One Month Till Street Scene

It was one of my New Year's resolutions to return to Coachella music festival but I missed it. I've been looking for something comparable ever since. When I saw the lineup for San Diego Street Scene 2009, I realized I had lucked out and could attend a superior festival instead (the artists in bold below are the ones I recognized). Street Scene also happens to be celebrating their 25th anniversary this year (August 28-29). 50 performances on five different stages over two nights means that you can probably only catch five complete sets each night. As far as the music goes, my top picks are Deerhunter, Band of Horses and Cake on Friday and Silversun Pickups, West Indian Girl and Bassnectar on Saturday. I feel kind of obligated to check out the headliners: Black Eyed Peas, Modest Mouse, M.I.A. and Public Enemy. As far as sheer stage presence goes, I'd like to witness Wavves, Girl Talk, Sharon Jones and Blue Scholars in action. To help me decide which performances were expendable, I listened to song samples for all the artists and I picked my favorites for each one, making up the playlist below (see my right column for the first half):

1. "Vertigo" - Anya Marina; breathy former San Diego DJ
2. "The Funeral" - Band of Horses; my favorite single from 2008
3. "Underground Communication" - Bassnectar; came on one of my XLR8R magazine compilation CDs with a Brazilian "baile funk" remix
4. "Pump It" - Black Eyed Peas; aside from this song's video and "Where Is the Love?" I find them pretty annoying
5. "Sugarfoot" - Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears; truth be told, I'm not into the blues, never have been, never will
6. "Motion Movement" - Blue Scholars; underground rap is where it's at
7. "Polaris" - Bostich; member of Nortec Collective (see below)
8. "Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check" - Busta Rhymes; since A Tribe Called Quest's "Scenario"
9. "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" - Cage the Elephant; it sounds like something that would be popular in Britain... which it is
10. "Shadow Stabbing" - Cake; I'm not the most loyal fan, but they slappa da bass, man
11. "Not Even Stevie Nicks..." - Calexico; too country, but I like the mariachi stuff
12. "Testify" - Carney; once again, too Southern for me
13. "You're So Gangsta" - Chromeo; freestyle nerd love
14. "Cabbage Town" - Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band; the only country I own is Conor's "I Don't Want To Die (In the Hospital" and Hank Williams Sr.
15. "I Wanna Kill" - Crocodiles; I'm loving this bandwagon sound right now
16. "Are Friends Electric?" - The Dead Weather; pretty straight cover of the Gary Numan classic; not as repetitive as their own songs' lyrics
17. "Rainwater Cassette Exchange" - Deerhunter; my self-professed new favorite band last year
18. "Trashcan" - Delta Spirit; local band, a little country
19. "Lover" - Devandra Banhart; I didn't know him till Nick and Norah's
20. "Born to Bleed" - Dirty Sweet; since I'm not into the blues, it should come as no surprise that classic rock's never been my thing
21. "BIG" - Donald Glaude; if I can, I'd like to squeeze his set in for some of those old school house sounds
22. "Svart Ar Himlen" - Dungen; I like Swedish synth pop but this stuff's beyond me
23. "Jakolando" - Extra Golden; normally I like world music but I don't know here
24. "Mirror Error" - The Faint; always reminds me of Don Guero
25. "Fancy Dancy" - Gram Rabbit; these kids are crazy but this song's fun
26. "Royal Gregory" - Holy F***; years before I understood what the term actually means, my friends and I used to call anybody trying too hard "hardcore" - our definition applies here
27. "The List (Clean Version)" - The Knux; NOT Bill Cosby's hip hop
28. "The International Tweexcore Underground" - Los Campesinos!; it's got its moments
29. "Mother Puncher" - Mastodon; their current radio single is too close to System of a Down for my comfort, but fortunately their style changes with every album
30. "Daylight" - Matt and Kim; only time will tell if they're more than a one hit wonder
31. "Paper Planes" - M.I.A.; I hated the Slumdog soundtrack
32. "Float On" - Modest Mouse; from what I can tell, their best albums seem to be The Moon & Antarctica & We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
33. "Ripped Knees" - No Age; more compulsive than the Strokes?
34. "Funky Tamazula" - Nortec Collective; people laughed at me when I first got into Kinky
35. "An Eluardian Instance" - Of Montreal; this is an example of something that happens a lot in our Age of Auto-Tune - good music with bad vocals
36. "Cut Chemist Suite" - Ozomatli; versatile
37. "Give It Up" - Public Enemy; ah, where do I begin?
38. "Ghost Under Rocks (Passion Pit Mix)" - Ra Ra Riot; I like the strings
39. "Inspiration Information" - Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings; soul music is BBQ music and who doesn't like BBQ?
40. "Lazy Eye" - Silversun Pickups; my Smashing Pumpkins replacement
41. "Nobody's Driving" - Ted Leo & the Pharmacists; I don't know yet
42. "Sweet Tides (feat. LouLou)" - Thievery Corporation; I'm curious to see how this would work for a festival
43. "Frontin'" - Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue; I prefer my jazz unplugged but I couldn't resist this Pharrell Williams cover
44. "Goth Girls" - Wavves; local act I must see to believe
45. "Still Lost" - West Indian Girl; local radio favorite
46. "Kantoi" - Zee Avi; see also her Christmas song

OUT ON DVD TODAY: THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN COMPLETE SEASON ONE