File this under the Department of Internet Bots Making Dumb Mistakes That We All Get to LOL At — the same department that gave us Bruce Springsteen's show at Mercy Lounge and Rush's appearance at Loveless Barn. According to Bandsintown — whose slogan is "We live for live music" but considering the circumstances should perhaps be "We're turned on by live music" — Macca will play The High Watt on June 28. Could it be?! Sir Paul will of course be taking the long and winding road down to Manchester, Tenn., in June, where he'll be headlining Bonnaroo. Perhaps he's camping out for a while, planning to pop up for a very scaled-down performance at the small-capacity High Watt?
No. Of course not. Bandsintown's aggregators made a mistake. As you can see at this ticket link, Wings Over Nashville — a tribute to Paul McCartney and Wings — will be playing the Watt on the 28th. The false listing even made its way onto Ticketmaster's Macca page, though I imagine that will be corrected before too long.
What do you get when you combine lo-fi C86-style twee with lifestyle lyrics about cats and weed? Best Coast, who brings their sonic slacker antics to Exit/In next Wednesday. Tickets are still available; you can purchase them here. AND, a single pair of tickets is available for free here on the Cream. They’ll go to the commenter who can conjure the funniest, most clever caption to accompany the apropos LOLcat image above (via). So put your peace pipe to work and get LOLs flowin’.
Also, be sure to include your email address in the appropriate field. We won't publish it, but we'll need it in order to contact our winner. We’ll pick a winner Wednesday at noon, so if you actually want do want to win both the contest and the tickets, please be reachable then. It’s your life, don’t fuck this up.
OK, go!
Well, it looks like I'm not the only one ready for the long weekend — it seems the entire rap scene has checked out for a little R&R. There is nary a new track nor video! And I can't hold it against y'all, because the sun is shining, the air is cool, and it's getting really close to grill o'clock. I mean, why not kick off the summer early? This work shit is for the birds. And since we've all got our priorities — party, party and of course party — why shouldn't we have a dope soundtrack, even if most folks have already cranked up the slack-off knob? Wally Clark of Gummy Soul has dropped a couple of mixtapes in the past month or so — Chicano Rap Oldies and Tim Dog is Alive! — that have the signature GS combination of classic vibes and smooth, smooth sounds. Basically, Wally has your long weekend jams fresh and ready for you, all you gotta do is download them.
And since we're here, I've posted a fine selection of GS mixes from the archives. Download them all, put them on repeat and enjoy the weekend.
On Friday, July 19, the lineup will feature long-beloved Middle Tennessean power-pop heroes The Features, whose self-titled album was released via Kings of Leon's Serpents and Snakes Records earlier this month. July 20's bill will feature rock 'n' rollers The Whigs and The Weeks, the latter of whom also recently released a long-player via Serpents and Snakes. We've got plenty more excellent talent and specials and surprises lined up, and we'll announce all that in the weeks to come.
Tickets for the shindig are $10 per night, but for a limited time, you can get a two-night weekend pass for $15. Get your July 19 (Features night!) tickets here, and your July 20 (Weeks/Whigs night!) tickets here. Or take my word for it and just go ahead and do that weekend pass. Now, follow me after the jump, where we'll get in the mood with videos courtesy of The Features, The Weeks and The Whigs.
But indoor kids and outdoor kids alike will take note of the handful of good shows we have going down this weekend. Tonight you've got: Nightbeds with Tristen at Mercy Lounge; Toubab Krewe at Exit/In; JoJo (the former tween sensation, not K-Ci's partner) at SEEN; Penicillin Baby at Springwater; and plenty more. Tomorrow you're looking at: Josephine Foster at The Stone Fox; Gladiator, Chris Crofton's Jesus Lizard tribute act, at Exit/In; Face to Face at Mercy; Snakehips at The Rutledge; folks doing Beck's Song Reader at The Basement; and more. Have a look at the rest — compiled by music listings editor Adam "Tent Popper" Gold — after the jump. Let us know what we missed, and have yourselves a rugged, rustic weekend.

Now, in keeping with that tradition of musical resurrection, and with reverence for J-Dub’s other hometown of Detroit, TMR today announced a pair of oft-unsung Motor City-centric Nugget-errific archival releases.
The first is the lone, posthumous, heretofore-unreleased 1973 two-song 45 by Detroit proto-funk-punkers RockFire Funk Express, the band that would later become Detroit’s Death, which a post on TMR’s official site aptly describes as “a cause-celebre in the punk community as early progenitors of the style.” Indeed. Learn more about Death (and by extension, Life) by watching this trailer for a documentary about the band.
