Tag: Goner Records

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Local Beat: Takin’ It to the Streets

In celebration of 10 years of the Stax Music Academy, the Soulsville Foundation, which operates the music academy and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, is bringing the culture back onto McLemore Avenue with the first Soulsville street festival, dubbed “Stax to the Max.“

The free outdoor festival will take place from noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 16th, on the grounds surrounding the museum. There will also be free admission to the museum during regular hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

As part of the entertainment, ensembles from the Stax Music Academy and the Soulsville Charter School orchestra will be joined by the Rhodes College Jazz Band and an ensemble from the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. Local jazz/funk trio The City Champs will also perform, as will comedian Sinbad.

The headlining event, however, will be “Stories of a Real Soul Man: An Evening with David Porter & Friends,“ a program built around the venerable Stax songwriter and performer. Joining Porter will be current Soulsville president and Grammy-certified saxophone great Kirk Whalum, singer Wendy Moten, guitarist Gary Goin, J. Blackfoot (of the Soul Children), newcomer Jeremy O’Bryan, and others.

“Stories of a Real Soul Man” is a touring production created by Porter, which features storytelling, live music, and video.

Record Store Day

While Soulsville is having a street festival, the country will be having Record Store Day, a “holiday” of sorts designed to promote business at brick-and-mortar record stores. The local chapter of the Recording Academy is holding one of their Grammy GPS events Saturday in conjunction with Record Story Day. Dubbed Exploring the Resurgence of Vinyl, the event will be held at Ardent Studios from 2 to 6 p.m. and will be built around a panel discussion that will look at aspects of using vinyl — from recording to production to promotion and distribution. Panelists include Ardent owner John Fry, mastering engineers Larry Nix, Scott Hull, and Jeff Powell, and manufacturer Eric Astor. Admission to the event is $20, or free to Recording Academy members. For more information, contact the Memphis chapter of the Recording Academy at Memphis@grammy.com or 901-525-1340.

While the number of specialty releases flooding stores on Saturday is many (see thevinyldistrict.com/Memphis for a lengthy guide), Goner Records in Cooper-Young will have their own exclusive. San Francisco-based Goner artist Ty Segall is putting out a six-song, 12-inch EP of covers of British glam-rock band T.Rex, with a clear vinyl pressing available only at the Goner store. Goner will open at 11 a.m. for Record Store Day, with everything in the store 10 percent off and local bands The Limes and Manatees playing a free show in the adjacent alley from 2:30 to 5 p.m.

Meanwhile, over at Shangri-La Records on Madison, there will be live music on tap to celebrate Record Store Day, with Good Luck Dark Star and The Wuvbirds playing at 6 p.m.

Music notes: Congratulations are in order to the four finalists who emerged from last weekend’s Memphis Music Launch event, sponsored by the Memphis Music Foundation. Delta Collective, Butta MD, Go Judo, and Arvada made it through the pitch and performance process and will go on to develop projects for a showcase concert in July. … Some shows of note this week: With the local underground hip-hop scene having a bit of a rebirth, scene godfathers the Iron Mic Coalition are also having a resurgence. The group will celebrate its seventh anniversary on Saturday, April 16th, at the New Daisy Theater. Group members such as Jason Da Hater, Fathom 9, the Mighty Quinn and others are scheduled to perform. Tickets are $11. Doors open at 9 p.m. … The Peabody‘s annual Rooftop Party series kicks off Thursday, April 14th, with live music from Ingram Hill. … Snowglobe’s Tim Regan brings his Austin-based band Oh No, Oh My to town for a gig at the Hi-Tone Café on Sunday, April 17th. Doors open at 9 p.m. and admission is $8. Regan’s Snowglobe bandmate Jeff Hulett opens.

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GonerFest: Take 5

Garage rock, power pop, punk rock, and a few other visceral permutations of rock ruled the game at last year’s GonerFest, a now semi-legendary rock festival curated by local record store and label Goner. This year, the evolving festival — which begins with, of all things, a Ping-Pong tournament Wednesday, September 24th, before the musical assault launches the next day — expands beyond its garage/punk base, roping in a diverse landscape of independent rock bands over four days and nights at five locations.

