Here's where I'd be

These are bands we especially dig, not full
listings. For those, please see Concerts and Clubs. For more top shows featuring local acts, please see Nightgeist.

Wednesday, Oct. 8

PLAN A: Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s, David Vandervelde, Judgement Day @ The Casbah. Margot’s nucleus is composed of a high-grade obsession with Wes Anderson movies along with the delicate fusion of indie rock and chamber pop. PLAN B: Yngwie Malmsteen @ House of Blues. Pat, I’d like to buy Yngwie a vowel. While I’m at it, I should probably also buy him a beer for being regarded as one of the best guitarists ever. PLAN C: The Most Interesting Show in the World @ Belly Up.  If a multinational collection of acrobats, fire jugglers, aerial performers, dancers and burlesque singers (accompanied by The Drowning Men and DJ Gabe Vega) sounds like a freak show, that’s because it is. BACKUP PLAN: Natural Vibrations @ ’Canes.

Thursday, Oct. 9

PLAN A: Quintron & Miss Pussycat, Golden Triangle, Christmas Island @ The Casbah. An enigmatic multi-instrumentalist (Quintron) meets a singing puppeteer (Miss Pussycat), they get married, play theatrical organ-grinding electronica and live happily strange ever after. PLAN B: Duffy, Eli “Paperboy” Reed @ Humphrey’s by the Bay. I’m not sure who would win in a bikini mud-wrestling match between Welsh pop singers Duffy and Jem, but I probably wouldn’t mind finding out. PLAN C: The Dogs @ Bar Pink. The Dogs were bred in the same kennel (Detroit) that spawned their heroes The Stooges and MC5. Then the punks relocated to Los Angeles and eventually slipped under the radar for a decade or two until they’ve now been unmuzzled to “Slash Your Face” anew. BACKUP PLAN: Sara Bareilles @ Spreckels.

Friday, Oct. 10

PLAN A: Santogold, Mates of State, Low Vs. Diamond @ House of Blues. All that glitters is golden (kind of like fried Twinkies) with our Santogold feature on this page. PLAN B: Rival Schools, Innaway @ Brick by Brick. Rival Schools aged enough during a recent five-year absence to be declared “post-hardcore,” but the fragments that originally made them an all-star collage of hardcore notables (Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand, CIV, etc.) are still there. PLAN C: Henry Rollins @ 4th & B. Hank may have long since given up waving his Black Flag in favor of delivering acerbic social monologues, but his vein-popping soliloquies are still as fierce as ever. (See our interview with him on this page.) BACKUP PLAN: Genghis Tron @ Che Café.  

Saturday, Oct. 11

PLAN A: Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, Rip Carson, The Rumblers @ The Casbah. Big Sandy and the Boys have melded western swing, country boogie and rockabilly well enough to be named to the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Yes, apparently there’s a Rockabilly Hall of Fame. PLAN B: Andre Nickatina, The Grouch & Eligh @ ’Canes. The cocaine rapper formerly known as Dre Dog teams up with Living Legends Grouch and Eligh for their bimonthly hip-hop sojourn to Mission Beach. PLAN C: Kataklysm, Dying Fetus, Eluveitie @ SOMA. Montreal death-metal stalwarts Kataklysm spearhead the “Death by Decibels” tour, which features lots of the dark and heavy. In case the tour title (or a band called Dying Fetus on the bill) didn’t tip you off. BACKUP PLAN: Sonny Landreth @ The Museum of Making Music.

Sunday, Oct. 12

PLAN A: Kings of Leon, We Are Scientists, The Stills @ House of Blues. This triple bill of indie-rock notables will be a tough ticket to snag, but it’s probably worth hiding beneath the Gospel Brunch buffet table for six hours in order to get in. PLAN B: Jolie Holland, Herman Dune @ Belly Up. Jolie—formerly of The Be Good Tanyas—makes a San Diego stop just days after satiating fans (including Tom Waits and Sage Francis) with her latest alt-folk effort, The Living and the Dead. PLAN C: San Diego Jewish Music Festival @ Garfield Theatre (La Jolla). Gentiles and Chosen People both get their dance on thanks to a range of acts that include The Klezmatics, His People and the Zukerman Chamber Players. And, for the record, O.J. Simpson: still not a Jew. BACKUP PLAN: Spell Toronto, Lanterns @ The Casbah.  

Monday, Oct. 13

PLAN A: Hotel Café Tour @ Belly Up. Hotel Café revs up its singer/songwriter star-maker machine again with a fresh lineup that includes San Diego’s own Anya Marina, along with the likes of Meiko, Brooke Fraser, JayMay and Erin McCarley. PLAN B: Gavin DeGraw, Charlotte Sometimes @ House of Blues. Gavin and Charlotte basically deliver a more streamlined Downtown variation on the Hotel Café Tour stop in Solana Beach. PLAN C: Wolves in the Throne Room, Nachtmystium @ The Casbah. Wolves are some despondent boys from Olympia, Wash., whose hearty black metal proves once and for all that it rains way too damn much in the Pacific Northwest. BACKUP PLAN: Sene Africa @ Anthenaeum.

Tuesday, Oct. 14

PLAN A: The Rumble Strips, Birdmonster @ The Casbah. The Strips have some stylistic speed bumps (did the world really need—or ask for—a ska cover of “The Boys Are Back in Town”?), but they add enough giddy English indie rock to make me forgive and forget. PLAN B: Free Moral Agents, Illuminauts, Zechs Marquise @ Beauty Bar. You’d expect some good and proper aural weirdness from a psych-rock band (Free Moral Agents) led by a member of the Mars Volta (keyboardist Ikey Owens), and FMA doesn’t disappoint. PLAN C: White Lion, Pretty Boy Floyd @ House of Blues. White Lion didn’t have ’80s minx Tawny Kitaen star in their music videos like Whitesnake, and they didn’t burn down a Rhode Island nightclub like Great White, but they did give us the power-balladicious “When the Children Cry.” BACKUP PLAN: Floater @ Winston’s.