Tonight is one of those nights when pretty much everyone in Charlottesville decided to throw an event at the same time. There’s absolutely no way you’ll be able to do even half of it, so choose carefully! Here’s the rundown:

The awesome and rightfully-acclaimed Eternal Summers are playing at the Tea Bazaar tonight; in an acknowledgement that a lot of the same people probably want to catch the DUST show as well (see below), this one will be an early show; doors at 7:30, music at 8pm. By this point you have probably heard and loved the album they put out late last year (or the even-better 8-track EP that preceded it); tonight they’ll be playing some songs from an even-newer EP, reportedly out soon! The opening act is Samuel Jones, who is apparently a member of the Young Sinclairs, another awesome Roanoke-based band who basically sound exactly like if the Byrds were an 80’s college-radio band. That’s $5, and definitely worth checking out.

Later on there’s a show at DUST; some of our newer readers or recent Cville transplants may not remember DUST, as there’s only been a handful of events there over the past three years, but for a long time DUST was basically the default location for anything intense and far-out and awesome in Charlottesville. It’s a warehouse space, so call one of us for directions, or ask your friends (I’m pretty sure they can legally host shows there since it’s zoned “industrial,” but given all the attention paid to venue liscences and dB-levels etc recently, let’s play it safe tonight, shall we?)

Anyhow, the line-up at DUST tonight is a truly worthy all-metal event which looks totally awesome; local retro-rockers Corsair are releasing their new EP (which sounds awesome, by the way); Adam and Scott and Dylan’s power-trio stoner-metal supergroup Double Complete Rainbow (newly christened Articulate Chewbacca, although not to be confused with Adam’s other band that had the same name) will be playing; that would already be enough to assure my presence at the show, but I’m totally thrilled to report that Horsefang will be playing tonight as well! They haven’t really done much in the past 2 years, and the the future of the band is uncertain at this point, so opinion remains divided about whether this is a Farewell Show or a Reunion Show, but anyhow if you want to hear some bone-dry, crushingly intense doom metal playing by the classic Horsefang line-up of three sweaty shirtless wasted dudes, then by all means report to Dust this evening.

I was told the line-up would be Corsair, then Horsefang, then Chewbacca — but then I was informed that Miami Nights and Mephtic Stench had been added to the bill at the last second, in classic DUST-style! Don’t know much about Mephtic Stench (I think they’re friends of Marie’s?), but I do know about Miami Nights; the awesome one-woman powerhouse of screaming doom metal; she used to be half of Red Wizard, or what Subverbo refers to as: “one-third of the Max Katz Trio known as Miami Nights and otherwise known as Max Katz.” So I assume those bands are playing first?

The cover is probably somewhere in the range between $7 and just passing a hat around, so bring a few bucks, and if you’re of-age remember to BYOB and be discreet about it (or better yet, just pre-game & get a driving buddy). Between giant blurry animated gifs of flaming smiley-faces, Curt’s most recent email helpfully informs us that the show will start at “9pm9pm…id i say 9 imeant 8 no seriously definately2011 blammoyoumissed it !!!!!!” … so I’m thinking showing up around 9pm might be wise. (Then again, I had to highlight big portions of the insanely-formatted text to even read that email, so who knows.)

If you’re on the University side of town, you can head over to the Student Activities Building to check out a Battle of the Bands, featuring (in this order): The Anatomy of Frank (aka Kyle Woolard, of Uncle Jemima and ex-Astronomers), Stories in Stone (about whom I know very little, and even that is not worth repeating), Left and Right (cool indie-rock powerhouse made up 100% of UTS bus drivers), University of Michigan (jangly indie-pop with some former Caninos, including Nailgun’s own Gary C.), and something called Beautiful People (whom I’ve never heard of before now, but they seem to have taken the tactic of all those bands who name themselves things like “free pizza” or whatever). That show is totally free, and it starts at 8pm. (Sorry to miss this one! Actually, I was asked to be one of the judges, and totally would have done so, if they had held this event on basically any other night… maybe next year?) But if you’re on grounds tonight, that seems like the thing to check out.

Oh, here’s another thing happening on Grounds earlier in the day: there’s going to be a Living Wage March during the Board of Visitors meeting today; the goal of the march, and of the organization in general, is to try to convince the University of Virginia to pay it’s employees a Living Wage, something at which the University is currently falling far short (following suit from the pretty much the rest of the country, I would expect). The march begins outside Old Caball Hall at 2:30pm (or basically, right now)!

Oh yeah, and there’s also the return of CLAW tonight; y’all know CLAW, yes? The Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers, rad ladies who wear ridiculous costumes and compete in feats of strength to raise $$$ for women’s charities? If you went back when i was a weekly event, you know the drill; if not, you can check it out tonight, for what may be their last event! Or at least the last one until next year… That’s at 8pm behind the Blue Moon Diner (though you may want to show up early; it’ll be crowded! Doors at 7:15)

Let’s see, what else… Oh, there’s a Turkish Band playing at McLeod Hall at UVA, the Carolina Chocolate Drops are at the Jefferson, and the Russ Helm Jazz Quartet is at Cville Coffee…

That’s a LOT, for a single night in February! So, where are y’all goin’? I think I’ll head to the Tea Bazaar after work and hit DUST shortly afterwards…