THE FRESNAN

Bandgeek!: Overloaded. That's What This Weekend Is.

Yep, Sudz In The City is Saturday. It really doesn't need to be said because it's one of those Fresno events that doesn't need advertising. Fresno beer drinkers just know. Plus this weekend, Fresnans will be wrapped up in Algeria, listening to the Diamond Dogs WAC it in Mesa (Mesa?), and laughing their asses off in a basement.

But really, it's all about the damn music!:

KUPPAJOE'S: Locals My Beautiful Surrender, touring band, Elliot, plus Good Night & Good Luck and See You Soon. [7:00 $7]

TOKYO GARDEN: Fresnan favorites, Trumpet Solo, with San Fransisco's, Sterling Says. Good times, karaoke at Tokyo can wait. [9:00 $5]

SEQUOIA BREWERY: Entertaining the micro-brew crowd is Super Lucky Catz. [8:30 Free]

REVUE CAFE: Rob Cox plus Jake Ballentine with some American folk:

STAR PALACE: Very happy to have Star Palace appear on Bandgeek. It's just the beginning of the whole Fulton Street Project thing. Tonight's bands to lead off a summer of music downtown is touring Christian rockers, Seventh Day Slumber, with Fresno's own A Current Affair. [Doors 7 Start 8:00 $17]

STARLINE: All ages can check out The Giddy-Ups and Toxic Shock:

CLUB RETRO: Metal hardcore band on tour from Austin TX, Fire From The Gods and The Requested with Rose Of Shaton, Beauty Becomes The Beast and Madera's Death Of A Archetype. Info:

AUDIE'S OLYMPIC: Seattle's Bob Wayne & Outlaw Carnies and more:

 

SATURDAY

STARLINE: You remember ol' Gilby Clarke, right? He replaced Izzy as GnR's rhythm guitarist and more recently was a member of reality show supergroup Rockstar Supernova. He's in the Tower on Saturday and he's playing it all:

Facebook Pages Killing Us Slowly: Mid-Century Modern Fresno

Another Fresno-y Facebook page that's killing new blog creation quickly catching Fresnans attention is Mid-Century Modern Fresno. So far it's mostly pictures of modern architecture in Fresno between 1940 and 1970. You'll be doin' a lot of "Ohhh yeah, that place, I've seen that place."

 

The Bullard area/Fig Garden Estates and River Bluff area (nice digs if you can get it) seem to be the place to be if you want to live around mid-century modernness. Also, it's good to see the Fultonia renovation is coming along:

Incoming!: Sudz In The City Saturday @ The Chuck

 

Ohhhh, so they finally got smart and opened up the 600 Club during Sudz In The City. Although it's VIP for another $25. Yeah, we get it, you gotta charge extra so you don't have us every drunkass douchebag stumbling around up in the club.

Bands that will be playing this year: DB & the Struggle, Super Lucky Catz, Motel Drive, On the Fly, Monkey Wrench and Annette Ash Trio.

Might be fun, might suck, either way we're glad it's still around and downtown.

Bootlegged In Fresno: Fierce Creatures

Last week we posted some video from a Sunday night show at Audie's with hot Fresno band, Fierce Creatures. Now we have some bootlegged live audio to share from the show. It's a song called ... well, we don't know. Just have a listen cause it's nice:

Click: fiercecreaturesbootleg.mp3

RELATED: In case you missed it, Mike Oz has a free, clean and polished, download from Fierce Creatures for ya.

RELATED TOO: Fierce is playing Starline on Tuesday on a nice looking bill:

Yo Taggers! Leave Burroughs Elem' Alone For Ahwile

Thank you to Gabriela Martinez and Susana Cruz of CCROPP for getting Fresno Unified to change its lock-all-gates-when-school-is-out policy for at least one school. As reported by the Bee's, Tracy Correa, FUSD is leaving Burroughs Elementary's gates open after hours as a pilot program. If there are no significant issues (like tagging and general vandalism), they will look at opening up more campuses in Fresno.

It's about damn time. With Clovis Uni campuses all open and Fresno being below average for city parks and green space, this is a positive move.

So Fresno taggers, please go graffiti up something else in Burroughs' neighborhood. We all need Burroughs to stay clean. Try a Clovis Unified campus or something, we hear they're easy to get into.

Tower Tonight: Letlive, Buffalo Guns, Beandip, Mane Horse, Hobo Nephews and Nashville Va-Jay-Jay

There's going to be some straight rockin' some shit up tonight at Starline with locally grown Beandip, Mane Horse and Buffalo Guns. Plus touring Los Angeles band, Letlive.

Much similar to our own, Beandip, these Letlive boys don't mess:

Happening in unison over at Audie's Olympic, traveling roots rock with...

METALLL MONDAAAY!! Total Shredder Edition

Who is Fresno biggest shredder? We submit that it's Azazel/Trumpet Solo's lead guitarist, Pierce May:

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! METALLLLL!! FUCK YEAH!

If you think there's a local guitarist that's shreds more that Pierce, we loved to hear it in the comments. Related: Trumpet Solo plays Tokyo Garden Friday night.

Focused On Fresno: Code Enforcement Edition

Do you know that you're looking at something illegal? The fliers in the picture, that is. Pretty much every flier on a pole, or fence, or whatever, is against City of Fresno codes. But really, who has time to enforce such little things? Right? There can't be money in the city's budget right now for somebody to check on fliers local bands post on telephone poles, can there?

Apparently there is, as Fresno's Down Word found out. They got a notice in the mail from the city of Fresno stating they had 48 hours to take down all their fliers or they would be fined several hundred dollars. Stupid considering all the other codes the city should be enforcing but don't really seem to do. We can think of a lot of blight in our neighborhood that are code violations yet these things never go away - and yes, we've reported them.

