During the 1990s, the Skeletones used to play every friggin' show from the Inland Empire to Orange County. After search the Internet, you might assume that the 10-piece ska group from Riverside still maintains a busy schedule.But look closer and you'll notice that a few newer bands have also taken the moniker since the original band's heyday. A Google search for "the Skeletones" comes up with three acts -- the Riverside band and two others from Michigan and England.

These days, the original Skeletones -- Jonas Cabrera, Paul Hampton, Mark Cummings, Chris Miles, Kip Wirtzfeld, Rick Bonin, Woody Diaz, Bob Alvarado, John Alvarado and Jared Palazzolo -- perform between 12-24 times a year, which is still a lot considering the group has been around for approximately two decades. That said, don't think frontman Jonas Cabrera has gotten too old to rock a stage because he says he will "out-skank anybody who dares to try" to beat him in a dance-off.

The Skeletones play Saturday as part of Long Beach Sound Society's fourth annual "We Are The Mods Celebration" at Madhaus. The event includes performances by Suedehead and the Savoys and features an array of DJs, food trucks and a horseshoe pit. With so much mod in one area, let's hope Cabrera has a new pair of dancing shoes cuz he's gonna need them.

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Katrina Nattress

Devendra Banhart
The Observatory
5/14/13
To call Devendra Banhart prolific would be an understatement. Since making his debut in 2002, the Venezuelan/American singer-songwriter has released seven full-length albums, not to mention a plethora of EPs and singles. With a discography as extensive as this, it's only natural for the live show to keep its audience on its toes, and that's exactly what happened last night at The Observatory.

Banhart took the stage solo and began strumming the opening riff of "The Body Breaks," off 2004's Rejoicing In The Hands. As he sang, he grunted charismatically. He stuck with this album and transitioned into "A Sight To Behold," and the audience stayed attentively silent, which is a rarity at The Observatory. "How's everyone doing tonight?" he asked between songs. As his fans cheered in reply, he continued: "I'd like to dedicate this song to Art and Mom. Mom is, well, she's my mom." He played the jovial "Little Yellow Spider," and enhanced each of the song's animal characters by adapting different voices for each one. His mother danced and sang along in the front row.

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Katrina Nattress

Kate Nash
The Observatory
5/9/13
I'm not gonna lie; it was a bit jarring at first to see Kate Nash strut onto The Observatory's stage last night in a tattered black dress, creepers, and long black hair with bleach blonde highlights. I was expecting a charming, quaint, redheaded girl to shyly sidle up to the microphone, and instead saw a woman who looked like Siouxsie Sioux if she had been part of the Riot Grrl movement. Though I must say, it was a good look for her.

Backed by an all-female band, the British chanteuse flexed her "Girl Power" muscle throughout her 90-minute performance, dedicating half of her set to her recently released and aptly titled third album, Girl Talk. She started her set slapping the bass to "Sister," one of the many gritty, punk-influenced tracks off her new album. As she played, projections of sound waves wriggled on a screen behind her and onto the small screens of old television sets stacked onstage. She sipped on tea in between songs, allowing her vocal chords to loosen as she's still adjusting from her old, innocent songs to her new, angst-riddled tunes.

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Mary Bell/OC Weekly

Jeff Bridges isn't exactly typecast from his role as the Dude in the Big Lebowski, but it is a character he'll be remembered for as long as there are still Little Lebowski Urban Achievers out there. Sometimes, it's hard to tell where the Dude ends and Bridges begins.

But it's an image he's not necessarily quick to shake. Take for example, what he calls his band: the Abiders--inspired by a line from the film, "Yeah, well. The Dude abides."

You could see bits and pieces of the Dude on stage during Bridge's performance at the El Rey Theatre on Thursday, but of course, the audience got a whole lot more. The unofficial theme of the evening was friendship. This being a hometown show of sorts, several of his friends old, near and dear were in the audience (including his big brother Beau) and even joined him on stage (legendary producer and singer-songwriter T-Bone Burnett made a cameo!).

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This Friday night, Eric Burdon, one of the last standing icons from the golden age of rock, will be hitting the stage at The Coach House, one of only a handful of shows the singer has planned in 2013.

