1) File this listing under “Form your own opinions,” but I think you, as a consumer and appreciator of local music, should go see Midnight Opera at MASS (1002 S Main) tonight (Thursday, March 8). They are headlining a bill that includes one of my favorite area rock bands, Natural Anthem, with a Los Angeles-based post-punk band I’ve never seen, called Diamonds, opening the show. I’d like to weigh in on Midnight Opera, but instead, I’m choosing to copy and paste what they say about themselves: “Midnight Opera (formerly Siamese) is a glam rock band from Dallas, TX. Mixing ominous art pop with opulent set design and deranged alter egos, their live show makes you feel like you could go out and invent a new color, or wear a leotard to work.” So go see them tonight, and see what you think. Show is 18+, cover is $7. Doors are at 8, bands start at 9. This is a Midnight Opera video:
2) This Friday, dig your rude boy suit and two-tone creepers out of storage and skank over to Three Links on Friday for OG English ska band Bad Manners. The show also features the Skatastrophics from Houston, a city that continues to breed ska bands in the way that Marvel’s Savage Lands are a lost world of dinosaurs and other extinct fauna; and Denton-based ska-punk act Holophonics. Doors to this all-ages show open at 7, bands start at 8, and tickets are $20. Here’s a Bad Manners video:
3) Also on Friday in Deep Ellum: Slow Motion w/ Blue, the Misfit at Independent Bar and Kitchen (2712 Main, Dallas). Dallas rapper and DJ Blue, the Misfit will be dropping tite and smooth R&B jams on your unwitting pheromone-producing organs all nite long, so if you’re anticipating a sleepover after the bars close, stop by 7-11 and grab a box of prophylactics, unless you want to alter your future with unplanned parenthood or visits to the doctor. THESE JAMS MIGHT GET YOU LAID, IN OTHER WORDS.
4) Saturday night at the Boiled Owl (909 W Magnolia) has a Wizardvizion-curated show called “Perhaps It’s Warmer Now,” which sounds like the name of a British sitcom about a weatherman in the future. The show includes Schlomi Bagdadi, a post-punk duo from NYC that includes Son of Stan’s Jordan Richardson and performance artist Laura Hajek; as well as NYC-based Peaches, Central-and-San-Joaquin-Valley-repping electronic duo HXXS, and local cyber-boi Squanto, plus the ever-evolving music quest of international pop star Steve Gnash. Show is 21+, it starts at 9ish, and cover is donation-based. This is what HXXS look and sound like:
5) You know what? I kinda like just dumping whatever an artist’s bio says about him or her or themself into these listings because doing so saves me time and also makes me ponder their various creative animi, inspirations, insecurities, and preferences for how the world perceives them. I wrote a few variations of that sentence about Midnight Opera, but I kept deleting them because I didn’t want to be rude or color people’s opinions about the band when Midnight Opera seem intent on filling in an audience’s ideas for them already. Anyway, here’s a chunk of what Canadian pop artist Boniface’s bio page says: “New pop stars are spawned every day; focus-grouped and conveyor-belted into being; dreamed up by music industry Svengalis and unleashed on the charts. Boniface offer something different, something rare and bright and fine: a new pop talent that has found its way alone, undiluted, electrifying, boundless in its ambition.” Have fun parsing the artistic psychology in that! Boniface headlines a show at MASS (1002 S Main) on Sunday night. Also on this bill: local pop punk/power pop/popular music group Meach Pango, Albuquerque-based garage pop band Red Light Cameras, “organic rock band” (pesticide-free pop) Pax Romana, and the psychedelic, good-time weirdo, slacker rock of Denver Williams, who starts the show at 8pm. Doors are at 7, the show is 18+, and cover is $7. I dunno… Boniface sounds like Coldplay to me. Watch this video and see what you think:
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.
