The latest from Special Event Productions is that Cruisin’ registration is sold out, so I hope everyone who wanted to participate in the car show next weekend have got their tickets already! Meanwhile, the headline concerts, the Vogues and the Ripchords, are still selling tickets with a week to go. What are you waiting for?

Apparently late on Saturday night there was a huge brawl outside of Seacrets, involving literally hundreds of people, and 23 police officers. Four officers and three civilians were injured, including one who was bitten by a police dog after throwing a punch at the dog’s handler. Ten people were arrested on various charges.

Surprisingly, despite the fact that some of the arrests were for property damage, this doesn’t seem to have hurt Seacrets. The club is still open for business, and is not itself under investigation. Those who were planning to catch the Jim Long Band, Wizdom Reggae, or Star69 this weekend should count themselves lucky — and please, behave yourselves. Nobody expects club-goers to behave like museum-goers, but a word to the wise: when you feel like you’re one drink away from wanting to punch a cop, you might want to stop drinking.

Further information on the story can be found at The Examiner, Delmarva Now, and pretty much all over the internet.

This is an exciting time of year — we just got through with Springfest (and it was awesome, and it didn’t rain after all!), and now it’s already time to remind you to buy Cruisin’ tickets before they sell out!

In case you need motivating, I dug up some YouTube links spotlighting this year’s headliners:

Here’s a nice, old-timey video someone put together to complement The Vogues’ 60’s hit “You’re The One.”

And here are the Rip Chords, performing in 2003 in Austin, Texas.

Sure looks like fun, doesn’t it? There’s still time to get in on the action, but not for much longer!

This weekend, Ocean City is hosting a Festival of Music at the Roland E. Powell Convention Center. The festival is a big-deal regional competition for high school music groups, including choruses, bands, chamber groups, and orchestras. The young musicians competing in this event will receive coaching from pros, and have the opportunity to perform in a parade along the boardwalk. In addition, winning groups get to perform in tomorrow night’s awards ceremony. The schedule of events is listed on the Festivals of Music official website, here.

I just wanted to take a moment to wish the best of luck to the kids taking part in the Festival. It sounds like a great opportunity to grow as a musician, and I hope that one day lots of you will be pro musicians being spotlighted in this very blog.

Okay, so it’s raining. Don’t tell me you’re going to let that ruin your whole week. Look at it this way, at least you won’t show up at Seacrets with an oh-so-unfashionable sunburn, right?

So now that we’ve established that the good blog-readers of Ocean City are going out and partying every night this week, that just leaves the matter of where to go. And, as usual, I have plenty of opinions.

Tonight, maybe you’d better just rest up. It’s going to be a long week, if I have anything to say about it.

Tuesday — Lower Class Blues at Seacrets. No, I’m not just recommending them because they are cute boys. I’m recommending them because they are REALLY cute boys. Well, that and because, as I said before, we have to get out there and show these DelMarVa area bands that OC has the best venues, the best scene and, obviously, the best audiences. And that means you guys! I know you can make them forget all about Dewey Beach.

Wednesday — The Singing With the Stars finale at Babe’s Lounge at the Blue Ox. … not that I have a secret weakness for karaoke or anything. At all. Shut up.

Thursday — Reggae night at Castaways. Nothing too new or exciting, but it continues to be one of the best ways to spend a weeknight in the OC — but maybe I’m biased by the $2.75 Red Stripes. Who wouldn’t be, though? And the band for this week is still TBA, so it’ll be an adventure — with the kind of bands that Castaways draws, it’s not like you’re risking anything.

Friday — Lauren Glick Band at the Steer Inn Tavern in Ocean Pines. Sure, it’s outside of OC limits, but I bet you haven’t been there before, have you? It’s a fun, very old-school bar with pool tables, dart boards, etc, along with a classic collection of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia. Being a pretty low-maintenance, just-a-beer-please-no-fancy-stuff kind of girl, I can get down with that. But you know I wouldn’t recommend a show if I couldn’t stand behind the headline act, and I don’t think I’m going to disappoint you this time around. Lauren and her band received this year’s Entertainers of the Year award from Coconut Times with good reason. They’re a lively, sassy update on classic folk-rockers like Janis Joplin and Joan Baez, combining folk and country influences with good old-fashioned rock and roll.

Saturday — Marty McKernan at Shenanigans’. Okay, nothing revolutionary here, but we at Ocean City Blogs will always have space for a Shenanigans’ shoutout. The people there are seriously like family. And this weekend is the opening of their 2008 live season, featuring Marty’s sets on Friday and Saturday. Don’t miss the first opportunity to see all your old friends again this summer!

