Patch Picks: The Top 5 Best Music Venues in Santa Monica

Santa Monica Patch's new weekly feature, Patch Picks, highlights editor and reader picks of great local businesses, destinations, services, organizations, ways to spend a day off and more.

You’ll find useful lists to help you, your family, friends and significant others find the best places for such events as Sunday brunch, date nights and kids parties as well as the best parks, florists and other businesses.

For , we assembled the top five places to get a burger in Santa Monica, according to to a related question. With our second one, we proposed some good places to get away from the noise and find some serenity.

Our third list was created by special request, after Santa Monica Patch reader Jill Kobritz asked where people can take their dog—with the exception of the most obvious suggestion: parks. Our fourth list was a rundown of five key volunteer opportunities in Santa Monica.

For our fifth, we continue running with an unexpected theme that has pervaded our Thursday content: music. Following our music-heavy roundup of things to do this weekend and our gallery of photos featuring Elemental Strings performers, we bring you ...

Patch Picks: Top Music Venues

• : This unconventional venue attracts artists and attendees who are equally discriminating about their tunes. In other words, hard-core musos call McCabe's home. That said, even casual music fans owe it to themselves to take in a show at this cozy, warm, clean—but hardly obvious—performance space.

• : From all indications, this was $45 million well spent. The Broad Stage, which still has that new smell, is off to a banner year thus far: It's sold out many shows, primarily of the classical-music and jazz variety, and already booked hundreds of performances through 2011. With pitch-perfect sound and a dynamo interior, all this place needs is a broader palette of musical offerings.

• : Gotta hand it to the folks behind this ramshackle venue: Practically upon its opening last year, the Central catapulted past the 14 Below club that used to stand on the same grounds, in terms of the quality of its performers and management. L.A. indie-rock fans don't have many oases west of the 405, but this proud dive bar—which has already hosted the Roots' ?uestlove and underground legend Mike Watt, among others—has rapidly become one of them.

• : It wasn't easy to include the Civic on this list, because the venue's acoustics are, simply put, abysmal. But with acts as huge as Bob Dylan and My Bloody Valentine still approving of the arena enough to perform at it in recent years, and with a major renovation ready to be undertaken, the Civic could soon reattain the dominating status it held in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

• Barnum Hall: It was tempting to place  as the fifth entry here, what with Metallica's unforgettable performance at the SMO site late last year. But after folk-rock heroes America perform at the  venue on Saturday—as part of the —Barnum Hall's place on this list should be even more qualified.

Want to suggest a list? Submit your idea in the comment box. And if you agree or disagree with this list of top music venues, don't keep your opinions to yourself.