What a hot summer it has been! And I ain’t talking about the weather. It’s been a hot summer of rock n roll. Hit a few LA shows in early July with a new band on Kirtland Records called The Hourly Radio.  Reminiscent of early New Order, these guys tore it UP! New record coming your way in the fall. Watch for it!  Got to hang with Kirtland goddess Tami Thompson who was in town from Dallas for the festivities. Tami is good people.  Also in July was a month of Thursday shows at the Hotel Café with San Diego sweetie Anya Marina. She wowed em with her kick ass songs and funny in between banter. Celebrity citing: Andy Dick.  Actually, I had met Andy years ago. He was dating a friend of mine for a couple weeks and she & I had plans to see a Billy Bragg show at the El Rey and when I went over to her house, there was Andy hanging out playing with the cat.  So we invited him along to the show and we hung out by the bar.  This was, like 1996. Ah… the good ol days.  Anyway, Anya kicked ass, and, truth be told, when you go to shows in Hollywood, you see actors all the time, so despite me hyping this up, it really wasn’t that big of a deal to see an actor there.  Switching gears a complete 180 degrees I ran across town to see Jive Recording hip hop artists The Pack kill it to a, um, packed, house.  Good seeing old friends there: Jive’s Roze Braunstein and KROQ’s Christine Fung.  Their new joint “Vans” is an ode to the punk rock sneaker and they are single-handedly bringing punk fashion to the hip hop nation, as evidenced by the slew of Vans in the house. Nice! Finally, just this week I hit an AMAZING solo acoustic set by Zero Seven’s Tina Dico at Largo. Man, it was like seeing the Dead.  Talk about fan-atical fans! This is every artist’s dream in the Brave New World of the music biz: do your thing, stay under the radar, play to your audience, and screw the rest of the world.  The post show line to buy merch/shake hands/take pix was just about everyone in the sold-out club. It was like being at a wedding! Be sure to check out her available-only-on-itunes track “Magic” which tells the story, in the way that only a singer-songwriter can do, about a post concert rock n roll one night stand. That’s sexy hot. And so it goes… the dog days of summer continue. Hope you’re all having a blast.