One month lasts forever when it’s festival season

NO AGE by ED TEMPLETON

Summer grinds into fall in a certain brutal way as soon as back to school commercials begin—these are the last grim weeks of the fun hunt, when any moment unconsumed by something energetically care-free will expire forever except for guilt to be revisited once real life begins again. So fest season is cram season—tons of fun to ration out for the slow months ahead, with a week of shows folded into a day and a festival per weekend for the next five weeks and almost anything playing you’d care to stand before. For one final month of summer (plus a slow fade into fall), the committed California music remora may all at once enjoy jazz of several tones, hip-hop from two and a half eras, parking lot pop-punk, east side public-radio rock, blues and rock ‘n’ roll from the first five guys to find the name, fringe trim from raging young weirdos and a last slab of metalloid wreckage under which a simple camp to last the next eight months may be fashioned. (Plus a teaser about Long Beach’s own street festival, scheduled for this fall.) Presented here are the milemarkers for the marathon.

AUG 8-10: LONG BEACH JAZZ FESTIVAL: ROY AYERS
Vibrophonist Roy Ayers’ undulating melodies added a special sort of glow to everything from hard-ass blaxploitation funk soundtracks (Coffy, revived to give Nas and Foxy Brown tracks to rap over) to new-thing fusion (Red Black And Green) to the slick pop bop of West Coast Vibes, which summed up the man’s early years in three airtight words. South Central raised and trained—he was a Jefferson High alum—Ayers would go on to become one of California’s definitive jazz musicians, appearing appropriately now as part of a “Superstars of Jazz Fusion” set with Miles Davis/Pharoah Sanders pianist Lonnie Smith plus singer and actress—Billie Holiday in Malcom X—Miki Howard, Jazz Crusaders’ founder and trombonist Wayne Henderson and Ayers collaborator and trumpeter Tom Brown. // CHRIS ZIEGLER

SEE ALSO: Percussionist Poncho Sanchez, masonry experts the Commodores, smoothie Kem and more.

LONG BEACH JAZZ FESTIVAL RAINBOW LAGOON | 400 SHORELINE VILLAGE DR | LONG BEACH 90802 | LONGBEACHJAZZFESTIVAL.COM | AUGUST 8 7PM | AND AUGUST 9 & 10 NOON | $45-$175 | ALL AGES

AUG 9: ROCK THE BELLS: PHARCYDE
The Pharcyde had California content and cozy for about three years—Bizarre Ride to Labcabin—and then came the crack and collapse that dumped the group into a weird kind of half-life for years. Fat Lip (apart from sightings by Spike Jonze, or during the Chemical Brothers’ possibly conceptual “Salmon Dance”) let his profile deflate slowly and attrition split the original foursome again and again until only Bootie Brown and Imani were left to carry the name. Reduced-strength Pharcyde were still workhorses, however, gigging small-club-level but working like there was an arena in front of them, and finally the arena came meekly back to them. This year’s Rock The Bells—prior home of the Wu Tang Clan reunion—restores one of Southern California’s defining hip-hop groups into probably their first time onstage all together locally since the mid-’90s. If it’s not monumental—and it may well be—it’s at least momentous. // CZ

SEE ALSO: A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Raekwon (late of Blue Cafe), Ghostface, Rakim and more.

ROCK THE BELLS GLEN HELEN PAVILLION | 2575 GLEN HELEN PKWY | SAN BERNARDINO 92407 | ROCKTHEBELLS.COM | AUGUST 9 NOON | $35.50-$203 | ALL AGES

