The big concert announcement this week is the final lineup for the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas and it looks like about half of the station’s listeners were very naughty this past year. With apologies to Bad Religion, whose new “New Maps of Hell” isn’t half-bad, the first night’s (Saturday, Dec. 8 ) lineup is a real lump of diamond-wannabe coal: Angels & Airwaves, Avenged Sevenfold, Paramore, Rise Against!, Serj Tankian and Linkin Park, which will be closing the show with its terrifying blend of boy-band verses, rap-rock bridges and nu-metal choruses.

Resisting the urge to focus the rest of this post on Avenged Sevenfold–what exactly are they avenging, and why do they feel the need to be so thorough about it?–I have to admit that half of the station’s listeners must have been very good this year, because Santa will definitely be in the house for night two’s lineup (Sunday, Dec. 9): Muse, Feist, Jimmy Eat World, Modest Mouse, Silversun Pickups, Spoon and the Shins. Why, the “s” bands alone are worth the price of admission!

Unfortunately there’s no Will Call Winner here. You have to be a KROQ Street Team member to get through to Ticketmaster for tickets, and that disqualifies the whole darned thing.

So what’s the top pick? I think it just may be the Editors, Louis XIV and Hot Hot Heat at the House of Blues Anaheim on Feb. 10. You can buy tickets to this nifty triple bill on Saturday.

–Liam Gowing

[My day has included not being able to access most of my e-mail, so just this

quick note:]

He cops to not being able to name one Spice Girls song (that makes two of us, dude),

but Duke has a pretty good rundown of the evening’s music here. I might add that the lineup at Club

NME at Spaceland — pairing garagey quintet Bloodcat Love and the Jam/Elvis

Costello-influenced the Lieutenants

– sounds like fun, if you don’t have tickets to the Indie 103.1 shindig at the Avalon. Or, if you’re

feeling a little country, Sally Jaye is

playing an early set at the Cinema Bar in Culver

City.

The good folks at Rhino Records know that it isn’t Christkwanzakuh unless you get a big box set that opens you up to cool, new worlds of music. So they’ve opened a Pop-Up store through December with lots of fun, mostly alt-country themed events to spice things up. Rhino, we love you and your amazing liner notes. Here are the details.

–Margaret Wappler

[I don’t think I can hold a thought for longer than one sentence today:]

– As strong as New York trio A Place to Bury Strangers

finished its set Monday night (and as cool as the band’s hand-manipulated visuals were),

I think local three-piece In Waves upstaged

them in what amounted to a battle of the shoegazers at the Viper Room. (APTBS is at the

Silverlake Lounge tonight with Xu Xu Fang and Mere Mortals.)

— Not sure

there are many local albums I’m looking forward to in 2008 more than the Little Ones’ debut, and the quintet

just put one track from the album up on its MySpace page.

– More on these guys later, but local trio Jr. Juggernaut (pictured), who remind me

of a few of the bands I loved during the 1990s,

have signed to Suburban Home Records,

and after a nice set Friday night at the Scene in Glendale spent Saturday recording more

songs for their full-length debut.

||| Here’s a taste from their self-released mini-album: Download "Coming in Backwards."

– A press release tells me Citysearch has selected the Wiltern as the

city’s best live music venue, and while I can see plaudits based on the charm and the

feel of the place, I wonder whether anybody besides me thinks the sound is often muddier

than major-label economics there. (The Roxy won the readers’ poll.)

– This was inevitable at some point, but electro-guru Jimmy Tamborello has remixed his Silver Lake

neighbors the Silversun Pickups — the

dreamy take on "Lazy Eye" will be released on iTunes on Tuesday as part of a

six-song EP.

– The heavenly voices of the Chapin

Sisters have also found a label home — the group’s debut will be out in March on Plain Recordings.

– During the been-there-done-that disco of Afrobots’ set Sunday at the El Rey, you got

the idea that frontman Rico Dolce Riot’s microphone should hire a personal injury

lawyer.

– And this from Monday night’s John C. Reilly-as-Dewey Cox gig at the Roxy:

"The joke wore thin fast."

Highlights for Tuesday, Dec. 4

Sharon Jones’ show at

the El Rey is sold out, as it darn well ought to be. … Wise guys-with-axes Oliver Future start a Tuesday night

residency at the Viper Room. … Speaking of wise guys, Glacier Hiking plays the Key Club. …

The Cave Singers and Port O’Brien play the Echo. … Chris Stills plays the Hotel Cafe,

and John Gold heads the bill at

Bordello.