GonerFest stalwart King Louie One Man Band kicks things off with a 5 p.m. performance Thursday at the Goner Records store in Cooper-Young, which also will be hosting a photo exhibit by the San Francisco-based Geoff Ellis, the man behind Sad Kids, the wonderful photography zine that focused its last issue on GonerFest 4.

“I wasn’t getting the attention I wanted through gallery openings, and doing a zine in 2008 actually puts me in a unique area,” says Ellis, a onetime Memphian who recently shot the cover for comedian Brett Wienbach’s next album. “People pay attention to it, because the web is saturated with photography blogs.”

Thursday night’s set at the Hi-Tone Café starts with San Francisco’s Sic Alps, one of the more talked-about bands of the festival. Sic Alps’ sound is informed by the lo-fi indie rock of the ’90s, along with the primal stomp of early garage-rock bands such as the Troggs or Pretty Things, unifying these influences via an inspired melodic sense and with the guts to blanket choice moments in layers of noise.

The more-pop-than-garage Crusaders of Love will represent France on their first U.S. visit. A totally different but no less interesting mindset will follow when Dan Melchior takes the stage. Melchior, a Brit who has been based in New York and, more recently, North Carolina, has appeared on more than 30 releases during the past 11 years, collaborating with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, recording solo, or fronting Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue. The latter released three great, full-length albums from 1999 to 2002 on the labels Sympathy for the Record Industry and In the Red.

Continuing Thursday night’s overload of goodness and hailing from the same San Francisco scene that spawned Sic Alps, Oh Sees are the current brainchild of John Dwyer, veteran of, in his estimate, “20 to 30 bands and creative monikers.” The long list includes the sadly defunct Coachwhips (which also featured Sic Alps’ Matt Hartman), a stripped-down garage-rock band that recalled the glory days of John Spencer’s legendary Pussy Galore. Before that, Dwyer led the unclassifiable Pink and Brown. “After being in so many bands over the years, Oh Sees are seven or eight of my creative outlets crashing into one band, so to speak,” Dwyer says.

Among the lineup at this year’s Gonerfest: Vivian Girls

For those who are not too hungover or still asleep or both, the first of the official GonerFest satellite shows will take place Friday afternoon in the backyard of Light Years Vintage at 885 S. Cooper. The Touch-Me-Nots, a Bay Area couple who play country-tinged pop, will kick things off around 2 p.m. More pop will come by way of Indiana’s Eric & the Happy Thoughts before the set concludes with the promising punk-rock assault of locals Dead Trends.

Friday night’s show at the Hi-Tone commences with Jeff Evans & His Southern Aces, a new project that the Goner site refers to as “Evans backed by a new crop of Alabama studs.” Should be interesting.

Evidenced by the strength and increasing popularity of their eponymous debut on In the Red, Cheap Time have made serious strides since longtime Goner regular Jeffrey Novak (late of his one-man band the Rat Traps) formed the band in 2006. The cover design of Cheap Time’s album screams “power-pop throwback,” but the sounds within benefit from a revamped lineup and an appreciation of early-’70s glam.

“The Ooga Boogas were my favorite act of last year, and that was only their first performance in the States,” says Goner co-owner Zac Ives. “I’m really looking forward to seeing how they are a year later, after releasing an album.”

The place that the Ooga Boogas are coming back from, to be precise, is Australia, where they are sort of a sister band to soon-to-be-omnipresent (just wait) Eddie Current Suppression Ring, the most recent addition to the Goner Records stable (with the release of this month’s Primary Colours full-length).

