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It's Friday already? Really? That's a pleasant surprise. Guess it's time to plan the weekend, then...

Here are our top choices for must-see music shows around the Metroplex this weekend. As always, check our music listings and print version for more options.

Pleasant Grove, Stumptone, Crushed Stars
9 p.m., Saturday, March 1, at The Double-Wide

Pretty much a local all-star line-up at The Double-Wide on Saturday, even if it is a bit varied. Stumptone and Crushed Stars are just the cherry on top here, though, as the real reason to catch this show is Pleasant Grove. This is the band's second-to-last Dallas show, before lead singer Marcus Striplin strands us for the greener pastures of NYC. So, if you're busy next Thursday, this is your last chance. Get to it.

Airline
7 p.m. Friday, February 29, at Good Records; 9 p.m. Saturday, March 1, at The Barley House

What's with all the holiday-themed shows this week? Is it just that people can't wait for St. Patrick's Day, and need a reason to party? I have no idea, but two shows stick out: one is celebrating the rarely loved Leap Day and the other can't wait for October for Halloween.

Most people don't really go nuts over Leap Day. (Except for those who were born on February 29, then it's probably really special.) So, I was kind of surprised to see people were going the route of throwing special shows to celebrate the day. A flyer I just saw called upon music fans to help the bands "ring in the leap year." Really? Well, if you dig the whole "leap" thing, then you can go nuts 6 p.m. tonight, February 29, over at Rock Steady. A Heartwell Ending headlines.

Then, this weekend it's Halloween in March up in Denton. I love zombies, so anytime I can celebrate horror stuff outside of October 31 makes me pretty happy. But, I'm going to be honest here, I have no idea what this show has to do with Halloween. Everyone just keeps sending me messages with the killer lineup. So, anyone who knows what makes the Springtime Halloween Celebration at Denton's Strawberry Fields a Halloween-y event, please tell me. With The Uptown Bums, Sarah Jaffe, Florene and The Frenz on the bill (along with 10+ others), I'd go even without the potential to discuss zombie flicks. It all starts at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 1. -- Chelsea Ide

While we here at DC-9 will be down in Austin at South by Southwest mid-March, we know not everyone is dropping the big moolah for the festival. A great in-town alternative is the "South By So What?!" fest. (They'll be more on the SXSW overflow shows and South By So What?! in an upcoming print edition of the Observer.) We've got our first glimpse of the lineup for South By So What?! today. The headliners for the March 14 Plano Centre show include: Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Halifax, Jeffree Star, The Audition, The Medic Droid, A Skylit Drive, Action Action, The Cab, Breathe Carolina, The Maine, Ivoryline and Memphis May Fire. Third String Productions, who put on the event, say 42 bands are set to play starting at 3 p.m. (keep an eye on Third String's MySpace for the scheduled bands). Tickets cost $18 in advance (buy 'em at kapiro.com) and $20 day of show. -- Chelsea Ide

60 or so bands played the Melodica Festival this weekend, and it would have been literally impossible to catch each and every performance during the three-night fest. Still, we ran ourselves ragged trying. The result: About 12 acts caught in full, another handful of performances seen mostly in full, and a whole bunch that were only seen for a song or two.

A little staggering in the schedule would’ve been nice—too many venues simultaneously featured between-set downtime. There were, however, plenty of worthwhile acts to see throughout the showcase. Below is a re-cap of the acts whose sets I saw enough of to confidently review.

(Note: This was meant to run earlier today as an online companion to the column I wrote in today’s Observer—only so many words can fit on the printed page, you know—but given a number of factors, not the least of which was the overwhelming amount of response the column received over the course of the night and the morning, it got pushed back a bit. So…sorry ’bout that.)

Looks like, once upon a time in 1977, someone hoped to make a concert film out of a Genesis concert that, apparently was filmed here in Dallas. Now someone's taken the liberty of posting the unreleased footage of the film, apparently called Seconds Out, onto YouTube. And we, in turn, are posting it here. Below are all four parts of this 1977 Genesis performance...

Part One:

Hey, CBS 11? 1999 called.

It wants it's rave party scare story back. -- Pete Freedman

Maceo Parker with Grand Pianoramax
February 27, 2008
House of Blues

Better than: Pretty much anything, save a second performance.

