Plenty of young bands rely on the use of video projection in their set to make their performance feel artsy and unique. Sadly, the simple act of rolling a moody, art-house film behind them onstage tends to feel either extremely emo or pitifully forced. But on a recent Monday night, MT. OSSA's commitment to elevate their visual performance actually left us feeling, well, pretty high.

In front of a full crowd at the Echo in LA, the South OC natives actually seemed to disappear in a flickering flurry of homespun images. Blizzards of sparkling silver shards on a white screen melted seamlessly into crashing, Technicolor waves and psychotropic cartoon footage from the '70s. Each frame is edited by the band and scored to fit their layers of woozy, surf-toned R&B and rippling pools of vocal delay. In short--these guys know what the hell they're doing.

"We've always been into a lot of colors and the brightness of everything," says drummer Tony Tancredi. "We want people to feel that when they see us. We want them to see the whole picture when we're playing live."

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Straddling the line between '80s NorCal thrash and '90s SoCal punk, Stuck Dickens play hard, fast, loud and technical, as evidenced by the band's face-forward single "Holden," which clocks upward of 190 beats per minute (think "Motorbreath" by Metallica) and is rife with pop/punk whoa-oa-oas, walloping snare fills and a guitar solo that showcases the band's trademark double-lead-guitar attack.

"Most punk bands don't have great guitar players," says guitarist Brad Zangwill, a disciple of the John Petrucci/Joe Satriani school of shred. "We're proud to have two guitarists who can alternate dueling guitar solos and blow people's minds."

Zangwill's six-string counterpart, lead vocalist Tim Tintari, takes a relatively subtler approach, favoring melodic phrases made famous by the likes of Dimebag Darrell and Marty Friedman. Tintari belts out lyrics with a pissed-off, nasal rigor, dampened by hints of apathy and resignation; their verses about wartime travesties, government fuck-ups and appeals for revolution are firmly rooted in the tradition of punk rock.

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Rollin' together

If there's one thing the Hindu Pirates have learned during the rising tide of their rock & roll stardom, it's the value of teamwork. Especially when it comes to rolling a joint at a moment's notice. Sitting on the back patio of the Echo in Los Angeles, preparing to open for the Smith Westerns, their altruistic tendencies came in handy just minutes before soundcheck. One by one, they all chipped in a piece of the pot-smoking puzzle--first the papers, then the green, followed by some nimble-fingered rolling techniques. And in less than three minutes, their mission was accomplished.

Their demeanor was loose and relaxed, never wasting an opportunity to crack a joke or pick on their own version of Parks & Recreation's Jerry Gergich, guitarist Giuseppe "Joey" LoBasso. But it's all in good fun, as the quintet have both a spoken and unspoken musical chemistry that creates a sound greater than the sum of their individual talents.

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Chance Artworks

Jesse Carzello of bobby blunders

Jesse Carzello's musical career has been a more haphazard adventure than most.

Though he recently celebrated the completion of a full-length album for his bedroom recordings-turned-experimental pop project, bobby blunders (yes, all lowercase), Carzello might be Long Beach's most unexpected bandleader.

For years, the self-taught multi-instrumentalist was a hired gun, playing with everyone from D.C. punk bands to his current steady gig as the pedal-wielding guitarist for the Long Beach collective Free Moral Agents.
But after inheriting an 8-track that was destined for the trash more than five years ago, the roots of Carzello's first original work began to form. "Right around the time I got the 8-track, I started to hear little poems," he says. "Most of them weren't songs, but instead little vignettes or little chants or something easy . . . I've always been a side man, so it wasn't initially my idea to take it live. I didn't even know if I could lead a band."

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Santa Ana's Kevin Parx is ready to step up to the charity stripe. The 23-year-old is a rapper by trade, not a b-baller, but he's hoping his forthcoming Freethrows mixtape, which is slated for a June 3 release, will hit nothing but net just the same. Even so, he is guarded about his latest work, though he reveals the title is a metaphor that will make sense once people listen to the tracks. "I can't get too much into the details about it," he says.

When the Weekly checked in with Parx last October, he was busy preparing for the launch of Detroit Bar's quarterly hip-hop event, Sound Asylum--a sorely needed outlet for MCs such as himself. The next show will be held Saturday. "That's my bro Aliso Black's event," he says. "Basically, his idea behind it is having all the local MCs who he thinks are talented rotate and kill Detroit Bar. So far, it's been good."