Over the past few years, Burdon has experienced a revival of sorts. At last year's South-by-Southwest, Bruce Springsteen told onlookers at his keynote speech that Burdon was the person who had the strongest influence on his songwriting and proceeded to invite him on stage at his not-so-secret show that same night.

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Andrew Youssef / OC Weekly

The Postal Service
Fox Theatre Pomona
April 15, 2013
With the news of the horrific Boston Marathon bombing, seeing two police cars parked in front of the Fox Theatre Pomona produced an eery calm to the evening. The exhilaration of surviving Coachella quickly dissipated upon hearing the terrifying news. Fortunately, The Postal Service provided an enchanting evening of escapism. The Postal Service are currently celebrating the tenth anniversary of their platinum selling debut album, Give Up with an extended tour that has sold out nearly everywhere they have been booked to play.

The band were definitely one of the highlights of Coachella and seemed to be gathering steam as they had the entire crowd in the palm of their hand with the electronic pulses of "The District Sleeps Alone." The entire audience knew the album so well that it was difficult to find a spot on the floor where someone wasn't singing along.

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Katrina Nattress

Beach House
The Glass House
April 10, 2013

It's that time of year again, when the lucky few (or around 100,000) ascend to the desert on two special weekends for this thing called Coachella. Maybe you've heard of it? Supposedly a bunch of cool bands play, and because of that, they can't tour around Los Angeles. But there is a loophole, and it's called Pomona.

Because it is just far enough outside of L.A., bands are able to play pre-Coachella shows at The Glass House and Fox Theater, and those of us without the financial means--or will--to endure an expensive, scorching three days in the polo fields are still able to catch some of the festival's big acts (huzzah!). Last night, Beach House kicked off the string of amazing acts playing Pomona in the week to come (The Postal Service, Modest Mouse, and Phoenix are just a few others), and The Glass House was filled to the brim.

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Andrew Youssef / OC Weekly

How to Destroy Angels
Fox Theatre Pomona
April 10, 2013

Primed with a midnight set at the Mojave tent this Friday at Coachella, How to Destroy Angels orchestrated a visual and auditory assault at their debut show at the Fox Theatre in Pomona that make them a must see act at Coachella. One could sense the electricity in the air when the lights dimmed at the Fox. The curtain finally pulled back to reveal streams of electric lights four sheets deep as Alessandro Cortini, Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig, Trent Reznor and Rob Sheridan worked in the shadows conjuring up the opening notes of "The Wake-Up."

How to Destroy Angels refer to themselves as a collective with all members contributing equally to their visual and auditory aesthetic. They recently added Cortini to their live band to help take on some bass guitar duties as well as extra synthesizer wizardry. All the members were hunkered over their work stations and grooved in time to the snarling synthesizer bass of "Keep It Together."

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Every band has "hits," the songs they have to play in concert or no one will pay money to see them. Alkaline Trio is no different.

Thanks to nine studio albums, including My Shame is True (released today), singer/guitarist Matt Skiba, singer/bassist Dan Andriano and drummer Derek Grant have a plethora of tunes that are damn-near guaranteed to make any set list, which means there's a good chance you'll hear "Radio," "Nose Over Tail," "Clavicle," "'97," "This Could Be Love," "Mercy Me," "Crawl," "Cringe" and "Bleeder." While there's nothing wrong with these (in fact, they are some of the band's best material), there are also a bunch of songs that rarely -- if ever -- get played. But they should.

There's no way of knowing what we'll hear from My Shame is True, but "Kiss You to Death," "Young Lovers" and "Until Death Do Us Part" are bona fide awesome and are worthy of replacing the oft-played "She Took Him to the Lake" and "Private Eye." And, if we are lucky, the addition of new material might force the band to dig into its catalog to pull out a few oldies-but-goodies.

So, here, in no particular order, are six songs that should be added to the band's set list when they kick off their upcoming tour at The Observatory on April 25.

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Black Francis

By: Katherine Turman
He's a man of many monikers and moods, and he rocks under any name. Charles Thompson / Frank Black / Black Francis has 23 albums to his credit, beginning in 1988 with Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, a band where the tired journalistic cliché "seminal" actually applies. More »