Expand Your Musical Horizons This Week With Bang On A Can and The Bobs

By Tomm Carroll

Friday, March 9-Thursday, March 15—Offbeat bands offer the highlights of live music this week on the Westside. Friday finds the New York-based avant garde ensemble The Bang On A Can All Stars back in town for a concert, while Saturday sees unconventional a capella quartet The Bobs returning to one of their old haunts for a couple of shows (for details on the latter, see Pick of the Week, below).

Last time they were in town, the "new music" septet (which took its name from Gotham’s Bang on a Can Festival) performed an acoustic realization of Brian Eno’s classic 1978 tape-loop system suite Music for Airports. A piece from that opus will most likely make the set list when these musical pioneers grace the Schoenberg Hall stage on the UCLA campus in Westwood Friday night.

The group most likely also will debut material from its new album, Renegade Heaven (Cantaloupe), due in stores next week. Guitars, percussion, strings, woodwinds and "sound design" are among the BOACAS’ tools of trade. Roll over Beethoven, indeed; this is 21^st century classical music.

The genius that is Duke Ellington will be celebrated Friday evening when husband-and-wife jazzers Cleo Laine (vox) and John Dankworth (sax) offer their tribute to the late composer with "The Dame and the Duke: A tribute to Duke Ellington" at the Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University in Malibu

.Now that we got the school shows out of the way, let’s get to the clubs: The mojo’s rising at 14 Below in Santa Monica Friday night as veteran Doors cover band Wild Child performs. Long before there were tribute bands, WC was doin’ its Doors thing, and here’s your change to see a group that has way outlasted the band it celebrates. Also on the bill that night are Hydroplane, Ten Pound Brown and Groove Foundation. And Sundays, as always, finds the Grateful Dead-inspired Cubensis reliving the music of Uncle Jer and company.

Rusty’s Surf Ranch on the Santa Monica Pier is painting the town red this weekend. Rockers Red Line 7000 perform Friday night, while Saturday marks the return of the Siberian surf-a-billies, The Red Elvises. From red to blue(s): Ramfunkshus ushers in the weekend at Santa Monica’s Home of the Blues, Harvelle’s, with its famed TGIF party show, while The Blistering Blues Band lives up to its name on Sunday at the club. And the ragtime blues, as performed by Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan, can be experienced Saturday night at Boulevard Music in Culver City

Gifted singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Susan Werner works her folk-friendly magic at McCabe’s Guitar Shop Friday evening.

Reggae outfit Boom Shaka shares the bill with Mama’s Kitchen and Band-Name-of-the-Week Norm with a Serious Jones at Temple Bar Saturday night. Friday at the club, it’s Quetzal, Five Degrees of Soul and El Tambor. Wednesday is "Rock Night" at the usually disco-leaning Lush in Santa Monica with Neva, Sweet Leaf (Black Sabbath anyone?) and Dogma I. Over at the West End in Santa Monica, it’s Johny’s Place Wednesday evening.

You didn’t see him in Ken Burns’ Jazz, but you can catch him live at the Jazz Bakery this week. Seventy-year-old Master of Space and Timing for the piano, the legendary Ahmal Jamaal transforms the instrument for six nights beginning Thursday. Another legend hits town this week too as the great Hadda Brooks, accompanied by Senator Eugene Wright, performs for your supper at the Lunaria dinner club in Century City Friday night.

PICK OF THE WEEK

THE BOBS

McCABE’S GUITAR SHOP

SATURDAY, MARCH 10

7:30 AND 9:30 PM

Warning: This is not your parents’ a capella quartet. Grammy-nominated and A Capella Community Award-winners (no kidding), The Bobs are back. And back where they got their first SoCal gigs some 20 years ago: McCabe’s Guitar Shop.

Called then a "Nu-Wave A Capella" band, the Bobs (no one’s named that; it stands for Best of Breed),

used to spruce up their already oddball set with remarkable arranged-for-mouth versions of rock classics such as "Psycho Killer" and "Helter Skelter," the latter for which they were nominated for a Grammy.

Touring behind the release of their latest CD, Coaster (Primarily A Capella), the Bobs are not the same band they were back then. In fact, although the three-guys-and-a-gal format has reamined constant, only basso pro-fun-do Richard Greene (the voice of "Fall–in-to-the-Gap" is an original. But that’s not meant to suggest this is a nostalgia act. Oh, no. You will still be mesmerized by the amazing vocal pyrotechnics, and will still need to keep an ear out for out-of-nowhere cover tunes.