Photo of Jr. Juggernaut by Kevin Scanlon

And no, Dewy is not slang for Dewars. Last night, Sunset Blvd.’s Roxy Theater became the “Coxy.” The venerable venue (and Sony Pictures) hosted an invite-only crowd for an up-close-and-personal show with the fictional band led by John C. Reilly, aka Dewey Cox from the fake biopic, “Walk Hard: The Dewy Cox Story.”

Reilly, as Cox, was clearly having the time of his life on stage—with his rather impressive trouser snake trying to escape from his tight black pants, he looked like some sort of cross between Johnny Cash and Elvis. He immediately assumed the persona of Cox the moment he hit the stage, asking for “a large glass of your finest tequila?”

Reilly then led an ace band through a 14-song-set that wore out the audience by the end. Most of the songs (many penned by Silverlake producer extraordinaire Mike Andrews) were catchy enough—but clearly most of the industry crowd had not yet heard any of the tracks (the film doesn’t hit screens until Dec. 21).

It’s never a good sign when the onstage banter counts as the best moments of the show. Reilly’s voice could not carry the entire evening, but his riffs on puns from the old “Cox” genre were funny: “Some people came here to check Cox out…and some people, they came here to worship Cox.”

Had the band played, say, only the best tracks from the film (”Guilty as Charged,” “Let’s Duet” and “Walk Hard” really would have been enough), the evening might have been a fantastic way to kick off the band’s promotional mini-tour across the U.S. to hype the film. But anything over ten songs is self-indulgent. The parody band became a parody of itself with the audience as the loser.

–Charlie Amter

I went to see Cake at downtown L.A’s beautiful Orpheum Theater on Friday night, November 30, but ended up taking a detour to King City instead. Set up in the orchestra pit, the six-piece was apparently a last-minute addition to the Cake tour (according to ersatz frontman Chewy Marzolo) and their job was to play during set changes on the packed bill, which also included the Detroit Cobras, Oakley Hall and Agent Ribbons.

Instead, they went and stole the show. Playing unamplified, San Francisco’s King City let fly with a surprising, unpretentious, skillfully crafted yet deliriously punk brand of tango instrumental. With a lineup featuring Rich Morin and Chris Rest on guitar, the irrepressible Boz Rivera on drums, Joe Raposo on bass, Marzolo on random percussion and guitar, and Keith Douglass on plaintive, lovely trumpet (all of them veterans of other well-known bands), most of the pieces went rocketing by like Django Reinhardt recordings played at 78. Man-handling the brash, happy ruckus, however, were the unsubtle dynamics that make tango great: stops, starts, hurry-ups, even a break that smashed into the metal bridge from “Carry On Our Wayward Son.” Even when they sounded like they were making cartoon music, they were obviously wearing Astor Piazzolla underwear.

Compared to the other bands on the bill, which were trying to play important songs that were meant to convey the importance of their art, King City’s joyous mini-sets of 4-7 original compositions were like a blast of pure fun. Which is probably why the unsigned band won over the crowd and left them howling for more.

–Dean Kuipers

P.S.

Nevermind the Sex Pistols, here’s Los Angeles. Johnny Rotten and company are running their anniversary lap, but we have plenty going on to commemorate our own mighty punk explosion.

It’s the big 3-0 (if we can agree it started in 1977) and the defining event was the opening of the Masque in Hollywood, the room that gave everyone a place to play. The club’s founder Brendan Mullen will present a slide show and sign copies of his new book, “Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley,” on Dec. 6 at Track 16 Gallery. The same venue will be presenting a show of photography by scene chronicler Ann Summa, opening Nov. 17 and closing with a Dec. 15 reception featuring bands TBA. (Any suggestions?) Another signing takes place Nov. 18 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, where Holly George-Warren presents “Punk 365,” whose international view of punk includes some L.A. luminaries.

And the music itself? The great Bomp label is reissuing the Weirdos’ seminal “Destroy All Music,” collected with the band’s first EP and assorted demos and other tracks. Thirty years later, it still makes you pogo.

