Locced Down

You can’t beat tonight’s indie rock lineup at T.T. the Bear’s Place. Even the names are entertaining - Boston’s own the Motion Sick (left) opens, with Springfield, Ill., bands Ha Ha Tonka and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yelstin to follow. The Motion Sick has had great success with its latest album, “The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait . . .” earning Spin.com’s “Band of the Month” honors, and you can boogie to the band’s “30 Lives” on the latest
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John Mellencamp’s “Life Death Love and Freedom” hits the shelves tomorrow, but if you just can’t wait to hear it, head to the Bank of America Pavilion tonight for his show with Lucinda Williams. The tracks Mellencamp has released online so far are a bit softer and more introspective than hits like “Jack and Diane” or “I Fight Authority,” but they have plenty of spark. If you’re the hard-core type, Mellencamp and Williams will be at the Pavilion
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The seventh annual Arts on the Arcade series continues this afternoon with a performance by the Latin guitar group Son de Sol. The group will play during the Monday market on the City Hall Plaza arcade that features vendors selling food and art. Market runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Music from noon to 2 p.m. City Hall Plaza, Cambridge Street by City Hall. 617-635-3911. cityofboston.gov© Copyright
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Before it makes a stop at the too-cool Pitchfork Festival later this month, High Places plays a show at the Middle East Downstairs tonight. The Brooklyn duo consists of vocalist Mary Pearson and Robert Barber, who is responsible for making an indie-rock sound from glockenspiels, bells, and mixing bowls. At the Middle East, you’ll hear the group’s pretty melodies, echoes, layered percussion, and its song “Jump In,” which was supposedly written
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She may no longer be the Queen of Disco, but Donna Summer was received like returning royalty by her hometown subjects at Bank of America Pavilion over the weekend. Summer herself spared no effort keeping the dream alive, opening with a song called “The Queen Is Back” from “Crayons,” her first album of new material in 17 years. “So many years ago/ On the radio/ She crept into your soul/ And loved to love you/ Oh, oh,” Summer sang, towering above
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“And that’s how you alienate a crowd!,” announced a gleeful John Mayer after telling a story that involved lock-picking, hotel security, and bodily functions. But the audience at the Comcast Center on Saturday was hardly taken aback. The crowd’s ardor remained undimmed, especially the young women up front who held up a sign that referenced the singer’s current girlfriend: “Forget Jen . . . And Get Naked!”

Mayer probably didn’t do the former (and
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Jay Brannan could have been juggling or spinning plates or reading your favorite section of the Yellow Pages. He could have done nothing at all except stand there with his guitar, alone on the Paradise Rock Club stage in a gray T-shirt and jeans, and just smiled.

It wouldn’t have mattered. The audience had come to see someone they don’t truly know but feel like they do. And it’s easy to see how they got that impression.

Outside of New York,
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It’s not that Nas doesn’t see signs of hope. Four months to election day, history seems like it’s footsteps away.

But a part of the Queens-born rapper refuses to forget the fight to get there, especially since all he had to do was look at the racial chaos in the year since he released his last album.

Michael Richards. Jena 6. Don Imus. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. Jeremiah Wright. Imus again.

The war for civil rights isn’t over in his eyes.
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LOS ANGELES—The Who was celebrated at a special concert by a few bands outside of their generation.

The legendary band was honored at the Saturday taping of the third annual “VH1 Rock Honors,” which will air Thursday on the cable channel. Celebrity guests such as David Duchovny, Mila Kunis, Rainn Wilson and Adam Sandler introduced The Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Incubus, Tenacious D and Pearl Jam, who covered songs from such Who albums as “Tommy,” “The Who Sell Out” and “Quadrophenia.”

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NEW YORK—Bon Jovi rocked Central Park, New Jersey style.

The rock group gave a free concert Saturday night on the park’s Great Lawn, delighting tens of thousands of fans who sang along with the lyrics on a glorious summer evening.

The band opened with “Livin’ on a Prayer” and belted out songs including “Born to be my Baby,” “Lost Highway,” and “Runaway.”

Jon Bon Jovi, for one, was relieved that a long tour was winding down.

“It’s
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Very cool. Run-DMC’s “Raising Hell” was the first rap record I ever got. They’re definitely pioneers and idols.

