1) It’s Friday, 9/8/2017, and there is some good news for once: Friday on the Green (1201 Lipscomb) returns from its height-of-summer-heat hiatus tonight, with a four-person lineup of songwriters that starts with the lovely voice of country songwriter Summer Dean, followed by Taylor Craig Mills, Jacob Furr, and headliner Jake Paleschic. The weather websites allege that temperatures will be in the mid-80s around this time, perfect for chilling out with some mellow live music. No cover, all-ages, bring a blanket. Here’s Jake Paleschic playing “Thank You for the Bad Days” at some Swisher Sweets-sponsored event:
2) Friday night at the Sunshine Bar (902 W Division, Arlingfun) will be anything but Mellow; Atlanta metal band Death of Kings headlines a show featuring local throwback thrashers Steel-Bearing Hand and hard rock party machine Duell. Cover is $8, plus or minus $3. Popcorn is free. Here’s Death of Kings playing a song called “Mountain Lord”
3) Also on Friday: Shipping & Receiving hosts long-running, Houston-based, latin-influenced ska band Los Skarnales. Los Skarnales evolved from the mid-’90s punk revival (they’ve been at it since 1993, incidentally) into a two-tone leaning band that blended elements of cumbia, reggae, surf, and rockabilly into a catchy, highly danceable mélange. Unless you just hate ska, I’d say this show is the Team to Beat Show of the Week. Doors are at 8, show is at 9, and minors are allowed with a legal guardian. Cover is $12-15. Here’s a video for Los Skarnales “Perdida,” a song that is tite as hell:
4) You’d think that would be plenty of suggestions for Friday, but here are two more, packed into one listing: I like this band called Better Now who are headlining Lola’s (2736 6th St); to my ears, they have a melancholic pop punk sound with some singalong male-female harmonies and direct, emotional lyrics, and the art on their recordings favors robots, possibly ones who exhibit human feelings. The middle-slot band, Bangarang from Denton, make dreamy pop with a harder edge, and Rei Clone (also from Denton) open the show with their blend of shoegaze and punk which is apparently influenced by anime. Maybe you’ll want to dig your last cosplay outfit out of the closet for a non-convention outing. 21+, $10 cover. Rei Clone once played in Tulsa and someone made this video of the show:
Also: War Party, Toy Gun, Meach Pango, and Young Valley are at MASS (1002 S Main) on Friday. The thoughts I had about Meach Pango the last time they played at MASS: “huh, this must be what the kids are into right now,” and “Huh. They drew kind of a big crowd!” Their sound is kind of all over the place, but the most striking element is sort of an effervescent pop punk, too. That might be a little too reductive – their melodic ideas are pretty mature for a genre that gets filed under “Late’90s Warped Tour,” and there’s some rapping, too. Show is 18+, cover is $10. This is video of Meach Pango at Tomcats West from back in January. In it, the lead singer goes, “You guys can totally dance to this one,” which is a quintessentially Warp Tourish thing to say, so maybe I’m not that reductive, huh? The song is still pretty cool:
5) Hey look! Here’s one for Saturday! And it’s in – oh it’s another one at the Sunshine Bar (902 W Division, Arlingfun). And it’s more punk and metal. Get to the bad part, right? Anyway, there’s this band Obstruction that’s made of members of Tolar and Unit 21, and they’re about to go on tour in Japan AND Korea, so this is sort of a bon voyage party for them. Also on the bill: Nihilistic Fit, Perdidos, Ugly, and Acatalepsy; I imagine those bands’ names ought to give you an idea of what they sound like. Cover is $8, and the show is 21+. Here’s Nihilistic Fit in a place in Denton called The Shed:
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 there, as well as 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, and maybe, once again in the hypothetical future, EPIC RUINS. 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 for the past fifteen years.
