Wed. July 27 

Few things are certain in life, but this is: At some point Wednesday July 27 during Flaming Lips’ concert at Bank of America Pavilion. singer Wayne Coyne, will be enclosed in a clear plastic bubble, and will bounce into and upon the crowd.
    “Most nights, it’s pretty easy and silly,” said Coyne, on the phone from his Oklahoma City home. “I’m really watching out for the audience. I don’t want to surprise people who aren’t ready to hold me up. I say it jokingly, but I don’t want to stumble upon a group of girls who are the size of the Olsen twins, on their cell phones and suddenly there’s this old man on top of them in a 30-pound space bubble.”
    It will be a night of Day-Glo psychedelia. Expect a massive LED screen, strobe lights, big balloons, confetti and costumed dancers. A visual and musical world Coyne has called “exaggerated optimism.”
     “There’s an arc to this hour-and-45 minutes,” Coyne said. “We want it to have energy, to have an ebb and flow of emotion and intensity. We don’t want to hear me sing too much. There s a lot of Wayne going on, but there’s some music we have created that wouldn’t work on a record but works really well in a dynamic concert setting.”

Fri. July 15

 I'm not big on these quasi-reunion - aka whoever is left standing, whoever has rights to the name - tour packages, but the bill Friday July 15 at the South Shore Music Circus is pricking my interest. One, because it features Flo & Eddie (Turtles) and Flo & Eddie made some of the sharpest post-Zappa sarcastic pop of the mid-'70s. As the Turtles, they also sang some of the sweetest of pop songs, including "Happy Together," the song my wife and I used, with the Cello Chix playing it, as our wedding processional. And Eddie's a Facebook friend. Also on the bill, the Grass Roots, with singer Rob Grill. I wrote about a gig they did in the late '80s in Sarasota - I was there visiting family and they just happened to be playing a nightclub - where I was thoroughly enchanted by "Live for Today," "Midnight Confessions," "Sooner or Later" and "Tempation Eyes." Guilty pleasures or just pleasures? I went backstage and spoke with Grill afterwards. The thing I remember? He told his girlfriend the Grass Roots were coming back and pretty soon, babe, "You'll be farting through silk." Really. I'd never heard that expression for success, but, hey maybe it's a regional thing. Sure, Rob was deluded, but it's not bad that five Grass Roots (including Rob) - there have been dozens - are around playing songs that ding the nostalgia bell and have some towering pop candy moments. Also on the bill - called the Happy Together tour - is Mark Linsday (of Paul Revere and the Raiders) and they had some hardish-rock killers, too: "Let Me," (with its dynamite fake ending and scream), "Just Like Me," and of course "Kicks." And, there's the softer side of things, the Associaton ("Cherish") and the Buckinghams ("Kind of a Drag"). I'm not an ageist. When I was younger I was a Jerry Lee Lewis fan (still am) and now older I'm an Arcade Fire fan. I always encouraged people to shun the generational tag and go into a world not your own. And I do so here.

Starts at 7:30. Tix: $55.75-$37.75.

130 Sohier St., Cohasset, 781-383-9850

Fri. July 15 

“Every job I’ve had, I’ve been fired,” said comic Norm Macdonald.
     He was most notoriously sacked from his “Saturday Night Live” “Weekend Update” anchor role in 1997 for harsh jokes and non-sequitors that displeased the West Coast head of NBC. Recently, Comedy Central dropped the acerbic, hilarious “Sports Show with Norm Macdonald” after nine episodes. 
     “I had a lot of fun with it,” Macdonald said. “I guess it was bad timing. It was on a Tuesday and every Tuesday there was an important NBA playoff game, so anybody who was a sports fan would watch that over my show. It was depressing. Also I think no woman ever watches sports so we lost all the women. They’re talking about bringing it back somewhere else, but I don’t hold out much hope for that.”
    “Thankfully,” the 47-year-old Macdonald continued, “I always did stand-up. That’s all I ever wanted to do. Thank goodness, because other guys - ‘actors’ - have to be waiters or something.”
   Macdonald just released a DVD, “Me Doing Standup,” but he won’t be doing a minute of it when plays the Wilbur Theatre Friday night for two shows, 7:30 and 10. If it’s been recorded, it’s history. Macdonald said he has seven hours of material from which to pluck. We spoke with the Quebec City-born comic from his Los Angeles home on Tuesday.
    JSInk: You say some reasonable-sounding, but pretty outrageous stuff in concert. How do your on and off stage personas relate?
  Macdonald: I guess onstage is lots closer to me. I can say things onstage I wouldn’t’ say offstage because of the “politeness” of society. Not that I’m into being shocking. I can just be unfiltered on stage, which is fun.
   There’s the idea that you can communicate truth in comedy that you can’t otherwise.
    Yeah. First of all I don’t have a very good memory, so I accidentally developed a way of doing standup where I have a central theme or idea I want to get across. Once I know something’s funny I’ll drift around and talk between the jokes.

Thurs. July 14

And now for something rather spiritual ... The 13th Annual Lantern Festival at Forest Hills Cemetery is taking place Thursday, July 14 6-9 p.m. What's this, you ask? We went to our first in 2007 (and have returned several times) and have this to say: Forest Hills Cemetery: It’s not just a big rolling green space to be buried six feet under any more. Never was, really. It was designed, early in the last century, not just as a burial ground, but as a place of rest, contemplation and beauty for the living. A park with splendid monuments, opulent crypts, sumptuous landscaping and a little lake.  “It’s the greatest outdoor sculpture museum in the country,” said Forest Hills Educational trustee Dick Smith.

Tues. July 12 

It was 2001 and I was talking with KISS bassist-singer-product hawker Gene Simmons from New York. "If I was any luckier,I'd throw up," he told me. I haven't talked to him since, but I'm pretty sure what he said in that interview holds trure today. He's one lucky man. He and Paul Stanley - the remaining original KISS members still standing play with, um, two other guys dressed up as former members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss - play Verizon Wireless Arena Tues. July 12.  But KISS isn't all about music. Some would argue that's somewhere down on the list. It's a lot to do with image and marketing, returning to the kabuki-style make-up that hides your age (after shedding it and stumbling big time), and still cleaning up at the arena level. KISS is playing to grandparents who sang along to "Rock 'n' Roll All Nite" when they were then 13 and their 13-year-old grandchildren. The show? It'll be bawdy, and rockin' and suggestive, but not really subversive. The most subversive thing about Simmons - who of course is a reality TV star now, too, - is that he was one of the first rockers to be such an out and out capitalist.
    If you were to suggest to Simmons that what he does for a living is "creating art," he may just spit (blood) at you. Figuratively, of course - he saves the real blood-spewing for when he's onstage, playing with his band. He just doesn't have much truck with the rock-as-art school.

"Any time anybody tells you otherwise," Simmons says, "that it's for some great artistic notion or they have a message, you have to remember rock 'n' roll musicians are not schooled, can't write or read music, certainly never went to school to pay dues, and have no certification of any kind that we're even qualified to do what we do.