Among the lineup at this year’s Gonerfest: Oh Sees

The “B” side of the Vivian Girls‘ seven-inch debut (“I Believe in Nothing”/”Damaged”) is one of my most frequently played pieces of new music in 2008. The band’s full-length debut will be released in a matter of days on In the Red. The album and the band are tough to pin down sonically — perhaps a low-budget My Bloody Valentine with gorgeous vocals, big hooks, and everything pushed through the speakers with drumming that evokes the Velvet Underground’s Mo Tucker.

They have two out of three predictions correct when it comes to GonerFest 5: “My vision of coming to Memphis is buying records at Goner, eating a lot of pizza, and partying a lot. People have warned us that there will be a lot of partying,” bassist Kickball Katy says.

Clocking in dangerously close to when some revelers will be rising after a round of early-morning after-parties, double-stage Murphy’s lineup for Saturday afternoon is alone worth the price of a three-day golden pass.

Blasting off at 1 p.m. with Chicago’s AV Murder, the lineup also includes the spazzy, fidelity-challenged pop of Eat Skull. Featuring former members of the Hospitals, Eat Skull are active participants in the rebirth of the Siltbreeze label, once a ’90s safe house for noisy, no-fidelity bands droning and screeching from the margins of underground rock (Dead C, Bardo Pond, Strapping Fieldhands).

To music fans who consider Arcade Fire or the Decemberists challenging fare, the Columbus, Ohio, trio known as Psychedelic Horseshit may sound like exactly that.

Among the lineup at this year’s Gonerfest: Intelligence

But ears trained in the above-mentioned noise-pop movements will hear mind-blowing hooks and inspired lyrics underneath the prickly blanket of noise and loose rhythm. They are highly recommended.

No strangers to a local stage, house party, or in-store performance, The Barbaras return to this year’s GonerFest with a Goner-released single (“Summertime Road”) under their belts and a Jay Reatard-produced full-length debut on In the Red scheduled for the near future. They command a whimsical pop sensibility somewhere between skiffle, the Beach Boys, and the forgotten glam of Roy Wood’s Wizzard.

“We’ve issued a challenge to certain audience members, and that challenge is to surprise us with something while we’re playing, just so long as it doesn’t interrupt the music,” says band member Bennett Foster. “If no one ends up doing a good prank or stunt, we have something that we’re going to unleash. Well, we’ll probably unleash it regardless.”

There’s no need to panic if attendance swiftly rises during the fourth hour. It just means that Jay Reatard and his band (Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes of the Barbaras) are about to take one of the stages. Moments later, Sector Zero will take an opposite stage. A vehicle for Goner co-owners Ives and Eric “Oblivian” Friedl, the band also includes Reatard on drums.

Also working to make this a very special afternoon are local hardcore hopefuls No Comply, The Oscars, with their first show in who knows how long, Alabama’s Wizzard Sleeve, Earthmen & Strangers, and Turpentine Brothers.

By this point, after processing the band schedule already covered, some readers probably are feeling phantom hangovers or hallucinating that their ears are ringing. Toughen up. It’s time for Saturday night back at the Hi-Tone.

Charging out of the gate will be Pierced Arrows, or Fred and Toody Cole of Dead Moon reborn with a different drummer. Lifers? The word doesn’t even begin to explain this couple. From his brushes with garage and bubblegum stardom in the ’60s (with the Weeds and the Lollipop Shoppe) on through countless bands until settling on the incredibly consistent Dead Moon in the mid-’80s, the Coles always have possessed more energy and passion than the vast majority of bands in their early 20s and will continue to do so two or three decades from now.

Regardless of this year’s impressive variety, there is no band playing GonerFest 5 that sounds quite like Intelligence. The baby of Lars Finberg, this Seattle band was long affiliated with A Frames due to Finberg’s membership in both. The (now-defunct) A Frames’ sound was an industrial post-punk wasteland with very rough edges, but Intelligence is less apocalyptic and more open to pop.

“When I saw this year’s GonerFest lineup, I thought, wow, it’d be great to play one of these things. [It includes] so many of my favorite bands right now,” Finberg says. “And then we were actually asked to play. I was really excited.”

