[Happy birthday, Geddy Lee ... and here's what's up on our happy Thursday:] Top 4 shows to not-so-surreptitiously tweet from: ☛ Brooklyn's Here We Go Magic , whose thicket of hypnotic beats, dizzying synths and spry melodies coalesce nicely on their sophomore album "Pigeons," visits the Troubadour (with Beach Fossils opening). That's HWGM's video for "Collector," above, and you can download it here . ☛ Nite Jewel (new EP "Am I Real?" just out digitally) is joined by [...]

Bands that do mod come and go in Los Angeles, where Anglophiles can have a fine time without ever leaving the West Coast. Long Beach's the New Fidelity have been doing it longer than most, and better. The sharp-dressed quintet's the Who-meets-Squeeze power-pop motors like a Vespa through an L.A. traffic jam. It's not necessarily the brand of retro —say, girl-group pop — that is currently fashionable, but the New Fidelity is no less adept at plundering the past. And those suits. ||| Download: The New Fidelity is currently making its six-song 2009 [...]

Say you’ve got four lanes of traffic, all going the same direction. The far outside lane exits, the next one over has the option to exit or go straight. What the hell is that causes Miami drivers in the two inside lanes to come to a complete stop? During my commute I go through these traffic jams daily and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why it happens. Please, if you can explain this mystery, drop me a note. In other more relevant news, there turned out to be some pretty decent things in my [...]

Check out my photos of Ida Maria at the Detroit Bar over at OC Weekly .

[Happy birthday to Suzi Quatro — maybe I will bust out the leather jacket in her honor tonight ...] Not quite as frantic a schedule in the city tonight — unless you're a fan of Pennywise (sold out at Club Nokia) or 2 Live Crew (playing the Key Club). ... Pilar Diaz ends a rockin' three-week residency at downtown's La Cita. ... Club NME at Spaceland offers the mod pop of Long Beach's the New Fidelity [pictured], along with the Lieutenants [...]
Via L.A. RECORD . Excited as my neighborhood turns into my record collection. It's like Soundwalk Private Reserve. Greater California will be playing a show I'm doing at Prospector on Oct. 25 (with Devon Williams —his first-ever time in Long Beach—and thee Makeout Party! ) and if you'd like some background on this event, link to my feature is here . Here are the set times for the Schooled in Song event we [...]

sean from new fidelity Download: Blank Blue "All The Shallow Deep" (from Western Water Music Vol. 2 on Ubiquity) Download: Greater California "It's Great" (shea M gauer remix) (from Trust Us on Fidotrust) [...]