1) Friday evening at Dreamy Life HQ (Dreamy Life Records and Music, inside the Fairmount Community Library at 1310 W Allen), there’s a free show that starts at 6 and features Big Heaven, the new project of Movie the Band drummer Jesse Gage and Crystal Furs main lady Mandy Hand. I couldn’t find anything about Beauty Parlor, unfortunately. It’s a great name, but unfortunately, it’s one that gets buried by more mundane results when you search for it, similar to Heater, BULLS, or Oil Boom. I guess those kind of names make you dig deeper, and making a fan work a little harder has its merits, but sometimes there are too many gas and sprinkler lines between the surface of a google search and the bedrock where good music wrapped in an cheeky, yet commonplace name lay hidden. Anyway, the show is free and kid-friendly if your children can’t be left at home by themselves without starting a riot or whatever it is they are liable to do. This is a commercial for Dreamy Life Records and Music:
2) Dallas-based Dead Flowers is bringing their rowdy rock ’n roll party to MASS (1002 S Main) on Saturday night to promote their brand new vinyl slab, Let Me Be, a 13-track LP of punk-influenced anthems and odes to burning the candle at both ends. Vicious Firs fill the middle slot with their high volume stoner metal riffage, and modern melodic guitar rockers Omicron J Trauma kick off the bill at 9pm. Doors are at 8, it’s 18+, and cover is $7 at the door. And actually, if you’re into Dead Flowers, they’ll be at MASS on NYE paying tribute to their biggest influence, the Replacements. Dead Flowers are always this loud:
3) Shipping and Receiving (201 S Calhoun) has a songwriter showcase on Saturday, starring Whiskey Folk Ramblers’ Tyler Curtis Rougeux, Jacob Metcalf, and Vincent Neil Emerson. The ballads fly at 9pm, and cover is $10. Jacob Metcalf once performed on KXT. It was January 29, 2016, during which he performed this nice song, called “Ein Berliner”:
4) Here’s some old-school loudness for Saturday night: Haltom City hard rock lords The Me-Thinks, Dallas punk originals Loco Gringos, and Lubbock’s party-hard purveyors of shit-kicking schtick, the Beaumonts crank up the wildness at Fred’s Texas Café (915 Currie St). Seeing as how the Gringos are legendary and more or less the reason the Me-Thinks exist as a band (ask MT-frontman Ray Liberio about this), this’ll be one of those can’t-miss Me-Thinks gigs. The show starts at 8pm with the Beaumonts, and there’s no cover. Here are Loco Gringos in the mid-’80s talking about fruit flies:
5) Why not have one more option for Saturday? If you’re like me, you’ve probably never seen a show at the Ridglea Lounge (6025 Camp Bowie), so why not try something new? As a bonus, if you need to buy some incense or a new bong or a one-hitter or whatever, the Gas Pipe is right next door. But anyway, this bill features veteran Austin-Fort Worth psychedelic rock band Un Chien and young pop punk upstarts Meach Pango, as well as a rare appearance by power pop rockers Goodwin. Cover is $8, doors are at 8, and the show is all ages. Here’s a Goodwin show from 11 years ago, when the members of Meach Pango were in elementary school. Cool tune, right?
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, and 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.
