Tonight: Whole Wheat Bread (er, MC Chris) + The Arcane Flowers

Y’know, Mondays don’t have to suck — it’s not like it’s a requirement or anything, but rather more about mindset, at least to me. And hey, when you’ve got two cool-ass shows going on the same damn Monday (namely, tonight, May 4th), what the hell’s there to complain about?

MC Chris/Whole Wheat Bread/I Am The Dream @ Walter’s on Washington
Okay, honesty time: I’m still kinda iffy on MC Chris. He’s goofy & quirky, sure, but the whole Adult Swim craze pretty much passed me by in my Old Dude-ness; it’s catchy and fun, just not for me, y’know?

But Whole Wheat Bread, on the other hand? Holy fuck. They grab hold of the metal/hip-hop folks have been trying for literally decades now with limited success and nail it to the fucking floor, incorporating elements of reggae, hardcore, metal, punk, and (duh) hip-hop to make something totally new & badass. The band makes music that’s heavy, street, and fuck-you punk all at once, blowing the doors off all those goddamn Limp Bizkits out there in the process. Tonight’s show is worth it just to see these guys, seriously.

The Arcane Flowers/The Wrong Ones @ Boondocks
The Arcane Flowers were one heck of a pleasant surprise — frontman J.T. Trash sent me some info on the band (formerly called “Sister Devastation”; “Arcane Flowers” is a much cooler name, IMHO) and got me inadvertently sucked into the band’s sorta-rootsy, glam-y rock, which draws from The Replacements and Hanoi Rocks in equal parts. The whole thing comes off both sleazy and sweet, like the blitzed, drugged-out dude with the tattoos and too much eyeliner whose “hard” exterior conceals a soul as sensitive and easily damaged as anybody else’s. Heck, some of the tracks on here make me think of Cinderella, albeit without Tom Keifer’s shredded throat (and no, that’s not a bad thing to be missing, there). They’re playing with The Wrong Ones (not to be confused with the Glaswegians of the same name), who aren’t bad themselves, albeit more on the punkish side of the glam-rock fence. Get on up to Boondocks at 10PM — oh, and it’s free, free, free…