We start the month as we always do by throwing the doors open for a night of free music and fun as the South First Friday art walk returns with the added attraction of the now massive SubZero street music/art festival takes place. For our part Art Boutiki will be presenting some very cool stuff. First off the art on our walls will be provided by San Diego based artist/educator Pose2fx. Pose produced a music video with San Jose based hip hop artist Scribe Sayar called Empty Without You which we will be premiering during First Friday. Scribe will follow up with a tremendous set of his tunes backed up by our very own house band Grooveyard Shift who will fill up the rest of the evening. This will be a great opportunity to see Art Boutiki sound man Dustin Vado step onto the stage in his roll as the Grooveyard bass player.  Lastly at 11:00 when we will premiere a short film by San Jose musician/filmmaker Jonathan Sontag called Green. If you like zombies you will not want to miss this.  

That would be an entire month for some places but at the Art Boutiki we do not rest on our laurels or crouch on our hindquarters.  Flash forward to the next weekend and June 8th and 9th and you have a weekend that has us convinced that we should be selling season passes to our shows as our own in-house production presents two shows packed with headliner material in every set.

On June 8th The Big Rock Show brings us Drop Dead Sixty, Little Red Lung (from Los Angeles), San Francisco's oh-so-cool Foxtails Brigade and an up-and-comer called Fossil Tree. This is going to be an evening that combines some very high energy material with some amazingly layered and textured tunes.

The next night we have another Big Rock Show that has just so much energetic jolt to it it keeps me up at night just thinking about it. Coming back for one of their trademark explosive sets is SLO based PK. Performing with them will be Pantheon, Curious Quail and San Francisco based Blood and Water.

We mellow things out a bit on Thursday June 14th when Art Boutiki turns into The Jazz Warehouse, our monthly jazz and art jam. Bring your instrument and sit in with house bandGrooveyard Shift, or if you don't play an instrument bring your sketchbook or other instrument of artistic expression and draw the music that people are grooving to. If you don't play or draw come by and hang out as the night is always filled with some great new jazz explorations.

The next night two of our favorite bands, Picture Atlantic and Please Do Not Fight team up to bring us their own themed concert series called The Rock Hop. Featured this month will be headliner Picture Atlantic. Backing them up and fresh of their SubZero appearance is Fresno's own and Art Boutiki fan favorite Fierce Creatures. Rounding out the night will beSahab and Downstairs as they all celebrate the theme of the evening The 90's.

We're taking the weekend of the solstice off either because we are going to go off and celebrate this celestial happening like the true tree-hugging druids that we are or because we got invited to an awesome party. It doesn't matter which since the bottom line is we will not be open this weekend because we will be saving our energy for the last weekend of the month because we are going to be ending the night with a bang.

June 29th bring us a band from halfway across the country as Nashville's The Winter Sounds bring their indy rock show to our humble warehouse. Headlining the night will be San Jose's own The Trims and rounding out the night we'll have a set by Oakland's Tremor Low and releasing a new CD Los Gatos' Claire on a Dare.  

Normally The Big Rock Show only presents four bands, but the line-up that materialized for June 30th was so good we could not turn one band away as we have a mixture of tremendous Silicon Valley bands and amazing talent from all over the western United States. Headline is San Jose's own Contra Ville, that right there packs the house right? Well the other groups rounding out the night are all headline material in their own towns. Coast Jumper (San Francisco) comes back with some new music, Hand Shake (Novato) makes their Art Boutiki debut and we round out the night with two bands on west coast tours; My Double My Brother (Fullerton) and Golden Sun (Salt Lake City). This could be your only opportunity to catch some of these bands, so come out and support local music and The Big Rock Show at The Art Boutiki.

And it will be your last chance to catch a show at our spot until late July as we are going to be closed for a good three weeks as we head to Comic-Con in San Diego in our other lives as comic book publishers. But don't fret music fans when we come back in July we are going to have possibly one of the biggest shows in Art Boutiki history. Who's coming? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for your support and be sure to say hi next time you stop by.

