Heavy Dates

BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

In her heyday, the former teen darling Tiffany Darwisch (then and now known simply as Tiffany) popularized the mall as a viable venue for bubblegum concerts. Unable to shake the performing bug, she's now carrying out "Operation Redhead," a tour of the nation's institutes of higher learning. Last year she released a new solo album called The Color of Silence (Eureka), which was greeted with, well, the sound of silence. But really, she seems to be doing okay: she's completed a track with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's Krayzie Bone, and it's expected to be the first single off his forthcoming solo album. In the meantime, you can catch Tiffany this Saturday as part of an eclectic all-day bill with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Kicked in the Head, the Lost City Angels, Shake Senora, and others at Brandeis University, (617) 931-2000 or visit www.greathorned.com, in Waltham.

It's been a long time since former Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler had a new album to support -- some 10 years, in fact. But he's back with Sailing to Philadelphia (Warner Bros.), a solid solo effort that features cameos by James Taylor and Van Morrison. And he kicks off a full-band US tour on Monday at the sold-out Orpheum, (617) 931-2000, in Boston before proceeding to the SNET Oakdale Theatre, (203) 265-1501, in Wallingford, Connecticut, on Tuesday.

Streetwalkin' Cheetahs took the inspiration for their name -- and most of their wild, sweaty, lucid garage-punk shtick -- from the opening line of the Stooges' "Raw Power." Which is an awful lot to live up to, and the Cheetahs aren't always quite there, but they're the kind of kamikazes who're committed to beating themselves half to death in the effort. Catch them with old-school Orange County punks D.I. at the Tune Inn, (203) 772-4310, in New Haven on Tuesday and at the Middle East, (617) 864-3278, in Cambridge on Wednesday.

Reggae great Frederick "Toots" Hibbert brings his Toots and the Maytals to Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, (401) 272-5876, in Providence tonight (April 19) with the Black Rebels and to the Roxy, (617) 931-2000, in Boston on Sunday with Bob Marley's old band, the Wailers. Dancehall reggae superstar Shaggy -- whose Hotshot (MCA) went to #1 more than six months after its release, thanks to its Clintonian ode to been-caught-cheatin', "It Wasn't Me" -- shows up on Sunday at the University of Rhode Island's Keaney Gymnasium, (401) 874-5298, in Kingston, and on Tuesday at Wellesley College (781) 823-1000.

Did Fates Warning inadvertently create emo? Well, no, but a few years back, in one of the guitar-player magazines, Weezer's Rivers Cuomo copped to taking lessons from one of the guys in the semi-famous '80s prog-metal band, who hail from Connecticut and are still at it. They're at the Station, (401) 823-4660, in West Warwick, Rhode Island, on Wednesday with Savatage, the conceptual metal band known for their rock operas, and perhaps now better known in the guise of their Christmas-tune alter ego, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

-- Carly Carioli