Rock Around the Clock

As Heartless Bastards, Fags, and Lab Rats prepare to invade Cleveland for the three-day CMJ/Rock Hall Music Fest, the city is girding for one of the biggest events of its kind ever to take place here.

With more than a hundred bands performing at every major club in town, the fest spans everything from bossa nova to heavy metal, hip-hop to ghoul punk. Moreover, there's a slew of special events at the Rock Hall, including a speaker series featuring famed punk Richard Hell, Sire Records founder Seymour Stein, and hip-hop icon Grandmaster Flash; a guitar competition judged by Joe Satriani and others; and a rock-poster show boasting the work of Cleveland's Derek Hess and scads more. In addition, rising Cleveland label Exit Stencil Recordings will be throwing a free barbecue Saturday afternoon at the Beachland Ballroom with sets from Roué, the New Lou Reeds, and others. They'll also be hosting a showcase later that night at Pat's in the Flats.

In short: there's a lot going on in the next three days. Read on, as we break down the shows you don't want to miss. -- Jason Bracelin

Pixies
If it hadn't been for a stray comment made in a radio interview, Frank Black might still be contemplating the vicissitudes of "My Life in Storage." Black wrote this soft folk-rock number after going through a divorce, putting his backing band, the Catholics, on hiatus, and moving from a musical hotbed (Los Angeles) to the outskirts of a hippie haven (Portland, Oregon). He plans to release the song in July on Honeycomb (EMI/Back Porch), a rootsy album cut in Nashville with legendary session men like '60s soul guitarist Steve Cropper. But just a few days after recording it last spring, this moderately successful cult artist resumed the stage name Black Francis and set out on a tour with his first band, the Pixies, easily one of the most important underground rock bands since the Sex Pistols -- and still one of the most thrilling.

The history and the thrill go together. With the possible exception of Sonic Youth, the Boston quartet did more to ignite the alt-rock explosion in the 1990s than any underground band of the '80s. Sonic Youth had an avant-garde tuning system and a complete commitment to bohemia; the Pixies had something simpler and perhaps more profound -- a complete commitment to postmodernism's ultimate earwax remover, disjuncture. It defined the loud-soft-loud dynamics that Kurt Cobain lifted for " Smells Like Teen Spirit," with jarring breaks and musical shifts as sharp as a digital beat, bizarrely allusive lyrics, and incongruous cultural references from surf rock to flamenco to Un Chien Andalou.

The Pixies reunited after Black casually mentioned the idea on an English radio show, as if it were a passing thought. For fans, though, the extended reunion tour has become a highlight during a low time in rock, as everyone from smalltime blogs to the London Times has proclaimed it a triumphant example of how emotionally direct yet multifaceted rock once was and should still be. Reached by phone from a tour stop in San Francisco, however, Frank Black/Black Francis is typically evasive on the subject.

"All we can do is move our little amplifiers into a rehearsal space and work up a little show," he says. "Or book a recording studio and make a little record. It's really up to the world -- or it's up to critics, to a certain degree -- to decide whether we made rock history. That may be our ultimate goal, but you don't sit around and analyze it. You don't sit around and say, 'Okay, how shall we be fantastic?'"

Right. Taking back the deposit on the storage space is a no-brainer. -- Franklin Soults
The Pixies. Wednesday, June 8, at the Rock Hall (early show). With the Bellrays at Scene Pavilion (late show).

Grandmaster Flash and Digable Planets
It seems a foregone conclusion that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will eventually induct Grandmaster Flash and his Furious Five. Although the group failed to make the cut in its first year of eligibility, and there undoubtedly remains a pocket of "hip-hop-isn't-really-rock-and-roll" resistance among some voters, Flash's credentials can't be ignored. Not only did he help create hip-hop -- which you could certainly argue has had more influence on rock and roll over the past 25 years than, say, Eric Clapton -- he's also the forefather of DJ culture, the guy who made the wheels of steel an instrument.

But if Flash and the Five are to become the Hall's first hip-hop inductees -- a goal that Flash has stated publicly he wants to achieve -- they'll have to hurry: In a couple of years, Run-DMC will come before the voters with a more obvious connection to rock (e.g., "Rock Box," "Walk This Way," etc.).