The Hormones, a Bay Area-based all-female Ramones tribute band, headlined The Blank Club this weekend. The benefit concert was held to raise funds for local Roller Derby teams. Metro photographer Greg Ramar was on the scene to catch the action. Check out the photos below:

In 1993, underground Southern Californian punk band The Offspring, which play the San Jose Civic on Tuesday Oct. 2, went mainstream when their third album, Smash, came out. Since then, they’ve had a string of singles and platinum records.

Their 9th, Days Go By, was released earlier this year. It, along with the prior album, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (2008) were produced by Bob Rock (Famous for producing Dr. Feelgood by Mötley Crüe and the Black Album by Metallica). We recently interviewed singer Dexter Holland about the new album and the recent direction the band has taken.

What strikes me the most about Days Go By is how much more carefully crafted the songs and recordings are—which I think is also true about Rise And Fall. How do you create that sense of immediacy when crafting songs slower? Or is that not a concern for you anymore?

We definitely spent more time on these records than ones in the past and I’m glad that it shows. It’s just a matter of us having done a number of records. This is our ninth record, and we wanted to make sure that it sounds different, not just a repeat of the other records, something more than we’ve done before.

It’s important to have different kinds of songs on the records. Some of my favorite bands growing up were punk bands like the Ramones, where a lot of times the music stayed pretty much the same from record to record. Even though I loved all of it, for us it’s always been important to try and mix it up. So it just takes a little bit longer.

How has the promotion model changed for you now, compared to the 90s, when it mostly depended on MTV and the radio?

It seems like the way the music world is, you need different things all together. It’s not just—get your video on MTV and get your record into Best Buy. That’s done. Now we’re using social media. The Internet’s really big and who you package your tour with, or if you get on Jimmy Kimmel. We have done a little bit of all of that. We did Jimmy Kimmel and the Tonight Show, which we’ve never done before.

The Internet is something I’ve always been comfortable with because I’ve always thought of the Internet as a way to directly connect to fans. It’s what we were trying to do in little clubs as a punk band. The bands that I loved are the bands that invited the audience on stage. We did a lot of that too. I always thought of punk shows as being really inclusive of their audience, like you’re part of an event. So when the Internet came along, you had your own webpage, your own chat room and your own Facebook—Twitter now is even more direct. It fits in very natural to what our band was already about.

To celebrate their 30th anniversary as a band last year, J-punk pioneers Shonen Knife finally released a full album of Ramones covers, Osaka Ramones. The anticipation came not just from the fact that their Ramones covers that had been floating around for years (“I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Suzy Is A Headbanger,” etc.) were some of the best ever, but also because since day one, Naoko Yamano and crew had patterned their music after the NYC superpunks. It was the album that Shonen Knife was destined to make.

It delivered, but there were some surprises, too—they picked not only the catchiest and most exuberant tunes from the Ramones catalog (since that’s the side Shonen Knife has emulated the most), but also some of their tougher, darker songs: “We Want The Airwaves,” “We’re A Happy Family,” “Chinese Rock.”

After that moment of harmonic convergence, they’re back to their own original songs—always sure to include something about parties, animals and food—with their new album, Pop Tunes.

Here in the U.S., it was the 1989 tribute album Every Band Has A Shonen Knife Who Loves Them that introduced many to their weird and wonderful worldview. Contributors included Sonic Youth, who covered “Burning Farm,” one of the band’s strangest songs. Kurt Cobain was a huge fan who took Yamano and company on a U.K. tour in 1991.

Like the Ramones, Shonen Knife hold tight to their aesthetic even as their style evolves. By 1997’s Brand New Knife, songs like “Explosion!” could and should have been on alt-rock radio, and their Carpenters’ cover “Top of the World” has probably been as widely heard as their fan favorites like “Redd Kross” (about the L.A. indie band Redd Kross) and “I Wanna Eat Choco Bars” (about wanting to eat choco bars). Also like the Ramones, the mainstream has never been able to really wrap their minds around them, which has done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of their cult following every time they come around.

Shonen Knife plays the Blank Club in San Jose on Saturday, Aug. 11, 9pm; $12.
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With the reunited Jane’s Addiction headlining Live 105’s BFD this weekend, it’s the perfect time to remember the first club to bring Perry Ferrell’s legendary band to the South Bay. From 1985 to 1990, Santa Clara’s One Step Beyond was a hub of counterculture in the Valley, with their all-ages policy exposing a generation of indie kids, punks, goths and other mistfits to not only Jane’s Addiction, but the Ramones, Replacements, Ministry and other alt-rock legends.

After the success of the One Step Beyond reunion last year, organizers are doing it again on July 21 at Club Illusions in Palo Alto (which has its own unique history throughout its various identities as the Keystone, the Vortex and the Edge). Headlining the One Step Beyond reunion this year will be the Frail, with performances from several DJs, including Live 105’s Aaron Axelsen.

Before Axelsen was shaping musical tastes around the Bay Area as music director at Live 105 and host of the weekly new-music showcase Soundcheck, he was having his own tastes shaped at One Step Beyond.

“I used to go to One Step Beyond and see crazy bands there when I was 14,” says Axelsen, who grew up in the East Bay. “It was a big part of who I am.”

He sees this event as sort of a high-school class reunion for those who had their eyes and ears opened at 1400 Martin Avenue. He’s also a big fan of headliners the Frail, the up-and-coming San Francisco electro-pop group who are releasing a new record this summer.

The One Step Beyond reunion will be held July 21, 8pm at Club Ilusions in Palo Alto, $10 pre-sale/$15 at the door.

Who knew Record Store Day would make it to is fifth anniversary? When it made its debut in 2007, it was a fairly revolutionary concept: ask famous musicians to support honest-to-god, brick-and-mortar independent record stores by giving them exclusive releases to sell.

But it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that it caught on, since indie record stores made the careers of many of the biggest artists who are now known for championing Record Store Day—like Wilco, who this year will be releasing an exclusive deluxe vinyl box set edition of their last album The Whole Love.

Other top Record Store Day releases this year include the first 7” single from the upcoming album of unreleased Joey Ramone tracks. Featuring an intense, anthemic delivery from the late Ramones lead singer, “Rock ‘n’ Roll is the Answer” almost sounds like a sequel to “We Want the Airwaves.” Iggy Pop, Taking Back Sunday, Fun and Richard Buckner are among the other artists contributing releases.