Rock Picks: Sunset Strip Music Festival, Neil Innes, Cheap Trick

Willie Nile at McCabe’s

“You can dream out loud,” Willie Nile sings on his new live CD, Live From the Streets of New York (due next month, as is a separate DVD with the same title, shot at the same show). His dreams come through loud and clear at this celebratory concert, where he’s backed by the Worry Dolls and such guests as Roseanne Cash drummer Rich Pagano and Jimmy Vivino (Late Night With Conan O’Brien). Nile is a quintessential New Yorker, sharing a romanticized Manhattan perspective that’s not all that far from the lonely alley-cat rambles of Johnny Thunders and Kevin K, but pumped up (for better and worse) with the sometimes-hammy theatrics of fellow East Coast bards Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen. “Vagabond Moon” rolls across the sky with latter-day Stones riffs, while the evocative ballad “The Day I Saw Bo Diddley in Washington Square” takes on added resonance after the great man’s recent passing. Nile’s most obvious hero is Bob Dylan, whose lyrical imagery heavily influences the title track and the nostalgically autobiographical “Back Home.” Nile is so Noo Yawk, in fact, he hasn’t performed in L.A. in 20 years. (Falling James)

Tara Punzone

The Casualties are still mad at Ronald Reagan.

Frozen Pictures

Neil Innes: How sweet to be an idiot with a tiny guitar

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Cheap Trick at the Hollywood Bowl

If there are any musicians who can pull off performing an album like Sgt. Pepper’s with credible faithfulness while still make it exciting and powerful in their own style, it’s Cheap Trick. They’re the perfect band for this, short of the real Beatles. The Rockford, Illinois, quartet’s history is already deeply tangled with Beatles allusions and homages (“Taxman, Mr. Thief”), cover songs (“Day Tripper”) and personal connections (George Martin produced their 1980 album All Shook Up, and guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos recorded with John Lennon). Last year’s 40th-anniversary celebration of Sgt. Pepper’s was a surprisingly satisfying affair, despite the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s sometimes treacly arrangements. Gomez’s Ian Ball — who came off as an amiable Davey Jones manqué despite butchering some of the lyrics — and Rob Laufer will reprise their roles, while new guest star Billy Corgan (probably) won’t bungle things as much as Ministry’s Al Jourgensen did last time. The show actually works best without all the embellishments, especially when powerhouse singer Robin Zander and the rest of Cheap Trick are left to their own devices. (Falling James)

Also playing Saturday:

311, SNOOP DOGG at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre; MICKEY AVALON, ANDRE LEGACY at the Key Club; THE BLESSINGS, BLACK WIDOWS, BACKBITER at Mr. T’s Bowl; THE 88 at the Roxy; KINGSIZEMAYBE at Taix; QUINTO SOL at Temple Bar; CASUALTIES, YOUTH BRIGADE at Vault 350; LOUIS XIV at Viper Room.

SUNDAY, JUNE 29


Gilberto Gil, Devendra Banhart, The Album Leaf, Mike Heron at the Hollywood Bowl

Part of the 10th-annual KCRW World Festival at the Bowl, this seemingly peculiar lineup is perhaps not so strange within the context of a contemporary redefining of what should appropriately be included under that big umbrella called world music. Singer-composer-guitarist Gilberto Gil is a cultural ambassador of Brazil — he, in fact, currently holds the official post of Culture Minister. Gil is the legendarily dazzling post-bossa sambista who originally emerged from Brazil’s tropicalismo movement in the late ’60s to help redefine the country’s music scene with his self-penned, eclectic stew of African, reggae, Euro-classical and traditional chorro-tinged tunes, richly melodious singing and agile, inventive acoustic guitar playing. Next, we have the one and indeed the only Devendra Banhart, the charismatic Venezuelan-American folk-rock-avant-bolero mystery man and, lately, a virtuosic singer and spidery-fingered guitarist. The Album Leaf is the dulcet-toned singer/multi-instrumentalist Jimmy LaValle, who creates a nicely ethereal introspection rock that etches its way firmly into the memory; he’ll be aided by Mike Heron of the late, great Incredible String Band, in an incredibly rare local appearance. (John Payne)

Also playing Sunday:

BOB WEIR & RATDOG, GOV’T MULE at Greek Theatre; JIM BAILEY at House of Blues; MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO at the Key Club; U ROY, CORNELL CAMPBELL at Malibu Inn; GENE LOVES JEZEBEL at Safari Sam’s; CAPTAIN AHAB at the Smell; WATSON TWINS at Fingerprints, Long Beach, 4 p.m.

MONDAY, JUNE 30


MELISSA MANCHESTER at Geffen Playhouse; PACHA MASSIVE, QUINTO SOL, MEXICAN DUBWISER at House of Blues; AFTERNOONS, HAPPY HOLLOWS, THE MOVIES at Spaceland; HARVEY SID FISHER at Bar One.

TUESDAY, JULY 1


We Are Scientists at El Rey Theatre

On their label’s web page (www.astralwerks.com/we_are_scientists/), Keith Murray and Chris Cain hype their new album, Brain Thrust Mastery, by staging a mock MTV Cribs-type program that looks like a Best Week Ever parody. The release’s first video, “After Hours,” was like their own little movie, subtitles and all, but it was the follow-up video, for “Chick-Lit” (a parody of Brokeback Mountain), that left me wondering if they’re a real group or a post–“Lazy Sunday” fabrication. In other words, do they make funny skits for their songs, or do they make songs for their funny skits? I would argue the latter if their songs weren’t genuinely catchy on their own. These Scientists have a knack for dance rock and an instinct for romance that would have been perfect for New York’s WDRE, circa 1987 (or Rodney on the ROQ), but it’s a “retro” that smells as au courant as the bathrooms of the Bowery Ballroom. (Daniel Siwek)