The proverbial 25th hour of GonerFest 5 will be colored with the punk-rock slap of Static Static (John Henry, formerly of Detonations) and the decidedly different Box Elders, an up-and-coming Ohio trio. “Box Elders will be a dark horse coming out of nowhere this year and blowing people’s minds,” Ives says.

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The Baron of Love

CREDIT: Don Perry

Ross Johnson is weak and afraid. At least that’s what he says repeatedly in his sardonic new lyrics for the classic elevator jam “Theme from ‘A Summer Place'”: “Boys and girls laughed at me because I was weak and afraid,” he chants. “It’s a lifestyle that’s working for me.”

Johnson, the mild-mannered University of Memphis librarian and elder statesman of Memphis punk, lets his listeners know that he’s okay with being a useless screw-up so they can be okay with it too.

“There’s trouble in this here world,” Johnson further confesses in a recording called “Naked Party,” “but the payoff,” he adds, explaining justice as he understands it, “is that you get to go to a nekkid party once in a while.”

In the liner notes for Make It Stop: The Most of Ross Johnson, Goner Records’ hysterical, perfectly paced 24-track retrospective of Johnson’s often bizarre but always entertaining output, former Memphis Flyer music editor John Floyd describes the dark, confessional content as being uncomfortably personal, even for people who don’t know the artist and have no idea that his rantings are, to a large extent, painful autobiography. As accurate as Floyd’s assessment sounds, Johnson’s on-again off-again bandmate Tav Falco, leader of Memphis’ art-damaged psycho-roots band Panther Burns, has the definitive take.

“Not since Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley have I knelt before the shrine of crossed funny bones, wicked innuendo, and hep diatribe like I kneel before the altar of Ross,” Falco says. “[Johnson’s lyrics] bristle with salty perceptions, uncanny epiphanies, and hysterical distortions over which a dark and unutterable muse presides.”

Not one to be easily categorized, Johnson sets the record straight. “It’s just a bunch of yelling,” he says after a few fumbling attempts to say something smart. “That’s what it is. It’s a bunch of yelling.”

But, as yelling goes, it can be glorious, like Jerry Clower, the loudmouthed hayseed comedian, reading boozy short fiction by Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver. Kent Benjamin, a former Memphis scenester and writer for the Austin-based music magazine Pop Culture Press once acknowledged in print that the best parts of any Panther Burns show were when “Tav was out in the parking lot,” leaving Johnson and Alex Chilton on stage as a duo.” Chilton would riff away while Johnson would rant wildly to delight the handful of stalwarts who actually made it all the way through an early Panther Burns show.

Whether he’ll cop to it or not, Johnson is one of the founding fathers of Memphis’ rootsy Midtown punk scene.

“I am a source of gossip and a parasite,” Johnson corrects. “And I have been very lucky over the years to attach myself like a barnacle to a ship’s hull to some very talented people like Chilton and Jim Dickinson.”

For all of the self-deprecation, Johnson’s bona fides are in order. In the 1970s, he wrote reviews for Creem editor Lester Bangs. By the end of that decade, he was drumming for Panther Burns. He’s also the man responsible for the unhinged rant “Baron of Love Pt. II,” which may be the only truly brilliant part of Chilton’s interestingly uneven but generally over-praised novelty album Like Flies on Sherbet. He’s drummed for North Mississippi blues singer Jesse Mae Hemphill and pounded the tubs for a ragged, revisionist honky-tonk band called the Gibson Brothers, which featured both Jeff Evans and Jon Spencer. He was also an early imbiber and frequent performer at the Well, a blue-collar bar at the corner of Madison and Avalon that became the Antenna club, where Memphis’ punk-rock scene was born.

“I remember [Panther Burns] was playing the Western Steak House, and Charlie Feathers was there,” Johnson says, recalling the days when Elvis’ favorite restaurant was still open and serving up rock-and-roll and meat. “Tav said we were going to do the Charlie Feathers song ‘Tongue-Tied Jill.’ Well, Charlie just put his head down and said, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ That’s when I learned that while applause is a real thrill, I also enjoyed negative attention.”

