Thank God It's Friday: Shows You Don't Want To Miss

What are you up to this weekend? There's a whole slew of shows for you to watch the next few days–here's a few you must see.


July 23, Friday
Tonight Ziggy Marley appears at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa
Mesa, bringing his easy-going take on life and love across the board to
the OC Fair crowd along with openers Common Sense. While he's forever
going to be associated with his famous father,
he's carved out his own niche, from his pop radio career peaks in the late '80s to his most recent
release, Family Time. 
]
Not
surprising that his newest is about family time, given that he once recorded a classic of his dad's with Sean
Paul for animated movie Shark Tale:

Sean Paul feat Ziggy Marley Three little birds
Uploaded by Sean_dutty. – See the latest featured music videos.


July 24, Saturday
Saturday sees the Offspring do another hometown show (at least of sorts)
at the Verizon Amphitheatre in Irvine, appearing with fellow
'90s-and-after survivors 311. The OC quartet is the subject of one of
our feature stories in this week's music section. Given the band's long since established impact locally and beyond, from
Dexter Holland's Nitro Records (and Gringo Bandito hot sauce, of course)
to Noodles showing you can be a guitar hero while wearing horn rims, that's understandable.
All that and any number of stick-in-the-brain songs, like the new one
they've been playing, “You Will Find a Way”:

Also on Saturday, Big Cisco, our Locals Only featured artist this week,
comes down from his home base of Long Beach to perform at the Red Night
Club in Newport Beach, one of his performing homes away from home. The
MC's been building up attention for his forthcoming debut CD with
reports on recording sessions–at last report he's down to finishing a song for it–along with other local appearances and a slew of
interviews. All the more reason to catch up with him now before he aims
to take over the world:

Elsewhere on Saturday, Katchafire comes to town, continuing a theme of
high profile reggae for the weekend. Though newcomers to the band might
be surprised as to which island nation they come from, these New
Zealand act are no slouches, having pulled off the not inconsiderable
trick of turning from a straight up Bob Marley tribute band to making a
mark with their own songs (ask yourself how many '80s revival acts
are going to get that far). Their biggest commercial profile back home
was some years ago but they've kept it going well since; openers will
include Tomorrow's Bad Seeds and Pacific Dub.

On top of everything else, Saturday has Dick Dale laying it down at the
Coach House, continuing his stretch of casually killer shows in Orange
County for half a century now. His hotwiring of so much music from
around the world into something uniquely Southern California and then
back again to that world many times over can never be understated or
underestimated–he's Dick Dale, he's the King of the Surf Guitar for a
reason, and the man's an inspiration to everyone when it comes to living
life to the full, so don't knock a chance to say you saw him: