The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just two days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer or Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our next "sleeper" is Detroit's Child Bite, performing Sunday at noon on the Bud Light Stage.Like an anxious jam session between Nick Cave’s Birthday Party, ProgCore’s Reduced and the more avant garde side of early Sebadoh, the Detroit area’s Child Bite is definitely the most outrageously adventurous act to grace any Bunbury stage this year. The group’s latest release, Monomania, is a neck-snapping, time-changing, shape-shifting beast of inventive, disjointed riffage, raw, natural Punk power, rhythms somewhere between Free Jazz and experimental Electronica and bug-eyed vocals that often sound like something captured on a field recording made inside the halls of an insane asylum. In other words, the perfect way to start off your Bunbury Sunday (after church, of course). Here's the Monomania track "Wrong Flesh."<a href="http://childbite.bandcamp.com/album/monomania">Monomania by Child Bite</a>Tickets and full info on the Bunbury music festival can be found here.

The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just three days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer or Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our next "sleeper" is Nikki Lane, performing Sunday at 1:30 p.m. on the Landor Stage.Nikki Lane has been compared to Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline, but what’s most important is that she’s a self-made woman. A high school dropout, Lane left her hometown of Greenville, SC, and headed to Los Angeles. After a stint in New York City, Nikki Lane moved to Nashville and self-released No Room For Cowboys. Now, Lane’s signed to L.A. label IAMSOUND Records and has released a four-song EP called Gone, Gone, Gone. Her second album, Walk of Shame, is due out in September. Like any good Country singer, Nikki Lane's songs embody the feelings of heartbreak, loss and wanderlust. Here's the official music video for Lane's Walk of Shame track "Sleep for You."Tickets and full info on the Bunbury Music Festival can be found here.

The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just three days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer or Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our next "sleeper" is Alberta Cross, performing Saturday at 1:30 p.m. on the Globili Stage.Alberta Cross is the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Petter Ericson Stakee and bassist/vocalist Terry Wolfers, British expatriates now based in Brooklyn. The duo, fleshed out by a variety of rotating personnel, started the band six years ago and quickly secured some impressive gigs; in 2008, the band opened for Oasis on its massive UK tour and, in 2009, the year of their full-length debut Broken Side of Time, Alberta Cross played the festival trifecta: Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Stakee’s tremulous voice has been favorably compared to Jim James and Neil Young, a perfect complement to the band’s expansive Pop/Rock vibe that suggests a confluence of The Verve, Smashing Pumpkins and Brian Wilson. Songs of Patience, the anticipated sophomore album from Alberta Cross (the band’s name is an as-yet unrevealed anagram), will be released next week; advance notice hints that it could be among the year’s best. Click here for the full stream of Songs of Patience (via Rolling Stone) or check out the album's first track, "Magnolia," below.Tickets and full info on the Bunbury music festival can be found here.

The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just four days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer or Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our next "sleeper" is Imagine Dragons, performing Saturday at 5:15 p.m. on the Bud Light Stage.Founded in Las Vegas four years ago by primary songwriter Dan Reynolds, Imagine Dragons went through a variety of permutations before settling on the current line-up (guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee, drummer Daniel Platzman). Since 2009, Imagine Dragons has turned out a quartet of impressive EPs, including the just-released Continued Silence, featuring the YouTube sensation “It’s Time,” all of which is a preview for the fall release of the band’s debut full-length, Night Visions. A quick spin through Continued Silence — the band’s first work for Interscope since signing last year and, like the new album, produced by renowned British Hop Hop boardsman Alex Da Kid — is like panning in a creek bedded with gold nuggets; glints of Coldplay, Everclear, Train and any number of other chart-topping Pop icons, but with a discernibly beat-driven Indie edge. As epic as Homerian poetry set to a U2 soundtrack and as intimate as a candlelight dinner in the Nevada desert. Tickets and full info on the Bunbury music festival can be found here. 

The inaugural Bunbury Music Festival — three days of top-shelf Alternative music at Cincinnati's riverfront Sawyer Point Park — is just four days away. All this week, CityBeat's music blog will be featuring samples from some of our "sleeper picks" for the fest, artists who some may not be as familiar with as they are Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie or Jane's Addiction. Our first "sleeper" is 1,2,3, performing Saturday at 2:15 p.m. on the Bud Light Stage. Pittsburgh duo 1,2,3 (they go “full band” for live shows) took off fairly quickly, earning accolades in the U.K. that led to live shows abroad, all within a year of forming. One listen to the band’s debut LP for Frenchkiss Records, last year’s New Heaven, should make it clear why — 1,2,3’s songs hook listeners instantly with an uncanny sense of melody that suggests a lifetime of absorbing the magical Pop of the masters, from Bacharach and Nilsson to The Kinks and of Montreal. Add in Nic Snyder’s soulful and elastic voice and a dynamic backdrop of odd atmospherics, off-kilter beats and unexpected sounds and you have one of the more perfectly original Pop bands in America today. Here's the band's music video for the track "Work":Tickets and full info on the Bunbury music festival can be found here.

