Paul Collins' Beat, Bad Sports, Occult Detective Club

It's hard to imagine a better pairing of area bands with a touring headliner than this power-pop-punk bill, as Bad Sports and Occult Detective Club open for power-pop legend Paul Collins.

History lesson for the young'uns: In 1974, Collins, Peter Case and Jack Lee founded legendary act The Nerves, a short-lived Los Angeles-based act with the distinction of touring with The Ramones pre-Roger Corman's Rock 'n' Roll High School. After The Nerves split, Collins and Case became The Breakaways (Case later broke "a million miles away," forming The Plimsouls). Collins formed The Beat in '77, and soon the band assumed the name "Paul Collins' Beat" to avoid across-the-big-pond confusion with 2 Tone ska act The English Beat.

In summer 2010, Alive Natural Sounds released Collins' new full-length King Of Power Pop! Produced in Detroit by Jim Diamond (The White Stripes, The Dirtbombs and The Go!), Collins says the album "puts it all together" by connecting the musical dots from The Nerves to The Breakaways to The Beat to Paul Collins' Beat and, finally, to Collins himself.

Speaking of new albums: Occult Detective Club's latest, Crimes, was similarly released on Alive Natural Sounds earlier this year, and a new Bad Sports album is due for late-summer pressing on Dirtnap Records. This is as impressive a power-pop bill as you're likely to find.