Green Day cancels Burbank show it never officially announced

Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong has been hyping a free rock 'n' roll "sex party" since June 13, but not everyone, apparently, agreed with the singer's declaration on Twitter that "chaos=love." And now, the planned, not-so-secret show, one for which the band never revealed a date or location, has been preemptively canceled by the group. 

While minimal details were unveiled, the show was, according to a cancellation notice, going to be "massive." A representative from the city of Burbank tells Pop & Hiss that Green Day was looking to stage a concert on the streets near its record label, Warner Bros. Records.

"Initially," said Joy Forbes, Burbank's deputy city manager, "they said it was for Warner Bros. employees and some friends and family. The original request was for a private event." 

The band applied for a street use permit, but Armstrong's very-public tweets raised some eyebrows, as suddenly the concert was looking to be not-so-private. With Warner Bros. Records adjacent to a residential community, the city expressed its concerns.

Forbes said the city was ready to welcome Green Day with open arms, and suggested other locations as a compromise. The outdoor amphitheater the Starlight Bowl was suggested, as was Johnny Carson Park.

Either location would have eased fire and police concerns, and could have each accommodated around 5,000 or so guests. Forbes said the city was told that the more traditional venues were not what the band was looking for. 

As late as June 17, Armstrong tweeted, "The not so secret show in LA area will be some time this week." Earlier, the artist teased the show as one in which fans could bring their own booze, and he joked that clothing was optional.

The band's official statement read that "permits needed for the show were denied by the city due to crowd control issues.The anticipated turnout was well into the thousands, and after monitoring the situation, fears were the number would dramatically swell and pose serious concern for safety of concert-goers once the location was made public."

Forbes said the band's statement was "fair," and expressed regret that all parties couldn't agree on an alternate location. The first of Green Day's three new albums, ¡Uno!," is due Sept. 25. 

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-- Todd Martens

 Image: Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

FYF Fest 2012: Refused, Wild Flag, M83, Yeasayer booked

Now in its ninth year, the independent-focused FYF Fest is returning to the Los Angeles State Historic Park and for the first time since moving downtown will expand from one to two days. The lineup for the Labor Day weekend fest is an adventurous mix of acts young and old, leaning heavily on punk and veterans of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Top-billed artists this year include the reunited Swedish punk band Refused, reunited local rock band Redd Kross, the trippy M83, indie-punk supergroup Wild Flag and electro-soul artist James Blake. 

Once again the FYF Fest is working in conjunction with Coachella promoter Goldenvoice. This marks the fourth straight year that FYF has been stationed at the Chinatown-adjacent State Historic Park, also the site of this summer's dance-focused Hard Summer. While FYF has long specialized in promoting punk and noise shows in and around Echo Park, this year's lineup was first unveiled on Santa Monica's non-profit KCRW-FM, a sign of FYF's growing influence on the local scene.

Other acts booked for the festival, which will take place Sept. 1 and 2, include the reunited Desaparecidos, the politically inclined scrappy punk outfit led by Bright Eyes architect Conor Oberst, and the global influenced music of Yeasayer. All told, more than 50 acts were revealed Monday morning. Among the highlights: hard-core act Quicksand, noise-pop aficionados Sleigh Bells, '80s revivalists Twin Shadow, electronic act Purity Ring, the patiently ambient rock of Warpaint and in-the-news punk band Against Me!

Weekend passes will start at $77 and will go on sale Friday via Ticketfly. FYF Fest is all-ages and will run from noon until midnight each day. Tickets will also be available at independent record stores in the L.A. area and select Chilli Beans locations. Visit the FYF Fest site for a complete run-down of outlets. 

Complete lineup and poster is after the jump:

America, don't hate us for the Offspring's 'Cruising California'

Dear 49 other states,

Forgive us, as we forgot about the Offspring. We weren't paying attention to the band, and left unchecked, this, apparently, is what happens.

While we can't speak for all of California, please know that many of us, as much as we may love the Golden State, are tired of rock songs about California. Even we understand that it's time to be inspired by something other than beaches and skinny people, and just in case Anthony Kiedis is reading, it still counts as a "California song" even if it's about a girl whose last name is California.

That all being said, we knew that this year, what with the Beach Boys reuniting and Best Coast issuing a new album, we were pushing our luck on the California-song overkill. But we didn't even see this one coming. Honestly, we didn't think we'd encounter the words "the Offspring" printed anywhere outside of a KROQ-FM festival.

