Music to Your Ears

 

Happy Birthday, Dear Launchpad

New Mexico's most venerated rock bar—and recipient of a 2008 Nickelodeon Parents' Pick award for Best Place for a Parents' Nite Out, lest we forget—turns the ripe old age of 12 this weekend. To commemorate more than a decade of hearing damage, the Launchpad will once again turn up the volume with a birthday music marathon on Saturday, May 16. Doors open at 3 p.m., and a first come, first served "food/barbecue thing" prepared by Richard Agee is covered in the $5 admission charge—but you must be 21 or older to get in. Sorry, actual 12-year-olds. If you throw your shoes in a fit of adolescent jealousy as you read the scheduled lineup, I'll understand:

3:45 p.m. Good As Dead

4:30 p.m. The Fire Season

5:15 p.m. Pan!c

6 p.m. The Ground Beneath

6:45 p.m. Ya Ya Boom

7:30 p.m. The Demons

8:15 p.m. Ben Hathorne

9 p.m. Outhouse

9:45 p.m. Scarless

10:30 p.m. The Grave of Nobody's Darling

11:15 p.m. Anesthesia

Midnight Suspended

Launchpad has had so many birthdays, I'm running out of interesting ways to wish it well. I encourage all the other Launchpad lovers to leave glittery "Happy Birthday!" animated GIFs in the comment section at myspace.com/launchpad. ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ti, Launchpad! You look like a monkey and you smell like one, too.