LA Weekly

THURSDAY, JULY 12

Nellie McKay at Largo

You probably shouldn’t pick a fight with Nellie McKay if you happen to work for any organization with the patriarchal name Columbia. The insanely talented NYC singer-pianist and fiercely committed animal-rights activist has been leading ongoing protests against Columbia University’s quaintly barbaric practice of experimenting on sentient primates for several years now, and she won back the rights to release an unadulterated version of her excellent second album, Pretty Little Head, from her former masters at Columbia/Sony Records after a tearful and unexpectedly exhilarating rant about corporate meddling at her notorious set at the Troubadour in 2005. Now the prolific little troublemaker is back to preview tunes from her upcoming CD, Obligatory Villagers, which ranges from a playfully jazzy subversion of sexist expectations (“Mother of Pearl”) and rapid-fire, free-associating pop (“Gin Rummy”) to brassy reggae (“Identity Theft”) and a festively uplifting and cleverly arranged Sly & the Family Stone–style ramble (“Testify”). The last time she was in town, McKay responded to several conflicting song requests by playing them all in a marvelously improvised medley, seamlessly weaving the lyrics into a brand new whole. She’s simply amazing. (Falling James)


Also playing Thursday:

THEE GENTLEMEN CALLERS at Alex’s Bar; STARFUCKERS at the Cat Club; DAEDELUS at the Echo; NINJA ACADEMY at Mr. T’s Bowl; BETH HART at the Roxy; HORNY TOAD at Rusty’s Surf Ranch; DOUBLE NAUGHT SPY CAR, REBEL REBEL, 8-BIT at Safari Sam’s; THE FRONT, MONOLATORS at the Scene; PATRICK PARK at Spaceland.


FRIDAY, JULY 13

Os Mutantes, Busdriver at El Rey Theatre

The very strange and curiously influential Brazilian people known as Os Mutantes were formed in São Paulo way back in 1965 by Arnaldo Baptista, Sergio Dias and future pop diva Rita Lee to purvey a tropicalia-tinged psychedelic rock that incorporated environmental sounds and musique concrète, ultra-distortion and way-, way-out studio FX into a chaotically sprawling, extremely good-humored and ultimately quite toe-tapping alternative pop music. In the face of massive obscurity in their own country and elsewhere, the band soldiered on in fits and starts, with Rita Lee eventually departing, the lineup further mutating and the band packing it in several times, but not before settling on a kind of progressive-rock format that, along with their earliest, freakiest recordings, finally found its way into the collections of discerning young tastemakers such as Kurt Cobain and the Redd Kross brothers. When David Byrne got wind of it, he snatched it all up for release and resuscitation on his Luaka Bop label. The band, encouraged, re-formed in 2006 to see that time has caught up with them, even recently scoring a Top 40 hit in Brazil for their remodeled “Balada do Louco.” Be on time to catch the high-art rap of superspeed Shakespeare Busdriver. (John Payne)


Jessica Fichot at California Plaza

Jessica Fichot is a singer-songwriter who was born in the U.S. and raised in France by her French father and Chinese mother. That heritage is reflected in her songs, such as “Le Velours et la Soie,” whose lyrics are in both French and Chinese and whose theme of an interracial romance is topical in a transcultural planet. Her songs and voice are delightful, as pure an instrument channeled through lovely evocations of love and love lost as you’ll ever hear. There is an innocence and beauty all over Le Chemin — her album of mostly originals featuring Fichot on piano, trumpet and toy accordion — that is sadly rare but wholly welcome in a relentlessly ugly world. The French-chanson tradition is alive and well in this Los Angeles resident’s repertoire. 350 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; noon; free. Also at Amoeba Music, Sat., 2 p.m. (Michael Simmons)


Willie Nelson, The Knitters at Pacific Amphitheatre

Back in the late ’70s, when the X song “The Unheard Music” was still largely unheard outside of the L.A. punk rock underground, it was outlandish to think that Exene Cervenka, John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake would ever rub shoulders with a country legend like Willie Nelson. And yet there was always a stubbornly rootsy and countryish blue-collar undercurrent in X’s punk attack, which became clearer when they started up the Knitters, their down-home folk side project with Jonny Ray Bartel and Dave Alvin. By now, their punk outsider status has made them simpatico with a Nashville-bucking outlaw like Willie Nelson. The Red-Headed Stranger, meanwhile, has been fairly prolific in recent years, when he could be resting on his laurels and his considerable back catalog. He exchanges duets with Merle Haggard and Ray Price on the aptly titled new CD Last of the Breed; shines a welcome light on the songs of Cindy Walker with his lovingly crafted 2006 tribute You Don’t Know Me; collaborates with the ubiquitous Ryan Adams & the Cardinals on 2006’s Songbird; and even put his reassuringly warm vocals to lilting grooves on his surprisingly successful 2005 reggae experiment, Countryman. (Falling James)


Tex & the Horseheads at Safari Sam’s

Even as the Willie Nelson/Knitters bill at Pacific Amphitheatre stands as a symbolic summit between the seemingly alien worlds of punk rock and country music, Tex & the Horseheads perhaps best represent what happened when the two genres first collided in the early ’80s. Although they were credited with starting the badly named cowpunk scene (along with the Gun Club, whose singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce was an early member of the Horseheads), the four-piece band were ultimately too bizarre to fit neatly into preconceived notions of what a tumblin’ tumbleweed should sound like. Much of that eccentric charm comes from fishnet-sheathed lead singer Texacala Jones, who howls with a scarifying ferocity on such windswept odes as “Oh Mother” but contrasts that passionate intensity with disarmingly engaging shaggy-dog storytelling and assorted rambling digressions onstage between songs. She evokes classic desert landscapes on “Border Town” and “Hidden by Hills,” but isn’t above name-dropping Felix the Cat on “It’s a Happening” (from 1985’s Life’s So Cool, produced by X’s John Doe). Guitarist Mike Martt buttresses Jones’ yowling with his own world-weary, whisky-burnished vocals and barbed-wire guitar on the classic “Clean the Dirt.” (Falling James)