Heavy Dates

Has it really been 30 years since NRBQ first graced the world stage with their unique and loopy brand of rock and roll? To the Q's credit, they've managed to stay fresh and vital all this time, even after losing founding-member Terry Adams to a solo career. Now that the Flamin' Groovies and Ramones have cashed-out, and the Fleshtones continue to not give a crap so long as they get to Europe annually, NRBQ may be America's Greatest Cult Act. And they always deliver the goods live. Check them out at the Lucky Dog Music Hall this Friday. The OutCats and Caged Heat open. Elsewhere on Friday, Boston/Worcester roots king Dennis Brennan returns to Gilrein's. The advance material off his upcoming disc is aces, but that's no surprise. If he sticks around for another 20-or-so years, he could become America's next Greatest Cult Act, assuming the Q finally quit. Also, there's a benefit for the always-beleaguered WCUW, featuring Loose Change, at the Tammany Club. And the Racky Thomas Band let it rip blues-style at John Stone's Inn. This month's Indie Cred Hipster Award goes to the Lucky Dog for Saturday's gig headlined by Six Going On Seven, who crucified the crowd last month at the CMJ festival. Garrison, who also played CMJ, play as do Washington, DC's My New Mistake (featuring former Beantown heavyweight Brian McTernan) and Prizefighter open the night. That's four great up-and-coming bands for the buck, kiddies. The Pioneer Valley, what with Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, Lonesome Brothers, Ray Mason Band, and Ware River Club, is a hotbed of fabulous-but-underrated roots talent. Add the Drunk Stuntmen to that list. Their '97 release, Taking My Pee Pants Off (Chunk), was a flat-out slab of countrified brilliance. Head to Jack's Saloon in Uxbridge and catch a band who perfectly blend the line between genius and buffoonery. The masters of space jam, George Clinton and P-Funk, return to the Palladium, while upstairs at the L'il Pal, it's punk-o-rama with the Unseen, Billy Yanks, and Statistics. Elsewhere on Saturday, Sugar Ray Norcia blows through Gilrein's, Five Year Sentence headline Ralph's. From the "what's-the-appeal-department," it's a double-shot-o-shit from Lynyrd Skynyard and ZZ Top. All right, we'll cut the Top some slack, as there are many a day we wish we could be whisked away by their magic car of babes (and Billy Gibbons played in the awesome Moving Sidewalks). But Skynyrd? We couldn't get a handle on those turds even under the duel influence of warm Bud and high-school peer pressure. And before you send nasty mail and call us "art assholes," two points: It's 1999. You live in the North. Try out a radio station where B.T.O. isn't in heavy rotation.

-- John O'Neill

BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

Singer/songwriter Sarah Dougher has gradually become one of the hardest-working women in the Northwest indie-rock scene. A member of the punk-poppy Lookers, she's also been collaborating with Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker in the organ-driven garage trio Cadillaca, and more recently she's joined the raucous Crabs on organ and vocals. Oh, and she's got a solo album titled Day One (K Records) that was released in August. She's out killing two birds with one stone by touring both as a solo artist and as a member of the Crabs on a bill that comes to the Abbey Lounge -- a tiny neighborhood hole-in-the-wall with no phone, located at 3 Beacon Street in Somerville -- on October 14. Both Sarah and the Crabs are also on a bill with the Butchies -- who are fresh off a tour with the Indigo Girls -- at the Met Café, (401) 861-2142, in Providence, on October 12.

You'll have to get outta town to get your hands on the deep funk this week. George Clinton and the reunited Parliament/Funkadelic crew are good for at least a couple of hours a night at the Palladium, (797-9696, in Worcester, on October 9, as well as at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, (401) 272-5876, in Providence, on the 10th. Although he don't got the funk, he's got plenty of bass: Led Zep's John Paul Jones, who hits the Paradise, (617) 423-6398, in Boston, next Friday, October 15, is at Pearl Street, (413) 584-0610, in Northampton, on the 12th. And former Minuteman Mike Watt is at the Met Café on October 15 with Cobra Verde and Medicine Ball, as well as at T.T. the Bear's Place, (617) 492-2327, in Cambridge, on the 16th with Cobra Verde and Wheat.

Herbie Hancock has only three dates scheduled on a tour in which he'll perform a career-retrospective set; it kicks off at the Calvin Theatre, (413) 586-8686, in Northampton, this Friday, October 8. And though she's a little old to be pulling her Catwoman sex-kitten shtick, Eartha Kitt's still going strong with a three-night stand at the Iron Horse, (413) 584-0610, in Northampton, October 10 through 12.

Transylvanian boogie is on tap when a Gypsy-tune bill featuring Kálmán Balogh & the Gypsy Cimbalom Band along with Hungary's Ökrös Ensemble (featuring renowned Romanian violinist Sándor Fodor "Neti", at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre, (617) 876-4275, on October 8, and at the Iron Horse on the 9th. Tricky does, uh, whatever it is he's doing these days on October 13 at Lupo's, and on the 14th at Avalon, (617) 423-6398, in Boston. Oh, and indie rock's child prodigy, former Noise Addict dude Ben Lee, is at T.T. the Bear's Place on October 11 with Buffalo Tom's Chris Colbourn, and at Pearl Street on October 13.

-- Carly Carioli