“Don’t give my brother a Steve Austin outfit/ Don’t give my sister a cuddly toy/ We don’t want a jigsaw or monopoly money/ We only want the real McCoy/ Father Christmas, give us some money/ We’ll beat you up if you make us annoyed/ Father Christmas, give us some money/ Don’t mess around with those silly toys/ But give my daddy a job ’cause he needs one/ He’s got lots of mouths to feed/ And if you’ve got one I’ll have a machine gun/ So I can scare all the kids on the street …” Lyrics to a communist holiday love song by Ray Davies.Last time I checked, it was time for Weekly Alibi’s Last Minute Gift guide, a compendium of community and consumer retail hopes that fills out one of this year’s last issues with spicy, spend-thrifty suggestions that one can grok with the greatest of ease.Over the years. I’ve been all over the place with my own gift guide suggestions. In days of yore I might have implored you to buy that exotic wood Hawaiian box guitar over at GuitarVista. Or I mighta told about the gift of kindness I received one year, despite my own scattered assumptions about what comprises a meaningful gift.In any case that set me to wonder if I had ever thought about ephemeral physical phenomena as concerts as a form of giftage. Hmm, the idea is certainly appealing—point to a potentially awesome experience as way of laying on the love.With Hanukkah already in progress and Christmas but three weeks hence there ought to be plenty of places and times and therefore worlds whose direction I can bid you towards from here. Well then. Put down that hot toddy and venture forth. There’s a sleighful of sounds waiting for you on the roof.
Show Up!: Thursday
Post-rock continues to develop craftily on its own luxurious limb, mostly free from the influence of the rocanrol, but still strangely, elusively dependent on the later form’s instrumentation and dynamic range. The addition of vocals and keyboards into the allowable—in an otherwise rather strict, almost doctrinaire subgenre—affords post-rock more emotional flexibility and adds a sense of humanness to a sometimes stoical enterprise. Such is the case with Kentucky singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle, who will be appearing at Sister (407 Central Ave. NW) on Thursday, Dec. 6. Rundle’s synthetic style certainly has shoe-gaze and ingenue elements strewn randomly throughout its mostly ambient musicality, but the lack of typical rocanrol song structures (I get it, post-rockers don’t dig bridges) makes for challenging, focused listening, almost like one might do at a performance by a noted string quartet. Combining vast sonic landscapes with confessional vocalizations, Rundle represents an evolution in the subgenre that should be welcomed by young audiences who naturally think of musical experience in rhythmic, danceability terms—due to their early and constant exposure to hip-hop nation, it seems. Mainly minimalist yet gothic musical mystery dude Jay Jayle opens. 8pm • $10 in advance, $13 at the door • 21+.
Show Up!: Friday
Mike Trujillo and Roman Barham of ARISE
Eric Williams Photography
As the winter holidays proceed, it has also been reported that instances of human kindness are on the rise across the nation and certainly in Burque. In fact one might say that here in the Duke City, they tend to arise. That’s the plain case with a charity event slash rocked out night of damn fine local music that is going to go from holiday fantasy to Christmas miracle on Friday, Dec. 7 at Launchpad (618 Central Ave. SW). ARISE Music and Coffee (who also mysteriously landed a place in our last minute gift guide on page 26) will be hosting a holiday hootenanny on that night. A toy and food drive is at the center of things for this blessed night of rocanrol that features award-winning local rockers like Moonshine Blind and The Talking Hours as well as metallic newcomers Musnttouchit, Andrako and the now legendary Manhigh, a local band with global footing—check out their FB feed, yo, this power trio is touring all over the damn place making a name for their brand of groovaliscious hard rock! Anywho, donations at the door result in bargains in the way of admission to this compassionately kind instance of December in the Burkes. 8pm • $8 or $5 with the donation of a toy or three units of food • 21+.
