Weekend Picks: Best Coast, The Shack Up festival, Elvis Depressedly, Motion City Soundtrack, Lady God, Dark Star Orchestra, Rock For Ricky, Diamond Heist, The Kind Eye

Atmospheric Southern California indie pop band Best Coast is at The National Thursday night. Tix are $19.50 advance, $23 day of show. Doors open at 7, show starts at 6 with openers Sunflower Bean and make sure you get in early to see them. Best Coast will be heading out on tour with The Go-Go's soon for the Go-Go's farewell tour. Kind of the past and the future of LA female pop. This is Best Coast's "Our Deal" from 2011 in a video directed by Drew Barrymore:



Dark Star Orchestra is in town (well, Chesterfield, technically) for a show at Pocahontas State Park Thursday evening. Doors open at 5:30. Dark Star Orchestra will start around 6 PM and will play until 10 PM. Tix are $21.50 advance, $25 at the door. If you don't know DSO, they are the biggest and one of the longest lasting Grateful Dead tribute bands. They will often recreate a setlist from a classic Dead show. Here they are playing "Bertha" last year at Frontier Field in Rochester NY:

Friday and Saturday at The Camel and The Broadberry, it's The Shack Band's The Shack Up festival. You can get tickets for both days both venues ($35), both venues just Saturday ($20) or single day one venue ($10 - $20). The full lineup and schedule is in the poster above. It's a whole lot of good bands. Be sure to catch The London Souls. The Shack Band (natch) and Southern Belles (there's a choice to make on Friday night). Here's The Shack Band playing in Charlotte NC in June:

Lo-fi indie rock band Elvis Depressedly plays an early show at Strange Matter Friday night. It's $12 in advance, $15 day of show. Doors open at 5 PM. Teen Suicide, Nicole Dollanganger and Cat Be Damned open. Here's Elvis Depressedly's "Up In the Air":



Classic rock/jam cover band The Kind Eye is at I Don't Know Sports Grille in Chester Friday night. Show starts at 8 and there is no cover. Here they are doing "Crossroads" acoustic:



Saturday at Cary St. Cafe, there is a benefit (Rock for Ricky) to help Ricky Tubbs with his medical bills after suffering a heel fracture. Bands playing include The Taters, ,The Dimmer Twins (Horsehead fellers),Hershel Stratego, Calvin Stewart, The Lucky Stiff's Light, Diamond Heist, and more! It will run from 2 to 6 PM and there is a $5 suggested donation. Here's The Taters doing the reggae classic, "Rivers of Babylon":



Sunday, spend an evening in the park with Neil Diamond. Well, not exactly Neil Diamond, but a Neil Diamond cover band, Diamond Heist, as part of the Music in the Park concert series in Forest Hill Park. Show will run from 6 - 8 PM, it's FREE and quite family friendly. Here they are performing "Cherry Cherry" at Cary St. Cafe a few months ago:



Power poppers Motion City Soundtrack rev into The National Sunday night. Tix are $23 advance, $28 day of show. Doors open at 6:30, show starts at 7:30 with openers A Great Big Pile of Leaves and Rozwell Kid. If you've ever wanted to see Motion City Soundtrack you better get to the show. The band are saying this will be their final tour. Here's "True Romance" from their 2012 album, "Go":



Tuesday night, RVA band Lady God call you to worship at their rock n' roll altar Strange Matter Tuesday night. It's $8 to get in. Doors open at 8. Queen of Jeans, Heaters, and The Wimps open. Here's Lady God at The Camel in May:



That'll do it. Have a great weekend! MTV Classic kicked off this week. It used to be VH1 Classic. They will concentrate on '90's MTV which is not classic. We all know the only true classic MTV is '81 - '91 when the original four MTV VJs  were on. But they did kick off MTV Classic by showing the very first hour of MTV, which featured this very prescient first video. And if you are looking for a great and fun book on early MTV and music videos, I highly recommend "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution".



Tony Jordan