Spiritualized | Grand Ole Party (Lakewood Theater)
When it comes to Spacemen 3, I've always been more of a Sonic Boom kinda guy, and after interviewing the man himself last year, I was left with sort of a mixed impression of both Sonic AND Jason Pierce on a personal level-- the constant fighting and he said he said stuff between the two of them was sort of a turn off in a sense, although it made for an entertaining read to say the least. Through Spiritualized, Pierce has certainly emerged as the more commercially successful former member of Spacemen 3, and although I would argue that his career has been less consistent, challenging and interesting than Sonic's, it is hard to deny that when Pierce has one of his moments, his music can be purely electrifying. Take the title track to his classic 1997 album Ladies and Gentleman We are Floating in Space for instance-- I'm pretty sure that nothing in Sonic Boom's solo catalogue has had the immediate emotional impact that the aforementioned song had on me the first time I heard it, and this is just one small example of how the relative accessibility of Pierce's material has worked in his favor time and time again. Lakewood Theater is an interesting choice for this show, and I've certainly never seen a concert there that packed the kind of volume this show is sure to. I wonder what is going to happen? Stuff starts REALLY early over there, so plan accordingly.

Hot Chip | Drums of Death (Palladium Ballroom)
Another early start (website says that the show begins at 730... can't a guy squeeze in a nap around here?) at Palladium for what will surely be a show worth seeing. I've enjoyed each and every one of Hot Chip's three full lengths a great deal, but they seem to get better each time. The band's latest, Made in the Dark, is easily their best, and the album's first single, "Ready for the Floor," is arguably the catchiest in a long line of very catchy singles from a band that takes bits and pieces of things like disco, punk, funk, soul and synth pop to create a sound that has produced so many inferior sound-a-like bands over the years that it probably deserves its own genre. This is fun dance pop written and performed by people who actually have a better record collection than you do, so here's to hoping that some of the kids out there will learn a thing or two tonight between smoke breaks.

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien | Bukue One | Tee Double | Headkrack (Granada)

80's Night with DJ G (Hailey's)

Thanks to our friends at the Granada, we have three pairs of tickets to give away to Cut Copy's September 30th performance at the Granada Theater with the Presets. We'll give them to three random winners who email us at weshotjrtix@yahoo.com with "Cut Copy" as the subject line, any time between now and noon tomorrow. Good luck!

I guess it must be the musky dander of Big Tex in the air, because there is a whole shit load of not much going on this weekend. Please let me know in the comments section if you think something should be added.

THURSDAY

Arno Rafael Minkkinen [link]
Richland College Lago Vista Gallery
Closing Reception & Artist Talk, 8-9 PM

This seems to be the major event of the week. Minkkinen is a Finnish-American photographer who has a tendency to show up uncomfortably naked and sometime butt-wrinkly in his own photographs. If you take into account that he doesn't digitally manipulate his images, some of this is really impressive. Instead of a tiny LCD screen, he uses Polaroid T-55 film, so he can get instant feedback while trying to construct a shot. When asked by the EGG Art Show (PBS) why he's always naked, he responds:

If I had any stitch of clothing on, it'd be about fashion. It'd be about a shirt or a tie or a coat or shoes. Running shoes, running on water. By being nude, it links it immediately back to nature. It links it to the same nudity that I find in the water, in the trees and the rocks. And the sky. Just as normal or natural. Also, it is always me because I didn't want to ask anyone else to be nude in the cold and leaning out over a cliff or putting themselves in harm's way. I had to be nude, in all the seasons and all the conditions I could find.

SATURDAY

Heavy Hitters Art Exhibition
F6 Gallery [link]
Saturday Night ONLY

The spirit behind the F6 group seems good. F6 was voted "Critic's Choice for Best Gallery 2008" by the Fort Worth Weekly. Also, check out the new F6 Gallery web site.

Turns out we won't have time to take the 2008 We Shot J.R. Awards ballot down until later this afternoon, and since it'll still be up there for most of the day anyway, we figured we might as well continue to allow people to vote for a few more hours.  You can go here to vote, and you'll be able to do so until the It List is posted later this afternoon.  And as hard as it may be to believe, we've received a very large number of thorough and thoughtful votes this year, so don't fuck up, ok?  

Not much going on today, which is not surprising as Wednesdays are often terrible. As I double-checked and scoured for anything at all, I noticed that a local website suggested that you could perhaps eat at "Hooligans Pub," while catching the Lupe Fiasco show at UTA's Texas Hall in Arlington. I once had my on-stage microphone cut off early at an event I spoke at in Anaheim, CA, because I compared Anaheim to Arlington. They were NOT at all happy about the comparison. I thought the similarities were all too obvious. Oh, well.