Self-described on his live album Life on Planet Groove as "2 percent jazz, 98 percent funky stuff,” Maceo Parker brought a funk explosion to the House of Blues Wednesday night. To sing the accolades of this legend, one would need much more space than this article will afford me, so for those of you not hip to Maceo, your homework assignment is to go to his Web site and read more about him.

The crowd was light early, giving me the opportunity to score a table. In short measure, I was served up the tasty freestyle of funk and spoken word of Grand Pianoramax. They did an outstanding job of setting the bar high for the night with a unique hybrid of analog synth and breakbeat drums, and the spoken word artistry of Celena Glenn was phenomenal. Keep an eye out for this group. Pianormax may be the future of funk.

The future came before the past and present on this night, as Maceo Parker and his incredible band took the stage in timely fashion at 9 p.m. Anticipation was apparent on the faces of those surrounding the stage. Parker wasted no time, firing into "Funky Fiesta" with fervor, and quickly bringing the crowd to its feet ...and later to the stage. Almost instinctively, every head began to nod, and by the time Parker and Co. hit "Off the Hook," there wasn’t a single person not fixated on the stage.

The Chicago-based band The Redwalls is currently touring the country in support of its self-titled album, which was release last October. With a sound that evokes British bands past and present and a look that does the same, The Redwalls are another in a long line of American acts that have tried to bring the sounds of the old country to our hemisphere. Are they having any luck? We caught up with Redwalls vocalist/guitarist Andrew Langer over the phone last week to get an answer for that and a few other questions.

How’s the tour going so far?
It’s going pretty good, you know? In some parts we do good and in certain parts, we’re working our way, trying to do good there. But it’s been fun.

If someone's never seen you live before, what can they expect from your live show?
We’re pretty much straight up rock and roll. A lot of people say we’re better live than on the records. [Laughs.]

Yeah? How do you feel about that?
It’s a different interpretation. It’s fine with me.

Well, what’s that an influence of, the better live sound? Did you guys start of performing right away when you got together?
Yeah, pretty much. When we started, we were playing in the clubs and bars of Chicago for like the first three or four years of being in existence. So, we kinda had to learn to deal with hecklers. We’d usually play at 1 or 2 in the morning after the headliner was already done. It kind of paved our way to this point.

Had any better luck with the hecklers of late?

Erykah Badu and friends… February 26, 2008 House of Blues, Dallas

Better Than: Staying home, watching American Idol and really pulling for that kid with the dreads.

It took a bit for Erykah Badu to hit the stage last night (she came on stage around 11:30), but when she did, man, she brought it.

Donning sunglasses, a black leather jacket and a teased out afro (a staunch difference from the more toned down look she sported the night before at Bill’s Records) Badu showed from the first minute of her set that it was she and she alone who would be in control of the set. With her voice rising and dropping with ease, fluttering atop the sounds of the 15 or so rotating crew of backing musicians and singers she employed throughout the night, Badu acted as much a stage director and conductor as she did a vocalist. Using hand signals and less discreet “stop!” and “hold up a minute!” vocal directives, Badu stopped and started the sound behind her to allow her voice to showcase its most brilliant range and lyrics.

The guys in Siren City just gave us a heads up that they'll be playing a special show Friday, February 29, at The Max. Moving Atlas and Loaded Moses are on the bill, too. The show is 18 and over and starts off at 8 p.m. The Dallas rock band is pretty excited about the show, so we'll bank on the group to bring its A game to the stage. If you're unfamiliar with the radio-friendly quintet, check this video of the group playing "Noise." (Jokes on this one are really easy. So for those not digging the tune, be clever.) -- Chelsea Ide

Siren City - Noise

Langdon Jones, the smartass, hipper-than-you frontman/guitarist for local rockers Fracas, is just happy to have a band. After eight years spent toiling with false starts, personnel problems and learning how to write songs, Jones has finally assembled a seemingly secure lineup that includes bassist Nick Upperman and drummer Matt Chappel. The trio recently released Dallas Suburbia, the second Fracas disc. (The first, Different Like Everyone Else, came out in 2003 and featured a different cast of characters.) Mixing punk, pop and witty rock a la Ween, Fracas gleefully pokes fun at the Dallas lifestyle and mass-market consumerism in general. We recently spoke with Fracas and, democratic to a fault, Jones insisted that the interview questions be divvied up equally among each member of the band.

