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Clicking through MySpace, one comes across tons of dreck, but every once in a while a diamond gleams in the pile of trash, some virtually anonymous flash of brilliance blinds the brain with humor, underdog sass or gumption. If I were one to make mixtapes (or CDs), here’s a handful of songs that would make the cut.

The Launderettes, “What Would Joan Jett Do?”: Oslo’s all-girl Launderettes announce themselves on MySpace as “Fuzz, Fjords, Farfisa & Frenzy.” If you’ve got Sirius radio, you may have heard “WWJJD” off the band’s Wicked Cool album Fluff ‘n Fold. If this one strikes your rock fancy, check out “I Wanna Jump Your Bones.”

Vidar Vang, “Under Six Strings”: Neil Young meets Springsteen in this alt-country churner from the 2002 EMI album Rodeo. Oslo’s Vang is just one of a number of Scandinavian bands who manage to keep alt-country fresh and evolving. You can’t go wrong with Vang’s “In the Shadow of Elvis” either.

A lot has been made this past year about the new wave of French techno; namely, groups like Justice and the renaissance of scene forefathers Daft Punk. Hell, this blog all but looked like it was written by a member of Justice’s street team at one point in December. It seemed no one on this side of the Atlantic was doing anything as catchy and arena-ready, save guys like LCD Soundsystem or MSTRKRFT.

But Jesus Almighty, we just got hip to Ghosthustler. And they are from frickin' Denton. Yes, that Denton. Texas. Our minds are blown.

Ghosthustler easily wins my award this year for best SXSW band name, mainly because the thought of a paranormal pimp makes my heart smile. But not only that, these guys sound like a decadent hybrid of mid-period New Order with just a splash of Britain's nu-ravers the Klaxons.

Welcome to Reverberations, a weekly column on all things garage rock…

There was a time – between the British Invasion and the eventual manifestation of Television – when a bunch of guys who’d come up on the cutting power of surf noise and the Yardbirds’ filthy, oversexed blues took what they’d absorbed, mimicked and "borrowed," threw on a layer of fuzz and gave it a shot of pure, youthful speed.

It was the sound of Hell with the top popped, a melodic cacophony that alienated and allured, antagonized and flirted, and – depending on your age, state of mind and level of intoxication – was either the most awful thing you’d ever heard or one of those rapturous musical experiences that transformed your listening from there on out. What came to be known as "garage rock" was many things, but it was not, and is not, particularly easy to define.

The "garage" to which I refer was, or is essentially modeled after, music that was punk before that word had any real currency, and arrived early enough to miss the stylistic stigma left in the wake of the first-wave punk bands. It’s post Elvis rock ‘n’ roll in one of its more potent forms, less art than a sincere artifice and a more visceral, as opposed to calculated, expression. It sounds and looks grimy, because Rocking is a dirty business.

The Houston International Festival, also known as iFest, has announced the lineup for its 37th annual edition, set to take place April 19-20 and 26-27 on nine stages spread across downtown. Instead of spotlighting a specific country this year, its theme “Out of Africa: The Three Journeys,” encompasses music, dance and other cultural traditions (even an Ethiopian fashion show) from the African, Afro-Caribbean and African-American spheres. Here’s a stage-by-stage rundown of what to expect when the world – or several continents’ worth, anyway - comes to Houston.

Bud Light World Music Stage: The main stage, with most of the big-ticket out-of-town talent. Headliners are Chicago blues sage Buddy Guy and Jamaican reggae royalty the Wailers the first weekend, and New Orleans chieftains the Neville Brothers and South African trumpet maestro Hugh Masekela (leading a Pan-African jam) the second.

NOFX
Warehouse Live
February 26, 2008

Better Than: Drawing up cool Barack Obama signs for your Super Tuesday rally. Seriously, “Barack the Vote”? How about “Barack You Like a Hurricane”?

Download: The ever-topical and notoriously long-winded “The Decline,” their 18-minute state-of-the-union punk address from 1999. It just keeps getting more prophetic each time you turn on the evening news. Also, seek out that split record they did with Rancid. They cover each other’s songs, and it’s a quite the thrill to hear the stalwart punks sing on tracks like “Don’t Call Me White.”