AUG 17: WARPED TOUR: MIKE WATT AND THE MISSINGMEN
To look at it like Watt might look at it, everybody has to start somewhere, and if his first-ever show was T. Rex at the Municipal Auditorium in Long Beach—which when all things are tabulated will still tower mightily over all these new bands whose names are jokey answers to the question “So who’s playing tonight?”—then maybe some curious confused someone could have their first show be Mike Watt and the Missingmen at the Warped Tour, which has the premise of Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (originals awake) but hopefully the resolution of Day The Earth Stood Still (true power educates). Missingmen are a ripping trio easily conversant with primitive space exploration—B.O.C. “The Red and The Black” and Stooges “Funhouse”—and reverent genuflection—Roky Erickson’s never-studio-recorded “Sweet Honey Pie,” which should please be played for an hour straight at Warped—and Minuteman contemporaries like Wire and Television, whose “Johnny Jewel” they used to turn vapor into liquid at a Pedro show last year. // CZ

SEE ALSO: Old cool man dream line-up with Fear, GBH and TSOL—a line-up that would have set Fender’s on fire—plus the pleasantly respectful Aggrolites and the Bronx sans mariachi get-up.

WARPED TOUR HOME DEPOT CENTER | 18400 AVALON BLVD | CARSON 90746 | WARPEDTOUR.COM | AUGUST 17 NOON | $30.25-$32.75 | ALL AGES

AUG 23-24: SUNSET JUNCTION: COLD WAR KIDS
It’s been a quiet private year for Cold War Kids. When their tour with the White Stripes evaporated just days before they would have left home, they took the unexpected loose time to advance a second album already destined for concentrated critical reception. (“The first record makes the idea of who you are for people who haven’t seen you before—there’s nothing to gauge it against,” said guitarist Jonnie Russell. “And the second one, now there’s something to compare it to. That’s why people love reviewing second records—they get a lot more firepower to say positive or negative things.”) The songs that will become September’s Loyalty To Loyalty came in glimpses until recently when a series of Let It Be-style instant secret shows whipped away the curtain; at the Prospector weeks ago, this year’s Cold War Kids came out wild and loud and fierce with an all-new set (less one Fugazi cover and “Quiet Please”) that suggests a laudable sophomore sea change. This Sunset Junction show will be their big official local appearance—after that, they get back on the jet overseas and leave Loyalty waiting behind them. // CZ

SEE ALSO: Quality locals like Entrance, Bodies of Water, Happy Hollows, Health and Henry Clay People plus Beachwood Sparks reunited and Dub Club fave Sister Nancy. And Isaac Hayes!

SUNSET JUNCTION 3700 SUNSET BLVD | LOS ANGELES 90026 | SUNSETJUNCTION.ORG | AUGUST 23 AND 24 NOON | $15-$20 | ALL AGES

AUG 30-31: LONG BEACH BLUES FESTIVAL: CHUCK BERRY
By the time punk rock came back supposedly dragging rock ‘n’ roll with it, Chuck Berry was already in space—1977 Voyager record (which is the only gold record that matters) took him with Louie Armstrong and Blind Willie Johnson into eternity, where they alone will live on after the sun goes nova and the solar system reduces to its component dust. There has yet to be a classification established to describe who Chuck Berry is anymore—he pre-dated and halfway-created and out-lasted the Beatles and Elvis and the fact that he might still appear on a stage and play something like “Maybelline” would overwhelm even the landing of the saucer men who are surely now looking for him. Legend is a word for a CD cover at Wal-Mart; what Chuck Berry did was invent about a quarter of modern life, and although he of course was not the first guy who played rock ‘n’ roll, he was also of course the first guy who really did. // CZ

SEE ALSO: Onion originator Booker T. Jones, Stax’s Eddie Floyd, bluesbreaker John Mayall and Pinetop Perkins.

LONG BEACH BLUES FESTIVAL RAINBOW LAGOON | 400 SHORELINE VILLAGE DR | LONG BEACH 90802 | JAZZANDBLUES.ORG | AUGUST 30 AND 31 1:15 PM | $45-$85 | ALL AGES

