This week’s big indie guitar showdown happens Tuesday Apr. 22, putting Black Lips (Phoenix Concert Theatre) up against We Are Scientists (Lee’s Palace). Breakups, breakdowns and a death in the band has not slowed down Black Lips. Eleven years on, these Atlanta garage legends continue to provoke and freak out audiences all over with their live show. This is, after all, the band which recorded their major label debut album, Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo, live off the floor of a dive bar in Tijuana, Mexico, that the band solemnly described as "absolutely nuts." Then there was India 2009, where the dudes got up to some onstage “antics’ which so outraged the audience, the Lips fled the city and eventually the country, abandoning the tour on account of the very real fear they’d be busted and thrown in the slammer for "homosexual acts". The band’s view: “Ian and Cole kissed, some weiners got pulled out, people lost their shit.”

Beautiful Nothing is here to tell you paying yer dues never goes outa style. Even while they tended their social media obligations, the five guys in the band also kept up a steady pace playing the Toronto rock circuit just about wherever someone would let them, all the while working on the sound ‘neath the steely gaze of the T.Dot’s  notoriously picky audiences. Also, industry savvy ones like Current Management’s Gerry Young, who knows a good  thing when he hears one and knows what to do with it. Which brings us to the altrock quintet’s first single release,    “Come Colour Me,” freshly in the hands of Canadian radio this week, with the accompanying video serviced to MuchMusic and MTV Canada.

Thursday April 8th marked the long awaited release of the late Kenny MacLean’s CD “Completely” at the Mod Club in Toronto. MacLean, best known as the bass player, singer and writer for Platinum Blonde “ who were inducted into the Canadian Broadcasters Hall of Fame at this year’s Canadian Music Week, passed away on November 24, 2008 three days after he played his last show at the Mod Club.

Mclean had featured singles from his than unfinished new C.D. at the event. “I miss him so much. We decided, because of Kenny, that we would get back together. It was great to play together the other night. We wish Kenny was there.” – Mark Holmes, March 12, 2010, speaking at the Royal York Hotel Awards ceremony about their Hall of Fame performance.

Mark would also be performing Kenny’s song “Don’t Look Back” at the C.D. release night.