THE CHEESE 4/19, JACKHAMMER’S This New Jersey quartet began as a cover band called the No Future Club. The originals on its debut, Flip Your Lid (Curb), hit so close to the melodic 70s radio rock of Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Peter Frampton as to make you wonder why the group even bothered changing names.
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BOZ SCAGGS 4/20, HOUSE OF BLUES Best known for the urbane funk ‘n’ balladry of his 1976 album Silk Degrees, this veteran crooner launched his solo career at the end of the 60s doing the same kind of southern soul blues he returns to on the fine new Come On Home (Virgin), which includes “Picture of a Broken Heart,” a Scaggs original first recorded by Robert Cray.
ZEN GUERRILLA 4/24, EMPTY BOTTLE Formed in Delaware and based now in San Francisco, this raucous quartet grounds itself in the straitlaced blues sensibility of a 60s British Invasion group like the Pretty Things, only to wriggle free and lunge in pursuit of post-Buttholes punk-metal extremes. –Frank Youngwerth
