang-syne with a full run-through of Appetite for Destruction, the 15-times-platinum album that defined about half the FM dial so succinctly that it forced people to make bands like Ugly Kid Joe just to have something else to play between commercials for DUI attorneys. Tribute band? Dude was actually in studio during “n-n-n-n-n-n-eez!” Fun and games at the Galaxy.
PLUS: Radio rock en espaol with two-count-'em nights of Jaguares at the HOB (one sold out and one still open as of press time for Monday); black-T-shirt-metal en ingls—and what would Axl and Adler think of this? I bet it would involve a slurred curse word—with Bleeding Through and underrated openers the Mistake to blow out Chain Reaction; Peter Hook's radio-live-transmission DJ set at Detroit—dude handles actual records before your very eyes, my FUCK! Let's have Nikki Sudden come down and do this.
SUNDAY
Crazy creeps in Sexy Time Explosion—hey, change that to HARD GAY if you wanna sound Japanese-y—got those opera vox over dirtball rock; slow down and it'd be about 1993 or so, striped stockings and everything, but STE have enough of a predilection for the weird (and loud) and not enough of a taste for repetition, so they keep flipping channels midsong between Pixies/Sonic Youth/L7/and like the B-side of every 7″ that got distro from Kill Rock Stars circa people liking 7″s. Tuff local band with tuff local songs. With the unkillable Telomere Repair—Lightning Bolt plus, uh, Scientist and Albert Ayler—and MaritimeAcademy at the legendary free BBQ at Alex's—eat a rack of ribs off a hospital gurney!
MONDAY
Detroit derives the sound of young America redux: Brookline hits botox city USA, blushing like Pink Floyd and displaying many traits shared by former Detroit stage-sharers like Innaway, Dios, R. Swift, etc., plus heavy guitar on the chorus that's more Bush than Nirvana but at least it tells you when to pay extra attention.
TUESDAY
Ain ish fun?
WEDNESDAY
Vice mag presents the Diamond Nights, whose weltanschtick warps even as it smothers; unlike the measure of most of these trashbags—Living Things, who will soon crawl back to the trust funds from which they slunk—at least Diamond Nights enjoy making music to make the world stupider (not an ignoble calling in itself) and so expend enough craft to actually put some songs in their songs. Thin Lizzy guitars with some Cheap-Trick-at-the-county-fair swagger, plus tinny cheap Cars keys and a lot of obvious Iggy cops on the vocals: “Her hips drip their sweet rubbing alcohol/. . . the girl's a-track-tive!” The S'cool Girls got a bye on this cartoon-goon thing because they never ever took their uniforms off—used to see them walking down the street in little girl's jeans and cheerleader varsity jackets, and looking back, huh, that's a little troubling—but I can't tell which would be more hateful: these guys showing up in cardigans and then rubbing on some Alice Cooper eyeliner in the parking lot, or these guys rolling out of the minivan with the sweat already shiny on their spandex. Anyway, rock N roll on a thin line at Detroit. P.S. You know in OC, Vice mag gives us this, and on the East Coast, they bring out like Pete Rock and Lord Finesse or etc. Now what does that say about how they think of you, 949ers?
PLUS: The 88, who come from 1995 to put 2006 into a mass pop grave at the Glass House; Keyshia Cole makes up for etc. at the Vault.
THURSDAY, JAN. 19
I cannot buy the Like: the Grown-Ups did this 10 years ago (when I was a baby and so were they!) and they only sounded like the Go-Go's for larfs on the way to some viciously affecting X, and they certainly never went for the cheap distortion-pedal chorus and their parents weren't the rich famouses. you may have heard about—if Mama was a TV set and Daddy was a music producer, this band here is the sum total. Easy to like; your folks raised you right; never heard a note gone wrong. If you want Malibu juve rock, go with Simon Dawes (40-year-old drummer, huge Zep/Bowie/Kinks/Who rip), and if you want some real-life LA crap that talks back, well, you missed it and you don't really have an excuse either. Deeeeetroit.
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