Show Up!: Saturday Part I
Cobra Vs Mongoose
There is a terrible and frightening thing in Burque called punk rock and it will never die. Some say it came to life the night Gordy Anderson happened to catch DEVO performing the stones song “Satisfaction” live on network teevee back at the end of the ’70s. That dark ritual led him to perform a cosmic incantation that thoroughly poisoned folks like Kevin Cruikshank and Judson Frondorf with the dark juice of punk rock flavor. And much like David’s xenomorphs in Prometheus, the evil beast has kept on rebirthing, mutating and evolving into something acidic, uncompromising and … fun as hell to jam out to! See and hear the latest iterations of the beasts called punk on Saturday, Dec. 8 at Launchpad (618 Central Ave. SW) when current local head of the hive Cobra Vs Mongoose hold an old-fashioned album release party for their stunning, toothy new work, 66 Guns. They’ll be joined on stage by some of this town’s most loudest, meanest bands, including Sorry Guero, SHREWD and Visions of Death. Prepare for the gods’ entrance into Valhalla! 9:30pm • $5 to $8 • 21+.
Show Up!: Saturday Part Ii
Bryce Hample of REIGHNBEAU
Shrimp Night is a semi-regular event at a local club called Sister (407 Central Ave. SW). During these supposedly crustacean influenced evenings, electronic music—of the grimiest and ginchiest sort—is played or performed, much to the delight of the youngish, holiday-bound hipsters that reside in a club as noted for its spectacular hip-hop shows (I still can’t forget the last Geto Boys throw down over there, yo) as for its excellent experimental indulgences (see Thursday of this week in Show Up!). When this joint serves up indietronica, they do it damn right, in other words. This time around, in addition to an evening of the dopest, most danceable beats ever made by the likes of the sound collective 1960SFE, electro-wizard REIGHNBEAU will perform a set. One hopes that such is based on the dude’s latest work, a shimmering nearly baroque collection of smeared-up industrial light and dark called SLIGHT. The record dropped about a month ago, a tour has commenced and bam! This stuff is fine for listening, dancing or living brightly forever under the influence of joy and volume knobs. 9pm • $5 • 21+.
Show Up!: Sunday
Magic Sword
Dudes, if there was a band and it was called Magic Sword and all of the members of the band wore cloaks, masks and had glowing eyes, plus they had names like “The Keeper” would you go check them out? What if they had bitching illustrations of formidable alien entities on their album covers and epic tuneage with song titles like “Colossus” or “In The Face of Evil?” Would it matter to you all if this band from Boise is not metal at all, not even prog? The first truth is, the folks behind Magic Sword play a kind of futuristic, dark yet celebratory synthwave that portends magical events and reveals cryptic musical moments via a compact, continuously unwinding narrative. The second truth is that these fellows totally rock. Magic Sword will be playing at Launchpad (417 Central Ave. SW) on Sunday, Dec. 9 with Colorado specter-rockers Crystal Ghost. Magic Sword takes on at least a couple of potent rocanrol tropes—rolled up and then spread smokily out into space like a fancy-schmancy splif—that combine spectacular instrumentation choices with bombastic, sometimes haunting electronic arrangements. 8pm • $10 • All-ages (13+).
Show Up!: Wednesday
Spendtime Palace
courtesy of the artist
If you would like to know what indie rocanrol sounds like in the year 2018, right fucking now, kidz, then you must head on over to Sister (417 Central Ave. SW) on Wednesday, Dec. 12, for a concert by Costa Mesa, Calif., force-of-nature, Spendtime Palace. Of course they’re from California. Where the heck else on Earth do young white rockers combine super-tasty elements of surf-rock, psychedelia, punk and the sweetest, most earnest pop ever, to create sounds both profoundly danceable yet reliably quirky all at the same time? The group’s latest single, “Blackout Control” has the snark of the young, drug-addled David Lowery mashed-up with the jangly sort of guitar gymnastics made famous lately by bands like FIDLAR and WAVVES. I listened to supporting act, The Brazen Youth, and I am now going to go with a hunch and scream the words “baroque pop” and “low-fi rock confessionals” out the window to see if they end up sticking together. Local experimental pop duo Fad Vandals (Omar Otero and Christopher Padilla) open this rare can of rocking ear-worms. 8pm • $10 to $12 • 21+.