I almost forgot: Wanz Dover is celebrating his birthday tonight at The Lounge with a new group, Eldridge Meatcleaver and The Soul Reavers. I'm sure you can guess the genre, and the set-list is said to include everything from Etta James, to Booker T. And The MG's, to The Sonics, and Serge Gainsbourg. Should be interesting. Wanz will also be DJ'ing along with DJ Gabriel.

Taxi Fare (Zubar)

Finally: Today is the last day to vote in the We Shot JR Awards. So please do so.

The Juan Maclean (The Loft)
Stonedranger thought I wouldn't be too familiar with The Juan Maclean and took it upon himself to give me this little primer:

1. they are touring as a four piece
2. Front man John MacLean used to be in Six Finger Satellite
3. He was one of the original members of the DFA crew, and anticipated a return of Chicago house and disco as early as 2002, when he started working with James Murphy in NY
4. Album due out later this year, new single "Happy house" has become a huge club hit over the summer, and it is pretty much straight-up Chicago house, complete with a pounding straight piano loop... you can listen to it on the myspace page if you want to hear for yourself... wait until about 2:30 into the song in order to get a feel for it.

Coolz?"

I would just like to add that I have been a fan of Maclean's music for over a decade, though I think his straight-faced foray into straight-up house music has moments that are better than others, which I suspect is precisely why SR sent me the informative e-mail. I've seen some live videos that have definitely sold me on seeing the group perform this music. Six Finger Satellite's recorded output from 1993 to 1998 is so ahead of its time, that I'm hard-pressed to think of a 90's band that sounds less dated, especially for a group on Sub Pop. Murphy's weirdly distorted beat production on the last SFS album Maclean was featured on, "Law Of Ruins" is still a fascinating listen over two LP's. I am still kicking myself for choosing not to see the group at Rubber Gloves, so many years ago. I hate teenage Defensive Listening.

UPDATE: I should also mention that Keith P is opening this show.

Thee Oh Sees | Sic Alps | Dogme 95 | Ty Sengall (The Lounge)
Though San Francisco's Pink And Brown were quite respected and respectable, the duo, consisting of John Dwyer and Jeff Rosenberg, maintained that respect largely by involving themselves in such a diverse list of projects: Coachwhips, The Hospitals, Young People, and of course, Thee Oh Sees. Thee Oh Sees aren't necessarily my favorite out of this list of noteworthy groups, they sound about what you'd expect from a band that uses "Thee" in their name: energetic, reverbed out, garage rock, with some psych passages. Thee Oh Sees have an excellent live reputation and this sounds like a show worth catching overall. The Sic Alps released a record on Siltbreeze over the summer, and have a sound that is as anachronistically inspired as Thee Oh Sees, but is dirtier, druggier, and more sprawling. Local act Dogme 95 has done everything from solo folk stuff, to remixes of other artists' music, to revisionist Nirvana covers.

PS-No hard feelings, SR. You big jerk.

Just a reminder that voting for our 2008 WSJR Awards ends at roughly 1am on Thursday (Wednesday night, basically), so if you want to have a say in the only local music awards that actually matter to anyone with taste... click here and vote now.

Miss Kittin and the Hacker (The Loft)
Monday night in Dallas is pretty much a total bummer setting for a show in which "sex with movie stars" will be a primary lyrical focus, but I guess a lot of people would argue that the novelty of "electroclash" is a pretty big bummer too. Of course, picking on electroclash has sort of become like picking on a retarded kid in elementary school, hasn't it? Yes, anyone who has picked up a single lifestyle magazine in the past six years knows that electroclash was a flash in the pan, but really, was it as insignificant as people like to claim? I don't know, but I have a hard time imagining that any of the trends that we've seen in dance music over the past several years would have occurred in the same way without the influence of people like Miss Kittin and Felix Da Housecat, for better or worse. They kind of served as a gateway drug for moody indie kids to finally accept the fact that dance music was ok to listen to even if you didn't take Ecstasy. And whether you're happy about what has become the dominant and single most significant development in American and European underground music in the past decade (the embrace of electro), you can hardly call it insignificant, and you can't say that tracks like Miss Kittin's "Frank Sinatra" didn't play a noteworthy part.

The Queers | The Independents | The Lash Outs (Doublewide)
This is the coolest show I've seen booked at Doublewide in many months, and obviously, that isn't saying much. Oh and by the way-- the Independents have been touring pretty much non stop since 1995, and they refer to themselves as a "horror ska" punk band, which is so awkward that its even hard to make fun of. Uh, Nelson Mandela is already free, mkay Danzig?

Cool Out (The Cavern)