Thurs. Aug. 7  

"We didn’t start out and say ‘Let’s make a band that makes people feel good when they leave’ the show,’’ says Saw Doctors guitarist Leo Moran. "I think we’re just lucky. Not all of our lyrics are completely upbeat, but the way we deliver them seem to be upbeat. They’re a strange mixture of light and dark. Even songs with serious lyrics have an uplifting rhythm and melody to them." He sees it aspiring to what the greats do, and notes when people whoop and holler when they hear "Bad Moon Rising," they generally have no idea about the dread contained in the song.

Fri. Aug. 8

Here, we submit, is one strange - albeit rewarding in some weird way - musical life: Guitarist Douglas Blair lives in Newburyport and splits his time between the local duo, signal2noise, and the L.A. naughty boy/metal band, W.A.S.P., led by Blackie Lawless. We asked Blair, whose s2n outfit plays Church Friday Aug. 8, what this was all about. He told us: "signal2noise sounds like Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine, Rush or King's X musically, with the limitations of two musicians/singers, thankfully preventing the ongoing trend of blending twenty-nine styles together into a big hodge-podge, Our primary goal is to reach a level of unpredictability and variety that having only two players facilitates (ex: Dresden Dolls), but in a very musical manner. ...

on some summer weekends

Imagine it's a gorgeous summer evening. You want to hear some music, have a couple of drinks, but not spend your time in some dark cellar or some bright disco. Solution? The Rock and Blues Concert Cruise. It's the fourth season for these guys, whose season runs June-August. What you do is board the Frederick Nolan Jr. at Long Wharf (between the Aquarium and the Long Wharf Marriott Hotel), pay your cover charge (between $20 and $30) and set sail around Boston Harbor for two-and-half to three hours listening to, well, heres the lineup to date:

Wed. – Sat. Aug 13 – 23

Deborah Henson-Conant – Grammy-nominated harpist and storyteller – has given a doozy of a title to her new one-woman show: “What the Hell are You Doing in the Waiting Room for Heaven?” We couldn’t help but ask how this came about. “My shows have always had me talking,” she says. “Stories that came out of music,; for this, the music (13 songs)  in the show comes out of the stories.”
     “Heaven has changed a bit,” Henson-Conant says, “and getting in the heavenly choir is a good way to get in. It’s a bit like ‘American Idol,’ with superstar judges like Elvis and Liberace.” Who’s in the waiting room? The members of the audience. Which means, the theatrical conceit, is “yes, you have died,” she says “and it’s very audience-interactive.” She’s termed in a “Transformational Music-Theatre Experience.” It takes place at the new Central Square Theater in Cambridge, on Wed.-Sat. August 13 – 23 at 8 p.m.

Wed. Aug 13 & Thurs. Aug. 14

Jake La Botz, singer-songwriter-guitarist, has been calling his third CD “Sing this To Yourself … and other suggestions for a personal apocalypse” the most depressing album ever.” It is an even-paced, acoustic album rooted in the blues, with murder ballads and other songs where the singer looks inward and doesn’t like what he finds. “I don’t think anyone else has ever claimed that,” says La Botz, on the phone, abut the “most depressing” tag. “I guess the idea is: There’s some fairly depressing material  there, but more than being a bunch of miserable songs wallowing in self pity, it’s more like an expression the rawness of emotion, unbridled, but not necessarily buying into going down the drain. There’s some quality of redemption.” La Botz will be letting those songs loose Wednesday Aug. 13 in Watertown at 21 Nickles  and the following night at the Brendan Behan Pub in Jamaica Plain.

Sun. Aug. 16

Ok, maybe there's something a bit off when a band is celebrating its 40th anniversary and one brother the band is named after is long dead, a key guitarist was booted out for boozing and the leader of the band, a recovering alcoholic, had to postpone a string of shows in Arpil because he's recovering from Hepatitis C. But, you know, it's only rock 'n' roll - and what band hasn't suffered so. (See: The Who.)

Thurs. Aug. 21 

Dave Wakeling formed the Beat in Birmingham England in the late 1970s. It was one of the leading bands of the ska-punk, two-tone movement – two-tone meaning blacks and whites playing in the same band. The Beat, called the English Beat in America for legal reasons, has broken up, re-formed, and taken different shapes over time. Several members went off to form Fine Young Cannibals.  Wakeling has long been based in California and it’s a US band that he brings with him to City Hall Plaza Thursday Aug. 21, a WBOS sponsored show. We’ve known Wakeling going back to when the Beat first hit Boston, around 1979; we saw them play a great show last year; and we caught up with him again for a chat about then and now. What struck us - last year in a club, this year at Earth Fest -  was how fresh, how pertinent old material like “Save It for Later,” “Twist and Crawl,” “Mirror in the Bathroom” and others seemed now, and we asked him about it. Does the music change its meaning over time?

Sat. Aug. 23

 Hot August Night! We can only hope. The Red Sox are in Toronto that night, Sat. Aug. 23, so they won't be singing along to "Sweet Caroline" at Fenway Park along with Neil Diamond, but we're sure 30,000-plus people will. It's a curious phenomenon, is it not? We take a guilty pleasure in Diamond - long have. Loved "Cherry, Cherry," "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show," "I'm a Believer" - not so hot on "I Am, I Said." Now, where does "Sweet Caroline" fit into this? It's just plain weird. It's a catchy, happy enough song about finding a lover who takes the pain away. It's also got those "oh-oh-oh!" breaks and "So good! So good! So good!" proclamations.

Fri. Sept. 5 - ongoing

 When asked what any particular Cirque du Soleil show is "about," we often hem, haw and basically draw a blank. It's about beauty and splendor and grace and strength and emotion and dazzling feats of acrobatics, all set to a rock/classical/world music score. But there are stories, there, too - although to explain the story, we often have to go back to the press release. So, concerning "Kooza," which goes up Friday Sept. 5 at the Bayside Expo Center, we turn to what the Cirque people say. And that's that it "tells the story of The Innocent, a melancholy loner in search of his place in the world." And "it is a return to the origins of Cirque du Soleil that combines two circus traditions - acrobatic performance and the art of clowning. The show highlights the physical demands of human performance in all its splendor and fragility, presented in a colorful mélange that emphasizes bold slapstick humor."