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40watt club

Biz Markie

Biz Markie is an East Coast hip hop artist, DJ and world-renowned Human Beat Boxer, best known for humorous singles like "Just a Friend" and "Pickin' Boogers." and his pre-MTV hit "Vapors". He has been labeled The Clown Prince of Hip-Hop. His career began in the 1980s. In 1992, Biz recorded a song called "Alone Again," but Gilbert O'Sullivan claimed the track featured an unauthorized sample of his hit "Alone Again (Naturally)," and served Biz papers. His career was quite damaged from the lawsuit, and Biz ducked out of the harshest glare of the limelight for the remainder of the 1990s.

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The Fleshtones

Often tagged as garage-rock revivalists, the Fleshtones mix the fuzz-guitar and Farfisa organ sounds of that genre with rockabilly, '50s and '60s R&B, and surf into a potent retro stew the group likes to call "Super Rock." The group formed in 1976 in Queens with vocalist/keyboardist Peter Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng, bassist Jan Marek Pukulski, and drummer Bill Milhizer and aimed to return rock and roll to the simplicity and unself-consciousness of the '50s and early-'60s. (The group was often joined on-stage and in the studio by sax player Gordon Spaeth, who passed on in 2005.

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El Vez

Because Elvis has become an international institution that can communicate across national and cultural boundaries, it comes as no surprise that El Vez - the self proclaimed "" - has come along. El Vez, aka Robert Lopez, has been kicking around the L.A. underground music scene for nearly twenty years. He first appeared in the early L.A. punk band The Zeros and then played in Catholic Discipline (which also spawned lesbian folk singer Phranc).

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