As we drove past the line to get in for last night’s NOFX concert, I felt a strange sensation. No, it wasn’t the opiates stolen from Grandma kicking in. Or the can of tuna I had before the show deciding it was time to let the dogs out. It was the sense of age that washed over me and the passengers in the car, like a cold Gulf wave on a simmering summer afternoon.

NOFX has been playing the part of punk-rock jesters since before that red-headed chick from Paramore was even born. In fact, they released “Liberal Animation” in 1988, long before some of the Jonas Brothers could even pee standing up. Since 1983, “Fat Mike” Burkett, Eric Melvin and Erik Sandin have been dishing out slabs of pop-punk that ending up inadvertently informing that same genre for the next two decades.

Photo by Linda Leseman

Cobra Starship
Cactus Music
February 23, 2008

Better Than: What’s better than a free show?

Download: Listen to songs from the new record on MySpace

Judging by the turnout at Saturday’s Cactus Music in-store performance, Cobra Starship has an adamant teenage following in Houston. At least, the audience looked teenaged. Kids mature so quickly these days, the fans might have been in Kindergarten for all I know.

Pearland's The Judy's have been announced as performers at this year's Austin Music Awards on March 12. Let's all hope they haven't ruled out any secret shows during SXSW. Back in December, their catalog once again became available after years of being out of print. All the new reissues come bundled with bonus tracks and rarities. Check it out here.

This reunion follows a 2005 one-off show at C.A. Nelson Auditorium on the campus of my old elementary school. As I was thinking about that show, I realized that that stage was also the site of my heartbreaking loss at the 1993 spelling bee. The word was "adjacent.”

Long before the White Stripes became one of the decade’s definitive bands – hell, before Jack and Meg even met, let alone married and divorced – Jucifer were doing the ridiculously loud boy-girl guitar-drums duo thing, only with Amber Valentine handling the amped-up fretwork and Edgar Livengood (Valentine’s offstage companion as well) pounding out the rhythm. He uses the entire kit, too. Much more metal than the Stripes’ blues-derived sound, Jucifer is one of the heaviest artists in Relapse Records’ formidable stable; their new double album, L’Autrichienne (French for “the Austrian one”) is due next month. Perhaps not coincidentally, Austrian “heavy zine” Stormbringer called it “ihr bis dato bestes Album vor,” i.e. “their best album to date.” This video for “Pontius of Palia,” from 2006’s If Thine Enemy Hunger, should give you and idea where they’re coming from.

You may well have seen Jucifer, formed in 1993, before. Since 2001, Valentine and Livengood have forsaken the college-town comforts of Athens, Georgia, for a nomadic existence on the road. Jucifer pulls into Super Happy Fun Land Sunday night – don’t forget those earplugs.

Tonight Houstonians can see, for free, two exhibits that couldn’t be more different, yet that both testify to how crucial photography and visual art can be to music. Luckily, they’re close by.

At Sound Exchange (1846 Richmond), the “Gulf Coast Underground Art” show combines Daniel “Sawblade” Shaw’s phantasmagoric drawings, which should be familiar to Insect Warfare fans, as he did the jaw-dropping cover to the Houston grindcore warriors last album, World Extermination, with Rosa Guerrero's you-are-there photography. See how long it takes his poster for tonight’s show to sear itself on the inside of your eyelids.

For every breakout band that hits Austin this year, there will be hundreds that trudge back to Omaha and get their jobs back at the video store. Something tells me if this band doesn't hit it big, they may just try out for the 8th grade volleyball team and record a noise record.

This is Care Bears on Fire, a Thurston Moore-lauded trio of 14-year-old New York City girls. They sound kind of like a slowed-down version of the Ramones, with a pubescent Kathleen Hanna on vocals. It's gritty. It's hip. It's not Hannah Montana. One of the girls even sports a Public Image Limited shirt. When I was this age, these girls could have pummeled my heart like a steel-toe boot to the face.

Sugar Hill Studios sent out a press release minutes ago announcing the passing of trumpeter Calvin Owens, who led BB King’s band through much of its glory period. The native of Fifth Ward’s Sawdust Alley section, who also played with Big Joe Turner, Archie Bell, T-Bone Walker and Johnny Copeland, was 79.

