Weekend retrofitting
It's back to a smoother time with Warren G.
More Weekend Agenda
Like an El Camino with a full diagram of the Large Hadron Collider painted on it, the weekend's show lineup tends to remake rusty, old things in the gnarled image of today. At heart, The Fiery Furnaces (who play Friday night at the Majestic Theatre) are playing with the basics of blues and pop, but would rather deconstruct the way those things usually come together than just craft a completely straightforward tune. The Bitter Tears' country influences will show through just fine during Friday's show at Inferno, just warped through a prism of performance art and bizarre storytelling. Hank Williams III (playing Friday at the Barrymore Theatre) lays claim to the original Hank's blood and spirit, but plays with a vulgar aggression his famous ancestor might not have bothered with. Meanwhile, University Theatre will open Blood Wedding, putting some of its own twists on Federico Garcia Lorca’s complex play, and Broom Street Theater opens McBeth, pulling Shakespeare's Macbeth into a modern boardroom.
Hank III would agree that older, grittier times were better ones, and that simply bringing them back can make for a relevant statement in the here and now. So it's kind of hysterical that antagonistic, semi-comical noise-performance group Cock E.S.P. comes to The Wisco on Friday, the same night that Real Estate bring a friendlier, trendier strain of sonic tinkering to the Rathskeller.
Of course, plenty of things in the past were novel and a bit odd to begin with, such as the chill hip-hop sound that Warren G. will resurrect at the Majestic on Saturday night. Plus, the people of the past had plenty of things layin' around that they could have combined but apparently didn't, like string bands and vaudeville-style performance troupes. Present-dwellers Asylum Street Spankers (playing Sunday at the High Noon Saloon) make up for that a bit, touring behind a loose concept album about religion. OK, actually, there is a music-comedy duo that might've predicted such a band just a little bit: The Smothers Brothers, playing sold-out shows Sunday and Monday at the Stoughton Opera House.