* As I've mentioned before, Los Colognes sound to me like a combination of latter-day Grateful Dead and latter-day Wilco. Now, personally, that's a combination that should send up a red flag for me. If you were to tell me that there's a band with a minimalistic sort of sweet and mildly corny song about getting along with your significant other and it sounds like a combo of "Touch of Grey" and "Sky Blue Sky" ... well, you'd think I'd say "thanks but no thanks." And yet, here I am enjoying the hell out of Los Colognes' "Working Together." See their recent Music City Roots performance of the song above, plus a couple more performance vids after the jump. By the way, Los Colognes will celebrate the release of their debut LP next week at The Stone Fox, and Goose wrote a pick about that one.
* Earlier this year, Holly Williams — a Williams of the Williams clan, you understand — released an album called The Highway. Not too long after, she stopped in over at War Memorial Auditorium to do one of WMA's Attic Sessions. Well, specifically, it's a little bonus video that the Memorial folks call an "Attic Extra." See that, in which Williams performs her "Waiting on June," after the jump, and catch her this Sunday, May 26, at 3rd & Lindsley — read Jewly Hight's Critic's Pick for that one.
* And finally, Cream fave Evan P. Donohue recently stopped in at American Songwriter's HQ to test out some sort of Line 6 P.A. (go to town, gear nerds). He played his tune "Tell Me, Sara," and in typical EPD fashion, it melds all sorts of rock 'n' roll, New Wave and Americana tropes into one distinctive approach. Watch after the jump.
At the very beginning of 2010, I discovered that my radio show was one of the first of many to be cancelled. As we all now know, The Man soon pulled the plug on WRVU, killing one of the purest and most diverse media outlets of any major city. Once my anger and frustration with the situation subsided, I realized just how grateful I was to have been given the chance to DJ at the station. I was exposed to some truly amazing music that otherwise would have never tickled my earholes. Much of these tunes either flew under the radar of our city’s music scene or have been collecting dust in our collective memory. Combing through the old WRVU playlist archives (here and here) brought back so many great bands and songs that I had completely forgotten about. It wasn’t easy to pick just five, but nonetheless, here's my contribution to the Cream's Best Local Rock Songs Ever series — some of the Best Local Rock Songs Ever that you’ve possibly never heard.
You know what would be awesome? A Half Japanese cover band. Somebody get on that. And while we're waiting for that to happen, let us indulge our other '90s obsessions at the Exit/In this Saturday. Cream cohort Chris Crofton is fronting Gladiator, a Jesus Lizard cover band, and we killed a few trees to tell you about it:
You know, the “get people to cover songs” thing isn't as easy as you might think. Sure, you can get bands to play A Popular Song of the Era or A Universally Acclaimed LP, but what if you want to hear a band play something that's actually, you know, cool? It's harder than a week-old cat turd. And finding enough people to perform An Obscure Indie Footnote is almost impossible, which is why we wigged out like a beer spout when we heard that local comedic provocateur, Nashville Cream podcaster and world-class curmudgeon Chris Crofton was fronting a Jesus Lizard cover band. A Jesus Lizard cover band! It takes incredible chutzpah to tackle one of Austin's most aggro purveyors of noise rock, but we can't think of anybody else more suited for the job. —SEAN L. MALONEY
Cio Cio & Co. do Weezer covers, and Take the Power Back is of course Nashville's finest all-female Rage Against the Machine cover band. We also heard a rumor that there is going to be an extra, super-duper secret special guest . I'm going to wager good money that it's Glen Frey — cause he and Crofton go way back— but your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, I'm sure it will be exactly like the video above — from the muy excellente Club DVD, filmed in 2009 at Exit/In — crossed with, oh say, Trash Humpers. Artist's rendition of the event after the jump.
I can sympathize with Jennifer Ann Ognibene about shortening her name for professional use. I can also get along with the groove she and her band lay down — "some cross between The Lovin' Spoonful and Nick Lowe" as The Spin aptly put it after seeing her open for Rodriguez at the Ryman last week. If you didn't make that show, swing by Grimey's tonight to catch Jenny O. and band kick out some jams from their debut full-length, Automechanic. The record was produced by Jonathan Wilson, a West Coaster whose recent adventures include working on Father John Misty's Fear Fun and Dawes' 2011 album Nothing Is Wrong. The team effort of Automechanic does a fantastic job of showing off Ms. O's songs and her voice, in which I hear touches of Joanna Newsom's quaint curlicues (minus the "medium from Poltergeist" affect) and a bit of Norah Jones' breathiness.
As always, the show is free, and it kicks off at 6 p.m.