Add to that: political signs are legal within three months of an election. So a band trying to promote a show a couple weeks away is doing something illegal but a politician doing the same thing is perfectly fine.

Hey City of Fresno, political signs: WAY more annoying than band fliers.

Bloggiest Moment Of The Week: Coke Penis Lands Blogger A Spot In The Fresno Bee

Not sure if it's the goal of every blogger to parlay successful blogging into something else, like getting a newspaper column or whatever. But we imagine that somebody that works for the Fresno Bee would think it's super sweet.

That's what happened to Fresno Bee reporter George Hostetter ("G-Hos") this week. His blog posts (sometimes about local billboards he sees penis in) have been so well received, the Bee Overloards decided to make him a columnist (we're guessing for the same pay). Nice work, G-Hos, that's the Bloggiest Moment Of The Week.

BONUS MOMENT!
The DumbDrum.com turned three-years-old this week. In blog years that's 58. We would like to give Roque and Bryan one of those slow claps that builds strength until every local blogger is clapping.

Also this week, the boys entered themselves in KSEE 24's Why I Love Fresno contest. Check out their Cross Streets inspired entry:

BANDGEEK!: Current Affairs, Jellyfests, Skankin, Awakinings, Big Sandys, Reving and Captive Loving

If you're looking for some Meatball Magic this weekend: you got it. If you're looking for Fashawn throwing out first pitches at Grizzlies games: you got it. If you're looking for an incredible amount of live music to enjoy this weekend:

KUPPAJOE'S: Always quality acts at Kuppa and tonight feels like a half-step above that with The Fore Cast, A Current Affair, Queens Club and From Indian Lakes. [7:30 $8]

AUSTIN'S DOWNTOWN GRILL: A pretty massive party as they'll be using both floors of Austin's for "Jellyfest". All kinds of jello-related drink specials, all for the craziness of the classic comedic punk/rock of Green Jelly. Also there's Leather Serpent, Cosmic Hayride, Dirtmouth and Psychostick. Presale tixs at Lovesick Tattoo. [7:00 $12 adv.]

CLUB BABYLON: They'll be "skankin up the Tower" with The Action League, The Notones and The Hooligans. [9:00 $6 21+]

STARLINE: It's the night of all nights for psycobilly and punk fans with the Midnight Howlers, Tabalitix, Idiosyncracy, The Horror Dolls, Not 4 Hire and Belladonna Beauties. [9:00 $6 All Ages]

CLUB RETRO: All ages awesome with Down Word, Driven Cure, Bittersweet Awakening and Bradley Alfred William and more. Advanced tickets bought at Afton Shows. [7:OO $12 adv]

 

CYC: Welcome to Chinatown. Tonight it's the home of No Guilt, Gideon Bezona, Where The Sidewalk Ends, Mighty Arrow, Iwanaga, NOBTA and Glamor Tronic. [6:00 $3]

AUDIE'S OLYMPIC: Fresno welcomes Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys (hopefully a euphemism). Lucky Tubb and Highway City will also be there. [9:00 $10]

SATURDAY

THE CAPTIVE: The lovely folks at LTC have a real office now and are having a party to celebrate:

Audie's Olympic Tonight: If It's Emo Enough For Seattle, It Must Be Emo Enough For Fresno

After you're done hanging with "Carlton" at the Chuck, Audie's has:

Guess Seattle must have a lot of Cure tribute bands if Fascination Street needs to proclaim their number one. Watch and see if they measure up:

Facebook: The Newest Venue For Fresno Nerds To Argue About The Fulton Mall

Let's face it, bloggers: Facebook pages have taken some juice from blogs. "Blogjuice", if you will (mmmmm, blog juice). Some of the classic blog wars that used to exclusively take place on some Fresno blog or Mindhub, now can take place on Facebook pages or Twitter.

Most active as of late is the Save The Fulton Mall page. A nice sized BLOG WAR!.... or um, Facebook War? happened the other day. It was sparked by a previous statement by Mayor Swearengin, calling the mall “a fundamentally flawed attempt to preserve what amounts to a failed urban renewal experiment that has bankrupted every effort to revitalize downtown Fresno for decades.” Scroll down the page and find it, it's worth the effort.

There are plenty more debates happening on the page too, some of them even positive. If you're like us, you'll want to follow the page just to see how Fresnans smarter than you, like to argue.

Seems though, no matter what the venue, we'll always be debating about the Fulton Mall. It's as Fresno as tacos and August heat.

20 Seconds With A Fresnan: Violinist, Patrick Contreras

It's annoying Fresno's Internets, one Fresnan at a time. It's the new game: 20 Seconds With A Fresnan. We let a Fresnan talk about whatever they want for 20 seconds, record it, then judge whether they got the proper info out. Look, it's just a goofyass way to promote some junk, okay? Just freaking go with it.

Up for playing our audio games this time: Patrick Contreras. He can play violin, but can he talk about it?

Click: 20secondswithpatrick.mp3 to listen. Or use the player:

Dredg Seemingly Touring Small Fresno Clubs

This week's perfect streak of quality live music in Fresno (that started on Sunday) continues tonight with Patrick Contreras playing at the Revue (more on that in a future post) and the return of Dredg:

Dredg played Starline last time through town. Small place for a band with their popularity. This time it's another cozy venue in Audie's Olympic. Opening up is Turlock's Evaline and Fresno's own Strange Vine. Strange Vine seems like an odd pairing with Dredge, but then again, not really if you're just a fan of quality music. More show info here.

Check out Dredg on Jimmy Kimmel:

Yo Fresno! Bike To Work Day Is Tomorrow

All the details are at ibikefresno.org. Hope to see a little more cyclists out on the roads Wednesday.