Motörhead by Mark Marek Photography, used under Creative Commons.

Motörhead and special guest Reverend Horton Heat are coming to Club Nokia in downtown L.A. on Friday, October 9. Also on the bill are Nashville Pussy and Chelsea Girls. Best of all, LA MetBlogs has your tickets to the show.

Motörhead is one of my favorite hard rock bands. After 34 years on the road, Lemmy & co. still rock harder than most bands half their age. The influence they’ve had on rock & roll is undeniable. Ask any latter-day hard rock or speed metal band who taught them how to rock, and if they’re honest, the first name on the list will be Motörhead.

Here’s your chance to see these legends (and the other great acts on the bill) with Lucinda Michele & me!  Well, we’ll give you the tickets; whether you hang with us is up to you.

Tell me via comment below which band(s) you want to see and why. Or tell me about your favorite Motörhead song. Really, just tell me something that will convey how much you want, need, demand to be at this show. Winners will be chosen at my whim and notified via email, so make sure you enter yours correctly. Complete show info is here.

Bonus: My all-time favorite photo of Lemmy is here.

UPDATE: First, ticket winners have all been notified and confirmed. All the responses were great, and I wish I could take everyone to the show. If you didn’t win, buy tickets at the link above and meet us at the show. This is going to be an unforgettable concert!

Second, I just got off the telephone with Motorhead’s manager. He wanted to let everyone know that Motorhead will be on Jimmy Kimmel Live tomorrow (Thursday) night, so stay up late.

Finally, for those going to the show (which should be everyone,) doors open at 7:30pm, show starts at 8:00. Reverend Horton Heat goes on at 9:40, and Motorhead hits the stage at 11:00pm. Get there early to see Chelsea Girls and Nashville Pussy, and get ready for Motorhead to rock your ass off. Also, bring earplugs. Safety first.

See you at the show!

While fellow bloggers have made no bones about their passion for the unassuming Mr. Hutchinson, I was happy to hold our ticket contest and send a really excited fan. Well, two, but Chris here was so stoked that he actually wrote back when I requested a post-event write-up.

Click thru to read his opinion of this up-and-coming, and funny, musician. (more…)

Also, he's easy on the eyes.

So, my day job is at a radio station, and Eric Hutchinson’s coming in tomorrow to play a little live show in our in-studio performance space–and the viewing is so full that we’ve all been told there’s no more room. That’s the buzz on this guy–this show will sell out, and he’ll be playing way bigger venues in the future. (Haven’t heard him yet? Listen here.)

Then, totally unrelated to my work, Goldenvoice gave Metblogs some tickets to his concert Thursday, to give away! Lucky you!

A mellow evening of piano- and melodic-driven singer-songwriteriness, for fans of The Fray, Dave Matthews Band, the aforementioned Mayer, Jason Mraz, or Jack Johnson.

More info on the show can be found here.

To win tickets just leave a comment telling me why you want to see the show. We’ll randomly pick a few winners.

Darby’s dead, but the Germs are not. With Shane West–the actor whose tour-de-force performance in 2007’s Germs biopic “What We Do Is Secret” brought Darby to life on the silver screen–now singing in Crash’s place, Pat Smear, Lorna Doom & Don “It’s Just Dr. Bronners” Bolles are bringing their snarling punk rodeo back to the stage.

Should be nuts (show info here).

With Agent Orange and Spider Problem opening for them, this show will be off the hook. You’ll kick yourself for not going.

I can hook you up if you leave a comment below telling me why you want to see the show. We’ll pick one lucky winner to go see these rock’n'roll survivors tear up the stage.

I had always heard of the Old 97’s, but I’d never heard them. Until one of the guys in my building, who did a lot of work with indie labels, was let go, and his massive collection of promo cd’s was left behind.

