Memorial Day weekend has arrived and with it the official start to the summer festival season. If you're not already trekking to Sasquatch or attending Folklife, Reverb's got a game plan for you. For $8, you can see 4 bands play at the Planned Parenthood Fundraiser tonight at the Croc. No Rey, Sweet Secrets, Fox and The Law, and The Volcano Diary join the ranks of every group from Best Coast to The Decemberists who've raised money for the organization. Then tomorrow you can donate further to the Moondoggies' tour fund at this show at the Piranha Shop.

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Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground play Barboza May 31st.

The weather sucks today, so it's the perfect time to catch up on a dance-tastic series from local psych popsters Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground. They've been releasing covers of '80s and '90s sex jams like Hall and Oates' "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" and Mary J Blige's "Mary Jane (All Night)" under the album title Experimeducation vol. 1 for the past two months. Each jam (they've amassed seven so far) is smoother and saxier than the last, and that delightful Kay Kay bizarro edge makes them as addictive as potato chips.

Listen to the latest, Evelyn "Champagne" King's "I'm In Love," and an inspired take on "No Diggity" featuring Katie Kate, after the break, and catch the band at their next show May 31st at Barboza. Let's hope they'll be taking requests.

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Matt McDonald

Last week, I wrote about the best bands from Bellingham, listing ten favorites well worth a listen. But one thing kept coming up in the comments: "You forgot Keaton Collective," first wrote Austin Santiago, talent buyer at Bellingham venue the Wild Buffalo, a sentiment which was then repeated several times, as well as in a few emails I received after publication. In fact, Hunter Motto, the longtime Bellingham talent buyer I talked to who now works at the Crocodile, did include them in his list of favorites. But due to the convenience of naming ten bands, I foolishly left them out of the final story.

Well, it has been brought to my attention that they're playing tonight at the Tractor with Portland's AgesandAges, and according to everyone in Bellingham, it would be well worth your while to check them out. "[They] run the gamut from alt-country to indie rock to pop rock and back," Motto says, while Brent Cole, editor of Bellingham's music magazine What's Up!, noted in an email that they've won best live band at What's Up!'s awards show. Last month, their song "Fallin' Asleep" was one of KEXP's songs of the day. "They work their asses off and are a damn good band because of it," Cole says.

Listen to their most recent album, Tercera, after the jump, and see you tonight at the Tractor. Tickets here.

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... at tonight's benefit for Rainier Valley institution the Life Enrichment Bookstore, Seattle's only black-owned and operated bookstore.

The event features acclaimed local author Pat Thomas, whose book Listen, Whitey!: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 (published by Emerald City's Fantagraphics Books) studies the use of protest music by the Black Panther movement and its subsequent cultural impact. Thomas will also be spinning tracks--complete with multimedia visuals-- from the book's brilliantly curated companion album, released on our own Light in the Attic records.

Covering a spectrum of protest music from the likes of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono, as well as counter culture musical revolutionaries like Roy Harper and Gene McDaniels, Thomas says of the experience, "I found it challenging and rewarding to find and collect strong, lost music and put it back out into the culture."

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Michael Ackerman

Fugazi are giving away recordings in a similar project, the Fugazi Live Series.

Researching the material for this list, I stumbled across a site that sparked my interest in a major way. It's called TheBandBrokeUp, and is a resource for defunct bands who want to share their recordings with their fans and anyone else who wants to listen. It had a nifty interface, a disarmingly funny about page and... oh, I'll just let them speak for themselves.Take it away, guys:

So... the band broke up. Maybe you put out an album or two, and you think they're really great. But that was 12 years ago, man. Maybe you have 478 copies of the CD you released last year, before your keyboard player went to grad school in Kentucky. I suppose you might be able to sell them. Right?

Did you make the mistake of actually putting out... (gulp)... a cassette? For shame! Face it, unless you've transferred it to mp3, no one is never ever never going to listen to your album again. [...]

Let us help you. What if you just gave your songs away to people who otherwise would probably never hear them? What if they were to fall in love with them?!

Like we said, let us help you. Send us your music and we'll put it up for people to who want to hear it.

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Fresh off the airwaves with our very own Chris Kornelis, Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, R.E.M., Minus 5) will be back in town Friday for an Irish-themed bash with some old friends including Kurt Bloch (Fastbacks, Young Fresh Fellows) and John Ramberg of The Less Than Equals, members of the Decemberists (I'm thinking that includes folks from this motley crew), and the Whyos. It's called the Kiss My Royal Irish Ass tour and includes just two other dates--one in Centralia, one in Portland--to commemorate the St. Paddy's Day weekend. This is bound to be one brewhaha indeed--a beer and whiskey fueled set of Pogues covers, Irish drinking songs, and sea shanties. Fremont won't know what hit it. Details here.

Ben Blood

Head's up all you fans of our very own piano-tinkling chanteuse: Kaylee Cole will perform for FREE on that classy grand piano at Vito's, 9 p.m. tonight. The singer, who's never played Vito's before, had this to say about the show:

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Kevin P. Casey

No Rey's Alejandro Garcia, in the role of Lou Kohl.

Perhaps the two most undeserving targets of budget hawks during the Great Recession have been schoolteachers and Planned Parenthood. In the minds of conservatives, teachers somehow went from being chronically underpaid and overworked to unreasonably entrenched layabouts, and all the work Planned Parenthood does to assist women and families got reduced to one word: abortion. And not just legal abortion, but supposed misappropriation of taxpayer funds for the act, which led the Pinksploitation gurus at the Komen Foundation to cease contributing to PP until an overwhelming chorus of naysayers swiftly convinced them of the extreme err of their ways.

As long as the radical right holds sway in Congress, PP will likely remain under siege. So they need your help, now more than ever. And can you think of an easier way to lend your support than forking over a modest $6 to hear No Rey rock the Sunset on Sunday night?

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Re:Generation is a Grammy®-associated documentary that chronicles the forced collaboration of a ton of different popular DJs/producers (Skrillex, DJ Premier, The Chrystal Method) with out-of-genre artists (The Doors, Leann Rimes, Erykah Badu), and as you might have guessed (watch the trailer below), ANTICS ENSUE. The novelty of the mash-up isn't quite where it was five or ten years ago, but hey, the Grammys have been stuck about that far behind the times for as long as I can remember, so whatevs. In my mind, the real draw here (besides landing a warm place to eat popcorn when you inevitably find yourself wandering stoned around downtown later) is the clashing of personalities that make any reality TV show worth its weight in social-decay. If the preview is any guide, there should be young DJs flipping sass to old vets, and indignant old guys talking back to aforementioned young bucks. On the flip side, there could be interesting music made, life-long friendships forged, group photo-shoots, and whatnot, so don't count that out. The most important part though, is that you get popcorn, and get stoned. Have fun.

Re:Generation runs at Pacific Place Cinema at 8 p.m. tonight only. Trailer after the jump...

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I'm not a big sports fan, but when I find myself watching the game, I often root for the underdog. Watching director (and former roadie) Sacha Gervasi's 2008 documentary about his beloved, yet down-on-their luck Canadian metal band Anvil extracted a similar emotional response: here was a group who toured with Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, and The Scorpions in the early '80s and influenced everyone from Metallica to Anthrax, but in spite of all their heart, stamina, and big hair, never achieved the lasting success of their contemporaries. Their 14th LP Juggernaut of Justice was released last year, and while it hardly captures the metal one-two punch of 1982's Metal on Metal and 1983's Forged in Fire--widely considered their best--the thought that the band's back on the road, rocking out, and making the music they love brings a bit of mist to the eye.

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