Moms nursed and delivered the toughest pup in the litter/Always left at home alone, no bone and no sitter/Taken from my family I moved from house to house/Ended up in this basement somewhere down south/I don’t have any friends the only dogs I know/Are trapped here with me or they’re six below/Abused from young I was trained to be the aggressor/When I fight it’s to kill on the real and nothing lesser.

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I’ve never felt so paralyzed standing before my CD collection as the day I brought my newborn son home from the hospital and decided to play him his very first music. So much was at stake. Should it be modern or Baroque? Orchestral or opera? Would Mozart make him smarter? Would Schoenberg instill in him revolutionary tendencies? Would Wagner make him loathe his Jewish roots?

I settled on Bach’s “Art of Fugue” in an arrangement for string quartet.
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Scientists will tell you that variety is key, and that there’s very little reason for parents to play their babies music that they don’t like themselves. Here is a highly subjective list of some personal favorites that have worked well during my own “field research,” along with album information where relevant:

. Beautifully hushed, meditative music, built of the simplest materials.

. One fast and one slow movement, from the composer’s “early”
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It only takes a single exposure, and in an instant, your whole day can change. The infection is rapid and feels potentially unending. One minute you’re minding your own business and the next you find that you can’t stop thinking, humming, or singing “Dancing Queen.”

“Friday night and the lights are low. . .”

No matter what you try, you can’t shake it. In fact, once you start thinking about ABBA, you’re a goner. Next thing you know, you’ve moved to this: “If you change your mind/ I’m the first in line. . .”

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PARIS - She charmed the queen of England, captivated Israel, impressed President Bush, and won over the hardest sell of all - the French.

But can France’s first lady, top model turned songstress Carla Bruni, who married President Nicolas Sarkozy in February, keep spinning the magic with her new album?

Its success, or failure, could be an affair of state.

The Italian-born Bruni (officially Bruni-Sarkozy) makes an unlikely spouse for any national
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Produced by ABBA principal Benny Andersson, who also contributes keyboards, the music on the “Mamma Mia!” film soundtrack shimmers as brightly as the originals.

Vocally, however, the results aren’t quite as sparkly. In the context of the film, the actors do an excellent job of putting the songs across as plot points. But divorced from the onscreen emoting, the disc makes clear the division between singers and actors who can sing.

Although she
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Want to meet Donna Summer? You can tonight - if you spring for the $150 tickets to the Dorchester-born disco diva’s concert at the Bank of America Pavilion (available at 617-348-6238). If you’re fine with watching the disco diva from afar, you don’t have to pony up nearly as much for this Summer extravaganza. Either way, your admission helps a good cause: Tonight’s concert is a benefit for Action for Boston Community Development. 7:30 p.m. $38.50-$150.
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When this orchestra gave its first free summer concert in 1951, the opening of Disneyland was still a few years away. It’s been a great ride for both, and at tonight’s “Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra’s Salute to Disney,” conductor Alton Baggett will lead the musicians in an outdoor program featuring selections from “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Pocahontas,” and other gems (rain date tomorrow).
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Twins have a good record in rock. There are the Deal sisters - Kim and Kelley - who teamed up to form the Breeders. And, of course, Charlie and Craig Reid of the Proclaimers. Tonight, another successful twin-fronted act comes to town. The Watson Twins - Chandra and Leigh Watson - will play indie-rock tunes from a new album called “Fire Songs” at T.T. the Bear’s. Hopefully, they’ll also play some songs from “Rabbit Fur Coat,” the album they recorded
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More than a phenomenal voice and a clutch of hit songs, nothing flatters a pop star quite like grace and understatement.

Julieta Venegas is such an artist. She made her Boston debut Thursday night at the Roxy, and from her simple greeting - “Hola. Buenas noches, Boston” - you’d never know she’s one of the most celebrated musicians in Latin pop today, an ambassador of good will who’s beloved by her peers far outside her native Mexico.

