Yr. Weekend, Pt. 2: Main Street Block Party + NOFX + Latch Key Kids + One Mic Houston + Tattooed For Good + Metal Summit 4 + More

Aaaaand here’s the biggie of the weekend — Saturday, January 22nd, is looking like an awesomely busy, option-filled day, I have to say. Not sure if I’ll be able to make it out to any of this stuff, but hey, you definitely shouldn’t follow my example; get on out there. Here goes:

Main Street Block Party, featuring L.A.X., Fat Tony, The Literary Greats, American Sharks, G Wizz, Glasnost, Ceeplus Bad Knives, Electric Attitude, The Tontons, The Black & White Years, The Pons, Mr. Castillo, Electric Touch, Female Demand, The Cutters, Gracie Chavez, A&A Dance Party, Q and A, Motel Aviv, The Small Sounds, The Handshake, Amorette, DJ Cuba Gooding Jr. & Dan Le, Muhammad Ali, Zorch, Talk Sick Brats, Fredster, 11:11, The Lusitania, Caddywhompus, Empress Hotel, Pacifico, Best Legs, Hollywood Floss, iLL LiaD, Stagger Lee, The Transco Empire, Twin Killers, The Bourgeois Gospels, Searching for Signal, Daniel Markem, Damon Allen, A.D.D., Twenty Eleven, Panchitron, Luke Lukas, Jim & The Toms, Satin Hooks, Unicorn Milk, Frank Freeman, Le Hibou, Renzo, Titan Blood, Gogo Garcia, Don’t Poke the Bear, Finnegan, GRRRL Parts, Low Plane Drifter, Linh Nguyen, Chane, Screwtape, DJ Psychedelic Sex Panther, Richie Roc, Vivian Pikkles & the Sweethearts Über Alles, & Young Savages @ The Continental Club, The Mink, The Big Top, & Natachee’s Supper & Punch (1PM-2AM)
Oh, yes. I seem to recall a previous incarnation of the Main Street Block Party happening a while back, but this time around, the folks throwing the party have seriously pulled out all the stops. They’ve enlisted some of my favorite, favorite, favorite bands & musicians around, including Muhammad Ali, Fat Tony, The Literary Greats, Searching for Signal, The Small Sounds, Electric Attitude, & Caddywhompus, paired ’em with some cool-ass out-of-towners, folks like Empress Hotel, Motel Aviv, The Pons, The Black & White Years, & L.A.X., and plunked them down in what is quite possibly the coolest stretch of Houston you can actually walk from end-to-end and barely break a sweat. (Sorry, Washington Ave.)

The show’s scattered between The Continental Club, The Mink, Shoeshine Charlie’s Big Top, & newest arrival Natachee’s Supper & Punch, and the whole thing’ll run you $15, which ain’t half bad for that wide a cross-section of bands. It starts at 1PM, apparently, and runs ’til 2AM that night; I’d originally figured on posting the full schedule, but heck, David over at Houston Calling‘s already got it online, so check it out over there, instead.

NOFX/The Bouncing Souls/Cobra Skulls/Old Man Markley/Latch Key Kids @ House of Blues
Y’know, back when I first heard NOFX, I figured they’d be dead & gone within a couple of years, tops. At the time, they just didn’t seem the type to end up somehow becoming the iconic torchbearers of the whole California pop-punk movement, and definitely not any kind of political force, that’s for damn sure. And yeah, I was wrong on both counts. Say what you will about these guys — at this point in history, every poppy, snarky, fart joke-obsessed punk band practicing in somebody’s basement owes NOFX a huge debt. They pretty much carved that little punk subgenre all by themselves, then climbed in it and proceeded to have a 30-year party.

And hey, as an added bonus, this time out they’ve got Cobra Skulls, whose straight-ahead, blue-collar-sounding, boogie-tinged melodic punk I happen to like quite a bit, and resurrected local pop-punk dudes the Latch Key Kids, who I’ve loved since I was a single, unmarried, no-kid-having young guy who, um, still went to shows all the time. Still got the band’s 7″s, and apparently they were over at SugarHill last year recording a brand-new full-length — keep an eye out for it.

One Mic Houston 2nd Anniversary, featuring El Prez, Hero & Rad, Dustin Prestige, RE, 4th N Inchez, The Boy Illinois, Nya with Atmosphere, H-Kane, Montana, D-Risha, Young Sensation, 3Bubble, Purple Bastard, Ensane, Twenty Eleven, Lower Life Form, Uzoy, O.N.E., Tha Centop, P.K.T., Hollywood Floss, Tommy Bumps, hasHBrown, Jett I. Masstyr, Dante Higgins, Nosaprise, John Dew, Thurogood Wordsmith, The Forces, Dice, The Niyat, Tim Ned, Ace Boogie, Kritkal, London Wilson, Danny Watts, Tawn P, Rock Show, Undergravity, Juzcoz, Hip-Phonix, The League of Extraordinary G’z, & more @ Groundhall
Wow. First the Block Party, then this — an awesome cross-section of some of the coolest rappers & DJs out there, including folks like Thurogood Wordsmith, Lower Life Form, Hero & Rad, The Niyat, Hollywood Floss, & the very-confusing (yet talented) hasHBrown/Jett I. Masstyr, who’s apparently one guy.

This is the 2nd Anniversary of the One Mic Houston show series, btw, all of which have featured some very, very cool people. Here’s my salute to it continuing on for many more years.

Tattooed For Good: Montrose Tattoo Shop Fundraiser Festival for ASSISTHERS, featuring Mantis, The Manichean, Skeleton Dick, Outer Heaven, Nikoo, Cadre, Mike Perkins, Another Run, The American Heist, DJ Darrell Ripley, DJ Mace, Big Deli, & DJ MIG @ Westheimer Rd. (between Stanford & Yupon; 12PM-12AM)
Yup, already talked this one up, so I’ll just give it another fervent thumbs-up & point y’all on over here for more info…

Metal Summit 4, featuring Turbid North, Assassinator, & Vaste Burai @ Sound Exchange (free!; 8PM)
If you read this here blog regularly, you might recall how a month or so ago blogger Becky posted about the cool-sounding Metal Summit 3; well, this here’s the next installment, Metal Summit 4, and it features an equally intriguing-sounding trio of bands, all for free, at Sound Exchange.

Don’t forget, btw, that this isn’t only a show — part of the idea of this “Summit” thing is for H-town metalfolk to get together & trade ideas and opinions about the state of metal here in Hell City. If you want the devil-horns to fly high above the crowds ’round here for many, many moons to come, hey, come and see what you can do to help.

Runners-Up:
Slim Thug/Z-Ro @ Arena Theatre
Los Skarnales/The Jungle Rockers/Murder the Stout/Idiginis @ Fitzgerald’s
The Hates/Carl Hayn/TC5 @ Walter’s
Shut Up Sidney/Mugrero/Penny Arcade @ Vinyl Junkie
The Wayward Sons/Jimmy Pizzitola/Mason Lankford & The Folk Family Revival @ Rudyard’s
Beans Barton & The Bi-Peds/Tribal Lillies Belly Dance Troupe @ Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar
Authority Zero/Flatfoot 56/Lionize @ The Scout Bar (Clear Lake)
Jesse Dayton @ Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe (Galveston)