Addicted To Vinyl Musical thoughts from the open road, with headphones on

Super-cool concert alert: Venice with Billy Idol and Dave Mason

I am WAY jealous of the residents of Santa Monica, CA, and their opportunity at the end of this week to catch one hell of a triple bill.

Locally based California studs Venice, the coolest band of brothers and cousins that I've ever came across in my time as a music fan, are part of a very cool benefit show happening in Santa Monica on Saturday night at Santa Monica High School.

The Venice boys will be joined by the king of the 80's sneer, Billy Idol, and classic rocker Dave Mason for one unforgettable evening at the For The Arts Benefit Concert, loaded top to bottom with an enviable setlist of hits. For those of you that are familiar with the Venice covers side project Pine Mountain Logs, the pairing with Dave Mason will make complete sense. But I'm highly intrigued by Idol's presence on the bill. There are a lot of cool setlist possibilities, and I'd LOVE to see the Venice boys back Idol for a killer version of "Eyes Without A Face!"

Fans that caught the Venice performance over the weekend at Topanga Days Festival got a nice preview of this weekend's performance when Billy Idol joined Venice onstage during their set to perform "Dancing With Myself," "Rebel Yell," and Idol's signature cover of "Mony, Mony."

Venice will stop by The Mark and Brian Show on Wednesday morning between 9am and 10am PST to chat about the Santa Monica benefit concert, and perform a track with Billy Idol. You can stream the interview and performance right here.

Some tickets are still available for Saturday night's benefit in Santa Monica, and you can purchase them right here. If you haven't ever seen Venice, I can't stress enough what a great first show this would be.

The band performed at a similar benefit concert earlier this year with Michael McDonald, Tommy Shaw, and Christopher Cross to rave reviews, and if you haven't been, these shows are always a ton of fun. I'd love to be at this one, but sadly the ATV travel budget is a bit depleted with Bonnaroo on the way.

I'll leave you with some sample material to dig into, including a recent video performance of the Venice original "Weight Has Been Lifted," that was edited by longtime Venice fan and site webmaster Matt Levitz. Directly below that, you'll find fan-shot video of two of my absolute favorite Venice tunes back-to-back, "World On My Back" and "Time On My Hands."

For your enjoyment, check out some Pine Mountain Logs live videos as well!

And for all of your Venice info, check out the band's website here.

I like the lighting/sound on the following video just a bit more, so here's an additional performance of "Time On My Hands," because you can never have enough live performances of "Time On My Hands." This one was filmed at the special Lennon Lounge concert earlier this year.

I'll leave you with a couple of heavy hitter endorsements:

“Venice is the best vocal group in America right now. They're better than anybody else I know. They're fantastic. I’m a student of harmony.
That’s my thing. I love all kinds of harmony. But I particularly love theirs, because it’s so natural. It’s not like anybody else’s. Very unforced, very from their hearts. I’ve been telling people about them since the first night I heard them. I’ve told everybody I could find that they were the best. This is my favorite band in the world.”

--David Crosby

"Venice, one of my favorite bands, is quintessentially Californian, with soaring harmonies. We’ve played together at numerous benefits and at each other's concerts. What they do is sing amazingly. There are two lead singers, there are four harmony parts a lot of the time, and what it most resembles is CSN, or sometimes Sly and the Family Stone. Well, anything unique is pretty hard to describe, but that's the general musical terrain. They sing and play their asses off, and I have seen them knock out many an unsuspecting crowd. On two separate occasions I booked them for large outdoor venues where we were doing benefits and they took the audiences, who had not come to see them, completely by surprise. It's such a pleasure to play with these guys, because they have that power."

--Jackson Browne