Is humor in music a lost art?

Matt: No, but I think humor in high quality music is a lost/rare art. A band like Tenacious D comes to mind. They obviously have funny lyrics, yet the musicianship is high quality. Funny lyrics and serious rock kind of seem rare to me these days when musicians take themselves way too seriously.

What have you got against the Dallas suburbs?

Langdon: I have several things against what goes on in the suburbs. I’ve come to the conclusion that the wealthy suburban lifestyle stunts the spiritual and intellectual growth of many a suburban housewife. Many, but not all, of these women just paint their nails, shop, work out at Larry North, gossip on the phone, go to church at Lake Pointe to help their husband with business networking and tote their kids to an extracurricular activity here and there. Then they point their Mexican laborers around to do the housework. Are these atrocities of the soul legal? Sure, but it’s also legal to make fun of them and that’s where I come in.

Does the band cause a fracas when they play? How many times have you’ve been asked that?

Quia's gonna be checking in first thing tomorrow morning with a review of tonight's Erykah badu show at the House of Blues, but before she does, we've got to mention something else of note: In addition to a slew of big names we already knew Erykah was bringing in to help celebrate her birthday and the release of her new album (?uestlove, Bun B, Pharoahe Monch, 9th Wonder, et al), she dropped a pretty big bomb on tonight's crowd when she introduced her friend Dave Chappelle to the stage. Chappelle, who unsurprisingly earned a thunderous applause, played some keyboard (or just faked it real well) before grabbing the mic and talking to the crowd.

"This is is like a bigfoot sighting! All the pictures of me in the press are all grainy and shit," he said before freezing in a half-stride, looking-over-his-shoulder-at-the audience pose.

"It's just nice to get out of the house," he said later. "Only Erykah can do that."

Chappelle then urged the crowd and the 20 or so people on stage to sing Erykah a "sexy" version of "Happy Birthday" before he returned to the background and side of the stage for the rest of the night.

As for if we'll see him again any time soon, Chappelle had this much to say: "I'm just waiting till Obama gets in office. Then I'll be on TV again saying all types of shit." -- Pete Freedman

No? OK then...

If you're not going to tonight's House of Blues show, you'll want to watch VH-1 Soul tonight at 8 to catch Ms. Badu's Storytellers performance. After a write-up about tonight's show for tomorrow's blog, we promise we'll stop might consider backing off Erykah for a bit. -- Pete Freedman

The crowd was somewhere between antsy and bored in anticipation of Erykah Badu's arrival at Bill's Records last night. Then again, the crowd probably felt a bit out of place--it'd be tough to say for certain that any of the people in the line to meet Erykah Badu last night had actually been to Bill's before. It didn't help that no one was quite sure what time Erykah was supposed to show--some people thought 10 p.m., others assumed midnight, as it was termed a "midnight release party"--and the lazy attempts at hyping up the crowd from DJ Big Texas weren't exactly helping matters.

Still, when Ms. Badu arrived at 12:20 to her crowd of maybe 75 fans or so, she was welcomed to a decent applause, especially after reminding the set that it was her birthday.

Here's how the entrance went down (thanks to Cindy Chaffin for throwing this clip I shot with her camera up on YouTube):

The next hour and fifteen minutes went relatively smoothly as Erykah signed copies of her CD, as well as the swag--New Amerykah lighters, posters, flyers and lanyards-- that her label and management reps were handing out to the crowd. Highlights and a few more photos after the jump.

My knees just got a little weak. The Mars Volta will be in Dallas April 8. I will be there. Sure, I don't have tickets. Tickets don't go on sale until Saturday, March 1. No matter. I'll be there. The last time I saw The Mars Volta it was in a venue similar to Nokia Theater -- mostly seats with overpriced beer. The band was great, but my concert cohort and I ended up feeling like old ladies for sitting during a 20-minute on-stage jam session. I need to make up for that. Granted, jamming isn't conducive to dancing, but I promise to stay on my feet all night when the group comes to the Palladium Ballroom. If you want to join me, tickets cost $35 and the doors will open at 7:30 p.m. -- Chelsea Ide