Malaco recording artist and blues legend Little Milton will
bring his band to the Center for Southern Folklore on Saturday, May 12th.
Advance tickets are $20, $25 at the door. This is the most high-profile show
at the center since reopening at Peabody Place last year, and center regulars
The Fieldstones and The Daddy Mack Blues Band will open
the show to make it that much more special.
There’s more than enough in this issue about the Guided By Voices
show this week at Last Place on Earth. But openers Creeper Lagoon are a
damn good reason to show up early for the May 15th show. This San Francisco-
based alt-rock band released their sophomore album, Take Back the Universe
and Give Me Yesterday, a few weeks ago, and it finds impressively sunny
middleground between the noisy indie rock of Pavement and the spirited arena
rock of Everclear.– Chris Herrington
The names of the clubs have changed, but other than that it feels
exactly like 1995 all over again. The Clears’ eccentric geometrist Shelby
Bryant played the Hi-Tone Café last Sunday, and Bob Pollard, the pop
bard of beer, bongs, and imaginary avionics, is bringing the never-ending
Guided By Voices rockathon to Last Place on Earth on Tuesday, May 15th
(see feature, page 54). Situated in between shows by these bright lights from
the heyday of indie rock are The Grifters, who will be playing Last
Place on Earth, Saturday, May 12th, with Califone.
Now you might think that there is nothing that we can say about
this group of art rockers (with the emphasis on rockers) that hasn’t been said
both before and better by former Flyer scribe John Floyd during the
group’s most productive, volatile, and amazingly influential period. And up
until this particular point in time you would have been correct. But in
addition to playing hits like “Bronze Cast” and “Get Out of
That Spaceship and Fight Like a Man,” the Grifters will be using this
show to test out a whole new body of original material. Jared McStay, the
driving force behind the Simpletones (Simple Ones, Simple One, etc.), will be
joining the band on guitar, allowing co-front man Dave Shouse to take on
keyboard duty. In other words, if you didn’t think it was possible for the
Grifters sound to get any bigger, well, you’ve got another think coming.
If you are interested in seeing a group of truly inspired folk-
punks whose oeuvre owes much to the Clash but in the end makes those angry
Brits sound like a bunch of sullen fussbudgets, then This Bike Is a Pipe
Bomb is the band to see. The last time This Bike was in town the group
befriended the boys from Lucero and they ended up playing an impromptu show
together at the Buccaneer. This time around they’ll be at the Map Room, their
regular Memphis venue, on Thursday, May 10th, with Pezz. But that may
very well turn out to be merely the first show of this hard-working band’s
evening. — Chris Davis
