By Seth A. McConnell

This week is over flowing with shows/concerts and live music.

Tonight at the T.R.E.A. bingo hall

Babyland -Performance based electronic funk punk (I think thats what the flier said)

With Billy Mack Collector, White Eyes and Imaginary Girlfriends.

$6     7 p.m.

I’m hoping to get off early enough to check this out. I don’t know what to really expect but it looks to be something memorable from what I’ve seen on their myspace page. http://www.myspace.com/babylandmusic it looks intense. It looks interesting.

Wednesday night July 1st.

Larry and His Flask with the Reddmen

I don’t have the flier for this one in front of me. I know its at T.R.E.A. as well. 7 pm start time and I do believe it is $5.

I caught L&HF the last time they rolled through Rapid City and they blew my mind. I didn’t know what to expect out of this “Hardcore/Folk/Punk” outfit from Oregon but what I got was one of the best live shows I’ve been to in a long time. They make the stage their own and put every ounce of themselves into their live performance. I would highly recommend catching this band. Their music recorded does this band no justice, they are a live band through and through.

Wednesday night also kicks off the Heritage festival at the bandshell in Memorial Park with Unfinished Business playing at 4, Brandon Sprague Band playing at 6:30 and Blues Bashers caping the night off starting at 9:30.

Thursday is jam packed with music as well.

Yabba Griffiths brings his brand of reggae to Summers on Seventh

and a whole slew of local rockers take the stage at the Heritage festival.

12 p.m. Old

1:30 Assault from the Sea

3 American Heavy Metal Weekend (This should be an interesting set. Fun band, great guys… weird place for them to be playing)

5:30- Fairbanks Blue (If you haven’t caught these guys yet I would highly recommend them, one of the best bands to rise out of Rapid in the last 5 years. Immensely talented not to mention great kids with great hearts playing honest music.)

7 The Reddmen

10 p.m. Sioux Falls rockers Kory and the Fireflys make their return to Rapid.

Friday July 3rd

3:30 James Van Nuys & Bob Fahey

5 Groove Daddy

7 Rooted Souls

10 Roster McCabe

Saturday July 4th

2-5:00 p.m. Battle of the Bands

5:30 Outlaws of Poker Flats

7 p.m. Riff Raff

10:30 Wakefield

By Eric Lochridge

I thought I’d open a thread for comments on the death of Michael Jackson.

The story that appeared in the Journal this morning:

Local fans reflect on King of Pop

By Journal staff

In the pantheon of popular music, Michael Jackson ranks with The King and The Fab Four as the key shapers of what you see and hear, say two local music aficionados.
Jackson, 50, died Thursday in Los Angeles. He had been singing and dancing in public since before his eighth birthday, became a No. 1 singing star in 1970, was featured in Saturday morning cartoons and gained international stardom for dance music videos, an entertainment art form never before seen.
Yes, there were the crotch-grabbing stage moves. Yes, there was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance. Yes, there were allegations about his behavior involving children.
But Jackson’s music and choreographed routines, punctuated by trademark moonwalks, created performance spectaculars that surpassed his private spectacle.
“Morning Animal” Kevin Phillips of Magic 93.9 said his morning show today will be a listener-led tribute to Jackson. Phillips will be playing songs that fans request and talking with celebrity commentator Cecily Knobler from Hollywood.
He fields daily instant requests to play musical favorites and can’t recall a show that someone didn’t request a Jackson song. His top picks are “Man in the Mirror” and “I’ll be There.”

Phillips, a radio staple in Rapid City for nearly 20 years, said his all-time favorite concert was Jackson’s 1988 performance in Minneapolis. “He moonwalked sideways, and I don’t know how he did that,” Phillips said. “He was one of a kind.”

Mike Sanborn has been writing music reviews for more than 40 years, had a weekly music column as a Rapid City Journal reporter and now markets music events at the Buffalo Chip Campground in Sturgis and elsewhere. For an upcoming project, he was listening to Jackson songs from the 1970s chart-topping Jackson Five-era earlier Thursday.

“The man was a flake, but he absolutely was a musical genius. Music history is full of flakes, all the way back to Mozart and probably back longer … but you have to concede that this guy changed rock ‘n’ roll and certainly R & B.”

