Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: Roky Moon & BOLT (Sold Out!) + Jealous Creatures + Chingo Bling + Houston Sound + Pains of Being Pure at Heart + Fired For Walking + More

Damn. It’s been an insanely busy-busy-busy week, to the point where this weekend has seriously crept up behind and mugged me. Gah… Got to keep this relatively short, but there is a lot going on this weekend, starting tonight, Fri., April 8th, and you really, truly should not miss out…

Where will I be tonight? Well, if the fates align and prevent the fam from getting sick & whatnot, I’ll hopefully be up at The Mink for Roky Moon & BOLT‘s official West Coast tour kickoff show. It promises to be quite an extravaganza, with lots of door prizes & art & booze & whatnot floating around, not to mention performances by {Poor Pilate}, {Jim and the Toms}, and the resurrected (yay!) {Springfield Riots}.

Sadly, if you haven’t already bought a ticket, well, you’re not gettin’ in. As of this AM, I’m told, all 125 tickets for the show were officially gone, leaving those latecomers stuck out in the cold & very, very sad. Dang…

But hey, never fear, because there’s quite a bit of other cool stuff going on. Should you have failed to snag a ticket for the Mink tonight, you can slide on down to The Continental Club, instead, where there’s an equally awesome lineup going on. Funky R&B dude {Ozeal} is headlining, and he’s playing with cool orchestra-pop gang {Spain Colored Orange}, über-dramatic art-rockers {The Manichean}, murky, punk-blues-y crew {Jealous Creatures}, and smart, Latin-tinged prog-rock band {Tax the Wolf} — it’s a diverse as hell lineup, but one with hardly a misstep, even still.

Swinging northeast into dowtown, tamale-slinging rap superstar {Chingo Bling} is playing the House of Blues, I think with the awesome {Fat Tony} (although he’s not listed on the HoB site, for some reason).

If you can get up that way a little earlier, btw, check out the latest installment of The Houston Sound Concert Series, this one featuring the freaking incredible {Benjamin Wesley} and Austinites MoTel Aviv, about whom I’ve heard great things. That one starts at 6:30PM, so don’t be late…

What else, what else… Well, Fitz has yet another great upstairs/downstairs lineup, with sweethearted indie-pop kids The Pains of Being Pure at Heart — who won me over big-time with “Young Adult Friction,” off their self-titled full-length — playing on one floor with cool local boys {The Watermarks} and the truly weird, Prince-gone-electro soul-pop of Twin Shadow and the mesmerizing Warpaint (who apparently really like Houston, they’ve come through so many damn times in the past year) tearing up the other with the help of PVT and The Family Band.

A little bit out of the way for some, but if you’re into experimental music, you really ought to head over to Project Row Houses to check out the ICP Orchestra (“ICP” for “Instant Composer’s Pool”), which is apparently a supergroup of Dutch experimentalists that includes Han Bennink & Ab Baars, among others.

If that’s not your speed, though, head on over to Rudz for a free(!) show with cool, straight-up alt-rock dudes {Fired for Walking} and the awesomely-named {Bald Eagle Burger}. Can’t beat the free-ness, y’all…

Anyway, that’s all I can keep in my brain right at the moment; here’s the full list:

Roky Moon & BOLT (tour kickoff)/Poor Pilate/Jim and the Toms/Springfield Riots @ The Mink
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart/Twin Shadow/The Watermarks @ Fitzgerald’s
Ozeal/Spain Colored Orange/The Manichean/Jealous Creatures/Tax the Wolf @ The Continental Club
Chingo Bling/Fat Tony @ House of Blues (Bronze Peacock Room)
Warpaint/PVT/The Family Band @ Fitzgerald’s
Fired For Walking/Bald Eagle Burger @ Rudyard’s
The Houston Sound Spring Concert Series, featuring MoTel Aviv & Benjamin Wesley @ Market Square Park (downtown; 6:30-8:30PM)
Grupo Fantasma/DJ Chicken George @ Warehouse Live
Fucked Up Friends 1 Year Anniversary, featuring Cuba Gooding Jr., Linh Nguyen, & Shawn Rindfoss @ Boondocks
ICP Orchestra @ Eldorado Ballroom at Project Row Houses (2310 Elgin; 8PM)
The Great Guinness Toast, featuring Blaggards @ Molly Maguire’s
Lady Gaga @ Toyota Center