This Saturday, Montreal pop enchantress Grimes will play the free show Make Music Pasadena in Old Town Pasadena, at 5 p.m. on the Playhouse District Eclectic Stage at 23 S. Madison Ave. (see the whole schedule here). She joins an impressive lineup, which this year includes indie pop stars Cults, psych-dance band The Chain Gang of 1974, and lots of local heroes like Dam-Funk (see photos of his Amoeba DJ set), Electric Guest, Dengue Fever, Grouplove, So Many Wizards, The Lonely Wild, NO, The Happy Hollows and more.
 
Grimes aka Claire Boucher stopped by Amoeba to pick up a few records and DVDs, and her choices aren’t necessarily what you’d expect. No K-pop and light on obscure electronica (save for Balam Acab’s Wander/Wonder), Boucher instead opted for guilty pleasures — a couple of Blink-182 and Justin Bieber DVDs, a T.A.T.U. record, that sort of thing. Having watched this thing a couple of times now, I’m most taken with Boucher’s ease and candor as she talks about really uncool music many of us secretly like.

As evident from the video excerpts above & below from their 2008 Amoeba Berkeley instore concert, Dengue Fever are always a really great band to catch playing live. But their two just announced April Bay Area and LA shows promise to be even more exciting since, as on the LA based psychedelic rock meets Cambodian pop sextet's forthcoming album, Cannibal Courtship, they will officially be introducing the band's very own musical instrument invention, the Mastadong. Shown on the anticipated new album's cover art, alongside lead singer Chhom Nimol, the unique Mastadong is one half Fender Jazzmaster guitar and one half Cambodian Chapei Dong Veng (traditional Cambodian two-stringed guitar). Created exclusively for Dengue Fever guitarist Zac Holtzman, the Mastadong was first unveiled last month at the NAMM 2011 Show in the Anaheim Convention Center.

Ever popular with Amoeba customers & staffers, Dengue Fever, who played the Hollywood Amoeba six years ago, was formed ten years ago by brothers Zac and Ethan Holtzman after Ethan was inspired by the music he witnessed firsthand on a trip to Cambodia. Soon after, they discovered their phenomenal lead singer, recent immigrant Chhom Nimol, who sings in Khmer, in a nightclub in the Little Phnom Penh area of Long Beach. Dengue Fever have released six albums over the years including their eponymous 2003 debut and their last album, 2009's Sleepwalking Through The Mekong (M80) but the eleven track Cannibal Courtship will be their debut for Fantasy Records/Concord Music Group and it looks likely to be the group's most well and widely received work to date. As well as the band's trademark psych meets Cambodian hybrid they also nicely meld in various other sounds such as Afrobeat and a heavy dose of fuzz guitar.