Reports from the scene

Locals Only

The San Diego love continues in Rolling Stone’s June 25 issue (set to hit newsstands by Friday), which will feature Rancho Peñasquitos resident and American Idol runner-up gf on the cover. According to the New York Post, Lambert will also use the forum to end speculation on his sexuality and publicly announce his homosexuality. San Diego was mentioned in Rolling Stone’s previous issue as having the “hot” music scene.

A benefit show has been scheduled for Rhythm Turner, who was recently the victim of an assault. The singer-songwriter, who was beaten by a man in Mission Beach while she was saying goodbye to her girlfriend, needs surgery to repair damage to her nose but is without health insurance. The benefit is at Humphrey’s Backstage Lounge from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 13. Guava Belly, Marie Haddad, Veronica May, MC Laura Jane and others are scheduled to perform.

The Soft Pack can certainly claim “big in Europe” status—they’ve been booked to play four festivals across the continent starting with the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, England (the largest field festival in the world) on June 28. The band is also scheduled to perform at the Roskilde Festival in Demark (July 3), the Oya Festival in Norway (Aug. 15) and the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium (Aug. 21). According to British taste-making mag NME, the band is also working on its debut album and expects it to be released by the end of 2009. CityBeat attempted to confirm, but our message wasn’t immediately returned.

Blues-rockers Joey Harris and the Mentals will release their self-titled album at a Brick by Brick show on Sunday, June 14, with Mojo Nixon, Scottie “Maddog” Blinn and Caren & Paul Kamanski also performing. The CD marks the first solo release from Harris—a veteran of the local scene who’s also played guitar with The Beat Farmers, Country Dick Montana and in Nixon’s band—since 1983’s Joey Harris and the Speedsters.

Crocodiles are scheduled to appear on Last Call with Carson Daly. The band has already taped the performance to be aired sometime in the next week.

Text confessions

What’s a text confession? Well, if CityBeat’s Will K. Shilling has your cell phone number, you’ve likely received a text or 10 from him asking random music-related questions. Shilling has some of San Diego’s biggest names on speed dial, so we thought: Why not print some of their answers? This week’s subject: Jefferson Airplane’s bastard offshoot Jefferson Starship, who play with Canned Heat and Tom Constanten at the San Diego County Fairgrounds on Friday, June 12.

Will’s text: Who’s on the Jefferson Starship?

Responses (unedited):
Amanda Suter (The Viewmasters): Sanford & Son.
Wendy Connor (entertainment accountant): George & Weezy?
Allison Gill (singer-songwriter): Christa McAuliffe. Too soon?
Tim Crowley (710 Beach Club): PIIIIIIIIIGS IN SPAAAAAAACE!
Drew Andrews (singer-songwriter): Everyone’s invited - whoever’s down to move on up to the East side!
Adam Jones (singer-songwriter): The valiant construction workers who built that city on rock and roll
Jen Correia (traffic reporter) : Grace slick the distant cousin of captain kirk
David Brown (Holiday Matinee): Fanny packs and golden girls.
Delio Bacalski (Lualta): Prolly florence.
Matt Rothenberg (Noise 292): Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate away team.
Billy Gruff (singer-songwriter): Jane, white rabbit and (somebody to love)
Rick Froberg (Obits): We all are.

View from a stool

Diablo Dimes meandered into Beauty Bar last Saturday night wearing black pants, a white T-shirt and suspenders, accented by his vaudevillian mustache and fedora, which pretty much signaled a carnivalesque blues show.

By the time Dimes got to the stage, I’d already spent four hours on a stool, too much money on beer and was thoroughly ready to hear what many call “deep-south blues.” Before he began his set, Dimes talked to me about his New Orleans roots, time spent in San Diego and the intensity and pace of living on the East Coast (he now resides in Miami).

Our time was cut short by what he called “a case of the laryngitis,” but onstage this seemed to make his voice even richer and more alluring. I nudged past half-naked burlesque dancers, scenesters and rockabilly dudes to get closer to the stage. As we all huddled together with cigarettes and 24’s of Pabst, we admired Dimes’ stage setup, which was adorned with Virgin Mary candles and shots of bourbon.

Dimes crawled about, playing on his back, then on his knees. He leapt around, squealing and rocking, swaying with the rhythm of the music. He played Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Levine with an edge typically felt in hard-core or punk. He seamlessly fused musicianship, odd vocal stylings, artistry and aesthetics. At times, he stroked his mustache and wailed on a harmonica; other times he blew on a kazoo till his breathe ran out.

Raw, respectable and everything grimy, the show was sexy, it was hot, it was Bukowskian, it was punk-rock Moulin Rouge in a dive bar. And it sure made me wish he still lived here.

The Enrique Experience

Hustlers, players and wangstas partied like it was 1989 last Thursday at U-31, as 2 Live Crew, the precursors of Miami booty-bass music and the godfathers of the “Parental Advisory” sticker, took the stage as part of Armory Massive and DJ Artistic’s ’80s and ’90s night.

“Ladies, rub on your titties,” their hype man shouted on the mic at the stroke of midnight, as original members Chris Wang Won (aka Fresh Kid Ice) and Mark “Brother Marquis” Ross—the latter armed with a bottle of Patrón Silver—took to the stage and performed such family-friendly anthems as “Pop That Coochie,” “Hoochie Mama,” “We Want Some Pussy” and, of course, their trademark “Me So Horny.”

“We never get tired of [performing] it,” Ross told me. “We was pioneers. That song always brings out the excitement, and people still love it.”

For those of you too young to remember, it’s hard to explain the impact of the Crew’s raunchy lyrics, best exemplified in their opus As Nasty as They Wanna Be, which led them all the way to a Florida court, becoming the first album to be deemed legally obscene. Yet despite retailers being arrested for selling it under the counter, it still went double platinum and cemented them as the kings of filthy rap. Think Britney’s meltdown, Lindsay’s crotch-shots and that horrible woman’s hairdo from the Jon & Kate Plus 8 show all rolled into one, and you might get close to the overall repugnance.

As for the current state of hip-hop?

“I think it’s a great thing. There’s room for everyone, and I hope it keeps on growing,” Fresh Kid Ice told me after the show. Of course, that magnanimous attitude is a 2 Live Crew staple, first displayed in the lyrics of “Bad Ass Bitch”: “The head was smokin’, I had to call my friends / In the next 10 minutes, all the boys were in / Dat was in the front and Lat was in the back / The pussy was poppin’ like Cracker Jack!”