If negative attention is what Johnson craves, he’ll probably get plenty for Make It Stop, which, if taken at face value, might come off as the misogynistic ramblings of the most annoying alcoholic at the club.

“There were certainly moments I wished the barroom floor would just open up and swallow me when my love for the booing got too painful,” Johnson admits, allowing that the three predominant themes in his music are “the misuse of ethanol,” conflicts with women, and all the guilt and shame he feels about the aforementioned two things.

But Make It Stop isn’t all bad blood, bad livers, and bad intentions. The wonderfully offbeat collection features tracks as disparate as “Rockabilly Monkey Faced Girl,” which finds Johnson wildly shouting inspired gibberish in the spirit of honky-tonk savant Hasil Atkins, and a beautifully wrecked guitar-driven cover of Floyd Cramer’s classic “Last Date,” with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck in the driver’s seat. “Hash House Pallor” references loungy, horn-driven TV themes of the 1970s, while Johnson’s winking cover of the Gentrys’ “Keep on Dancing” quickly turns into a comic meditation on paranoia and “ass whoopings.”

“My parents are dead, but my sister is alive and she would be ashamed to hear the word ‘blackout’ used to describe the condition I was in when I recorded some of this,” Johnson gleefully laments, sounding like a Catskills insult comic falling on his own rapier wit. “Sometimes it’s hard to listen to.”

And it is. But all wincing aside, it’s extremely satisfying, and for the adventurous listener, it’s well worth the extra effort.

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R.I.P. Punk

For the last several years, Los Angeles-based photographer Theresa Kereakes has focused her lens on Memphis garage-rock icons such as Monsieur Jeffrey Evans, Jack Yarber, and Harlan T. Bobo, adding their images to her already vast musical pantheon.

Late last month, as part of a continental “tour” that includes stops in Atlanta, Toronto, Houston, and Oxford, Mississippi, Kereakes returned to Memphis — not to shoot more photos, but to begin installing an exhibit of her work, which goes on display at Goner Records Thursday, November 1st.

Titled “Punk Rock Day of the Dead,” there’s not a Memphis musician in the bunch. Instead, Kereakes — who showed past work here as part of 2005’s Gonerfest 2 — turns a critical eye on “live fast, die young” L.A. musicians such as Germs frontman Darby Crash, who died of a drug overdose in 1980; AIDS casualties such as Black Randy (who founded West Coast art-punk group Metrosquad) and Lance Loud; Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who died of a brain hemorrhage at 37; and former Cramps guitarist Bryan Gregory, who dropped dead of a heart attack four years before his 50th birthday.

“Out of all the people I have pictures of, the ones who really resonate are the dead guys,” admits Kereakes, who, during punk’s heyday, also captured legends like Johnny Thunders, who died under mysterious circumstances in New Orleans when he was just 38, and Stiv Bators, the cocksure Dead Boys vocalist who died in his sleep after being struck down by a Paris taxi.

“One time, Stiv painted ‘R.I.P. Sid Vicious’ on a billboard for the movie Heaven Can Wait,” she recalls. “He called me up and said, ‘You know, Sid’s died. You’ve got to come see this billboard on Sunset [Boulevard].’ I shot a picture of it, which was used as the lead picture for Creem magazine’s obituary of Sid.

“Later on, when Stiv was touring with Lords of the New Church for the last time, he’d become such a monster. He was doing every kind of speed imaginable, which turned him into the biggest jackass. I’d still drive him around and take him places, but I was angry at him. Then someone called me from Paris and said Stiv was dead. I said, ‘Put him on the phone — now,’ because he was someone who’d fake death two or three times a week. But they said that he was really dead.”

Today, Kereakes considers herself a survivor of a scene where “even the ones who weren’t drug addicts, alcoholics, or complete fuck-ups” are lucky to be alive.

