1) MASS (1002 S Main) has a don’t-miss-it bill on Friday night: Mind Spiders, Motorcade, and Clifffs. Have you heard the new Mind Spiders album? It’s excellent, and if you’ve been “meaning to check it out,” what are you waiting for? Procrastination is the thief of time, and life is scarily brief! Close your news app and open up Spotify right now; you can read all those anti-Trump articles while you’re taking a shit. Now is a great opportunity to enrich your brain and soul with some angular, anxious, chillingly adept, synth-centric punk rock. As for tonight’s show, Clifffs starts the bill at 9:15. Show is 18+ (bring a parent if you’re younger than that), and the cover is $10, or slightly less if you buy a ticket right now on the Internet. Here’s a video for Furies’ title track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGZf0f4H4uc
2) In Dallas, there’s a free show at the Armoury DE (2714 Elm St, Dallas): a psyche rock band from Shreveport called the Bristol Hills, Denton noise punks Psychic Killers, and the Larry Carlton-by-way-of-a-VHS-instructional-video instrumental jet-fighter rock of Programme. These shows start at 9 and are 21+. Psychic Killers will try to murder your brain with sight and sound, apparently; ins this video, the fans chanting “Psychic Killers” are kind of distracting for this type of music, but they shut up quickly enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp6pXnvasFs
3) Dead Vinyl are rocking a couple sets at Twilite Lounge (212 Lipscomb) Friday night. Show is free and it starts at 10pm. If you’re the kind of local music fan who can’t go a week without hearing a Led Zeppelin cover, the band will probably oblige you. Dead Vinyl has a funny new video coming out soon, but here’s an old one to tide you over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyV08iiKi3E
4) For over a decade, blues jammers Dirty Pool have been filling bars with hot licks and tight grooves, and on Saturday, they’ll be making their first recording in ten years, recording a live show at Rahr Brewery starting at noon; on May 19, they’ll release a CD of Saturday’s performance, and all proceeds will go to a charity of Rahr’s choosing which means that if you go to the one this weekend, you don’t want to miss the CD release, since you’ll want to try to identify your own claps and cheering on the live album. What a long sentence! Once upon a time, I didn’t write like that, but during a failed four-month stint as the Dallas editor at popular advertainment website Thrillist.com, I was forced to learn how to cram a hundred dependent clauses between a single sentence’s capital letter and its ending punctuation, and I’ve never been the same since. Real talk: I was pretty terrible at that job, and I take full responsibility for my shortcomings, though in my defense – whoa, Steve… live in the past much? Why don’t you move on? HEY, BUDDY, I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH HIS FOOT STUCK IN YESTERYEAR! This Dirty Pool performance is from 2007, playing at song that debuted in 1972!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88nUsu-zb0E
5) Saturday night, there are two fun DJ events: DJ duo Pop Boy Etc. is doing an ’80s night at Republic Street Bar (201 E. Hattie, free to attend), and over at Off The Record West (715 Magnolia) I and Jordan Richardson are spinning vinyl under our WIZARDVIZION brand name. Last night, WIZARDVIZION was composed of myself and my buddy Daniel, whose DJ call sign is Diz Sparkie; we did sets at the OTR in Dallas, and when this guy asked me what my DJ name was, I said “DJ 311 Poster.” He was initially confused, and then he offered this advice: “Yo, you should change your name to like, DJ Steve Love, or Steve Smooth, or Steve, uh…”
“…Steve Rage Against the Machine Poster,” I replied. I forget what he said after that, but we slapped hands together amicably and then he walked out the door. Moral of that story: if your friends ask what you’re doing Saturday night, one thing you can say is that you’re “thinking ’bout goin to see Pop Boy Etc. at Republic Street or DJ Son of Stan and DJ Steve Rage Against the Machine Poster at Off the Record.” I hope you choose that response option, because I think DJ names are kind of ridiculous. The line between indisputably cool and eyerollingly overbearing is almost imperceptible, and a clever yet serious enough name like Pop Boy Etc. walks that tightrope. In any case, my professional (and self-promotional — see below) advice: both bars are close enough that the Uber between them will be affordable, and there’s enough overlap between the DJs’ respective record (or digital file) collections – DJ SOS and DJ SRATMP’s jams bleed heavily into the ’70s and a little bit into the ’90s, whereas Pop Boy Etc. is more focused on its stated, advertised, genre- and/or event-specific themes – that you’ll get similar vibes at either spot. But also, good music is good music, and if you can’t dance to what either DJ collective is playing, that shit’s on you, bro.
FULL DISCLOSURE/WRITER BIO ALERT: per editorial suggestion, in addition to writing about music and other shit for the FW Weekly, I am an investor in a venue/bar called Main at Southside, colloquially known as MASS. I also bartend at the Boiled Owl Tavern, a bar that also hosts shows a few times a month. And, since we’re on the subject of warning you against what may be perceived as my own icky, unseemly self-promotion and/or conflicts of interest, I play bass in the following bands: Oil Boom, Son of Stan, Darth Vato. Sometimes I talk about one or more of those entities in this space, but I assure you that it has very little to do with my own vested interests; it just happens that the aforementioned venues and bands are part of the Fort Worth music scene, and this music scene is something I care very passionately about, as I have been part of it since 2002.
This article is so bias! Steve thinks he’s so handsome! He also thinks the way he plays bass turns me on, but you know what, it doesn’t.