And then -- BAM -- late last week this thing called "Cruising California (Bumpin' In My Trunk)" suddenly appears, arriving with an attitude that was seemingly time-capsuled in pre-women's suffrage America. Look, we expect nonsense from Katy Perry, an artist who regularly shoots substances -- fire, frosting, dignity -- out of her bra. On the other side of the spectrum, we expect grown men in their mid-40s to not use the word "caboose" in reference to anything other than working on the railroad. 

Now, we are well aware that the Offspring long ago swapped the all-inclusive, anything-goes ethos of punk rock for the world of radio-hit novelties, so ixnay on the "can't you take a joke" comments. But having a song called "Original Prankster" in your catalog doesn't mean you can deliver a punchline, and if "Cruising California" is meant to be absurd, then the band should have done more than deliver pandering, Carly Rae Jespen synths and a video in which a gaggle of senior citizens and tweens ogle barely-clothed strippers. Yes, the video, like the song, is not age-appropriate. Hilarious.

We don't want to call any more attention to this song and video than is necessary, especially because it quotes a classic from the Ramones and we don't want think of this nightmare when we hear "Blitzkrieg Bop." We simply wanted the rest of the country to know that some of us here in California are sorry that our pop-culture personalities continue to brag about wasting their lives away in beach towns.

Most of us here work hard, and many of us are jealous of things like seasons and baseball parks that aren't full of beach balls. Should you come to California, there are not, as the Offspring would lead you to believe, travelling buses full of women in G-strings -- unless, maybe, you're still collecting royalties on "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" and can afford to act like a boob. 

Sincerely,

Pop & Hiss

P.S.

The video is below:

'Public Image was a training camp,' John Lydon says

“Don’t ruin this interview.” John Lydon drops that warning nearly 40 minutes into a conversation, when he’s asked how he feels about his early collaborators in Public Image Ltd. -- Keith Levene and Jah Wobble -- revisiting the band’s catalog on their own, outside of the Public Image name.

Known best for his work as the snarling troublemaker Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols, Lydon in 2009 reformed his post-Pistols experimental outfit Public Image Ltd. “Don’t call it a reunion,” Lydon says. “This is a continuation.”

The band, which includes later-Public Image additions Lu Edmonds and Bruce Smith, released this week its first album of new material in 20 years, “This is PiL." Here, he talks about the band’s legacy and its “continuation.”

Posthumous Joey Ramone album due May 22; live performance set

Punk rock has nothing if not a strong sense of the absurd, and Saturday will bring yet another example with the annual birthday bash honoring punk founding father Joey Ramone. It will include a live performance of a new album by a rocker who’s been dead for 11 years.

It’s no gag, though. The new album, “… ya know?” and scheduled for May 22 release,  consists of tracks left incomplete when Ramone, born Jeffry Hyman, died in 2001 of lymphoma. Ramone’s brother, Mickey Leigh, used demos and other unreleased recordings his brother made and completed the tracks with assistance from various friends and admirers including Joan Jett, E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt (who has written the liner notes), Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos, Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye and Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken.

"Over the past eight years, I've been getting a barrage of emails and Facebook messages from Joey's fans, wanting to know when this album would be coming out,” Leigh said in a statement issued Tuesday. “So having it finally become a reality gives me a feeling of triumph -- not for me, but for my brother, and for his fans. And there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that people are gonna be blown away by it."

At Saturday’s 12th Joey Ramone birthday celebration in New York, Leigh will be joined in performing the album in its entirety by many of those who played on "... ya know?" including Jean Beauvoir, Richie Stotts, Ed Stasium, Amy Hartman, Al Maddy and JP “Thunderbolt” Patterson. Tommy Ramone, the sole surviving original member of the group, is slated to be among those making guest appearances along with David Peel, Joey Lanz and others. Additional performers for the show will include the Threads, the Brats, the Indecent, Ivan Julian and the Bullys. The event will be held at the Studio at Webster Hall.

Tickets are $40 and proceeds go to the Joey Ramone Foundation for Lymphoma Research.

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Photo of Dee Dee, Tommy, Joey and Johnny Ramone courtesy of Roberta Bayley.

Redd Kross survives the 'awkward' stage, readies new album

The first new album in 15 years from Redd Kross was five years in the making. It may have taken even longer had Steven McDonald not signed on for a desk job. In the summer of 2010 the Redd Kross co-founder and current member of OFF! went to work as an A&R executive for Warner Bros. 