“We’d drive all night to concerts. I remember doing a five-hour drive in the rain to San Francisco to see the Sex Pistols. I’ve lived fast and hard, and somebody’s been watching over me. It puts a lot of things in perspective,” she says.

“Back in the day, during the first punk rock gestalt, I think we had the right degree of narcissism. We knew we were special. We were gonna take over the world,” says Kereakes, whose ’70s-era portraits of the Cramps, Avengers vocalist Penelope Houston, and the Velvet Underground‘s John Cale appear in Punk 365, Holly George-Warren‘s coffee-table tome on the musical genre, published by Abrams this month as part of the 30th anniversary of a revolution that began with the October ’77 release of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.

“I couldn’t do this show in my hometown,” Kereakes declares of “Punk Rock Day of the Dead.” “In L.A., there’d be so many expectations. They knew all of these people already, and there’s so much information people would bring to the party — too much ‘I don’t like that guy.’

“Memphis is different,” she says. “It’s more fun, because people really like the music, and there’s no judgment about the musicians. I find this town so warm and welcoming. I’m a huge Oblivians fan and to be able to walk into a place and find people like Jack, Eric [Friedl, founder of the Goner Records label], and Jeff Evans, and document what they do seems so important.”

Surveying her work, which includes a portrait of an uncharacteristically fragile-looking Darby Crash holding an acoustic guitar and an action shot of Stiv Bators sharing the spotlight with Dee Dee Ramone, Kereakes says of her numerous friends who have crossed over from notoriety to immortality, “Unfortunately, dead, they’re worth a whole lot more.”

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Visitation

Gonerfest,” says Memphis transplant John Hoppe, “is like [New Orleans roots-music festival] Ponderosa Stomp in reverse: Instead of waiting 25 years for someone to tell you this band is great, you can actually see ’em while they’re good.”

Hoppe knows of what he speaks: He traveled here to attend the three previous Gonerfest garage-rock extravaganzas and had such a good time last year that he moved from Michigan, permanently, and got a job at Goner Records, the Cooper-Young label/storefront behind the event.

Hoppe, Goner founder Eric Friedl, and co-owner Zac Ives have spent the last nine months preparing for Gonerfest 4, a five-day affair that kicked off with a five-act label showcase on September 26th and — spanning seven venues and including an art show, record-spinning DJs, and a special screening of the movie The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing — continues until the wee hours of Monday morning.

“A lot of it books itself,” says Friedl, who describes the festival as an “organic” event that, this year, draws more than 100 musicians from three continents.

“We’re getting better at planning ahead,” he says. “It kind of extends from one year to the next. Who couldn’t come, who did we forget to ask, and what were we missing from the last one?”

This year, the Goner crew has pulled out some big guns, including 1990s garage-rock legends Donny Denim, Tina Lucchesi, and Head; Australian rockers the Ooga Boogas and Eddy Current Suppression Ring; the return of U.K. garage group the Hipshakes; and regional favorites Lover!, Evil Army, Mr. Quintron & Miss Pussycat, and the Perfect Fits.

“The fact that it’s in Memphis is something else we’ve got going for us,” says Ives, who points out that performers and audience members alike are flocking to the Bluff City to eat, shop, and party all week long.

It helps, of course, that past Gonerfests have been immortalized on both the Goner Records message board and via the Electric Goneroo: Gonerfest 2 DVD/CD, which was co-produced by Live From Memphis and Rocket Science Audio and is currently out-of-print.

For out-of-towners, the ancillary draws are many: the wealth of music history found here; the only-in-Memphis high jinks that range from Young Avenue hot dog cookouts (Gonerfest 1) to an outdoor kiddie pool filled with live eels (Gonerfest 3); the stamina of local scenesters, who already have planned three nights of after-party shows that kick off at 2 a.m.; the lure of five new Goner releases, including a Ross Johnson retrospective CD, stellar new albums from Chicago rockers Cococoma and Atlanta group the Carbonas; and a book by Milwaukee artist/Tuff Bananas bassist Mark Ertmer. All of this, in addition to the regular daily and nightly shows, make the marathon event a must, despite the popularity of other garage-rock festivals such as Chicago’s Blackout, Oakland’s Budget Rock Showcase, and the Las Vegas Grind.