Also known as “The Maestro,” Owens worked professionally in Memphis and as an A&R man for Peacock here in town and as an arranger for A&M records in Los Angeles. His career spanned the eras from working as a ballyhoo man for a traveling minstrel show to hip-hop – in 2006 he made a rap album called Say Boy How You Do That Thing? He also crossed the language divide, recording Spanish-language songs with singers Norma Zenteno and Evelyn Rubio and the rapper Valdemar. Through it all, his bread and butter remained the brassy big-band, densely-textured jazz-blues that was once the city’s trademark sound. Check out albums like True Blue and The House is Burnin’ for examples, not to mention his all-encompassing creative vision. Even if everything he touched was rooted in the blues, he loved crossing genre boundaries, and not just with hip-hop and Latin styles. “H-Town Frenchtown Getdown” finds him going zydeco, for example. Whatever style he threw in the blender, he maintained it was still “our music,” by which he meant Houston music.

East End art/performance space Super Happy Fun Land, which recently relocated from the Heights to 3801 Polk, was shut down by the fire marshal last Friday for failure to display an occupancy permit. That’s because, as owner Brian Arthur told Houstoned Rocks earlier today, they didn’t exactly have one. He hopes to have the situation straightened out soon.

Houstoned Rocks: I was at this house party yesterday, and a guy from the band playing there said they were supposed to play Super Happy Fun Land last weekend but y’all got shut down. What happened?

Brian Arthur: We just have an issue with our occupancy, but we’ll be open this weekend. When we came in here, there were still some things we wanted to get done. We didn’t have a lot of time to move, and we wanted to fix up some things before we went ahead and got our occupancy card. In the meantime, we had a few shows scheduled, and we kind of ran out of time. So we were running without an occupancy permit, but we’ve got an application in for that.

HP: So what exactly happened then? Did the fire marshal come?

BA: Yeah. He just gave me a citation for not having my permit. It’s just one of those things where they want you to go with the official thing.

HP: When did this happen?

I honestly feel like I, and everyone else at Boondocks last night, cheated the Wild Moccasins and Sabra Laval: We should have paid to see the show. Including local and touring acts, it was one of the best I’ve seen so far this year, and I saw Shat last Thursday at Rudz. (It’s not easy to top a guy wearing a dildo helmet and singing hardcore.)

I have to send a shout out to Ruthie Rodriguez at The Daily Cougar for her article about the Wild Moccasins, which led me to the quintet, who switch from pop to country-tinged rock with the energy you’d expect to see from a group of under-20s.

This band is easily a Best New Act contender for any music award showcase in Houston this year. From first beat, which the drummer clapped out while standing on his seat, to last, these kids didn’t let up. The dating-duo of Zahira Gutierrez and Cody Swann laid down some of the, well, cutest harmonies over the swinging guitar, bass and drum work of Andrew Lee, Nicholas Cody and Andrew Ortiz, respectively. If you’re looking to see a show as impressive as it is fun, Young Mammals and Something Fierce-style, check out the Moccasins’ next show, March 21 at Walter’s. But for now, check out the video below.

No Depression magazine announced that the May/June issue will be its last. Explaining their decision to shutter, co-owners Peter Blackstock, Grant Alden and Kyla Fairchild issued a statement citing a decline in record company ad revenue, diminished brick and mortar retail space, rising newsprint costs and postage increases, and the overall economy.

“What makes this especially painful and particularly frustrating is that our readership has not significantly declined, our newsstand sell-through remains among the best in our portion of the industry, and our passion for and pleasure in the music has in no way diminished. We still have shelves full of first-rate music we’d love to tell you about.

“And we have taken great pride in being one of the last bastions of the long-form article, despite the received wisdom throughout publishing that shorter is better. We were particularly gratified to be nominated for our third Utne award last year.”

Man, I came home the other night and saw this new Arcade Fire video online after a long night of drinking cough syrup. I know, class out tha ass, no doubt.

Whose idea was it to include a ghastly giant old man head!? Is it weird for someone my age to still have night terrors? – Craig Hlavaty