Fri. Dec. 16

 Well, if it's Christmas time the Scrooges must be playing a Boston club. They claim to come from the North Pole (but more likely Allston) and they'll all dress like Santa, confusing the little kids already baffled by a myriad of mall Santas. Then, again, this isn't a show little kids will be at, is it? The Scrooges will at Radio tonight, along with be playing "No Fun," "Search and Destroy," "TV Eye," "I Got a Right" and many more favorites from the original pre-punk band. Check out their www.myspace.com/thescrooges. Tickets: $5. With Cortez and Double Nines. Starts at, uh, 9.

379 Somerville Ave., Somerville, 617-764-0005

Thurs. Dec. 15

One of our most treasured holiday traditions returns to Johnny D's this year, Thursday Dec. 15, the 7th or 8th Annual Boston Christmas Cavalcade Benefit for the Homeless. We asked its founder/leader/pajama-clad madman Chandler Travis what the season and the event mean to him and he e-mailed us: "Christmas is the lamest, most shameless, crass, inane, frustrating, blood-chilling, shattering holiday there is; also the most touching, mystical, and occasionally even noblest... it's somewhere between suicide and a kick-ass good time,  and the only holiday that comes with its own ridiculously extensive catalog of music, one that flaunts all these attributes and vices. Obviously, both the holiday and the music associated with it dote on the extremes of human endeavor, and encompass both the highest highs and the lowest lows. Which means you get Darlene Love singing 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),' plus (or minus) the Wilder Brothers' immortal classic, 'I Want A Goat For Christmas.' In short, Christmas is a workout, and so is the Boston Christmas Cavalcade."

This year's paraded includes (of course) the Chandler Travis Philharmonic and Philharmonic Trombone Shout Band, Liv Taylor, Jen D'Angora, the Upper Crust, the Conolly / Conley Christmas Singers (with Mission of Burma's Clint Conley and the Lyres' Jeff Conolly), Merrie Amsterberg, Jennifer Kimball, the Darlings, Miriam, Shaun Wolf Wortis, Ramona Silver, Factory Seconds, Alastair Moock, Greg Greenway and the Athol Thingerth, plus one of our favorite groups, TBA.

 Fri. Dec. 9 – Sun. Dec. 11

 "Every junkie’s like a setting sun." Neil Young sang that line in "The Needle and the Damage Done" way back in the early ‘70s – he’d lost a couple of friends that way – and to me, at that time, it seemed a distant impossible nightmare, the end of a dark tunnel no one would ever go down, knowing what’s gone before and, especially, what lies ahead. But that’s not the way it works. Cautionary tales can be informative and scary. Read books by ex-junkies Richard Hell, Pete Townshend, Eric Bogosian or Jerry Stahl. Listen to Lou Reed’s "Heroin." Consider the stories of Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. People don’t necessarily learn from others tales; they must go down that road themselves, emboldened by the concept that (initially) there’s so much pleasure and (certainly) this won’t happen to them. It’s a sad drama that keeps getting played, year after year.

Or, as Kathleen Turner, as Sister Jamison "Jamie" Connelly puts it in "Hight" at the Cutler Majestic Theatre through Sunday, "Why would a person do the same thing over and over again knowing the horror?"

Even Jonigkeit plays Cody Randall, the 19-year-old junkie in Matthew Lombardo’s play, based to a degree on Lombardo’s own experiences of falling prey to addiction and worthlessness. Cody seems to be a street-smart kid, but may be less naïve about the consequences and more nihilistic. If he dies, so what? He’ll have his escapist fun and get out. His life’s been horrible, starting with childhood rape by her mother’s "boyfriend." His mother was a junkie and whore; he turned tricks from an early age, and, yet, at some level, he knows he’s sunken into the gutter when he’s pushed into the hands of Sister Jamie, a tough broad, husky-voiced Turner, who returns to Boston after starring in "The Graduate" and "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Jamie is nun, yes, but a most a foul-mouthed one (she gives Dexter’s sister a run for her f-bombs), and she’s also a recovering alcoholic whose unenviable task it is to break Cody down and build him up.

 Wed. Dec. 7

"My friends and family call me Nanna and I would like it to stay that way," said the Danish singer the rest of us know as Oh Land. Twenty-six years ago, she was born Nanna Øland Fabricious.

"For me, Oh Land was a very natural stage name, as it is how my middle name is pronounced in English," she continued. "I liked the anonymity of it and that it didn't indicate whether I was a boy or girl or a band. Especially in the beginning, it gave me a lot of freedom because there wasn't a face to it. It was just about the music."

"It's like I have two enhanced versions of myself. Oh Land is the super version of me where I do all the things I wouldn't always get away with normally. It's sort of like Clark Kent and Superman."

Oh Land headlines Brighton Music Hall Wednesday Dec. 7. She will play synthesizer and omnichord, alongside her backup musicians, synthist Tore Nissen and drummer Hans Hvidberg-Hansen.

And now this ... 23 years to the day after Roy Orbison's heart attack and deth Barbara Orbison, 60, left our world. She met Roy when she was 17 and married him 9 months later. She had been fighting pancreatic cancer since April.  She had gone through surgeries and treatments and was passed off as cancer free back in October.  She was re-admitted last month with some complications. ... I met Roy Orbison at the Club Casino in NH, covering him (seeing him for the first time live) and talking with him extensively backstage in the '80s. He was the warmest, most generous man and the music, it soared. Nothing sounded dated at all, it was timeless. I wrote this after Orbison died, 23 years ago Dec. 6. I had interviewed him just prior to his Boston shows. WFNX dj Julie Kramer took this photo backstage at the Channel.

And, now, it's over. Roy Orbison's life ended Dec. 6 of a heart attack, at his mother's home in Hendersonville, Tenn., just when he was poised to reenter the upper atmosphere of a star-studded, star-crossed pop world.

Orbison -- the stocky, solitary guy in trademark dark shades and uniformly black garb -- was the world's most popular male singer from 1960 to 1964. Success came to him after he'd made a minor hit for Sam Phillips' famous Sun Records, the stable of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Orbison's star faded when the Beatles and other British bands invaded the United States during the mid-'60s. His songs missed the top of the charts, yet he survived -- and prospered -- on the concert circuit.

In showcasing his multi-octave range last weekend in Boston at the Channel, during his next-to-last concert, Orbison again proved himself the premier pop balladeer, a man for whom heartbreak and loneliness were always a breath away, no matter how "dated" the songs. The man still felt it.