On this day in 1973, wishful thinking channeled through a Pop song paid off for rootsy New Jersey Rock group Dr. Hook when they appeared on the cover of the Rolling Stone. The band formed in 1967 and, in 1970, Dr. Hook was asked to cut a couple tracks for a film that featured songs written by poet/illustrator Shel Silverstein. Those songs led to a record contract and the group continued its collaborative partnership with Silverstein. After modest success with its debut, Dr. Hook's second album, Sloppy Seconds, was completely written by Silverstein and featured what would become the band's signature song, "The Cover of the Rolling Stone." The song was a lighthearted, ironic take on the amateurish idealism of young musicians who believe that if they could only make the cover of a major magazine, they'd finally be successful. (It reminds me of my grandmother who once suggested to me that if my garage band could just get on that David Letterman show, maybe we would be more popular and successful.) The smart-asses at Rolling Stone put them on the cover in caricature form under the caption, "What's-Their-Names Make The Cover." Dr. Hook indeed became Rock stars after that and continued to have hits into the ’70s with Soft Rock material like "When You're in Love with A Beautiful Woman" and "Sexy Eyes." The band broke up in the mid-’80s. Here's the band's first big hit.Born This Day: Musical movers and shakers sharing a March 29 birthday include star actress/singer Pearl Bailey (1918); Brazilian Bossa Nova singer ("The Girl from Ipanema") Astrud Gilberto (1940); Greek musician/composer (Chariots of Fire soundtrack) Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, better known as Vangelis (1943); singer for soft rockers Toto, Bobby Kimball (1947); late smooth Jazz taxman Michael Brecker (1949); master Blues harmonica player William Clarke (1951); late original lead singer for Ohio-spawned New Wave band The Waitresses ("I Know What Boys Like"), Patty Donahue (1956); singer/harmonica player with ’90s hit makers Blues Traveler, John Popper (1967); and Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell (1959). Born Peretz Bernstein in New York City, Farrell grew up to be one of the leading generals of the Alternative music revolution of the ’90s. Besides being the engine behind one of the leading bands of Alt music's eventual mainstream takeover, Farrell created the Lollapalooza traveling festival in 1991 (the first year also served as Jane's "farewell" tour). The fest, itself a kind of traveling Woodstock, paved the way for like-minded tours like Lilith Fair and H.O.R.D.E. The traveling package tour trend petered out and, after a failed attempt at another touring fest in 2004, Lollapalooza became a stand-alone "destination" festival in Chicago's Grant Park in 2005. It remains one of the more anticipated events of its kind alongside Bonnaroo in Tennessee and Coachella in California.Farrell has reformed Jane's Addiction yet again and this summer the band is touring extensively, playing several music festivals around the world that undoubtedly owe some debt to the success of the initial Lolla tours. Jane's comes to Cincinnati to headline the opening night of the inaugural Bunbury Music Festival on July 13. Check back later today for news on Bunbury's lineup. An announcement is expected at noon. Here's some raw footage from that very first Lollapalooza in 1991, with Jane's playing "Classic Girl."

After previously teasing its inaugural lineup by announcing performers like Jane’s Addiction, Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie, Airborne Toxic Event, Manchester Orchestra and Gym Class Heroes, the Bunbury Music Festival today announced most of the remaining acts for the July 13-15 festival along the riverfront at Yeatman's Cove/Sawyer Point. There will reportedly be over 100 acts on six stages over the three days, so more acts will be announced.Here's who's playing:Friday, July 13
: Jane’s Addiction, 
Airborne Toxic Event, Minus the Bear, O.A.R., Foxy Shazam, Ra Ra Riot
, LP, Matt Pryor, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Ponderosa, 
All Get Out
, The Minor Leagues, Lauren Mann, She Does Is Magic,  Bo & the Locomotive, Tristen and Pet Clinic. Saturday, July 14: Weezer, 
Gym Class Heroes, Manchester Orchestra, Grouplove, RJD2, Dan Deacon, 
Jukebox the Ghost, The Bright Light Social Hour, Kevin Devine, 
The Silent Comedy, Graffiti 6, 1,2,3, Secret Music
, Messerly & Ewing, 500 Miles To Memphis, The Lions Rampant, 
Jeremy Pinnell & the 55’s, Wheels on Fire and Hotfox. Sunday, July 15
: Death Cab for Cutie, 
City and Colour, Motion City Soundtrack, 
Guided By Voices
, Margot & The Nuclear So & So’s, Good Old War, Lights, Will Hoge, Maps & Atlases, YAWN, Now, Now
, Wussy, The Seedy Seeds and The Tillers.Tickets are $46 for one day or $93 for a three-day pass. Click here for more details.

Two items of importance came down the wire recently relating to upcoming concerts in Cincinnati. • This summer's three-day Bunbury Music Festival along the riverfront previously announced headliners for each day (Jane's Addiction, Death Cab for Cutie and Weezer) and today organizers gave us three more names. The Airborne Toxic Event is now set to play July 13 before Jane's, Manchester Orchestra will play July 14 and Gym Class Heroes (pictured) is set for the closing day of the fest, July 15. From a purely commercial standpoint, this thing is going to be huge. Each act announced so far is top-tier enough to headline its own large show and all receive regular airplay on "Modern Rock" radio (if not Top 40). I'd get your tickets early if you are hoping to attend. Passes for the inaugural Bunbury fest are $46 for one day or $93 for all three days. Click here to purchase. • If you don't have tickets for The Black Keys show at U.S. Bank Arena this Friday, start thinking about cyber scalpers (sorry, "online ticket brokers") because the show has officially sold out. Friday's concert is the first date on the Keys' first ever headlining arena tour, which includes a few other sold-out shows along the route, including a Madison Square Garden one that sold every ticket in 15 minutes. I think that officially makes them "Arena Rock" stars. And damn popular ones at that. Not bad for a little Blues/Rock duo from Akron, Ohio.