AUG 30-31: F YEAH FEST: NO AGE
Fingerprints employee and New York Times-approved hustler Sean Carlson puts together this cheerful yearly teenage Altamont—now with sadly less “uck”—in the heart of Echo Park with a typically top-notch roster of off-center national acts and some of Southern California’s best. This year (as last year) comes guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/singer Dean Spunt as No Age, a noise-pop outfit that peels the stratum corneum off for specific reuse: revealing and reveling in its abrasive dermis, in the tough and elastic layer containing white fibrous tissue interlaced with yellow; in cute little sebaceous riffs burst into moist chord lushness, then come back keratinized, dragging a purple crayon through the air, building pyramids and elephants and a little moon to sit on. Lyricism is relegated to the outfield while skuzzy intensity gets to ring around the bases, getting sunburned until it collapses and takes a quick power nap, which is when the words fling hot dogs in the air. // DAIANA FEUER

SEE ALSO: Classic hellrockers Negative Approach, Can-disco band Glass Candy, Brooklyn telepaths High Places, your own Crystal Antlers, post-Elevator-ers Strange Boys and the uncontestably legitimate Abe Vigoda.

F YEAH FEST 5 THE ECHOPLEX | 1154 GLENDALE BLVD | LOS ANGELES 90026 | FYEAHFEST.COM | AUGUST 30 4 PM AND AUGUST 31 2 PM | $16 | ALL AGES

SEPT 7:  MANIFEST DESTINY: EARTHLESS
All hail the cosmic nod: Isaiah Mitchell on the “acid guitar,” Mike Eginton’s “bass spew” and Mario Rubalcaba “drum bruising” their way to a crooked neck. Stuck between a rock and a psychedelic place, don’t call this San Diego trio a jam band, though they wander there for extended periods of instrumental freak-out. They’re not totally metal, either, but arpeggios abound. Basically, here’s what happens when you ride a stationary bike and drink Red Bull at the same time: not a heart attack but an “amplified passing trajectory perception cascade.” What if you’re standing sideways and upside-down and your stationary bike transforms into a labyrinth of stairs that must be traversed in order to save Roky Erickson from a two-headed dog threatening to steal all the mail he stole from his neighbors? Mostly, though, these guys rock out and exchange facial signals when the goose is cooked and needs to be turned over. // DF

SEE ALSO: Roky reverers Witchcraft, Pentagram pursuers Witch and L.A.’s Warlocks—perhaps someone can cover Coven?—plus headshrinkers Ancestors and cosmonauts Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound and more.

MANIFEST DESTINY THE ECHOPLEX | 1154 GLENDALE BLVD | LOS ANGELES 90026 | TEEPEERECORDS.COM | SEPT 7 NOON | ADMISSION TBA | ALL AGES

OCT 5: SCHOOLED IN SONG: DUSTY RHODES AND THE RIVER BAND
Even prehistoric years ago, there was something to salute about Dusty Rhodes and the River Band—saw them make an entire pizza parlor fall in love, heard how they drove all the way to Kansas and back just to play for some strange knot of fans who’d pledged permanent alliance. After a bit of underwatering on the dark-bar circuit, a psychic push from Ikey Owens—whose fingertips in 2007 may have tapped all the big things of 2008—got them hooked up with opening slots for Los Lobos and signed to the same label as Gogol Bordello, who use an accordion for entirely different things. The Dusty way is the dusty way—rock ‘n’ roll revived like it was in the basement of Big Pink or on the fantastic expedition of Dillard and Clark or even in Cosmo’s Factory, and despite Owens’ probably prescient production note that he was making their first record an Aerosmith record, there’s a swap meet LP vibe to these guys that recalls the best 50 cents anyone ever spent. // CZ

SEE ALSO: Born-at-Dragon-House Cambodian Nuggets band Dengue Fever, Mutantes broadcasters Blank Blue, rocker Jay Buchanan, Year Zero’s Lili De La Mora and more.

SCHOOLED IN SONG FIRST ST AND LINDEN AVE | LONG BEACH 90802 | MYSPACE.COM/SCHOOLEDINSONG | OCT 5 NOON | ADMISSION TBA | ALL AGES

Tags: chuck berry, f yeah fest, long beach blues fest, long beach jazz fest, mike watt, Music, no age, schooled in song