Heavy Dates

WORCESTER

Heavy dates

Thursday night, the Lucky Dog offers up a mixed bag with Tunnel Drill, Alien Tesh, the Tide and Jack's Smirking Revenge. Friday night is the happening night again in Worcester with Hypnotic Kick opening up the night at 7 PM on an all ages show headlined by local rapcore greats Eastcide. (They play here often enough that I consider them local) Upstairs at The Palladium. The Lucky Dog offers up the ghoulish rockabilly of Gein and the Graverobbers and the heavy pop of Milk among others. Will Strangefolk be the salvation for all those hippies left stupefied with Jerry dead and Phish on extended hiatus? You can find out for yourself when they play with locals Jiggle at the Palladium Friday night. Also on Friday, Wilbur and the Dukes return for a blues-wailing good time at Ralph's.

On Saturday heavy meets psychedelic as Simon and No Crime Done do the Lucky Dog. Entrain jam at The Tammany Club, while Clutch Grabwell get wild and crazy at The Plantation Club, and Ralph's brings in new blood with Last Man Standing, Pony, and Spyndakit.

-- Phil MacNamara

BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

The inventor, organist, and sometime one-man band Mr. Quintron has long been among the most entertaining vaudevillean personalities on the avant-noise circuit. For the past couple of years he's been touting the genius of his latest invention, the Drum Buddy: "a five-oscillator, light-activated, mechanically rotating drum machine" that appears to operate something like a theremin. He's got a couple of new albums out on the Chicago label Skin Graft and the Providence label Bulb, as well as a 45-minute "infomercial" for the Drum Buddy filmed live at his home base at the Spellcaster Lodge in New Orleans's Ninth Ward with help from local legends MC Trachiotomy and Mr. "Mother-in-Law" himself, Ernie K-Doe. Quintron's on something like a promotional tour that'll include screenings of the infomercial, live Drum Buddy demos, and probably some other musicmaking; check it out on Saturday at the Bulb Records Clubhouse, (401)276-2820, in Providence, and on Sunday at Infrasound, (617) 241-8201, in Boston.

This squalling indie rock-and-roll show brought to you by the letter L: Les Savy Fav, the Lot Six (Boston's answer to At the Drive-In?), and Love As Laughter hit the Middle East, (617) 864-2378, in Cambridge on Saturday. Les Savy Fav move on to the Tune Inn, (203) 772-4310, in New Haven on Sunday, where they team up with Texas Terri and the Stiff Ones, whose leader is a kind of Iggy-Pop-meets-Karen-Black disaster who performs Stooges covers (and, unfortunately, some of her own songs) with her naughty bits obscured by only a bit of electrical tape. You can also catch Texas Terri on Monday at the Middle East and on Tuesday at the Skinny, (207) 871-8983, in Portland, Maine, where she teams up with the bizarro -- and by now somewhat legendary -- arena-psych-punk group the Frogs. The Frogs will then turn up at the Middle East next Thursday (March 29) with the Unsane offshoot Cutthroats 9.

Former godheadsilo madman Mike Kunka continues his runontitled rock-and-roll warfare with Enemymine, who came up with a damn fine signifier for their esoteric brand of spastic bash 'n' throttle: "Slint Bizkit." To tell the truth, Enemymine's migraine-punk double-bass throb is more grating and unwieldy than anything either of those bands turns out, but sheesh, shouldn't someone steal that name? Catch Enemymine at the Middle East on Wednesday and at the Tune Inn next Thursday.

Another slip of the Bizkit -- Limp guitarist Wes Borland's side project Big Dumb Face betrays his oft-professed worship of Ween, whom you could think of as the Weezer of rock-and-roll satirists. Ween are at the Higher Ground, (802) 863-5966, in Winooski, Vermont, on Sunday, at Pearl Street, (413) 584-0610, in Northampton on Monday, and at Avalon, (617) 423-6398, in Boston on Tuesday.

-- Carly Carioli