All bashful
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At Great Scott tomorrow night, it’s Will Dailey a singer-songwriter from Boston who has been signed to CBS Radio and has been touring to support the introspective and television-soundtrack-friendly disc “Back Flipping Forward.” This should be a nice homecoming for Dailey, who has been up and down the East Coast this month. Joining him will be Joshua James and Amber Rubarth. 8:30 p.m. $15. Great Scott, 1222 Commonwealth Ave., Allston. 617-566-9014.
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Also up north today is the 6th Annual Newburyport Riverfront Festival, which features 92.5 The River-endorsed musicians playing by the water. This year’s lineup is the Brother Kite, NeedtoBreathe, Matt Nathanson, and Blind Melon, which has replaced the late Shannon Hoon, its former lead singer, with a new frontman, Travis Warren. 3 to 7 p.m. Free. Waterfront Park, Newburyport. 978-462-6680. newburyportchamber.org (more…)

LOWELL - It may have been the first concert at the ballpark where the Lowell Spinners ply their trade, but Thursday’s doubleheader between the Dropkick Murphys and Mighty Mighty Bosstones felt as natural a fit as Boston world championships do these days.

Under sunny skies at LeLacheur Park and nestled along the outfield wall in deep center field, the two leading lights of Boston’s Irish punk scene shared both stage and spotlight, paying homage
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Veteran rocker and longtime critical favorite Alejandro Escovedo walked an adoring crowd through the steps of his long and varied career on Thursday. The show invoked his history as a pioneering punk act and alt-country innovator in the ’70s and ’80s. But the performance drew mostly from solo recordings of a more recent vintage, particularly his new album, the roots-minded “Real Animal.” The six-piece rock band eased into a stirring cello and violin
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Before “Bad Girls” and “She Works Hard for the Money,” before she was dubbed a disco diva and won numerous Grammys, Donna Summer was just another girl growing up in Mission Hill.

She remembers class at Jeremiah E. Burke High School. She remembers singing at her Washington Street church. She remembers her first recording session on Newbury Street.

“It’s home,” she said during a telephone interview from the road. “This is where I’m from; I consider Boston my main home.”

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They went to the doctor. They went to the fountain. Now, they’re on their way to a city with a lot of old mill buildings. Tonight, the Indigo Girls play the Lowell Summer Music Series. And if you can’t make it tonight, don’t fret - the Girls will be at the Cape Cod Melody Tent July 16. Opening tonight will be Rose Polenzani. 7:30 p.m. $26, $30. Boarding House Park, 40 French St., Lowell. 978-264-9123. lowellsum mermusic.org (more…)

Perhaps best known as Ceth in the sexually charged 2006 drama “Shortbus,” singer Jay Brannan (below) kicks off an 11-stop US tour in Boston tonight at the Paradise. Brannan has taken a diverse approach to selling his music. His song “Soda Shop” is the top selling piece of the “Shortbus” soundtrack, and he’s also gone guerrilla, marketing 1,000 unique copies of his EP, each with a different Polaroid snapshop on the cover; they sold out in a day.
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Meat-and-potatoes pop-metal - it sounds like an oxymoron, but in Bon Jovi’s capable hands the earnest working class meets teased hair and pretty power chords, over and over and over again.

Bon Jovi’s show at the Garden Wednesday night, the first in a two-night stand, was a model of heartfelt efficiency. Tuneful rockers alternated with button-pushing power ballads - all built using a secret recipe formulated a quarter century ago. Miraculously, it works just as well in 2008 as the day Jon Bon Jovi wrote “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

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SOMERVILLE - Shelby Lynne is a captivating combination of steely gaze and soft heart. You could bounce a quarter off her outer shell, but work your way into one of the nicks in the facade and she’s pure silk, soothing and vulnerable.

Wednesday night at Somerville Theatre she was equally convincing excoriating a neglectful lover in “Leavin’ ” as she was desperately begging an abusive one to stay on the heartwrenching “Pretend.”

Those juxtapositions
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For months, a demon word has been chasing Fleet Foxes across hill and darkened valley from the band’s hometown of Seattle to the cramped bars of the Northeast. Hippie. A pejorative built out of pastel and paisley, redolent of Beat spirit, barbiturates, and busted ambition.

“I guess if a guy has a beard, it means he’s a hippie,” sighs Fleet Foxes keyboardist, mandolinist, and vocalist Casey Wescott, on the phone from a tour stop in Pennsylvania.
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