He’s been playing music for 25 years, recorded three full-length records at the world-famous Sun Studios in Memphis, and he has more than 130,000 views on YouTube. Still, David Brookings is far from a household name. But he’s cool with that.

“I’m not famous, but that doesn’t mean people haven’t bought the albums, and it doesn’t mean people don’t go, ‘Hey man, that’s a great song,’” Brookings says. “I don’t think anybody should be doing this to be famous, and I’m certainly not.”

Brookings, who will play a semi-unplugged set with his pop-rock band The Average Lookings at Streetlight Records in San Jose this Saturday, says he didn’t set out to be a superstar. Growing up in Richmond, Va., he began writing songs when he was 10 years old. Back then, he says, he never thought about whether his music would make him a star: “I always said I would do this whether I was famous or not.”

He moved to Memphis in his 20s to pursue music and ultimately landed a job working as a tour guide at Sun Studios. Brookings was allowed to record there after hours and he cut three of his six albums in the same room where Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley recorded some of the greatest pop music of the 20th century. He moved to the South Bay in 2009.

For the 35-year-old San Jose transplant, music is a passion. He made that quite clear with the series of YouTube postings he made from July of 2010 to February of 2011, in which Brookings posted cover versions of all 209 Beatles songs in 209 consecutive days.

He says he did it in part to draw people to his original material. But Brookings is also a huge Beatles fan and watching him perform the entirety of the Fab Four’s catalog it is plain that he just enjoys singing a good pop song.

In fact, perhaps the only thing he enjoys more than playing a catchy tune is writing one. It’s fitting then that Brookings would be so proud of his latest release, 2013’s The Maze. Comprising 11 compact and jangling gems, The Maze, is a veritable clinic in pop songwriting.

Shimmering guitars crisscross over a bouncing bass line and straight-to-the-point drumming on album opener “If I Don’t Make It Back,” a Strokes-ish number about the ever-present specter of mortality that looms over day-to-day life. At first blush, this sounds like a dark topic, but in reality it’s a meditation on the triumph of life. “If I don’t make it back/it’s gonna be all right,” Brookings sings along with a sweet vocal harmony. “It’s gonna take some time/but you’ll make it through the night.”

David Brookings and The Average Lookings will play an in-store performance at Streetlight Records in San Jose on Dec 13 at 2pm. More info.

Mark your calendars. December 11 is shaping up to be a nice day for a white wedding. Or for dancing with yourself… Or maybe you’re more into “Rebel Yell. Point is, whoever you are, you’ve likely caught yourself belting out one Billy Idol’s monster hits—in the shower, in the car, that one time you had one-too-many-shots of Jameson at karaoke night…

Christmas is coming early for local fans of the punk icon and music video pioneer, who is playing the newly opened Rockbar Theater in San Jose the second week of December. It’s going to be an intimate show at the 1,200-capacity venue.

Tickets go on sale Nov. 14. Click here for more info, and watch the groundbreaking, award-winning video for “Dancing With Myself” video below:

These days, terrestrial radio isn’t the first place most would turn in search of new or obscure music. But this weekend—all day Friday and Saturday—fans of the spacey sounds of modern psychedelic music, will be tuning into KFJC, Foothill College’s radio station, as it will be broadcasting live from the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia in the United Kingdom.

KFJC’s low-wattage frequency (89.7 FM) can be hard to get a fix on—especially for those outside of the South Bay. Yet, even while the station broadcasts at a frequency that is dwarfed by the major commercial radio outlets in the Bay Area, KFJC works hard to punch above its weight class, by delivering programming, like the live broadcast of the psych festival, that listeners can’t get anywhere else.

According to Eric Johnson, general manager at KFJC, broadcasting the psych fest is likely to be the radio station’s largest undertaking to date. They’ve covered events in Japan and New Zealand—both further away than Liverpool—but this time around they’ll be doing much more than they have in the past.

“It’s pretty huge,” he says, noting that KFJC will capture live sound at three individual stages, conduct artist interviews and stream live high definition video of the festival, some of which will be cached for repeat viewing.

In spite of the challenges posed by the broadcast, Johnson says he is “confident” that the station and the team of six heading across the pond will be able to handle it. More than that, he is “looking forward to it.”

That’s because he and the rest of the staff at KFJC—along with the student DJs—feel the work they are doing is important.

Johnson, who has been at KFJC since 1991, says he doesn’t know anything about commercial radio, and it’s pretty clear he doesn’t care to learn.

“I think it’s kind of been a mission of college radio to be an alternative to mainstream,” he says. “We’re looking to sort of satisfy folks who get a little tired of the formulated stuff out there. We’re looking to draw attention to bands that may not otherwise get attention.”

The bands playing at the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia include: Goats, Woods, Allah-Las, Suuns, White Hills and Amen Dunes, among many more.

Bringing KFJC listeners live performances of these artists is equally as important to Johnson. “There are things that happen live that just don’t happen in the studio,” he says. “Live, sometimes, is far more amazing than studio.”

The Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia will be broadcast live on KFJC, 89.7 FM, from 6am-7pm on Sept. 26 & 27. Live streaming audio and video will be available at kfjc.org. Watch San Francisco’s Allah-Las below.