THE FRESNAN

KYNO Finally Gets A Flamethrower, KMJ Tries To Break It

What a fucking doucebag. Did you see what Ray Googleton Appleton is doing?

King of KMJ (but somehow not Mayor of KMJ) is making his Facebooky friends all a flutter with the post stating there's going to be a major announcement Thursday about his future.

Why is that so doucey, other than the old man using Facebook factor? It just so happens that Thursday is the day KMJ rival KYNO switches stations and gets the same bigass signal that KMJ has had for so long. Finally a little little bit of potential competition for KMJ.

Is KMJ and Appleton like eight or something? They can't get out of the way for one day? It's not like KYNO is exactly biting at their heels. KMJ is still the dominate force it's always been and KYNO is on the other side of the ratings spectrum.

It doesn't matter if this is a April Fools joke or not, the only conclusion is... Appleton: Classless radio doucebag.

Focused On Fresno: Sign Graveyard Edition

We stumbled upon three prominent old Fresno signs the other day.

• One is the Motel Bel Air that was located at 99 and Olive. This is what it looked like before it was removed and this is what it looked like back in the day.
• Second is the Luigi's Restaurant sign. It was located on Blackstone, North of Shaw. A photo history of Luigi's can be found here.
• Third is the K-Mart sign that we assume came from the Olive and Golden State location. Now it's like some sorta swap mart? or something.

You can see the mini sign graveyard yourself, it's located on Commercial Neon's property at 5547 N. Golden State Blvd.

In The Tower Tonight: Some Dude From Some Other Dude's Band Plus Some Other Dudes, and then there's a chick

As you may have already learned, it's not your normal Indie Tuesday™ at Starline tonight as SXSW graduate Jonny Craig (formally of Dance Gavin Dance and now of Emarosa and Isles & Glaciers) will be headlining. Tides Of Man, Eye Alaska and Romance On A Rocket Ship will be there too.

Also, down the street at Audie's Olympic, The Young Republic. They're a Tennessee band (the one with the girl - ladies in bands, always awesome) out on a national tour who are influenced by the sound of the Beatles, Dylan and Tom Wait and what not.

Music Box Fresno: Radio Free Silver Lake Talks With Sosa

Rademacher frontman Malcolm Sosa recently talked with the Los Angeles blog, Radio Free Silver Lake, giving So Cal folks (and now Fresnans) an update on what's been going on with his band. Two words: Lineup changes. But what else is new with those guys!? If there were records kept on things like Fresno band lineup changes, Rademacher would be Wayne fucking Gretzky.

The extent of the Rademacher "family" is not all we learn, Malcolm fills RFSL readers in on what's next for the band, his take on the Los Angeles scene and more. Check out the post here.

Then, check out the current Rademacher lineup for yourself at Tokyo Garden on Thursday:

Stupid or Awesome?: Fancher Creek Town Center

Last week, the Fresno City Council said yes to the Fancher Creek Town Center. This will be a large development with a mix of retail and housing and will be located near Clovis and Kings Canyon. There will be living spaces atop retail spaces, a movie theater, all kinds of crazy shit.

Sounds pretty awesome, especially to the Sunnyside area folks.

But wait, maybe you haven't heard how it's being described, "... it will rival North Fresno's River Park." Yeah, pretty sick of anything new being described as "Like River Park in ___."

Plus, isn't building huge centers on the edge of town, like River Park, exactly the kinda thing that Fresno needs to avoid doing in the future? Hasn't River Park been around for like ten years or something and they still haven't been able to lease all their spots out? Aren't we trying to get something like this in Downtown Fresno? Isn't Sierra Vista Mall and its newish and not real busy outdoor section only a few miles down the street from Fancher Creek?

But not one council member voted no. Guess when you see potential tax revenue, you kinda forget your plans for Fresno building in and not out.

But hey, who are we to stop the Sunnyside area from gettin' theirs!? They deserve something special. Maybe it is awesome. But then why does it feel so stupid?

[Fancher drawing stolen from Fresno city website]

Tonight Fresno Rises Rebels and Resists

Don't know if 104.1 v.2.0 will be playing metal band OTEP, but plenty of other stations across the country have been playing their song Smash The Control Machine. These guys (and gal) are gettin' pretty big and tonight they're coming to our little ol' Starline club. More metal comes by way of Bury Your Dead, Though the Eyes of the Dead, Destrophy plus Fresno's own Approaching Darkness.

Bloggiest Moment Of The Week: The Daily Planet Still Haunts Tower

The old Daily Planet is finally getting a new life. It will become a comedy and magic club called Theater Arcanum, opening in August. Hopefully it will successfully stop the string of bad luck at that location. It's such a high profile Tower District spot, it needs to be as vibrate as the rest of the district.

But some folks aren't convinced it will work. And some are upbeat about it. Others just feel the Tower needs an Indian food restaurant and some other stuff. And we feel that's all enough (barely) to make it the Bloggiest Moment Of The Week.

[Photo stolen from Inthetower's photostream]

Bankgeek! Kerretta, No Kuppa, Space Hookers?, For Today, Trumpet Solo and Rotting Out

With Kuppajoes being dark this weekend, there is a lot less indie happening. It's okay, think we'll all survive, especially when there is all this kickassness happening:

FRIDAY

BABYLON CLUB: This may be the first time the Love The Captive kids have put on a show at Babylon and it looks like a good one. Kerretta. They're a touring band out of NEW ZELAND people, that play experimental instrumental metal. They sound pretty sweet. Fresno's Say Swear, Beandip and The Grand Armada will fill things out. [9:00 $5 21+]

STARLINE: It's Clovis band, Space Hooker's, CD release show with Death Alley Motor Cult and Granted Earth. [9:00 $6 All ages]

AUDIE'S OLYMPIC: A night of blues and psychedelic rock with AC Miles, Federale, Chief Nowhere (Hollywood) and The Quarter After. [9:00? 5?]

