It’s time for the Jackpot Film Festival!

The Jackpot Film Festival, a weeklong cornucopia of music-related offerings put on by Jackpot Records, takes over the Hollywood Theater this week.

Every night admission is free, and with every night also being a double feature, you’re bound to run across something you like.

The Jackpot staff take it upon themselves to select material to show during the weeklong event. Apparently, they have vowed never to show the same thing twice, which generally results in a nice, wide variety of documentaries and live performances.

Tuesday features a double-header of early hip-hop videos and live footage of The Stax Volt Review from 1965. Films such as Wild Style and Style Wars have captured the unique visual qualities of early hip-hop culture. Expanding on such work is this selection of videos spanning from 1982 to 1988. They showcase the maturation of both hip-hop and the music video itself into an awesome mass-cultural force, along with documenting the luminaries (and less than luminaries) of the hip-hop scene.

The Stax Volt Revue playing afterwards is a fine slice of ’60s soul. Stax Records, along with the more famous Motown, was responsible for many of the hit-making soul and R&B artists of the ’60s. Give it a try and you’ll never be able to listen to the horrible crap that passes for soul music these days. They didn’t have voice equalization software back then, so singers actually had to have soulful voices, and a real band to back them up. As such, this film is one of your best bets of the week.

Wednesday boasts the earliest known footage of both the Talking Heads and the B-52’s. Following these two half-hour segments is a selection of glam-rock videos. Clips of famous bands’ first shows are always worth watching, although the same can’t always be said for glam videos. Thursday is psych/garage night, featuring carefully selected, often hyper-rare footage of garage-bound no-counts of all stripes from the ’60s and ’70s. Since many of these pimply-faced teens had more rock and roll in their little toe than a thousand My Chemical Romances, this one is a no-brainer. This is the night to show up early, however. The past popularity of psych night means that it will likely be the most crowded of the week. Since it stretches for a marathon 100 minutes, there’s only this one thing on the menu for Thursday.

Friday finishes off the festival with a screening of a concert by the super-reclusive Jandek. Distributing creepy, atonal folk records from a P.O. box, revealing next to nothing about himself, Jandek is tailor-made for a cult following. After nearly 30 years and 49 albums, Jackpot managed to coax him into a rare live performance last year at the Hollywood Theater, which was filmed and will be shown Friday. While undeniably interesting, Jandek’s highly irregular style isn’t for everyone. Even so, if you have a taste for the out-of-the-ordinary, you might want to give this Jandek concert a watch.

And there you have it–a full week of musical bounty, laid out conveniently at your feet by the fine people of Jackpot Records. Although some nights are more appealing than most, any one you attend is likely to be good in its own way. Also, if you end up not enjoying yourself at all, at least you’re not out any money. You now have a week full of potential cheap dates ahead of you. So go ahead and pencil the Jackpot festival into your day planner. Your ears, and your wallet, will thank you.