The collection was raided by our entire office, picked and pawed through, but I grabbed the “Hit by a Train: Best of the Old 97’s” cd. I popped it in while driving home. With the first rippling, enormously satisfying chord, my jaw hit the steering wheel. By the first keening, lonely guitar solo, I was utterly sold. How could I have missed these guys while I played my Whiskeytown & Cracker cds down to the nibs? Oh well.

Now you can win a pair of tickets to this show, but you gotta tell me how YOU discovered the Old 97’s, and I hope it has more cred than my story. We’ll pick a random winner. Info on the show is here.

I hate you people.

See, I only have one pair of tickets to give away for The Hold Steady next Tuesday. If I had two pairs, or even three, I could use one for myself. But I only have one. So I have to give it to you people.

Photo by Marina Chavez

The Hold Steady is one of my favorite bands. Introduced to me by a bartender friend (quelle surprise), at first they rubbed me the wrong way. What the HELL is up with him shouting over the songs?

Then I listened to what he was saying, and the lyrics melted into the music and became the sound of the rust belt rocking the night away in dim bars, the sound of hell-bent tours to crappy clubs around the country, the heir to Kerouac, to Springsteen. The piano made me think of the Mississippi River.

So, you jerks, tell me your favorite thing about The Hold Steady. Or your favorite story about them. One lucky winner, who will not be me, will get to go to the show.

Just kidding about hating you. I love you all. Please take me as your plus-one.* (more…)

Rock! Roll! Rides! Racks (guns AND girls’)! The annual Hootenanny festival’s a celebration of balls-out rock: rockabilly, psychobilly, swingbilly (ok, I made that up)–a musical smackdown of epic proportions involving quite a lot of pomaded pompadours, cuffed blue jeans, pinup beauties & candy-apple-red devil cars.

The Reverend Horton Heat

Bands include The Reverend Horton Heat, Los Lobos, Supersuckers, Horrorpops, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Nekromantix, Lee Rocker, The Blasters and lots more, plus a car show and cool swag for sale, much of which should prolly be paying Coop royalties.

Supersuckers

Wanna go? Tell me your favorite rockabilly band & song in the comments, and post your fave passage of their lyrics. We’ll randomly choose a few winners to go rock their socks off.

Take danceable darkwave, industrial, and a dash of Peter Murphy’s soaring goth epics, and you get VNV Nation: now on their 7th album, they still own the dancefloor at gloomy clubs nationwide. Ronan, the lead singer, is totally against type though: no brooding, rail-thin ghoul in black, he’s a slightly-rotund bouncing ball of wild energy, jumping around the stage, yelling at the top of his lungs, exhorting rooms of sullen goth kids to “put down your fucking phones and dance!”

Which I love.

Wanna go? Tell me your favorite VNV Nation lyric in the comments–or, if you prefer, tell me your favorite silly goth dance.

Info on the show is here.

The lovely Neko Case will be bringing her stunning voice to LA’s own Greek Theatre this Friday and you, yes YOU, can be there. Wanna go? In the comments below, tell me the first time you fell in love with Neko’s music. We’ll randomly select one lucky winner to go enjoy the show.

Show info is here.

We gave away tickets to a couple lucky winners last week, and I followed hot on their heels to the Mogwai show downtown.

With all the wild boosterism I supply for the Orpheum, you’d think I’d have been there, but this was my first time. The semi-baroque, semi-neoclassical performance hall did not disappoint. It was strange but appropriate to see Mogwai there–such a stark, spare, deconstructed-and-reconstructed sound amidst the architectural equivalent of an Italian opera.

I wish I knew the titles of each song they played, but alas, I do not. I reluctantly hand back my membership in the Music Geek Club.

Nonetheless, the show was an aural assault that soothed you into a calm complacency as Stuart Braithwaite noodled somnolently away at his guitar, then let loose with a massive wall of sound that set the subwoofers beneath my feet (as I took pictures from the pit) thrumming, fit to rattle down the gold-leafed ceiling.

Amen to Mogwai, and a sound so wide and deep it can’t fit in words. Thanks for bringing the sublime to downtown LA.

More pics behind the jump and on flickr.

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