As Alex Cuervo, frontman for the Austin-based group the Hex Dispensers, insists, “My wife and I were talking about coming, no matter what. It’s even more fun to play it, but I’m glad we’re performing on Thursday night, so we can relax. We want to eat at Gus’s Fried Chicken and the Cozy Corner as often as we can. The Memphis scene seems like it’s thriving. There’s a lot of really exciting stuff happening there.”

Here’s a critical guide to some of Gonerfest 4’s potential highlights:

Thursday Picks:

Greg Cartwright — Goner Records, 5:30 p.m.

Why you should care: In between playing on the Detroit Cobras’ latest album and producing Mary Weiss’ much-heralded comeback and appearing, with Weiss, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the former Memphian hasn’t returned home for a gig since his band the Reigning Sound’s triumphant show last New Year’s Eve. Sans his backing band, Cartwright headlines the official opening ceremonies for Gonerfest 4. And if the live album he and the Reigning Sound cut at Goner in June 2005 is any indication, he’ll be performing at full-throttle — in pure Cartwright style, with his neck tucked in and his strumming arm flailing — for the hometown crowd.

Greg Cartwright

Hex Dispensers — Hi-Tone Café,

10:30 p.m.

What to expect: Horror-themed Ramones-meets-Misfits pop punk. “As basic and as good a description as that is, it’s pretty flattering. It sounds kind of generic, because they’re both such obvious and prominent punk-rock bands — but at the same time, that’s what we’ve tried to do,” says vocalist/guitarist Alex Cuervo, veteran of classic garage-rock groups Blacktop and the Now Time Delegation, who formed the Hex Dispensers with guitarist Tom Kodiak, drummer Alyse Mervosh, and bassist Dave Bessenhoffer last year.

Top Ten — Hi-Tone Café, 11:15 p.m.

What to expect: “We’re action-packed comedy and good times — a drunken extravaganza,” says Top Ten frontwoman Tina Lucchesi, who has planned a six-city tour around the group’s Gonerfest 4 appearance. A veteran of iconic Bay Area garage-rock group the Trashwomen, the raven-haired Lucchesi sings gritty covers of classics such as Teenage Head’s “Got No Sense” alongside helter-skelter, Runaways-minded originals such as “Easily Unkind” with the assistance of hard-rocking guitarist Erin McDermott, bassist Richie Butler, and new drummer Lumpy McGumps.

Jay Reatard — Hi-Tone Café, 1 a.m.

Why you should care: For the majority of Memphis’ million-plus population, Jay Reatard’s as anonymous as you or me. On the indie-rock circuit, however, his rock-and-roll antics and oft-disputed musical brilliance are making him a household name. At last year’s SXSW Music Festival, Reatard (real name: Jay Lindsey) dazzled the honchos at Vice Records; now, fresh off a European tour with the Boston Chinks, he’s being hounded by über-producer Rick Rubin and A&R men from media conglomerate Universal and alternative stalwart Matador Records. “It’s all weird ’til I get paid,” Reatard says with a shrug, declining to name which label’s the lucky bidder. Catch him while you can: Post-Gonerfest, Reatard and the Boston Chinks embark on a two-month coast-to-coast U.S. tour, which includes a high-profile stop at the CMJ Festival in New York City.

Friday Picks:

Hex Dispensers

Head — Hi-Tone Café, 10:30 p.m.

Why you should care: Since forming in 1990, Seattle punk trio Head has languished in garage-rock obscurity. When Eric Friedl requested a dream reunion for Goner Records’ 2006 SXSW showcase, band members Ree Ree, Touch, and Tulu insisted, “We never broke up.” Indeed, Head has plugged along for nearly two decades, independently releasing albums on the band’s own imprint, Evil Clown Records, including Heil Head, a 31-track discography, and a new album called No Hugging No Learning, which includes the hook-laden, pop-punk pedophilic anthem “I’m 35 Years Older Than You.”