… so I thought I’d share my favorite of the photos DelmarvaNow.com posted from the Dewey Beach Music Festival in Delaware:

That’s Lower Case Blues, a Rehoboth-based band that does quite a few dates in Ocean City, including an April 30th gig at Seacrets.

It looks like the festival was a pretty big success, with lots of local bands playing and fans coming out to show their support. But come on, everyone knows that when it comes to rocking, Dewey Beach just can’t compete with the original OC. So when you come out to Ocean City this weekend or any weekend, remember to show plenty of enthusiasm for acts like Lower Case Blues. Let them know that, whatever Dewey Beach has been telling them, Ocean City is still the rock capital of DelMarVa.

I know, I already told you that you should go see Bill Haley’s Comits at Springfest next weekend. You know already. But it never hurts to let you see for yourself. So here’s a video of the band in 2006, rocking the classic hit “Shake, Rattle & Roll”

Compare to a classic clip from the band’s heyday:

Impressed yet? For more information, you can check out their page on my all-time favorite resource site, AllMusic Guide, which has a complete discography and other vital statistics but is sadly lacking a bio. Or you could just, you know, go to the show.

Happy Springfest, everybody!

Just touching base to share my pics out of Springfest 2008’s astounding variety of musical acts. If you’re only going to see three bands next weekend, these are the ones to catch:

1) Three Dog Night — Just to get the obvious out of the way first. You know this is the one everybody’s going to be talking about. Tickets for the big show run $15-$35 dollars, which is really a bargain for a national classic-rock name with  almost all original members. And really, can’t you see yourself sharing the Inlet Park sunset with a tipsy but good-natured crowd of fellow vacationers, belting out “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue see, and joy to you and me”?

2)   Bill Haley’s Comets — okay, I am NOT OLD. I just, um, really enjoy a lot of the same music that old people happen to enjoy. It is genuinely good music, seriously. And Bill Haley and his band may not be the newest hipsters on the indie scene, but I guarantee that they will make you dance more than that new Silversun Pickups EP will. The band is known for getting audiences moving. After all, there’s a reason why people have been dancing to this music for the better part of a century.

3)  Randy Lee Ashcraft — There are a lot of musicians coming to play from all around the country, but I had to round out my list with a local boy whose music represents the spirit and culture of the Eastern shore. This is real beach music, and you owe it to yourself to give it a listen. Especially if you, like me, are a native Marylander with a soft spot for your home stomping grounds.

See you all at the shows!

You’re advertising a couple of gigs by Jett Stream up on your site there. You might want to change that, because the band is actually Jettstream, one word, as Google very helpfully informed me. So you know, in case you want to change that…

Anyway, since looking up Jett Stream isn’t going to do anyone any good, I might as well let everyone know that Jettstream is a five-piece, local Maryland band that specializes in Southern and classic rock. So hey — one show where you’re actually supposed to scream for Skynyrd covers. They’re performing at the Purple Moose on Friday the 18th and Saturday the 19th, with Baltimore’s own Jupiter Lee, a prog-inspired percussionist/synth wizard whom you can check out on MySpace (yay again for Web 2.0). Apparently Jettstream (one word!) and Jupiter have rocked the house together at a few other MD venues, so it could be easily worth it to celebrate the spring with a night of rock and roll.

So it’s well-known that every rock snob secretly enjoys at least one non-rock genre, preferably something cheesy and embarrassing that his/her parents listen to. In my case, though, I don’t think it’s too bad — I just really, really like Irish music. I’m not talking about the Dropkick Murphies here (although I do like “Shippin’ off to Boston” an awful lot), I’m talking about old dudes with lilting accents singing about Danny Boy and whatnot. Yes, I am serious. I’m talking about this:

So yeah, I’m real hip, right? You’re going to stop taking my recommendations now? Hear me out, though. These bands, the ones who play at places like Shenanigans, Off The Boat and Malone and the Lads and the rest, they’re talented musicians as well as being oral historians. These people are passing along their families’ folklore, the traditions of generations of guys with fiddles and drums and flutes and what-have-you. You also have to look at the level of rhythmic complexity, which is always sometimes I look at in a band — it’s why I love breakcore, but it’s also why I love the Rankin Family. The bodhran, the drum used in Irish music, allows for some really virtuosic technique, involving rapidly alternating between hitting the drum head and it’s wooden frame. I actually have a bodhran, although I never got good at playing it.

So yeah, I am not embarrassed to recommend that you all go to Shenanigans and listen to music performed by people who could have voted for Eisenhower. They’re keeping traditions and techniques alive that haven’t been taken over by commercial interests or assimilated into bland “mainstream” music like so many of our folk traditions have. So come on, give Malone and the Lads a try, this summer at Shenanigans or at any of their OC venues. And if you have a few pints and find yourself singing along to “Danny Boy,” well, I promise I won’t tell the guys at the record store.