The Friday night summer concerts series returned to Cesar Chavez Plaza. Concerts in the Park returned for the first time without promoter Jerry Perry hosting the event. The music played on Friday, May 4 continues to be as entertaining as ever. Just like Fiesta en la Calle did last year this year’s CIP includes a DJ on site. DJ Shaun Slaughter supplied great music for those in attendance. Slaughter, writes and produces music under D.A.M.B., and also performed at the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival Saturday night. Concerts in the Park began on May 4 and runs every Friday until July 27. Many of last year’s bands return to the venue. Another noticeable difference this year is that

It’s almost summer, and with the season comes the return of Concerts in the Park. Sacramentans of all varieties came out to Cesar Chavez Park on Friday for the first in the concert series that will continue through July. The crowd swelled in size as the sun set and music filled the air. Stage performers included bands Storytellers, Island of Black and White, and Arden Park Roots. DJ Shaun Slaughter provided dance beats and announcer Danny Secretion rallied the concert-goers between sets. Check out the free concerts every Friday from 5 - 9 p.m. this summer at Cesar Chavez park.

photographs by Barry Wisdom / The volume wasn't the only thing turned to "11" the evening of May 4, as an off-the-dial number of revel-hungry music lovers descended on Cesar Chavez Park for the 2012 Concerts in the Park season opener. Some 6,300 men, women and children – a record for the 21-year-old free, all-ages concert series – filled the downtown Sacramento venue to celebrate the River City's unofficial summer kick-off. Local musician and erstwhile emcee Danny Secretion hosted the Downtown Sacramento Partnership-sponsored event, offering loving introductions to The Storytellers, Island of Black and White, and Arden Park Roots. The Storytellers, described on the DSP website as a

One could make the argument that The Clash's "London Calling" is one of the riskiest moves in rock history. After two well-received and straightforward punk albums, the quartet from London threw fans, critics and the entire rock world a curveball in 1979. Spanning at least three genres in 65 minutes, the double LP was not only twice as long as anything the band had recorded prior, but also about the last thing anybody expected from one of the founders of the British punk movement. It could be considered just as risky, then, that a concert promoter would find it feasible to actually put together a bill of bands of equally varying styles to cover the classic album in its entirety. However,