–Richard Cromelin

Bring earplugs: A Place to Bury Strangers plays L.A.

for the first time this week, and if the trio’s name or its reputation as “the loudest

band in New York” (and now their MySpace page has been changed to read "loudest

band in the United States") doesn’t set off alarms, know this: Frontman Oliver

Ackermann started a guitar-pedal effects company called Death by Audio six years ago when he came up

with a device called Total Sonic Annihilation.

“That about says it all,” Ackermann says with a laugh, remembering how an idea to

earn money for a vacation trip blossomed into a career making custom effects for

guitars. In the ensuing years, he founded APTBS with bassist Jono Mofo and drummer Jay

Space, wrapping his truculence in menacing sheets of distortion that color his songs

like thunderheads and appeal to fans of shoegazer and experimental rock alike.

“We’re just writing pop songs, but what we do seems to fit the whole experimental

music thing that’s going on,” Ackermann says, noting that the darkness in his music

doesn’t necessarily reflect his anger as a person. “It’s just when a feeling brings you

to that creative place, it adds fuel to the intensity of the song. I think it’s what

keeps me happy, really — it’s my form of therapy.”

It struck a chord too with Boston blogger Jon Whitney (brainwashed.com), who talked the band into

letting him release its album on his Killer Pimp imprint, although “I still

felt like some of the songs were in the demo stages,” Ackermann says. “Thank goodness

for Jon.”

||| Live: A Place to Bury Strangers plays tonight at the Viper Room

with In Waves and Eulogies and Tuesday at the Silverlake

Lounge with Xu Xu Fang and Mere Mortals.

||| Download: four songs at APTBS’s MySpace page.

Elsewhere tonight, Dec. 3

Plenty to choose from: Carbon/Silicon — the band that Mick Jones

has been doing with Generation X’s Tony James in recent years when not producing the

Libertines or Babyshambles — plays the Troubadour. Carbon/Silicon’s recent Caroline

Records release, "The Last Post," is as sharp and energetic as any teenage

British band of the moment. … Speaking of bands of the moment, Vampire Weekend brings its Afro

pop-meets-indie rock to the Echo. The New York band’s album is due out in February. …

Got soul? Sharon Jones plays a free in-store at Amoeba

Music at 7 p.m. … Venus Infers

and the Henry Clay People start

a co-residency at the Detroit Bar. … And the Binges kick off their residency at

Spaceland.

I’m pretty sure I know Katy Perry, the latest Matrix spawn, if only in that “around the hipster corridor” way. We’ve rubbed shoulders at Echo, shopped next to each other in Wasteland or maybe I just read about her in Nylon. Anyway, she looks very familiar.

Her CD is in my hands. It already felled two hardy music listeners in the office, who claim to have not been able to make it past the 50-second mark on track one, succinctly titled, “Ur So Gay.” I’m about to dive in. I will be blogging in real time. I am a little scared:

0:16: It’s starting a lot more downbeat than I thought it would. There’s some whistling going on, given a bit of the wickety-wick treatment.

0:29: Nice first line: “I hope you hang yourself by your H&M scarf.”

0:44: You’re so indie rock it’s almost [unintelligible]… You need SPF 45 just to stay alive… You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys.”

1:39: “I can’t believe I fell in love with someone who wears more make-up than [me]…” Ooooh, so this is an angry song to someone she had a thing with. How boring: I’m more into the hipster rip, aimed at any and all in the subset. On the plus side for Katie, she’s not a bad singer. Kind of meaninglessly vampy but she’s got a nice throaty tone.

2:24: Crappy scatting alert! Augh. You can’t do that for a few seconds and then bow out. If you’re going to scat and you’re not Ella Fitzgerald, then you better at least embrace it for more than 10 seconds.

2:46: The song is winding down now with some keyboard twiddling and that stupid whistling sample again. I’m a little grateful when the song gets glitchy, thanks to the whims of my ancient PC.

3:39: It ended and I don’t remember very well what I just listened to. But, in my afterthoughts, I’m thinking that the lyrics, sassy and all-knowing, didn’t really match the song, with its ironed-on samples from the 99-cent bin. I mean, whistling? Come on, even Peter, Bjorn and John will tell you that’s pretty lame.

So I made it through. The song is sort of rattling around in my head. Oh god, what if I can’t get it out?

–Margaret Wappler

P.S. The guy to the right is A.K.A. I don’t think his scarf is from H&M so I’m assuming he’s not the “gay” in question.

(Photo courtesy Ian White / Columbia)