Dan Vado

Big Kahuna

Someone suggested to me that it might be helpful if I did a blog post at the beginning of every month detailing the goings on at The Art Boutiki. I shot the guy a blank stare and said "where were you five days ago" when I could have put this up and included the two events that just passed.

For those of you keeping score at home, we just completed back-to-back days of totally free events; South First Friday came and brought a crowd of students from local Notre Dame High School  as we hosted their schools end of the year art show. Many of them came back for Free Comic Book Day the next day (which was the second free event of the weekend) and brought out their families to see their work, get free comics and listen to the bands who played  a totally free show for us. Thanks to all the guys in Pauser, Animal Super Species and Vulture Smile for putting on such a great show and making the Art Boutiki FCBD one of the coolest in the nation.

While we are shouting out about Free Comic Book Day, anyone who missed it also missed a chance to meet Stephen Coughlin (creator of the comic series Sanctuary) and Jef Bambas (whose robot comic Model A is way too cool), but we have their comics in the shop still so you should come out and check them out as you will not find them anywhere else.

Looking forward to the rest of May we will be having a little less in the way of live music at the Art Boutiki, but as they say less is more.

First off on May 10th, The Jazz Warehouse jazz jam returns. This is one of the most entertaining jams I have ever been to and I am not just saying that because we host it. This has quickly become one of the best jams in the area and worth checking out even if you do not play an instrument. More info on that at www.artboutiki.com/jazz.

The next night we have another night of live music brought to you by Pin-Up productions. Fossil Tree, I Swallowed an Owl, Sailing South and LA based Beware of Darkness will all be playing for us. Doors open at 7:00, admission is $10 at the door.

Saturday May 19th brings the return of The Big Rock Show, our very own music series. This week we will have a show which coincides with the annual Big Wow Comic fest at the convention center. Four northern California bands with eclectic sounds and styles will be joining us. The Spliffs, Walking Spanish, Moonlight Orchestra and Animal,l Lore will provide the music for the night. If you come in with a Big Wow ticket you can get $2.00 off admission.  

This takes us to Memorial Day weekend and what is going to be our most interesting show  of the month. Saturday May 26th features the Art Boutiki debut of Porch, supported by their friends in Industry of Sustainable Destruction, Tinkle Potty and to round out the night our good friend in 8:19.  Porch is Todd Huth (Guitar/vocals), Christopher Frey (bass) and Michael Jacobs (drums). Three guys, two of them from the Bay Area, the other from Nashville. One of them used to be in Primus, another in Today is the Day. This will be another fun, all-ages affair at the Art Boutiki and one where we remind everyone that our place has avery strict no moshing, no circle pit no any stupid stuff policy. If inflicting bodily harm on people is how you have fun, please do it elsewhere. This is true for all of our events.

That being said, come out and have fun. Admission is $10.00 at the door.

That covers May and as cool as this all sounds June is shaping up to be legendary with the return of The Rock Hop and another visit from our friends in PK. Plus the debut of our weekly podcast Art Boutiki Radio.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Come out in May, remember that comics and graphic novels are always 20% off cover price at The Art Boutiki. For more details on these or other events visit www.artboutiki.com or like us at www.facebook.com/artboutikisj

Dan Vado

Hey, we here at the Boutiki are as happy as anyone to see Osama bin Laden gone, but this book is dreck and tries to sanitize something that cannot be sanitized. Not that I was looking for a gore fest, but really this thing has two men clinking cans of some unidentified beverage on the deck of the Carl Vinson while bin Laden's body is being carted out of a helicopter and saying "Good riddance to bad rubbish". Yeah, THAT'S what they said, even remotely. Sanitized sensation, SANSATIONAL (look, I invented a new word).

Anyway, its not even going out on the shelves, but if you want one ask for it and we will sell it to you for 25% off cover price.

Not a giant thing, but kind of cool considering we do not do that many shows.

Thanks to all