Arts DEVO

Columnist in search of hook AKA Arts DEVO’s Best of Chico for the last week of September:

Best lyrics by a touring band coming to Chico this week:

“Ha ha, ha ha/ Ho ho ho/ Yeah yeah, yeah yeah/ no no no/ This ain’t rocket science/ This is rock-and-roll,” from “This Ain’t Rocket Science,” the opening track on Barbaric, Mystical, Bored, the latest by Portland, Ore., two-piece The Bugs. The band goes on to prove its opening assertion with 18 sparsely arranged, clever, garage-pop tunes that emphatically make the case that less is more. Be a cool kid for once, catch The Bugs Wednesday, Sept. 30, at Café Flo with city-mates Sad Horse.

Best excuse for getting to bed early this week:

This one’s a million-way tie between impending community events that will test even the most hardcore Chicoan’s time-budgeting skills: the final downtown Thursday Night Market of the season (9/24); the final Friday Night Concert in the Plaza, with Urban Legend (9/25); the Salmon Festival in Oroville (9/25-26); Earthdance at the Goddess Temple in Forest Ranch (9/25-26); and Chico Palio (9/26), the Chico arts faire, art-horse race, community banquet kick-off for Artoberfest.

Best e-mail:

“Hello, my name is RayRay a singer/songwriter. I graduated from Corning High School in 1985. I have an album called CaLi Lovin, it’s baby makin’ music.” (Note to local bands: Using “baby makin’ music” in an e-mail is the surest way to get a response from your local arts editor.) And he’s right: “I wanna get alone with you/ So we can do what grown-ups do,” is a sampling from RayRay’s “Jet Black Sand,” about a romantic night on the beach, and a perfect example of his slow-jam flavor of R&B. RayRay is back home in Corning after stints in L.A. and Sac-town and is busy working on his follow-up to CaLi Lovin. Look him up at myspace.com/rayrayincali.

Best place to trigger your gag reflex: Cinemark theater’s trash compactor. It looks like what I imagine the compactor in Star Wars would look like from the outside, and the giant red, metal box is constantly leaking a piquant reduction of movie treats in tacky rivulets across the sloping blacktop behind the theater. I swear, I’m really not even complaining. Hell, I always park next to the thing on purpose. It’s so impressive that I just want to experience the drama of when the sour air hits my eyeballs first and a ripple of fear shudders through me in anticipation of the smell that follows.

Best place to put a triggered gag reflex to use: The ticket window for the upcoming Creedence Clearwater Revisited show Saturday, Sept. 26, at Gold Country Casino. I have no problem with the drummer and bassist for the original Creedence Clearwater Revival making a few bucks while enjoying playing the great tunes of their past, but I am baffled that the market will apparently bear ticket prices of $40-$55 to take a seat in the audience. Despite the absence of John Fogerty—the original singer/songwriter and guitarist for every song the band will be playing—nostalgia seekers are apparently OK spending the same amount of money to watch a cover band as they would to buy the definitive CCR box set, featuring every one of the band’s albums ($40 on Amazon.com).

Best movie preview: Where the Wild Things Are. The best children’s book ever + director Spike Jonze + trailer song by Arcade Fire (“Wake Up”) = goosebumps. Go find it at www.imdb.com and make the rest of your day better.

Best reunion news: Pavement in 2010. The hits keep coming! I think someone has been sneaking into my brain.