LOVELY BAD THINGS

Brought together by time and fate—they’d all known each other since high school, but finally made a band together in 2009—and named by some kind of esoteric computer filename error too complex to further explain, Orange County’s The Lovely Bad Things are the hyperactive omnitalented and relentlessly hilarious garage-pop band who crowdfunded their way to an encore performance at the world-famous Primavera Sound festival and whose new album The Late Great Whatever was titled during a dream at the suggestion of their spirit guide, who happens to look strangely like Dinosaur Jr drummer Murph. Was that a lot to take in all at once? Then now you can sympathize with the cop who pulled them over on their way to the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico: “‘Who here has ADD?’” Brayden Ward remembers him asking. “And we all raised our hands.”

The Lovely Bad Things are Brayden and brother Camron Ward, Tim Hatch and Lauren Curtius, each a multi-instrumentalist and each devoted to a bottomless knowledge of ridiculous pop culture and comprehensive appreciation for the Pixies, though if you dismantled their songs and their record collections both you’d find Sonic Youth, Modest Mouse, the B-52s, the Wipers and of course Redd Kross, whose sense of humor and sense for a hook the Bad Things have inherited. They mostly come from the city of La Mirada, but their true home is the Lovely Bad Pad, a converted suburban garage—converted personally by the band members—that’s hosted truly legendary backyard punk shows, up to and including a surprise set by Peter, Bjorn and John, who know a good thing when they hear it.

It’s this combination of D.I.Y. spirit and off-the-wall luck that carried The Lovely Bad Things from that backyard to a cassette release on trendsetter label Burger Records that would be called one of the best L.A. punk releases of 2011 by the L.A. Weekly. And from there they ricocheted into a surprise slot at Primavera Sound festival, crowdfunding and benefit-showing just barely enough for airfare to get there and winning over their audience forever once they did. Now, after building a fan base show by show and person by frothing-at-the-mouth person—a guy once came all the way from Belgium to see them play one special song—The Lovely Bad Things have finished The Late Great Whatever for Volcom Entertainment.

THE BLANK TAPES

The Blank Tapes is the monicker of Los Angeles / San Francisco based multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter Matt Adams, who has produced 9 albums of  “winsome pop tunes” (OC Weekly) and “Kinks-plus-Creedence roots-rock ‘n’ roll” (LA Record) recorded almost entirely by himself on an 8 track cassette tape recorder in garages, basements & sheds across the California coast.  Lately his band has consisted of Pearl Charles, DA Humphrey, & Will Halsey and the four piece recently toured Europe for their second time sharing stages with the likes of Thee Oh Sees and R. Stevie Moore.  Immediately before that, they toured Japan for their first time along with the director of the surf movie Stoked & Broke by Korduroy.tv (which includes over a dozen Blank Tapes songs in the soundtrack and has gained international acclaim within the surf community). Earlier this year, they also toured Brazil for their second time (after having 2 of their songs featured in TV commercials), not to mention all of the massive amounts touring they’ve done here in America.

While Adams and co. are currently finishing up a new studio album called Vacation (to be released in early 2013), the band is set to release their newest 7″, I’m Back on San Francisco’s 20-Sided Records! Also, the band recently released a wonderful cassette only release, Sun’s Too Bright, on Fullerton’s Burger Records. Before that they released a split cassette called Invisible Colors on Portland’s Curly Cassettes label along with a vinyl & CD of Home Away From Home on LA Records’ White Noise label, which showed a new pschedelic rock direction different than their previous folk rock albums. Aside from music, Matt Adams is also the artist behind all of his posters & album covers and has even worked for MAD Magazine at one point!

LAKE

CRUEL SUMMER