Sat. Aug. 7 

We wrestled with the concept of "tribute" bands for years, but have pretty much come around to the idea that if the cover band is good and the original band is dead or doesn't tour, the tribute band can provide a measure of pleasure at a nominal prince. The Machine, America's best live Pink Floyd show, has been doing this gig for, well, decades. They're not as grizzled (or dead: RIP Syd Barrett and Rick Wright) as original Pink Floyd guys, but there probably isn't a Pink Floyd anymore. (David Gilmour released a double-live disc with lots of Floyd - bonus Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera on guitar with Dave; and Roger Waters goes out to the arenas every so often flying the flag of faint hope against a wall of cynicism. He'll do that this fall, when he restages "The Wall.") The Machine doesn't bring a tangled history to their show - just the tunes, man. They've got some cred - they played at the hip Bonnaroo festival and with the Detroite Symphony Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. On Sat. Aug. 7 they'll bring an unplugged show to the Natick Center for the Arts at 8:00 PM. Rolling Stone has praised their “chilling accuracy," although jams have been known to evolve. Spin praises the band as sounding "exactly like Pink Floyd," while The Village Voice declares that "The Machine is dead-on." More love from Bob Ezrin, the co-producer of Pink Floyd's seminal album The Wall, "these guys are great!"

Sat. Aug. 7 

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 Comcast Center Saturday Aug. 7.   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.

Sat. Aug. 7

     There’s a new kid on the block in North End. A big, balding Irish fellow. A chap you might have seen on a Sunday morning at St. Leonard of Port Maurice’s all-Italian Mass. It’s Ronan Tynan, the 50-year-old singer who came to fame both as a solo performer and with Irish Tenors.

Sat. Aug. 7

Rock 'n' roll camps are springing up everywhere - there's the Boston branch of the national chain School of Rock out in Watertown - and Mary Lou Lord (in photo) and Hilken Mancini are hosting a girls rock camp in our parts, the theory, going, we suppose, that girls need more encouragement and support in learning to play and forming bands and all that. We've come a long from the days when Creem magazine started a review of the Runaways with the line "These bitches suck." I asked Cherie Currie about that, doing a piece to coincide with the opening of the Runaways movie and she was still pissed. Times changed in the late-'70s and early-'80s with girl bands like the Slits, the Raincoats, the Go-Go's and others, and then of course their was the Bikini Kill riot grrl movements. But sometimes, it makes sense to break things down by gender and that's what Lord and Mancini are doing.  The "pros" took the stage in late July. On Saturday Aug. 7, the girls - ages 8 - 16 - take over T.T.'s stage, same time span. It's the showcase, or the culmination of the Girls Rock Camp Boston week. You will hear how the (happy?) campers - divvied up into 9 bands - learned  how to rock. Tix: TBA.

10 Brookline St., Cambridge, 617-492-0082 www.ttthebears.com

Fri. Aug. 6

Lovewhip is where synth pop, rocking guitar lines, punk rock and funky drums serve as the basis for Empress Erin's soulful vocals. Fans of M.I.A., the Brazilian Girls and LCD Soundsystem might relate. Erin is Erin Harpe, who not long ago released a blues album with her dad, is obviously at home with genre switching. Lovewhip is her booty-shaker band and they're at the Midway Cafe Friday Aug. 15. Wanna get a look? Check out their new vid, 'Gimme That" at www.lovewhip.net and/or www.myspace.com/lovewhip. The group is readying a new CD now. For this date, they're joined by Logan 5 & the Runners and The Wealthy Whore Entertaimnet - a different kind of WWE, we'd say. Show starts at 9. Cover is $8. By the way, the pic above is Erin in blues mode.

3496 Washington St., Jamaica Plain, 617-524-9038 www.midwaycafe.com