Friday, Oct. 27, 7 p.m. – “”Warren and Revelle Rock PC Plaza”” – Price Center – Free

Living Legends – ELIGH & MYSTIK JOURNEYMEN

Apparent perks accompany staying completely independent and making a loud point of never signing to a record label. The eight DIY-to-the-death rapper/producers who make up Living Legends have maintained their Oakland house-party intimacy and “come puff this J with me on the tour bus” local hospitality since the engines first revved in the mid ’90s with the union of founding members Sunspot Jonz and Luckyiam.PSC.

Soon, the duo, together known as Mystik Journeymen, was joined by the Grouch, met the three Melancholy Gypsys — Murs, Scarub and Eligh — and added Aesop and Bicasso as a finishing touch.

You never know which combination of members are going to show up at a Legends concert — and depending on who it is, results vary. Murs is undoubtedly the star, as he has worked with fan-heavy underground darlings Atmosphere, with the Grouch coming in second as a side-producer for Daddy Kev and, most recently, Zion I. But the selection set to hip-hoppify Price Center this Friday will serve as a solid representation of what the Legends do best: bring the out-of-reach enigma of the rap star down to a local and relatable level, bumping brassy beats and spitting smooth, if elementary, rhymes all the while.

Eligh is the white third of the act — accordingly, his flow tends to wind a little artistically off-beat, stop-start a little too dramatically and overuse the nasal passage. Luckyiam and Sunspot Jonz come off somewhat heavier, with confidently slow-spoken hooks and some of that Bay slant to their words and ways.

The Legends prove that handing out your own flyers is a small price to pay for freedom from the push-pull stress of a label’s media pressure and the inevitable betrayal of fans looking for something more underground.

Boss ditties: “Night Prowler,” “Rabbit Hole”

NadaSurf

Forgive “Popular,” Nada Surf’s first minor hit — you were probably taking your own theatrical throes of locker-nerd desperation pretty seriously 11 years ago, too. Plus, they did muscle out enough punchy, scrubbed-raw grunge-pop on freshman effort High/Low to back up any otherwise petty woes with convincingly furrowed (not to mention danceable) distress.

A four-year no-music period yielded the New York trio’s forgettable Proximity Effect in 2002. Within a year, it was indeed forgotten: Follow-up Let Go dropped loudly, and baby-faced frontman Matthew Caws was looking pretty damn cute bobbing up and down 14th Street to some Dylan on his golden radio. “Blonde on Blonde” skipped hand-in-hand with such catchy fixes as “Inside of Love” — an oceanic tranquilizer of simplistic strum heavier than Travis and inferior to U2, but reeking of both — and the Beach Boy-tight retro roll of “Blizzard of ’77.” But it didn’t take much careless smearing to blend the unexceptional songs of a fragile sounds-like band into 2005’s The Weight Is a Gift, a boring push of bang-bang, yeah-yeah child’s play stripped of all worthwhile style.

The best way to enjoy this indie-hot serving of Price Center pop-punk is to pretend you’re at one of those live-band proms where the group is judged only by how skillfully it camouflages its covers. Nada Surf did a passable “Where Is My Mind?” on the Pixies tribute compilation and contributed a foxy rendition of “If You Leave” (the “Pretty in Pink” climax song) to the first “O.C.” soundtrack. Even their originals sound like gymnasium-amped creations from greater talent filtered through the modesties of a lesser cover band. But believe it or not, these are their rightful owners, so put your party dress on and toast your red cup of punch to the boys.

Boss ditties: “Fruit Flies,” “Blonde on Blonde”