Heavy Dates

Heavy Dates

Leading the talent pool this week is former Salamander Crossing fiddle gal, Rani Arbo who performs with Daisy Mayhem this Friday at Grafton Crossing. Over at the Lucky Dog, it's the reformed Life Goes Wrong, featuring LD honcho Erick Godin. Sayhitolisa and Top Hat Charlie are also on the bill. Saturday brings former members of Freeballin' back to town with the interstellar sounds of Spac'n. They stop by the Above Club. Over at Dinny's, Providence's number-one action-stompers the Fabulous Itchies stop in for a set celebrating the release of their debut disc. Then they pack up for Las Vegas to play alongside Barry and the Remains and the Standells. The Crybabies and Free Radicals open. Elsewhere, Sugar Ray and the Bluetones let it rip at Gilrein's, and Second Class Citizen have a CD-release party at Stooges Pub.

-- John O'Neill

BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

It may be a little late in the game for an industrial supergroup to take root, but if there's room for just one, it's probably the Damage Manual. All the major factions from the early Wax Trax days are on board: singer Chris Connelly (Ministry, Revolting Cocks), guitarist Geordie Walker (Killing Joke), and drummer/programmer Martin Atkins (Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Pigface), plus Public Image Ltd. bassist Jah Wobble. And if their debut EP, One (Invisible), isn't exactly groundbreaking, it is one of the better reiterations of that late-'80s/early-'90s industro-metal thing to come down the pike in some time. "Sunset Gun" rips off Zeppelin better than anyone since the Beasties; if "Damage Addict" recalls Ministry's "Breathe" and "Blame and Demand" conjures the spirit of Pailhead, well, just call 'em fine old cannibals. The Damage Manual play Pearl Street, (413) 584-0610, in Northampton, on June 17, and the Middle East, (617) 864-3278, in Cambridge, on June 18.

Northampton's Thurston Moore has another one of his avant/improv discs coming in a few weeks, this time as part of a trio with Wally Shoup and Toshi Makihara; it'll be released on Sublingual Records, the imprint belonging to the local free-improv ensemble Saturnalia. In the meantime, Moore and the rest of Sonic Youth are on tour behind their new nyc ghosts & flowers, with Stereolab in tow. They're at Avalon, (617) 423-6398, in Boston, on June 15 and at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, (401) 272-5876, in Providence, on June 16.

Taking a page out of the Cheap Trick playbook, rap-metal dudes 311 will be performing one of their first three album in its entirety (exactly which one is a secret) as part of their set at the Tweeter Center, (617) 931-2000, in Mansfield, on June 15. Neo-soul is getting a groove on at the FleetBoston Pavilion, (617) 931-2000: tickets went on sale last week for a date by voodoo lover D'Angelo on August 28; and, more immediately, sultry, streetwise songstress Mary J. Blige comes to the Pavilion on June 16. Ska-punks-gone-new-wavers No Doubt are at the Pavilion on June 22 with modern rockers Lit and down-home hip-hoppers Black Eyed Peas. The Cape Cod Melody Tent, (508) 775-9100, in Hyannis, opens its season with a performance by the personification of dry wit, comedian Steven Wright, on June 17, followed by Bob Weir's Ratdog on June 18. And it's not as if they needed to tour now that the post office is doing all their publicity for them, but the Steve Miller Band fly like, well, you know, into the Tweeter Center on June 17 along with Gov't Mule.

-- Carly Carioli