From the outside, nothing much seems to have changed about the world famous Bob's Java Jive. Still a dingy kettle nestled on South Tacoma Way, still the place where junkie William Hurt and junkier Keanu Reeves were hired to kill a man in I Love You To Death (seriously, go watch that movie), still a cavern of music history in a city with a complicated relationship to music.

But, the Java Jive hasn't always had the easiest time existing as a worthwhile place to go and see music. In the past few years, shows had begun to dwindle - so much so that, as a music columnist, I would give up for months at paying attention to the Jive's goings on. As of roughly last August, though, attentive music-lovers should have noticed an uptick in activity coming from the kettle. Brandon Rowley, an old-time booker who began with punk shows on the East Coast before coming to the Northwest about a decade ago, started working to get the Java Jive back on track, music-wise.

"I always liked the Jive," says Rowley. "I consider it definitely the top dive bar in Tacoma, if not the top in the whole Northwest. ... I had noticed that the Jive, when I first lived in Tacoma, hipsters were all over the Java Jive. It was a really cool place to be, and it was always really crowded. But I noticed, coming back to Tacoma, that it had kinda gotten quieter and there wasn't much of the younger crowd. ... I wanted to help out, and I'm not in it for the money or the ego. A lot of it is that I'm just really lazy. I don't want to go all the way to Capitol Hill to see a good show. I want to walk down the street from my house to see a good show."

Part of the struggle, then, is to cross the all-important threshold of actually getting non-Tacoma bands to come and play here. This isn't always as easy as it seems. While there are some more technical reasons for this (some venues in Seattle enact blackout clauses, meaning that a band can't play within a certain radius of Seattle after playing that club, which results in bands going straight through to Olympia), some of it simply comes from preconceptions about Tacoma's reputation.

"It's kind of a weird thing, here in Tacoma," says Rowley. "As most people know, Seattle is a mecca for awesome music. So, a lot of times, these Seattle bands will get really caught up in the Seattle scene, and neglect cities like Tacoma that are thirty miles down the road. ... A lot of times, these bands, they'll go on tour, they might even tour Europe or Japan, but they won't even think about Tacoma. A couple times, I've actually encountered people in bands that scoff at Tacoma. It's happened a couple times, where bands basically write Tacoma off. It always kind of confused me, because if you're a Seattle band, and you're very popular, you need to recognize that your popularity is flowing out of the boundaries of places like Fremont and Ballard, and that the people that are coming to your shows are actually coming from Kent and Tacoma and Lynnwood and Bellevue."

This is a long way of coming around to the point that the Java Jive has two incredibly exciting shows coming up, featuring Seattle bands that rarely, if ever, make the trek down to Tacoma. This Saturday's show features Grave Babies and Wimps, and next week's show features La Luz and Pony Time. We'll talk more about the La Luz/Pony Time show next week, but first let's cover Grave Babies and Wimps.

"I haven't (played the Java Jive before)," says Rachel Ratner of Wimps. "I went to school in Tacoma a while ago, like in 1997, and I would go to shows there, but I've never played there. I'm really excited."

Wimps play gloriously giddy punk music that comes in 2-minute fits and starts - and that giddiness landed their song, "Repeat," on a recent episode of This American Life. Grave Babies, signees to Hardly Art, make moody post-punk that provokes as much as it envelops in gauzy noise. Awesome shows like this are able to happen at the Java Jive - and amazing bands like these are able to come down to Tacoma - because Tacomans come out to see them.

If you could simultaneously prove all the naysayers wrong and get your ears blasted off in a giant, grimy kettle, why wouldn't you?

WIMPS, GRAVE BABIES, w/ Full Moon Radio, Wild Berries, 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 1, Bob's Java Jive, 2102 South Tacoma Way, Tacoma, $5, 253.475.9843

LA LUZ, w/ Pony Time, The Fucking Eagles, the Tom Price Desert Classic, 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 8, Bob's Java Jive, 2102 South Tacoma Way, Tacoma, $5, 253.475.9843

See Also

Q&A: Talking to Rachel Ratner from Wimps on wiggle dripping, partying at the wrong time and This American Life