Friday means another visit from the characters in The Adolescents at Alex's Bar in Long
Beach–and why not, given how often they've made it a home away from home
(or alternately, close to home?). But there's a further mix of familiar
characters on the bill: Woodland Hills' The
Grim are approaching 30 years, more or less, of cranking the amps and
letting fly with punk's-not-dead bravado.
]
In between the openers and the
headliners are the deathless Dickies,
punk parodists before punk had fully happened, pretty much. Presumably the
usual array of goofiness and talking penises will be on-hand.
On Saturday, Sharon
Van Etten swings through at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, with Little Scream opening. Van Etten is one
of our featured artists in this week's issue, and there's little wonder as to why: Her second
album, Epic, was one of last year's
highlights, a collection of inspired performances that ranged as easily from
classic country to unsettled art/psych zoneouts, all tied together by her
excellent voice and lyrics. Van Etten is already booked to open for her buds in The National at the Hollywood Bowl
later this year, so why not catch her now at a much more intimate level?
Saturday also finds Foxxhound
at the Viento y Agua Gallery in Long Beach for a free show, along with The Venetian and Greywolf & Coyote. Foxxhound are also our featured Locals Only
artists this week, and if you think the name means some sort of retro-LA-glam
revival act, you might want to read the article to get the real story involving
an unfairly forgotten Disney movie from the early '80s rather than the end
of that decade. (Though those double X's do seem like this should be invoking
some very high hairstyles indeed.)
U.K. band was one of the biggest successes at the time of punk's heyday there, but
Cornwell had been doing music since the '60s and continues to this day, with
an ear for catchy anthems that were as much '60s garage rampage (and not a
little Kinks spikiness) mixed with Sex Pistols-ish rabble rousing. He's
spent the past 20 years doing the solo thing with spirit, not to mention
writing a few books along the way. Whatever happens that evening, it'll be a
high-spirited affair.
