On July 2, Queens of the Stone Age friend and colleague Natasha Shneider died after a battle with cancer. She was a founding member of the Los Angeles hard-psych band Eleven, so it’s somewhat poetic that she died at 11:11. That this benefit lineup is as varied as it is merely speaks to the great spectrum of lives she touched: PJ Harvey and the aforementioned Queens, Jack Black & Kyle Gass (a.k.a. Tenacious D), Soundgarden/Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, ex-Distiller Brody Dalle, Eagles of Death Metal singer Jesse Hughes, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, seer and sage of the desert-rock scene Chris Goss, and Shneider’s partner and Eleven bandmate, Alain Johannes, who was with her until the very end. Tonight, her friends gather to remember her life and play some songs that remind them of her, and better times than right now. Ultimately, it’s a night of music that stops you in your tracks — if only to remind you that you still have to keep going. For more info, go to www.natashashneider.org. (David Cotner)
Also playing Saturday:
Norman Seeff
The thinker: Raphael Saadiq
Lost boys: Previously on Lost
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ANTHONY HAMILTON, JODY WATLEY at Par 3 Golf Course, Compton, noon; RAY CAMPI at Blue Cafe; JARBOE, EVA O at the Good Hurt; TERRA NAOMI at the Hotel Café; SACCHARINE TRUST at McCabe’s; KLEVELAND at Molly Malone’s; KIM FOWLEY, STEVEN T., CRAZY WHITE MAN at the Redwood Bar & Grill; KINGSIZEMAYBE, ATOMIC SHERPAS at Taix; SHIELDS, CHROME U.K., GIRL & THE SEA at Roberto’s.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 17
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Lost boys: Previously on Lost
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Allá perfect the art of waiting.
Raphael Saadiq, Janelle Monáe at the Roxy
Though he tasted commercial success with his early-’90s R&B trio Tony! Toni! Toné!, Raphael Saadiq hasn’t quite managed to carve out a space in the mainstream as a solo artist. Soul-music aficionados know how talented this dude is, but his name is far less recognizable than those of the stars for whom he’s produced or written (including John Legend, Joss Stone and D’Angelo). Thanks to Amy Winehouse’s success last year (and Duffy’s success this year), though, the record industry is betting that old-school R&B has a better-than-usual chance in the marketplace, which explains Columbia’s recent signing of Saadiq. Next month, the label will release The Way I See It, an excellent new studio disc, and tonight he’ll preview it at the Roxy. Do what you can to see that he feels loved. Wild-haired opener Janelle Monáe is Diddy’s latest protégée; she should appeal to fans of OutKast and Gnarls Barkley. (Mikael Wood)
Liz Pappademas at Saint Rocke
Did the recent earthquake shake you up? Blame it on Liz Pappademas. “I was the epicenter,” the singer-pianist confesses on her 2007 CD of thoughtfully moody ballads, Eleven Songs. Actually, she’s singing about a different temblor in “Loma Prieta,” but she has such a gift for palpably poetic lyrics and evocative, soul-swept melodies, perhaps the mayor can appoint her as this city’s Official Post-Earthquake Consoler to help us recover when the Big One inevitably lays us low. “I am not that rabid dog,” she attempts to reassure a lover as a storm envelops them. She calls on helicopters, paratroopers and “the mouth of a bear” to tell her tales, turning the paintings of Robert Rauschenberg and Jackson Pollack inside out (“Desaturate It”) before making a Houdini-like escape (“Open”). She’s a bit of a romantic escapist on “Vacation Romance” and “Keep Going West,” but she can’t avoid seeing warning signs (“Birds . tilt their wings on the wind . the low sky hangs in God’s own noose”) and ultimately asks her lover to strangle her during the austerely lovely and somber “Go On, Kill Me.” With HoneyHoney. (Falling James)
Warped Tour '08 at the Home Depot Center
If you can get past the sound-alike corporate punk bands and the horde of emo-tinged pop-rock whiners, there are actually some pretty decent performers smuggled onto the bill for this local stop on the annual Warped Tour. For one thing, there’s a pleasing assortment of early punks, such as the supreme black-humored satirists the Dickies, sinister Orange County vets T.S.O.L., the reunited M.I.A. (who, ironically, have been missing in action for many years), pop-punks Big Drill Car, the slobberingly fierce Brit hardcore rowdies G.B.H., and even that new Frankenstein-monster cobbling of the Germs (in which overmatched understudy Shane West stands in for the still-dead Darby Crash). For another, the historically testosterone-heavy festival this year spotlights at least a few token female acts, including the erratic-but-promising Randies, the always lively Danish ska-punks HorrorPops, and former Christian-pop thrush Katy Perry, whose “UR So Gay” is — for better or worse — the modern, politically incorrect equivalent to Josie Cotton’s “Johnny, Are You Queer?” The more adventurous-minded should track down Barcelona’s Pinker Tones, whose new CD, Wild Animals (Nacional), is a typically merry mélange of kicky electronica (“S.E.X.Y.R.O.B.O.T.”), slinky dance pop (“Electrotumbao”) and circusy reveries (“Biorganised”). (Falling James)
