Witchburn | The SunBreak

It’s the spring, and from the frigid temperatures you’d never know it; all the better to pack into a local music venue this weekend.

Tonight (Friday, March 2):

Peter Case and Paul Collins, Summer Twins, Bang sha Bang @ The Funhouse. $20 day of show. Doors at 8pm.

Together as The Nerves and separately as members of The Plimsouls and the Paul Collins Beat, Case and Collins helped lay down the groundwork for the punchy/sweet dichotomy that is power pop. If you’re a fan of Weezer, Ted Leo, or OK Go, and you want to hear the roots of those sounds, this should be unmissable. Expect to hear plenty of gems from these guys’ deep back catalogs, and Case will surely belt out that classic of classics, “A Million Miles Away”.

Steel Tigers of Death. Partman Parthorse, Halcyon Daze @ The High Dive. $7 at the door. Show at 9pm.

Local punks Steel Tigers of Death bust out furious noise that still manages to be catchy (and funny) as all get out, and the band frequently sports the most inspired wardrobes of any punk band in town.

The George Tisdale Band, Kissing Potion, Down North @ The Skylark Cafe. $10 at the door. Show at 8pm.

West Seattle’s most fun hole-in-the-wall club brings the funk tonight. I’ll abstain from rattling on (again) about the snap and greatness of Down North, largely because The George Tisdale Band‘s swaggering brand of eighties-influenced funk and Kissing Potion’s jazzy variation on thick 1970’s soul will make this bill a stem-to-stern booty-shaker.

Saturday, March 3:

The Spittin’ Cobras, Witchburn, Zero Down, Ancient Warlocks, Piston Ready @ El Corazon. $6 advance, $10 day of show. Doors at 8pm.

It’s all local metal, wall to wall, at South Lake Union’s most metal of venues with this bill. The two headliners bring gloriously old-school headbanging to the table: The Spittin’ Cobras sound like Judas Priest beating the shit out of Kiss in a back alley, while Witchburn‘s call-and-response metal attack sports some serious firepower thanks to iron-lunged lead singer Jamie Nova’s hellstorm of a voice.

Sunday, March 4:

Andrew W.K, The Evaporators @ The Showbox at the Market. $25 advance, $28 day of show. Doors at 7pm.

It’s hard to believe Andrew W.K’s ripe and robust cheese-metal-pop masterwork, I Get Wet, is a decade old, but there you go. This tour’s an unashamed roll in the Elysian Fields of nostalgia, so you’ll likely hear all of I Get Wet, and heaps of the old hits. Party Hard, indeed.

[You’ve been reading Tony Kay in our e-pages for some time, so I am delighted to announce that Tony is stepping up his contributions here, and taking over the role of Music Editor at The SunBreak. A round of applause, a beer hoisted to his health, he’ll probably need it–ed.]

Instead of going the traditional route and posting my Bumbershoot 2011 slideshows chronologically, I thought it’d be fun to throw down the photos by rough category. And I reckon this is the roughest category, in a good way.

I’m cutting a broad swath here, mostly as an excuse to post some of my favorite Bumber-shots. Witchburn’s call-and-response traditional metal, Valient Thorr’s Warner-Brothers-cartoon-on-crystal meth groove rock, Red Fang’s brainiac metal, The Jim Jones Revue’s turbocharged Little Richard riffing, Thee Oh Sees‘s garage punk, My Goodness‘s stripped-down blues rock, Whalebones‘s narcotic grind, and You am I‘s hard-rocking power pop really only shared one commonality during Bumbershoot weekend: They all cranked their guitars to 11. Thank god.

If you’re interested in more loud/fast music photos, the SunBreak’s intrepid SlightlyNorth caught NoMeansNo, Atari Teenage Riot, and Anti-Flag, among others, documented here. Have fun, and rock on.