CLUB RETRO: Metal & hardcore mutahfuckaaa with Silence The Oppressors, For Today plus:

CYC: Go ahead and stare at the flier for a while... it'll creep you the fuck out. Just don't forget to get all the important info:

SATURDAY

Oh hell yeah! House party with our boys Trumpet Solo and there is a little bit of indie rock to make up for the no Kuppajoes thing:

CLUB RETRO: Performing for you, the West Shaw enjoyer, Tooth and Nail Records' Project 86 from the OC with A Current Affair, Wavorly and Flatfoot 56. [7:00 $10]

STARLINE: Metal, rock and all that goes with it with Dislodic, Drunk, Firebaugh band Trust, Coda Vice and Lying In Wait. [8:00 $6 All ages]

AUDIE'S OLYMPIC: Nice mix of things with DB & The Struggle, ShonJ, and the Viper City Brass Band. [8:30 $7]

BABYLON CLUB: Yes, the Dirty Sanchez is headlining. Deal with it other bands:

Audie's Olympic Tonight: Buffalo Guns, Style LR, Candysound and Bicicleta

Audie's has local dudes Buffalo Guns, Style Like Revelators, Bicicleta and a pretty awesome flier. Plus touring band from Washington, Candysound.

A very spot on representation of Candysound playing live forthcoming:

Downtown Fresno Tonight: Tokyo Garden Hosts Twestival

There will be sooo much talent overfilling the small confines of Tokyo Garden (the Fenway Park of Fresno venues) a wall might come down or somethin... at least maybe that wall that separates the bar from the booths (which wouldn't be such a bad thing in this blog's opinion).

Downed walls or not, tonight looks like a lot of fun with entertainment by Patrick Contreras, Abigail Nolte, DJ Bradley, DJ Soulflower and DJ Revol. Plus there will be booths by Twitter using folks like Storyland/Playland, Fresno Beehive, Fresno Filmworks and... well look at the damn bottom of the flier.

All this goodness is for Concern Worldwide, the current charity choice of the nationwide Twestival event. More details can be found on the Fresno Twestival website.

Top Five Awesome By-products Of The San Joaquin River Now Making It Out To The Ocean

As a result of the restoration of the San Joaquin River, the SJR once again makes it all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It's been quite some time since that happened.

So this basically means the water running along side Fresno's NW border, is deeper and filled with wild possibilities for Fresno area folks. These are the five most awesome possibilities:

• River Boat Gambling. It's a fight between Chukchansi and Table Mountain to see who gets the first black jack table on the water.
• Ability for our garbage to float into the San Fransisco Bay. The Bay Area's smog has been floating into our valley forever, time for some payback.
• Firebaugh will become the new Lake Havasu. Seriously, Firebaugh could totally be the spring break capital, just like Lake Havasu. The Eastern border of Downtown Firebaugh is the river. We're buying our Firebaugh house to rent out, right now.
• Frankenfish. Forget some whale finding its way upstream, we think there's a Frankenfish sighting in Fresno's future... or a really bigass catfish.
• Speed boat rides to San Fransisco. Yeah, a high speed rail coming through town would be great, but would it be better than cruising to the bay Miami Vice Style.

F On F: Finally A Mural For Tokyo Garden Edition

Work has begun on the long awaited mural for the back of Tokyo Garden in Fresno's Mural District. Unlikely there will be protesters on this one (mural is not yet complete):

You can find some more pics here (by Donavan Byrn). And you can be awesome and come out April 10th with your ten bucks and a readiness to have a kick ass time, all to benefit Creative Fresno's Mural Project:

Indie Tuesday: Otis Heat, Style LR and the Two Man-ness of Strange Vine

Strange Vine is growing ever so popular amongst local music fans. We think they're awesome too, but we also wonder if they would be even better with a bass player... just sayin, maybe the drummer has a little too much going on what with the drums and singing and keyboard playing, all at once. Check 'em out tonight at Starline and see if you like the two man setup.

Also playing are locals Style Like Revelators and touring band, Otis Heat. Very nice. How bouts an Otis Heat video (of sorts) to get ya in the mood:

Also tonight, a free show at the CYC with a little more aggression behind it:

Time For The Fresno Nerds To Have Their Say!

Woo hoo! They have returned! It's time again for the Famous Choice Awards. The Choicies are of course the best of the Fresno award lists because they are voted on by us blog readers, aka Fresno's Nerd Nation.

The Famous awards are also why you won't see an all encompassing award list by this blog or any other Fresno blog really - there's already the Famous Choice Awards so why bother.

This year they've made it a little more difficult for one person to vote several times, so that's cool. And like every year, they mixed in some new categories (think they're new anyway) like 'best bartender' and 'best local do-gooder' (which would most likely be the same person in our book).

So get over to Famous and vote correct like and make those other ones look silly.

Bloggiest Moment Of The Weeek: Fresno Discovers Central High Has Trees And An East Campus

Poor old Central East High. Normally both Central High campuses sit quietly on the westside of town, happily staying out of all the Fresno vs. Clovis Uni' drama. Heck, we bet there are some Fresnans that didn't even realize Central (let alone the East campus) was out there before this week.

What happened this week? Oh some teens cut down a couple mature Central East High trees. Admitted to it, got expelled, then their parents lawyered-up. On the surface it barely seems like something that would make it into the news, yet it hit a media grand slam: print, TV, radio and blogosphere.

And that makes the Central High Tree Cutters the Bloggiest Moment Of The Week!

Ch' 30 reporter Corin Hoggard did a nice report that sums this all up and even has some Central folks yelling at each other. Awesome.