Friday, Friday Friday! What do your TGIF festivities entail? Perhaps some live music? Here are some highlights for tonight:
RX Bandits and The Dear Hunter with From Indian Lakes Two progressive-leaning indie alt-rock heavyweights team up for this co-headlining jaunt. RX Bandits blend guitar distorted post-hardcore riffing and grinding with prog shreds and solos, changing tempos and time signatures with more reggae-swaying riddims and ska-punk propulsion, and finish it off with keen melodic sensibility and doses of psychedelia. The Orange County, Calif. foursome hypes their first new album in five years and seventh overall, the PledgeMusic-funded Gemini, Her Majesty, which drops July 22. Rhode Island’s The Dear Hunter is another genre-jumping outfit, this one led by Casey Crescenzo (formerly of The Receiving End of Sirens) and similarly melodic and post-hardcore inclined, but more emo-yearning and experimental-rock driving with added chamber rock-style drama; they back a 2013 fifth studio LP, Migrant. 6:30 p.m. doors, State Theatre, St. Petersburg.
A.J. Vincent, Michael Parallax, Glow Low Austin-bred A.J. Vincent (formerly of Bright Light Social Hour) sings in a falsetto-reaching wail over heavy keys-driven odes (sometimes ‘70s grooving organ, other times pulsing dance-ready synthesizers) in his one-man electro-psychedelic odes. Orlando’s Michael Parallax is another solo act, his self-styled “Electronic Spiritual Revival Tent Music” brightly-hued and finely layered experimental pop delivered with zealous fervor and bursts of confetti. And Glow Low is the new project of Tampa music-makers Sandra Lolo (guitar, vocals) and Jeremy Gloff (keys, vocals), who harmonize over breezy dreamy keys-and-guitar-powered pop. 9 p.m., New World Brewery, Ybor City.
Morris Day & The Time Morris Day was credited on a string of hits with The Time (“Jungle Love” was the most ubiquitous), but it was really an early side project of Prince, who played all the instruments, wrote all the music on three ‘80s-era albums, and hired Day to sing lead in his synth-zipping marriage of funk, pop, rock and New Wave R&B, rather like Parliament lite with its dance-vibing, none-too-serious tone. Prince assembled The Time to back Day and perform the material on the road, but growing dissention in The Time ranks (who were not only underpaid but not allowed to give any input on the music they were playing) paired with incidents touring as warm-up for Prince’s actual band led to their eventual dissolution. Prince’s last Morris Day & The Time album was a reunion tie-in with his 1990 film Graffiti Bridge. The group currently records as The Original 7ven, though only six original members remain at present, and they’re still billed as Morris Day & the Time when on tour (likely for ticket sales purposes). 8 p.m., Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg.
Ba Dum Bump The name is clever — that ol’ drum-sting of a punchline — and the musicians who make it up are impressive locals collaborating on vintage-sounding music: keysman Chris Flowers, bassist Chuck Riley (Damon Fowler Band), drummer Aaron Fowler (Nervous Turkey) and slide guitar sensation Sarasota Slim. 8 p.m., Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa.
