Tonight: Mos Def (Reviewed!) + O Pioneers!!! (Painful) Surprise Show + Ghost Mountain + theSTART + More

A bit of a late notice on this one, I know — just got back from some much-needed Galveston vacationizing and realized that holy freaking crap, that Mos Def show is tonight (Wed., August 19th, you calendrically-impaired people), with Jay Electronica (about whom I know zero) over at the House of Blues.

And yes, this will be a pretty badass show, especially considering that new album The Ecstatic is reportedly Mos’s best since Black on Both Sides. Very cool writer guy Daniel Y. checked it out & wrote a damned insightful review of it, in fact — see here for the whole thing.

On the Bad News Front… It turns out that H-town rockers O Pioneers!!! have had to cancel their tour (which I’d mentioned over here last week) due to some epic, crap-ass tour-van fail. Damn.

But The Rest of America’s loss is Houston’s gain, because the Pioneers have jumped onto a surprise show here in town tonight, up at The Mink. It was already a darn good bill to begin with, with mesmerizing bass/drum duo Female Demand headlining and crazed/fun indie-electro-hop kids Ghost Mountain playing a bit earlier on, but the addition of the Pioneers makes it extra-special sweet (and something tells me they’re going to need any and all cash they can glean from the show to fix the van, so the $7/$10 cover charge seems more than justified). Not sure about utterly un-Googleable St. Louis-ites Spelling Bee or the maybe-playing(?) Chairs, so consider them a super-surprise bonus, eh?

But that’s not all, no. Okay, so I do feel compelled to mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that these aren’t the only options available to you this fine mid-week evening…

You could also head over to Rudyard’s for theSTART, The Boxing Lesson, & local rock dudes Osirus (from whom, as you can probably tell, I snagged the flyer). While theSTART’s snarling, glam-y, female-fronted hard rock may not be for everybody, I’ve liked what I’ve heard from ’em in the past (mostly off previous album Initiation), and the newer stuff sounds interesting, more electronicized and synth-y. Plus, Austin guys The Boxing Lesson are very cool in that rock-with-keys kind of way, and I’ve been meaning to check out Osirus for a looooong time now — the songs I’ve heard are decent, in a sweet-voiced folkie-gone-rock kind of way.

And then, last but not quite least, if you feel the need to get your cheeseball arena-rock on, there’s Def Leppard, Poison, & Cheap Trick, playing way the hell out of town at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. It’s a weird-ass bill, but hell, the inclusion of Cheap Trick makes it sound halfway enticing…