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Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men and Los Straitjackets
Thursday · Southgate House
When the Los Angeles scene erupted in the late ’70s/early ’80s, the only common denominator was boundless energy. Pure Punk angst was exemplified by The Germs, a jazzier Punk vibe was captured by X, and East L.A.’s Hispanic culture was reflected by Los Lobos. In the midst of this intensely diverse musical milieu, Dave Alvin and his brother Phil were reinventing Country, Folk and Rockabilly into a musical form that incorporated all its base elements while operating at Punk volume. The Blasters became the leading lights of the nascent Americana movement, inspiring countless bands to follow their freshly blazed trail. In the years since The Blasters’ dissolution, Dave Alvin has continued to explore the edges of American music on his own and with his band of Country/Folk/Blues provocateurs, the Guilty Men. With his latest album, Ashgrove, Alvin does nothing less than reinforce the numerous and passionate accolades that have been deservedly heaped upon him over the past 20 years. Regardless of the genre he chooses to inhabit at any given moment, Dave Alvin rocks.
Opening the show for Alvin are those Mexican-wrestling-masked stalwarts of instrumental Surf Rock and twisted Rockabilly, Los Straitjackets. For anyone unfamiliar with the tone of Los Straitjackets, imagine a campy horror movie with a two-headed stitch job of Duane Eddy and Link Wray taking guitar lessons from Hank Marvin and learning to play spy/surf/monster themes on Dick Dale’s Fender Strat through a Showman amp, when The Ventures show up and challenge Duane/Link to a battle of the bands, which is officiated by Santo and cornered by Tura Satana and Quentin Tarentino. The Straits’ appearance on the Dave Alvin bill is no coincidence; Alvin co-wrote and sang a track on the Straits’ lone vocal album, 2001’s Sing Along with Los Straitjackets.
Bring your shuffling shoes and be prepared to grin ‘n rock all night. (Brian Baker)
Funeral For a Friend with Korn, Snoop Dogg, Linkin Park and more
Friday · Riverbend Music Center
Perhaps prophets of their own subsequent success or possibly a young group of hard-rocking soothsayers. Whatever it is, Funeral For a Friend must have ESP or some sort of sixth sense. Want proof? For starters they titled their first full-length album, Casually Dressed and Deep In Conversation, as if they knew that would be the exact scenario many Rock critics would be found in when describing the depths of their Hardcore Emo sound. What’s even eerier is that the first track on this album was named “Rookie of the Year” way before Kerrang Magazine hailed the quintet as 2003’s Best New Band. Kerrang hasn’t been the only one to show reverence. Since the release of Casually Dressed, FFaF have been talked about by the Rock community more than carbs at a dinner table of middle-aged country clubbers. Spin, Revolver, Metal Hammer, Hit Parader, NME and Alternative Press have all given nods to FFaF’s ability to create songs that span an enormously wide spectrum of energy and honesty. The guitars leave no fret untouched and instantaneously pivot back and forth between a trickling of razor-sharp squeals to a tempest of downtuned distortion. Lead vocalist Matt Davies whispers, croons, growls and screams without any perceivable inhibitions to accomplish the exceedingly difficult job of placing appropriate narration to the bouncing ball of frantic, pitch-shifting turmoil. Find out about Funeral For a Friend now, before they lose their validity as the next worthwhile up-and-coming Screamo band. Otherwise, if the buzz on them plays out, current trends dictate they could be the “next hot band” name-dropped on The O.C. Not as a band the scrawny kid would be listening to, but the other guy. The one with the wifebeaters and real problems. (Jacob Richardson)
Pigmy Love Circus with The Strongest Proof and Blacklight Barbarian
Saturday · Radio Down
Over the years, Tool has become a veritable Petrie dish of Rock experimentalism, spawning a number of similarly heavy side projects. The most renowned of Tool’s extracurricular activities is Maynard James Keenan’s A Perfect Circle, a band whose success might be close to eclipsing its parent group. But one of Tool’s most prolific moonlighters could be drummer Danny Carey, who currently puts in overtime with an Electronic outfit called ZAUM and his longtime Rock project, Pigmy Love Circus. Carey had been a part of PLC in the early ’90s but diminished his involvement with Tool’s meteoric rise. Two years ago, PLC reformed for a one-off benefit performance at L.A.’s House of Blues and the band’s old chemistry (combined with Tool’s longer-than-expected hiatus) convinced Carey to make some Pigmy time in his schedule. Their subsequent work together inspired the Pigmys (Carey, vocalist Michael Savage, guitarist Peter Fletcher, bassist E. Shepherd Stevenson and guitarist John Ziegler) to finally come up with an album’s worth of new material, which was produced by Carey in his loft studio and released on Go Kart Records last month. The album, The Power of Beef, has been likened to everything from Motörhead to ZZ Top to AC/DC, so it should be pretty clear that Pigmy Love Circus is not nearly as cerebrally stimulating as Tool’s thoughtful Prog Metal, but then that’s really the obvious point of PLC. There’s a time and a place for thinking while you rock and Tool fills that bill to an esoteric fault. If you just want to be knocked on your ass by good old-fashioned amps-cranked-to-Spinal-Tap-proportions Rock, then Pigmy Love Circus is your blistering cup of volume. (BB)
Secret Machines
Monday · Top Cat’s
In the dichotomous world of Rock there are a great many your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter examples of disparate styles of music being combined to make a harmoniously hybridized genre that stands apart from its roots. And in all those examples, there might have never been two styles of music more suited to being tossed together in a musical salad than Progressive Rock and Metal. Both genres routinely exude copious amounts of bombast and pomp, both are intensely passionate musical styles and both are frequently guilty of overwrought precision and mind-numbing excess. Given the weight of their common sins, it’s little wonder that failures in combining the two genres far outnumber the successes, but the Prog/Metal credit column gets fuller by one with the release of The Secret Machines’ powerful debut, Now Here is Nowhere. Utilizing the more understated aspects of both genres and then synthesizing the two styles with an intense sense of melody and Pop tunefulness, The Secret Machines have created a textbook example of the right way to combine two tricky and often cumbersome styles into a streamlined and gloriously listenable third genre. The Machines show their confidence on Now Here by making “First Wave Intact,” their nine minute magnum opus, the album’s lead off track, a position that stands as the critical gateway to the rest of the album. The New York-via-Dallas trio (who have clocked time with regional/national faves UFOFU and Tripping Daisy) deliver on that bold opening over the course of the rest of the album by drawing influence from ’70s powerhouses like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and lesser lights like Hawkwind while keeping contemporary visionaries like the Flaming Lips well in mind. And none of this takes into account the intricate political subtext of the Machines’ lyrics. Now Here is an incredible blend of eras and styles, and the Secret Machines’ clinic on how to balance the density of Metal with the ephemeral delicacy of Prog. (BB)
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2004.