"It smoked me out of my hive," McDonald told Pop & Hiss Monday afternoon. While McDonald relished the opportunity to champion young artists, he ultimately found life behind the scenes "a little awkward."

"I had to figure out whether I wanted to go on tour and be an artist again, or if I just wanted to be chasing down other artists and trying to get 15% of their touring or merch money," he said. "Not to be too crass, but it was an eye-opening experience. When you have 10 bosses, you can believe what you’re saying, but it’s hard to pull it off when there’s so many voices that actually have more say than you do."

Having reunited in 2006, Redd Kross had been tinkering with new material long before McDonald took a day job, but plans to release a new album accelerated soon after he left the gig. The band, which had its beginnings in punk rock when an 11-year-old McDonald began playing music with his teenage brother Jeff more than 30 years ago, has now signed with celebrated North Carolina indie label Merge Records. A new 10-track album, "Researching the Blues," is due Aug. 7.

The band's last album, 1997's "Show World," was a crisp power-pop collection, one long removed from the band's far more scrappy start on 1982's "Born Innocent." The new album was largely written by Jeff and produced by his younger brother, and Steven hesitates to speculate on where it would fit in the Redd Kross canon, declaring it a "straightforward, simple collection of tunes."

"It’s certainly not as trashy and snotty as the ‘Born Innocent’ era," he said. "I don’t know how to eloquently put it. Styles have changed. With each of our records there was always at least a three-year gap and an evolution happening. When we were young it was happening much quicker. We were literally just going through puberty on record."

John Doe and Exene Cervenka 'Singing and Playing' on first duo album

The first-ever duo album from X founding singers and chief songwriters Exene Cervenka and John Doe began about three years ago as a humble keepsake they made as a fan-only offer to those who turned out for their 2009-2010 tour as a twosome.

Now it’s been released by a fledgling label, Orange-based Moonlight Graham Records. It the inaugural offering from what is promised to be a string of recordings by Southern California musicians that will also include former TSOL frontman Jack Grisham and beyond.

The eight tracks on “John Doe and Exene Cervenka Singing and Playing Live” constitute a combination of songs written independently and several on which they collaborated. Included are "Never Enough," which Doe recorded in a different version for his 2011 solo album, "Keeper," and "Lonesome War," which Cervenka had written on her own, but never released. ("It was tailor-made for us," Doe said.)

Pop & Hiss sat down with them last week to talk about the album for a profile in Tuesday’s Calendar. Doe, who arrived first to the interview, was invited to talk about the first track, “It Just Dawned on Me,” which stood out as a sterling example of the unexpected directions that he and Cervenka have gone throughout their careers together and apart.

“It’s a typically John-and-Exene song,” he said of this stripped-down, predominantly acoustic affair that demonstrates how they still complement one another more than three decades after X was born on the gritty back streets of the City of Angels.

Its arc begins with the singer’s moment of awareness that a romantic partner has emotionally exited a relationship. Initial reactions of confusion and hurt lead to the realization that maybe the split isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Keith Morris and OFF! are pressed for time

The first thing Keith Morris says to start an interview, before even "Hi, how are you?" pleasantries have been exchanged, is that he's "not into it."

Specifically, the member of L.A.'s punk rock royalty doesn't like preordained press days. Make no mistake, Morris is outgoingly friendly and eager to discuss his new album with OFF!, but he makes it clear from the start that he doesn't believe a 20-minute phone call with a stranger is a proper way to have a conversation.

No argument here, of course, but the comment is a tad surprising coming from Morris. After all, his band's self-titled second album, due in stores Tuesday, is 16 tracks that clock in at less than 16 minutes. Morris, it would seem, wouldn't be someone who would need a lot of time to get to the point.

"We’re urgent," says Morris, whose roles in Black Flag and the Circle Jerks helped shape the Southern California punk scene, one where snottiness and rebellion were often coupled with skateboarding. The two worlds, says Morris, share a "get-up-and-go-type attitude." 

"We’re hectic," he continues. "We don’t have a lot of time. Three of the guys in the band are fathers, so they have to be dads. Two of the guys play in other bands. One guy plays in four bands."

Don't interrupt Morris, and he'll continue for a number of minutes, detailing the pedigrees of each member of OFF!. The band is something of a punk rock supergroup or, as Morris has referred to it in the past, "Plan B," as the band was formed after sessions for a new Circle Jerks album went south. In OFF!, he works with Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket From the Crypt) and Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides).

Yet even when a song is just 44 seconds, everything feels in its proper place. These are tightly packed bursts of noise that riff, distengrate and immediately beg for a second listen.  

