Folk-rocker Shane Gooding died of cancer in 2007, but his music made a strong impact on many of his fellow OC/LA musicians. Consequently, MJ Lazarsky is organizing a tribute concert to Gooding, scheduled for May 18 in Rancho Santa Margarita, 1 p.m.-7 p.m. [see details below]

Called FG-V, it will feature 10 locals acts, including Steve Heaviside, Whitton, Jack Marko, Ron Hexagon, Sandra B, One String King and Francesca Valle.

Lago Santa Margarita Park
21472 Avenida De Los Fundadores
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688
(near Santa Margarita Parkway, After parking- go 1 Block north around the lake)

Here's a clip of Shane playing at the Pike Bar in Long Beach.

A documentary film and a concert will take place on UCLA's campus May 28 and 29, respectively, in order to raise funds and awareness for Darfur Now, which is committed to helping alleviate humanitarian problems stemming from the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan.

Press release after the cut.

Trailer for Darfur Now, featuring George Clooney and Don Cheadle.

Beautiful Noise, a concert to benefit the family of the recently deceased Mike Conley of OC punk band MIA, is happening April 28 at House of Blues. It will be preceded by a warm-up show at Detroit Bar Sun. April 27 at 9 p.m. Participants include original members of Conley's former group MIA and JigSaw, who will be joined by a surprise guest vocalist. All proceeds go to the Mike Conley Family Fund.

Below is a video featuring MIA's "Boredom Is the Reason" and "Murder in a Foreign Place."

On Thurs. Feb. 21, a slew of OC punk bands will be playing a benefit show at the Galaxy Theater to help raise money for D.I.'s Craig Jewitt (a.k.a. Chckn), who is fighting cancer and receiving care at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. TSOL, Social Distortion, Agent Orange, Franki Doll & the Broken Toys, Shattered Faith, D.I., Noise Attack, Narcoleptic Youth, Drain Bramaged and the Uprising are pledging their support and playing for the cause. Doors at 5 p.m., show at 7 p.m., $25 cover.

For more information, contact event coordinator Franki Doll at (714) 852-1169 and check D.I.'s MySpace page.

Meanwhile, check out D.I. live on Doll's Flashrock Webcast.

Use this.

I don't know what the deal is, but lately I've been receiving a lot of phone calls and emails from musicians asking how they can get their work reviewed in this paper, as if there were some great mystery involved.

It's really quite simple; bands have been doing it for decades (or paying people to do it for them for that long). I'm only going to say this once, as I don't have time to field calls and reply to emails all day about this awfully basic concept. If you're a friend of a musician who doesn't have internet access or who doesn't read this blog, please pass on this info to him/her. Here goes...

1.Record extraordinary music.
2.Put that extraordinary music onto a format such as CD or vinyl (MP3s are shite, mate).
3.Send that extraordinary music to me at this address, or drop it off yourself: Dave Segal/OC Weekly, 1666 N Main St #500, Santa Ana CA 92701
4.Give me 7-10 days to listen to and evaluate your (I hope) extraordinary music, then shoot me an email [dsegal@ocweekly.com] to ask about coverage.
5.Keep expectations low, as space is limited, releases are plentiful and the music editor is a picky bastard.

And that's it. Good luck.

Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur (released June 12 by Warner Bros.) is a two-CD set of rich, famous musicians covering John Lennon songs that will raise funds to help the ravaged civilians of Sudan. It is worth the mild pain you'll experience to donate money to this eminently worthy cause while listening to some of your favorite Beatle's best solo material get molded into bland sonic paste. (You can peep the track listing here.)

The highlights for me are Youssou N'Dour's ultra-tender interpretation of “Jealous Guy” and, shockingly, Christina Aguilar's passionate “Mother.” Lowlights include Lenny Kravitz's slackjawed run through of one of Lennon's most harrowing tunes, “Cold Turkey,” Avril Lavigne's “Imagine” (Lennon's most overrated song done to syrupy ickiness by an overrated hack out of her depth), Flaming Lips' “(Just Like) Starting Over” (a cloying song sugared up to retching point), and Jakob Dylan/Dhani Harrison's limp, defanged “Gimme Some Truth.”

Still, it's only fair that you suffer a bit, even in your charitable mode, to get an infinitesimal idea of what Darfur's unfortunates are going through.