Eddy Current Suppression Ring —

Hi-Tone Café, 11:15 p.m.

What to expect: With the Ooga Boogas (which features members from the Onyas and the Sailors) and Digger & the Pussycats, the land down under is well-represented at Gonerfest 4, but word on the street is that Eddy Current Suppression Ring is the band to watch. Named for the electromagnetic ripples on a conductive metal plate, the group takes on the deconstructionist roots-rock style popularized by fringe groups such as the Country Teasers, then channels it through a hurricane-force, four-to-the-floor technique that’s equal parts ’60s Yardbirds punk and ’70s New York minimalism.

Head

Mr. Airplane Man — Hi-Tone Café, midnight

Why you should care: “It’s been awhile, and I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal to see ’em again,” says Greg Cartwright, who helped this Boston-based blues-rock duo cut two albums, 2002’s Moanin’ and its ’04 follow-up, C’mon DJ. He has a point: Despite rising success in the middle of the decade, the band went on hiatus after guitarist Margaret Garrett’s temporary exodus to Memphis (and subsequent return to New England) and drummer Tara McManus focused her energies on the Turpentine Brothers. A rumored reunion gig in Los Angeles this fall never happened, but Garrett and McManus performed live in Somerville, Massachusetts, last week and are finally slated to bring their unadorned, North Mississippi hill-country-blues meets Morphine rock sounds back down South.

Saturday Picks:

Mr. Airplane Man

Goodnight Loving — Murphy’s, 5 p.m.

What to expect: While this Milwaukee group has already rolled through Memphis once this year, their appearance at Gonerfest 4 should still be a highlight: The band’s new album, Crooked Lake, which was recorded in a fishing cabin and released just days ago, sounds like a well-mixed combination of Muswell Hillbillies-era Kinks and Irish roustabouts the Pogues, with catchy lyrics and driving rhythms galore. Don’t miss the live rendition of their song “Land of 1,000 Bars,” a folksy ode to binge drinking that’s guaranteed to stick in your head long after the buzz wears off.

Donny Denim & The Meatballs —

Hi-Tone Café, midnight

What to expect: “I’m coming to Gonerfest because I said no the first three years Eric asked me.” So says South City, California, homeboy Darin Raffaelli, whose first band, Supercharger, inspired Friedl’s iconic Memphis group the Oblivians. “The switchboard is lighting up,” Raffaelli adds, when queried about his backing band, the Meatballs. “Russell [Quan, drummer for another early Oblivians influence, the Mummies] is coming, and Brian Hermosillo and Kathy Walker from the Retardos, along with Chris Santamaria from Loli and the Chones.” For their sojourn to Memphis, the Meatballs — a party band that initially cut just two songs, “Hey You” and “Necro Sue” — have been working on a set of inspired covers that are sure to pack the dance floor, although Raffaelli, aka Denim, claims, “I’m actually intimidated by this Hi-Tone place. I think we’d be much more comfortable in a record store or someone’s living room.”

Why you should care: Ask Raffaelli about his musical background, and he’ll solemnly declare, “I’m a hobbyist.” But as his friend Tina Lucchesi correctly insists, “Darin’s important for late-’80s to early-’90s garage rock. His band Supercharger came around at a time when there was a musical lull, and, along with the Mummies, they started an explosive run of punk rock and simple rock-and-roll. Because of those two bands, all these other bands started.” Other notches on Raffaelli’s belt: He was the Kim Fowley-like Svengali behind the Donnas’ formation and wrote all the material for their first album, he’s the mogul behind West Coast indie label Super*teem Records, and he’s the voice behind “Boy Like You,” which was featured in a popular 2002 Target TV spot. Ever modest, Raffaelli counters, “I’m out of touch. I never felt in touch, to be honest. I wasn’t and have never felt part of any scene.”