BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

Now that this year's Worcester Phoenix Best Music Poll shindig is history, you are invited to take the train to Rhode Island, where on Saturday (May 20) the Providence Phoenix does its BMP festivities at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, (401) 272-5876, and the Met Café, (401) 861-2142, with help from undie hip-hop sensations Dilated Peoples and Black Star's other half, Talib Kweli. Maine alterna-rock dudes Rustic Overtones are also on the bill.

If you're in the neighborhood of Easthampton next week, the Flywheel, (413) 527-9800, has got a promising spate of gigs, starting on May 20 with the mighty Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the death/grind/noise champions whose lacerating tempos and under-a-minute song lengths come closer than anyone we know to the pain of Anal Cunt. They're on a bill with the Thrones, from the Kill Rock Stars stable. On May 22 the Chicago school of minimalist/free-improv/postgrad-electronicats hit Flywheel in the person of Kevin Drumm, on a bill with the reeds/cello/guitar/bass quartet Pillow. Then the Elephant 6 pick-up team known as the Music Tapes arrive on May 23, touting such bleeding-edge musical technologies as a seven-foot metronome, an organ-playing helmet, a "clapping-hands machine," and some sort of human-television hybrid. Left-coast mod punks the Aislers Set set up shop with Teenbeat's Aden on May 24; both bands continue on to the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes, (617) 524-3740, in Jamaica Plain, on May 26. And Flywheel hosts underground-comics gal Dame Darcy's Meat Cake: The Play -- which includes Milky Way booking agent Darcy Leonard as half of a pair of Siamese twins -- on May 25, with the band 27 along as well. The production also plays Fort Thunder, (401) 521-1851, in Providence, on May 24 and the Tannery, (978) 463-1744, in Newburyport, on May 26, then travels to Bad Girrls Studio, (617) 971-0082, in Jamaica Plain, and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, (617) 734-2500, in Brookline, on May 27.

Last but not least: the Wellfleet Beachcomber, (508) 349-6055 -- our favorite oceanside cabana, and the official Cape summer-bungalow retreat of area rock and roll -- opens for biz next Thursday, May 25. If you show up for that night's gig by SuperHoney -- who just might be Beantown's best funk band -- or the following night's show by the Incredible Casuals, who reunite for a 20th year at the joint, you'll get a season pass that'll entitle you to reduced admission all summer long.

-- Carly Carioli