Born and raised in Santa Ana, Parx has been doing his thing to build and maintain the culture, hosting MC battle "The Riot" at Tough Times clothing store in the city's downtown area. "Around 150 people came up," the rapper says of a recent event. "It was a real good look."

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Sometimes the process of creating a labor of love from the ground up can be less-than-pretty. After months of planting ideas for their sophomore La Habra EP, Gardeners Logic are in a hurry to find out if the proper elements are in place to help their soon-to-be-finished recording make an impact when it sees the light of day at the end of the month.

This challenge, though, is being able to finish it in the midst of their second residency Detroit Bar, where the Huntington Beach band is filling up April with various shades of indie rock and Americana lineups to support their acoustic-driven, road trip-ready songs. As each day approaches toward their April 29th record release--the last night of their four-week stint--the promise of late night mixing sessions, crammed schedules and copious amounts of sweat aren't enough to intimidate this young-but-scrappy crew of OC folksters.

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Nina Lodica

Past the kitschy Chuck Norris photos and vintage roller skates, to the left of the 5-foot, papier-mâché sea monster, California Lions unleashed their first folky, surf-inspired songs. The location was the backroom of Seal Beach's surf and kind-finds shop, Canvas, for the band's late-February CD-release party for their self-titled, Kickstarter-funded EP.

The stage, with its black-and-white surf-photo backdrop adorned with broken-off boards, was swell. Accompanied by a printed program to help the stories unfold, California Lions transported friends, family and fans via song on a journey to sleepy California surf spots.

There were shout outs to Big Sur's Willow Creek, Santa Barbara and the Malibu pier, even some name-dropping. Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond and Darby Crash got in on the gnar.

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Rukes.com

On Friday nights, notorious Hollywood hot spot Avalon continues to be the dance-music mecca for the wild, electro-addicted, 19-and-over crowd. And in a world crammed with revelers in need of a fix, Ryan Jaso--the man behind WhiteLite Productions and its weekly staple, CONTROL Fridays--is a major supplier. Two weeks ago, CONTROL celebrated its fourth anniversary with a huge performance by U.K.'s Jack Beats, alongside trap master Carnage and resident DJ as well as partner Whiiite.

The turnout garnered the kind of attendance most clubs would die for, with a line around the corner. Inside, celebrity-guest DJs in attendance included Borgore, Dillion Francis and 12th Planet, all of whom came ready to party and even hop on the decks. Naturally, the ability to conjure this kind of a scene on a weekly basis is quickly turning Jaso's residency and the artists under his Technique Management roster into very hot commodities. Not bad for a guy who used to hand out club fliers outside parties such as this.

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Zuleica Zepeda

Endz

Alan Navarro doesn't like starting what he can't finish. It's a motivating factor that inspired the moniker Endz, though it's only the beginning for the MC with endless potential. Back in the day, hip-hop was there when he was a kid trying to get his act together. "In high school, I just never gave a fuck. I had a lot of police contact. I got caught up on some stuff, but I loved listening to hip-hop," he says.

"What got me into it was just that I could express myself at no cost, and every time I went through some bullshit, writing was like therapy to me," the 22-year-old Navarro adds. Instrumentals don't always come free, though, and producer Yon P Beats gave him his first one for $20. "He saw my potential and never charged me again."

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The nature of the beat scene in Orange County doesn't lend itself to being seen in public very often. For prolific local producers such as Kalva Won, the art of flipping open a laptop in his bedroom and composing kaleidoscopic soundscapes injected with hip-hop DNA doesn't require a ton of live performance. And club nights such as LA's Low End Theory--where producers are often the star of the show--are basically nonexistent in OC. So if you're not satisfied with being a prolific presence on such file-sharing sites as Sound Cloud or Dat Piff, where does a local, avant-garde producer go to get some attention from the real world?

Kalva Won's answer to that question evolves. Currently, the Huntington Beach producer is working on a three-pronged attack of dropping a new album, strengthening his residency at Avalon Bar in Costa Mesa and taking good notes as an intern for LA's Alpha Pup Records. And his nomination for the OC Music Award for Best Electronic Artist this year is proof that galvanizing local producers (including his own music collective, GRN+GLD) and giving them a place to perform every second Friday of the month is having a positive effect on the strength of his chops and the possibility he'll make it to a bigger stage one day.

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