DANCE CONTEST RULES: During each band, a winner will be picked by me based strictly on my own personal opinion of what is awesome. Two bands rock, two band electro, so the playing field is fairly level between people who actually know how to dance and people who just spazz around or do some interpretive lurch/bop action. Four bands, four winners.

Winners gain free entry to all “Feats of Strength” shows from 7/29 through 8/6. Winners also get free super-deluxe beverage reserve at DAM House show on 7/28 with Sexy Prison, Night Wounds, and Twin Crystals.

If you care not for competition, this show’s just gonna be a really fun time regardless.

Panther is Charlie from Portland, formerly the singer of The Planet The, a masterful stage commander with tai chi-ish dancemoves. His electro-funk is getting slinkier and more Prince-ly. You might not even need to be a fan of the music to enjoy the show. Here, watch… http://youtube.com/watch?v=3HUSvB_9CeM

http://www.panthertouch.com/

No Doctors are rad bros from Oakland via Chicago via Minneapolis. They had been known for the blues-soaked garage barrage of their Hunting Season album when they moved to the west coast, but on their brand-new Origin & Tectonics LP+CD (180g vinyl comes packed w/CD), they snap to a form more objectively recognized as blues-based rock but still take it over-the-top with their spirit and realness. This is an excellent record, and Elvis DeMorrow is a bonafide guitar hero now. Someone’s gonna win the contest probably during this particular song… http://youtube.com/watch?v=2nyiESIBm2s

http://nodoctors.com/

Copy is Markus from Portland, and BPM mag says of his latest album: “If Marius Libman is concerned with being pegged as another Eighties’ revivalist, he’s not showing it. Sure, it’d be easy to discredit his debut album as the definition of his production monicer - a Copy.Yet there’s more to Mobius Beard than meets the precursory preview. Occupying a strange space between Ghostly glitch and saccharin-sweet electro-pop, there’s a suprising unpredicability within each track. On “Plagiarhythm”, warm phonograph pops and a seemingly tepid hip hop beat play sleight-of-hand on the ears, suddenly engaging as swirling cyclic melodies skate figure-eights around organ-drum rhythms just this side of Ratatat. “It’s A Little Too Late” combines the gleeful spirit of Yaz filtered through an NES emulator. Throughout the rest of the album, Copy continues eschewing the boring winks and prerequisite electro-set posturing for sincerity, and Mobius Beard reflects the sound of an artist who removed the tongue from his cheek before licking the 9-volt of Dre, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Isolee. Zap!”

http://myspace.com/copy

The Pizzas are Sacto’s newest garagepunk band to sneer snidely and Gregg-jangle into your heart. Members include Matt K. of th’Losin’ Streaks and ex-Zodiac Killers and Charles of Rock the Light, Megacools, Sunshine Smile, and a million other Sacto bands that sometimes mix the sloppunk with discipledom of Ginn and/or Moon. These four songs sound awesome…

http://myspace.com/lovethepizzas

Kinda schizo of us to do a show with two righteous rockers and two electro-booyar-poppers, but HEY! Double the constituents equals more fun fashion faux-pas dagger-starin’ (no, actually, I think we can probably all get along!).

This is the first show in a series we call SACTO/DAVIS FEATS OF STRENGTH FEST (if someone besides Dawson of DJ Rick goes to all of these shows, something awesome will come your way from Rick to you (I haven’t decided what yet)).

Five artists affiliated with the prolific and influential label Deathbomb Arc are coming to Fools Foundation for a gabber vs. noise basement battle. Robert Inhuman, singer/leader of Realicide, has said “Punk’s not punk”…so why not noise out for a change? This will surely be one of the best noise events to try if you’ve not snapped into “noise music” yet. Whereas many noise artists decidedly separate themselves from rock and more pedestrian forms of electronic music (esp. techno) in order to present their noise as “high art,” these bands slum through even the basest influences with purely punk ethos to directly engage even the most uninitiated audiences and create a palpable sense of wild fun.

Vankmen are Sacramento’s own, veterans of previous NorCal Noisefest and AudioWaffles events. Just as their hyper-driven ludicrous-speed hysterics and timbrally-rich electro-squall approaches the fury and intensity of hardcore punk from its 1980s vintage through the powerviolence of a decade ago, Vankmen actually exceed that threshold of mayhem into previously uncharted territory where the definition of “extreme” is ripped from the clutches of advertising executives and purveyors of corporate-controlled rebellion. Pulse-quickening prog, C64-era VGM tunes, grindcore, and thrash are cyber-soaked and caked in clamor-dust, resulting in this incendiary futurenoise.
http://www.myspace.com/vankmen

Realicide from Cincinnati, Gabbertree from Los Angeles, and Nero’s Day at Disneyland from Oakland are pioneering this same field (a)musically, but Realicide center as much or more on the positively filthy vokill squelches and subspecies shrieks of Robert Inhuman, best known to listeners of community Freeform KDVS 90.3 FM from Davis for his collaboration with The New Flesh wherein his paint-peeling caterwaul tore a new one into “Punched in the Head” by Drunks With Guns. Gabbertree and ND@D are still raw, real, and often noise-drenched, but their techno angle is inclined quite a bit closer to gabber’s stylistic intersection with “happy hardcore,” which is prone to giddiness and lighthearted melodics. But it’s still the blackest humor to wreck a woofer since the original glorydays of “Miami bass.”
http://www.realicide.tk/
http://myspace.com/gabbertree
http://www.myspace.com/nerosdayatdisneyland

Kevin Shields from Los Angeles–proprietor of the hyper-creative Hate State cassette label and erstwhile member of Gang Wizard–puts the friendliest and most welcoming face on “harsh noise” as she (Kev’s actually a lady named Eva Aguilar) playfully plunders a tabletop of low-tech electro tools and her own handbuilt contraption that looks like the head of a high-revving Japanese engine complete with hand-cranking camshaft exuding metal-level heaviness under the sheer shrillness and insanity.
http://www.myspace.com/kkevinsshields