Sat. Jan. 23

Call your band The Big Disappointments and you win both ways: If you suck, it’s truth in billing, if you rock, it’s ironic. Eric Boomhower – who used to drum for the In Out – played under The Big Disappointments moniker as a joke back in 1999, and then abandoned it. He picked it up again last year when he made the switch to singer-songwriter-guitarist and In Out bassist Andy Abrahamson moved to guitar for this quartet. “I re-used the name,” says Boomhower, “because everybody liked it.” One person who especially liked what bassist Jon Littlefield calls their “swamp rock,” was Thalia Zedek. The former Come/Uzi singer-guitarist happens to live with Boomhower, and she co-produced their eponymous debut with the band. (Paul Kolderie engineered.)

Fri. Jan. 22

It's not very often here at the ougoing JSInk site that our advice is: Sit on your coach, turn on the idiot bos, watch for two hours. But tonight, well, you might just want to do that ... and open your wallet, too. It's the Haiti telethon on virtually every network you can shake a stick at, put together by MTV, which once stood for Music Television and now is kiddie reality show central. Ah, but the Live Aid charitable heart still beats and the George Clooney/Wyclef Jean-hosted event is on from 8-10. Now, here’s something we got from Babson Prof. Jeff Melnick’s take on packaging tonight’s telethon. He's an Associate Professor of American Studies at the college.

"It will be interesting to track how this Friday’s Haiti fundraising telethon “packages” this most horrifying tragedy. Major fundraisers featuring primarily rock-era music performances had a 30 year history at this point, which begins with 1971’s "Concert for Bangladesh," a Madison Square Garden show (and later film) that George Harrison organized to call attention to that country’s war and famine-related devastation.  Since then popular musicians have regulalry banded together in telethons (or consciousness-raising tours) in support of Amnesty International, American farmers, and victims of famine in Ethiopia, among many others.

Fri. Jan. 22

 The punk rock revolution and post-punk era re-generated the idea of rock concert poster art. At Space 242, an exhibit of more than 100 rock posters called "POST THIS!" is up and ongoing, open on Fridays, but closing this Friday Jan. 22. It has splashy, neo-psychedelic rock posters from the 1990s into the present (Butthole Surfers, Meat Puppets, Pearl Jam, the Jesus Lizard, among them). It's open every 6:30-8. Some of the best-known artists showing their work are Lindsey Kuhn, Pete Cardoso, Joey Mars (in photo) Enemy Ink, Mike King, Brian Methe and Ben Wilson. . Incidentally, Space 242 celebrates a year in the, um, space in January of 2009. It's been the proud home of what some would call "low-brow" or pop surrrealist art - an alternative to the "fine art" galleries on Newbury street and elsewhere in the South End. Is the stuff for sale? You betcha.

242 E. Berkeley Street, 2nd floor, between Albany Street and Harrison Ave, in the South End (The Medieval Manor Building), 617-797-8267 www.space242.com

Sat. Jan. 23

It's Surrealist Night at the Somerville Armory for the Arts. That is, it's a trip back to the heyday of the '20s and '30s with your host Roger Miller (Mission of Burma, Alloy Orchestra, etc.) What you'll do tonight, Sat. Jan. 23: Learn and play riotous mind-bending games that were developed by Andre Breton and his co-conspirators 70, 80 years ago. Miller will explain and lead the games to kick off the event, and he'll also DJ - providing a surrealistic soundtrack to the evening (we're guessing some Stockhausen, Glass, Eno, Cage, Virgil Thomson) - and handpick a variety of beers (surreal beers?) to be made available for gameplaying consumption.
One of these games is Exquisite Corpse, also the name of one of Miller's musical entities. Exquisite Corpse is derived from a word game Benton developed, the basic Exquisite Corpse drawing game (advanced drawing skills are not required), the Dream Game, and other varieties of surrealist word games.

Thurs. Jan. 21

Club Passim has not always been called Club Passim, but the spot on Palmer street in Harvard Square has been a go-to place for folkies for, oh, five decades. For the past fifth of those storied 50 years, local singer/songwriter Alastair Moock has been inviting his friends to Passim for a free-form song swap and mutual admiration society he calls "Pastures of Plenty." On Thursday, January 21, PoP will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special show featuring Moock, along with featured guests Miss Tess, Kimber Ludiker, Rob Laurens, and Session Americana and Chandler Travis Philharmonic  multi-instrumentalist Dinty Childs.

"Roots music was always synonymous with community for me," Moock explains. "That was the main attraction. The first folk concerts I saw were collaborative shows by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie where everyone participated in everything.You didn't just sit and watch; you were part of it. It was a wholly different experience than I'd had at other shows. When I started playing, I tried to make my own shows that way too. I still do. In addition to being communal and collaborative, the Patures shows are also greatly improvised which adds to the energy and flow between and among the performers and audience members.