Sanborn points to Jackson’s 1982 “Thriller” album, which sold a record 26 million copies, and his music video appearances on MTV among career benchmarks.

Gene Kelly, the famous “Singin’ in the Rain” film dance star, lauded Jackson’s “Billy Jean” choreographed routine from Thriller as “the most spectacular” dance performance he had ever seen, according to Sanborn.

“Everything he did he broke ground. I’m sorry that I won’t get to hear any more of his new projects. Certainly, the music community is a smaller place for his having gone.”

By Journal staff

Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot will bring his brand of folk-rock to the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City this fall.

Lightfoot, who rose to fame in the 1970s on the strength of such songs as “Sundown,” “If You Could Read My Mind” and “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” will play the Civic Center on Friday, Oct. 2.

Tickets for the show went on sale today (Friday, June 19) for at the Civic Center Box Office, The Silverado in Deadwood, by calling 1-800-GOT-MINE or go to www.GotMine.com or www.JadePresents.com. Tickets for the reserved-seating show are $35 or $45.

The show is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., with the doors opening at 7 p.m.

By Eric Lochridge

If you go
Who: Indie rock band Cursive, with Box Elders and The Reddmen
When: 8 p.m. today
Where: Dahl Arts Center, 713 Seventh St. in Rapid City
Tickets: $14 at the Dahl.

Like many indie-rockers, Matt Maginn chafes at musical labels. As Cursive’s bass player, he’s hesitant to offer comparisons because the other members of his Omaha-based band might not agree. Sow that initial seed of discord, and the next thing you know, Cursive has been erased.
So, no, Maginn told me, he’d rather not answer my question of how he would classify Cursive’s music.
Fair enough. But as a music writer, I live for genre-bending labels.
Listening to Cursive’s sixth and most recent album, “Mama, I’m Swollen,” I was reminded of a pair of ’90s alternative bands — Sunny Day Real Estate and the Afghan Whigs.
What I wasn’t reminded of was “roots punk,” which is one of the odder descriptions of the band’s music I have encountered.
So when I got the chance to interview Maginn, labels were on my mind.
“I think that’s very difficult for a band to do for themselves,” he said. “We don’t really set out to be a certain genre. … It’s weird for us to try and claim one.”
But he and I did agree that roots punk misses the mark, and that “Mama, I’m Swollen” — released in March by Saddle Creek Records — is an intriguing rock record.
“It’s sort of all encompassing. In a lot of ways, I think it reaches back to even our first record,” he said, citing the album’s range, from “quiet slow brooding” to “a little more experimental, a little more odd.”
The band is happy with the reception fans have given “Mama, I’m Swollen.”
“I think the longtime fans are the ones that like it,” Maginn said. “We’ve put out a lot of records. I feel like it ebbs and flows.”
Cursive plans to spend much of 2009 on tour, and its show tonight — with locals The Reddmen and Box Elders — at the Dahl Arts Center will be its first performance in Rapid City. Touring with a strong album of literate songs is certain to raise the band’s profile — and the national exposure of playing “Late Night with David Letterman” earlier this spring won’t hurt either.
But any notion of success is secondary to what the band’s true intentions are.
“We’ve never written with success in mind, other than to write a good song, not to appeal to a certain audience or anything,” he said. “We don’t have a plan for that. We never have. Our plan is to try to put out a different record than the last.”

Call Eric Lochridge at 394-8321 or e-mail
eric.lochridge@rapidcityjournal.com.

By Journal staff

Rock and roll icon Chuck Berry is coming to the Buffalo Chip.

The legendary musician, who scored huge hits with “Maybellene,” “Roll Over, Beethoven,” and “Johnny B. Goode,” will make his first appearance at the Chip during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on Saturday, Aug. 1.

Chip owner Rod Woodruff points out that Berry invented rock and roll.

”The truth is that (rock) came from Chuck Berry’s crazy idea that you could mix the blues with country influences and get something that moves people,” said Woodruff.

“We are honored — humbled — to have this giant coming to our stage.”

For more information or tickets, go to www.buffalochip.com.

Chuck Berry, \"Johnny B. Goode\"