Weekender, Fri., June 5

Catch First Friday on the Green tonight (uh, Friday), with Tim Locke (ex-Calhoun), Chatterton, and Jordan Mycoskie & Fire-Breathing Fish. Bring your lawn chairs and/or blankies, in addition to your family members, friends, and four-legged friends, but leave the coolers at home — beverages and food will be available for sale. Admission is free, but a donation to the Tarrant Area Food Bank would be nice.

On Tuesday at 1919 Hemphill (817-920-9665) Orlando’s Runnamucks will be playing with Fort Worth’s Unit 21, a straight-up punk outfit that will be featured in next week’s paper. Here’s a snippet from Weekly scribe Caroline Collier’s upcoming piece:

“[Frontman] Cory Keg’s bitter diatribes against life and society expose his true inner nature, according to [guitarist] Chris Piss. Keg ‘likes to show everyone he’s happy and having fun, but, really, he’s pissed off,’ Piss said. The singer manages a drive-thru fried chicken joint when he’s not smashing his head into a microphone, which may add to his acrid songwriting style. ‘Secret Vulture,’ a song available on the band’s MySpace page but not yet on an album, is about ‘[Keg’s] wanting to kill everyone he comes into contact with,’ Piss said. Less violent but along the same lines is ‘Soccer Mom,’ a song about ‘Chicken-gluttonous mothers who think they own everything,’ according to Chris Piss.

“Apparently,” Collier continues, “the angst extends worldwide. The tight fury that Unit 21 has been pumping out from Texas coincidentally made it to the ears of a guitarist named Souichi from a popular Japanese band named Forward. Souichi funded and designed the artwork for Unit 21’s 2008 release, Death Stripes, and founded a label, Under the Surface Records, which helped bring Unit 21 to Japan last summer to make the rounds with Crude, a Japanese punk outfit.”

For more, pick up next week’s issue, hitting newsstands on Wed., June 10.

Continuing on. Tomorrow (Saturday) at Dan’s Silverleaf (103 Industrial St, Denton, 940-320-2000): a recently resurrected band I know nothing about but have heard good things from yokels: Brutal Juice. Weekly scribe and Rivercrest Yacht Clubber Eric Griffey waxes ecstatic over the band: “IMHO,” he writes me in an e-mail, “Brutal Juice is the best band to ever come out of this area. I first caught their shows as a burgeoning young hipster in his mid-to-late teens, back when The Engine Room was the only real rock club in town. After seeing them once, BJ shows were like Christmas morning for me. Their sound was something I’d never heard before. It was equal parts disturbing and catchy but always technically interesting, like Jesus Lizard caught in the gears of a combine. They were also a part of a wave of bands in the mid ‘90s that got signed up by major labels. Their Interscope release, Mutilation Makes Identification Difficult, still ranks as one of my favorites, but it didn’t have that ‘90s radio please-kill-me sound, so they never ‘made it,’ whatever that means. I’m glad their doing reunion shows, but none of the members’ other bands have approached the brilliance of BJ, so I wish they’d just get back together.”

Also tomorrow, the Whiskey Folk Ramblers are playing Levitt Pavilion (505 E Border St, Arlington, 817-543-4301), a sweeeeet mega-venue that kind of popped up outta the blue not too long ago and that seems perfect for the Ramblers’ brand of good-timey old-timey musicmaking. There’s just something about non-scorching Texas weather and Southern-gothic, backporch rockarolla that says, “Perfect. Now bring me a fucking iced tea.”

Tonight (Friday) at Lola’s Saloon Stockyards (105 W Exchange Av, 817-386-5008): Pablo & The Hemphill 7 and the aforementioned Rivercrest Yacht Club.

STUFF TO WATCH (SOON)

On Mon., June 8, at 9 p.m. Central Time, Food Network will air the episode of Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives in which Fort Worth’s beloved Fred’s Texas Café will be featured.

The night before is a broadcast of the Whatever Annual Tony Awards ceremony. The $64,000 question: Will anyone outside of New York City other than me watch the damn thing?