Laminate those vaccine cards? Live music is coming back and soon.

Plus, a lost gem of '60s Fresno garage rock.

Here’s some good (or goodish) news, for those eagerly waiting for the return of Fresno’s live performance venues.

The state announced on Friday that it will allow indoor concerts, theater performances and the like starting April 15.

It’s pretty much what the venues expected, but now there’s a timeline, even if how it all plays out is a bit complicated and not as promising as it might seem.

The breakdown: Counties in the state’s red tier (that’s Fresno) can operate venues of less than 1,500 people at 10 percent capacity (up to 60 or so people for most venues in Fresno). The capacity cap jumps to 2,000 for counties in the yellow tier (here’s a quick reminder of the tier system).

Venues can choose to make events open only to those who can prove they’ve been vaccinated or those who have had a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of the event. In such cases, the capacity limit jumps to 25 percent (50 percent for counties in the yellow tier).

The big mystery here is how these vaccine-required events will be handled at the venues (will Strummer’s be checking vaxx cards at the doors?), whether agents/bands will demand them and whether the benefit will outweigh the hassle in terms of available tickets and ticket sales.

The Clovis Rodeo will be asking tickets holder to be vaccinated (or tested) for this year’s event (Aug. 21-25), so we’ll have our first test case soon enough.

The Bushmen, self titled

Garage rock fans, especially the fall-down-the-rabbit hole, obscure-record collector types have long loved Fresno’s music scene circa the mid to late 1960s (see: Stephen David Heitkotter’s “Black Orchid”).

Before being cut off by Viet Nam war, every town in the San Joaquin Valley had its own teenage rock band. They would drive up and down Highway 99 playing dances and the like at places like the Rainbow Ballroom.

Some of those band were lucky enough to get into a studio for proper recordings and have since been rediscovered (Fresno’s Road Runners and the Brymers from Lemoore come to mind).

Other’s, like the Bushmen, never did.

So, the Fresno band’s self-titled LP (released by Sundazed Music in July) is “unearthed garage glory.” Taken from a show at the Rainbow Ballroom in 1965, the band plays through nine songs of era-appropriate cover tunes (from the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Paul Revere and The Raiders).

This is text-book ’60s garage rock, complete with the Farfisa organ and reverb-laden guitar solos and vocal yelps (and screams. The screams do it, for me).

It will hit with fans of the genre, for sure.

But several of the songs (The Kinks “You Really Got Me,” “The Last Time,” from the Stones) have since become full-blown hits and will be recognizable to even the casual listener. That, coupled with a few deep cuts (the Kingsman’s B-side “Long Green), is enough to make this album worth the time.

“The Bushmen” is available on digital formats and vinyl (white vinyl specifically, cut and pressed at Third Man Pressing).

That’s it for this week. If you have anything you think I need to be looking at or listening to, feel free to let me know: jtehee@gmail.com