Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: The Busy Kids + Manchester Orchestra + The Standells + Wails + Holy Fiction + Spin Doctors + More

A good, long (well, for me, anyway) Memorial Day weekend coming up, and it’s looking like a damn busy one, to boot, starting with tonight, Friday, May 27th.

First off, there’s a cool-ass lineup of garage-y, punk-y goodness going on at the Big Star Bar; I dunno The Tough Shits, but I’ve been meaning to check out {The Busy Kids} (which features Niki from {Something Fierce}, among others) for a long damn time now, I’ve liked what I’ve heard of {The Wrong Ones}, and I’ve been pretty mightily impressed by {The Examples}. And it’s all only $5. Sweet.

I’m seriously torn, though, because there’s a lot of other stuff going on, too… For one thing, Manchester Orchestra is playing at the Verizon Wireless Theater, and while I can’t claim to be a full-on “fan,” I dig their soft-voiced (yet driving) Gibbardian indie-rock, both the quieter bits and faster, more bitter/angry tracks.

You can check out a stream of their entire new album, Simple Math, right here:

“Simple Math” Album Stream by Manchester Orchestra

A little more low-key, there’s the show over at The Mink with out-of-towners Destry and Communipaw and two of my flat-out favorite bands in town lately, {Wails} and {Holy Fiction}.

They’re not all that similar, but both are pretty ridiculously cool, with Wails riding these shimmering Brit-pop drones and disaffected vocals and Holy Fiction roaring out these majestic, gorgeous songs that always make me think of Peter Gabriel’s more serious moments, for some reason (and which are really fun to howl along with as you blaze down the freeway). I’ll have some more news on the latter very soon, btw, but I want to hold off a bit on that…

Then, before I forget, there’s tonight’s “holy shit” moment, as in, “holy shit — are The Standells really playing here? At the freaking Concert Pub?” The answer would be “yes”; the guys behind “Dirty Water” and a bunch of other bumping, snarling classics that basically paved the way for punk as a musical genre are indeed playing over at the Concert Pub’s Galleria location tonight. Whoa.

What else, what else… Well, the excellent Comicpalooza started today (it runs through Sunday, I believe), and while I’m not super-excited about any of the bands or musicians playing, I’m psyched about the festival as a whole — took Midget #1 last year, and we both had a blast, even though she had no idea who Chewbacca was. And hey, this year they’ve got Admiral Adama, so hey…

Last but not least, the Arena Theater has a lineup tonight that just plain cracks me up: Rick Springfield and…Spin Doctors. I am so, so not kidding.

I won’t lie; I did like the Spin Doctors back in the ’90s, although I’ve since sold off whatever I had by ’em, and prior to seeing their names on the Theater Website, I hadn’t thought about ’em in a very long time. But heck, after reading the recent interview the {Houston Press} did with bassist Mark White, now I’m kinda remembering ’em more fondly.

Anyway, here’s the full list:

The Tough Shits/Busy Kids/The Wrong Ones/The Examples @ Big Star Bar
Manchester Orchestra/Cage The Elephant/Sleeper Agent @ Verizon Wireless Theater
Destry/Communipaw/Wails/Holy Fiction @ The Mink
FANTASTIC, featuring Frank Castle, D-Risha, Nosaprise, Screwtape, Flow Factory, Kid Kali, ChopE, & ThatKidNamedCee @ Fitzgerald’s
The Standells @ The Concert Pub Galleria
The Escatones/The Pub Affair/Young Girls @ Rudyard’s
Hadden Sayers/Picture Book @ The Continental Club
D.R.U.M./Bigga Star @ Last Concert Cafe
Chango Man/Mosley @ Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar
Rick Springfield/Spin Doctors @ Arena Theatre
Comicpalooza 2011, featuring The Hectic, Denise Vasquez, Happy! Project, The Lost Boys, Midnight Carnival, Ozeal, The Side Quest, Sievert, Skeleton Dick, & more Adam Warrock @ George R. Brown Convention Center