"That would be because of our musical director, Dimitri Coats," Morris says. "He comes from a different genre. He comes from a grungier, louder, stonier place. He’s played with Mark Lanegan and Josh Homme and all of those desert stoner guys. That’s not what we’re about, although we might have a bit of that running through what we do."

John Lydon, Public Image Ltd. return with first new album in 20 years

John Lydon, a k a Johnny Rotten, has returned to the studio with his post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd., a k a PiL, for the group’s first new album in 20 years, “This is PiL,” set for May 28 release.

Four of the dozen tracks that make up the album will be issued on an EP slated for national Record Store Day on April 21, ahead of the full collection. PiL reunited at the end of 2009 to play its first shows in 17 years, and returned to U.S. soil for the first time the following spring at the 2010 Coachella music festival.

“Well, 12 songs, where do I begin?” Lydon said of the new album in a statement issued Thursday. “Everything and anything that attracts my attention. ‘One Drop’ is about my early youth in Finsbury Park. Fantastic! Hello, we’re all teenagers don’t you forget it! At any age, stay young.

“ ‘Lollipop Opera’ is basically a beautiful bunch of background noise and music to sum up Britain and all its wonderful ambidextrousness! ‘The Room I Am In’ well that’s about drugs and council flats,” Lydon’s statement continued. “And there’s a tragedy that still continues. ‘I Must Be Dreaming’ well, you know, I must be to put up with these governments.”

The lineup on the new album includes two musicians who joined PiL in 1986 — Lu Edmonds, multi-instrumentalist and former guitarist with the Damned, and drummer Bruce Smith from the Pop Group and the Slits — along with the band's latest addition, bassist Scott Firth, who has played with Steve Winwood and Elvis Costello.

Lydon, who has lived for many years in California at the beach near Venice, formed PiL in the wake of the 1978 implosion of the Sex Pistols, taking a 90-degree musical turn from assaultive punk rock into dark and moody, often expansive explorations that relied heavily on the interplay among the musicians. It was a template that influenced subsequent doom-and-gloom bands including Joy Division, New Order, the Smiths and the Cure, and even more latter-day bands such as LCD Soundsystem.

"Imitation really is not the sincerest form of flattery," Lydon said in 1984 when PiL came through Southern California on tour. "We're not selfish about any of that, but it's really annoying and insulting to listen to an album by someone else and know they've taken all your ideas and are claiming them to be [their] own."

At that time he also predictably expressed his intention to remain unpredictable.

“We get enough [hardcore punk fans] to keep it interesting,” Lydon said. “But there’s no fun in appealing continually to the converted, so it's very nice to see such an odd diversity [at PiL shows]. That’s what makes it so damn relevant, because it is so varied. At some of the gigs we get what look like college professors with beards — obviously in their 40s, from the hippie period — and they’re pogoing in tweed suits. It’s hysterical good fun.”

He also had great fun invoking the name of the Carpenters — a group at the polar opposite of the pop music spectrum from the Sex Pistols or PiL — in making a point about the importance  of openmindedness when it comes to music.

“I see no reason why I shouldn’t like the Dead Kennedys and the Carpenters,” he said. “They’re both valid.”

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-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Public Image Ltd., from left, Bruce Smith, Scott Firth, John Lydon and Lu Edmonds. Credit: Paul Heartfield

Exene Cervenka and John Doe releasing new duo album April 10

 X founding members and singers Exene Cervenka and John Doe are formally releasing their first studio recordings together since 1993 next week on “John Doe and Exene Cervenka Singing and Playing,” from the new Orange County-based Moonlight Graham Records label.

The collection includes seven studio tracks they recorded together in 2010 and previously sold only at stops on their joint tour that year. Those recordings are supplemented by two songs Doe and Cervenka recorded live last year at Moonlight Graham’s store in downtown Orange, including an updated rendition of X’s “See How We Are.”

They will do an in-store performance together on April 10, the album's scheduled release day, at the Amoeba Music store in San Francisco. They have not announced any plans yet for additional performances in Southern California.

The label, which lists Cervenka as its A&R executive, also plans to issue music from former TSOL lead singer Jack Grisham, Blasters singer Phil Alvin and other stalwarts of the Southern California music scene.

Cervenka's most recent solo effort is the 2011 album "The Excitement of Maybe"; Doe's is 2011's "Keeper."

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-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Exene Cervenka and John Doe at a 2009 performance at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. Credit: Ringo H.W. Chiu / For The Times.