Heavy Dates

BOSTON/PROVIDENCE

Last week, B.B. King's daughter Shirley -- who'd put in 20 years as an exotic dancer before deciding to take up the family business -- came through Worcester with a band. This week the Beale Street Blues Boy (who was also in Worcester recently) himself makes one last victory lap at the end of a century whose musical legacy would be unthinkable without him. B.B.'s at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, (978) 454-2299, December 16, and at the State Theatre, (207) 775-3331, in Portland, Maine, December 17.

As extreme metal has retreated to increasingly arcane corners of the underground, it's become as art-damaged as any University of Chicago post-rock symposium -- defined not by wank but by wonk. Just check out the mathematical labyrinths that grace Calculating Infinity (Relapse), the new disc by Dillinger Escape Plan that's being heralded as the new standard for depth-plumbing conceptual terror. The Dillinger gang set up shop with Cattlepress, Pig Destroyer, As the Sun Sets, and Daybreak at the Met Café, (401) 861-2142, in Providence, on December 17. A less-cerebral brand of metal -- the muckraking, low-end, elephant-gun-toting type -- is in store when Clutch hit the Living Room, (401) 521-5200, in Providence, December 16. Shed and Eastcide make up the middle of the bill, but show up early and catch Clutch -- minus the singer -- in effect opening for themselves as the Bakerton Group, their instrumental alter ego.

At any gutter-punk show within spitting distance of Christmas, it's always worth lobbing a request toward the stage for anything by the Yobs, the alter ego formed by class-of-'77 Britpunks the Boys in order to roast a few Yuletide chestnuts. That might go over well with any of the bands on the bill at the Met Café on December 20: Blanks '77, the Ducky Boys, old-school NYC cats L.E.S. Stitches, and Total Chaos. Same goes for the December 21 bill at the Middle East, (617) 864-3278, in Cambridge, with the Showcase Showdown, the Explosion, the Loiters, and Cops and Robbers.

-- Carly Carioli