THURSDAY, JANUARY 4
Longest line gets longer and longer every year for NOFX—”Musically, the same old shit,” said Fat Mike, but they completely hate George Bush now, though if George Bush was 40 years younger, he completely would have been yukkin' it over a bong to Heavy Petting Zoo in whatever windowless building Yale Univ. uses for frat housing. So sad that these two guys got a gulf of generations and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties between them because they'd both probably buy the same budget beers and giggle at the same basic-cable fart jokes if only situation and class rigidity hadn't forced things otherwise. This war is tearing brothers apart. KKKcuf Amerikkka at HOB.
PLUS: Post-Main Frame computer pop band Repeater warms jets and leatherettes at Detroit.
FRIDAY
A couple seconds of southern-style folk soul from Elvis Perkins on the song “Ash Wednesday,” which sombers along as fast as Procol Harum and as sad as “Unchained Melody” plus a little Van Morrison horns-and-vocal-croaking when it gets a little too much for him. Sam Cooke used to have his own special label called SAR—the first independent label with major distribution owned by a black man if I remember right—and he used it to put out the gospel he always loved and the R&B that the name labels couldn't quite drum up the guts to touch and Perkins here has an SAR sort of feeling and should go out and get a lot more of it. The folkier songs are nice and just squirt right by but an Astral Weeks plus “Bring It on Home to Me” (which already touch pretty close) thing would get rows of good-hearted girls weeping on their knees just like Elvises with guitars historically deserve. It's allright mama with My Morning Jacket at HOB.
PLUS: I guess I hate Fall Out Boy just like everyone else and it makes me feel so common that I'm gonna go down to the Wal-Mart and buy me a hot dog to cheer up. At the Grove for one million fans who will never need to read these words.
SATURDAY
Frat rat weed-holding Art Garfunkel has a new album coming out any week now and as Nixon prepared to resign he was reading Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Thungpa. You could take a lesson at Cerritos Center.
SUNDAY
Hook machine Akon has been hanging on the charts forever and trading cute choruses to all the famous people on the TV set—new sweet soul that makes all the ladies coo when they hear it as a ringtone. Six weeks took his last record platinum and reportedly Akon has already jumped to the next stage of hypertrophic stardom by prepping a biopic starring Mekhi Phifer as Akon. “He looks just like me,” says Akon. “But he's a little bit more handsome!” All this and modest too at the HOB!
PLUS: Clean-cut jock-jammers Helmetcome back hard and heavy from last year's Monochrome—chugga-chugga-nur-nur-nur just like the guys like at the Glass House.
MONDAY
“A Jamaican girl, a musical pearl!” is what they say about Marcia Griffiths, and all the rest is just listing hits: young Marcia felt like jumping for her first and best-known and best Studio One single, and although Jamaica rates a long roster of unbelievable women in front of unbelievable bands, Marcia Griffiths is one of the very special ones. She could have gone to Motown and ran Aretha around but instead she stayed where it never snows and recorded sleepy songs that still erase everything awful from the first half of your awful day. Reggae magic at the Coach House.
TUESDAY
Justin Timberlake brings sexy back and Pink locks the door once it gets inside the famous Honda Ponda in Anaheim.
WEDNESDAY
Grawge loons the Epsilons make their Devo do the dog at the Plush Caf: carnie trash rock by kids who just wanna hear that beat go beat-beat-beat. Sometimes it's still fun to hear every instrument hitting every single note at the same time and sometimes it's fun to hear the loud parts of the song kill and eat the quiet parts. Total teenage shutdown from South County. Fun band.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 11
So Keller Williams is like Jackson Browne plus Ray Stevens? Cuz that's a great half-hour infomercial if so. Streak the Galaxy.
For venue information, check blogs.ocweekly.com/music.
