Our Critics' Picks

THURSDAY 3/27Ass-KickingF*CK CANCER BENEFITWhen life you gives you lemons, sometimes you gotta give it the finger. And since attitude is key to recovery from any illness, it’s not surprising that cancer survivors—as well as the family and friends of those who didn’t beat it—take comfort in sending this dreaded disease a message: Fuck off. The Features, Ricky Young & The Slow Films, Cassino, Tommy & The Whale and Pico vs Island Trees will take the stage to raise money for the medical bills of 23-year-old Carolyn Benedict, who was recently diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. The show also features a silent auction; $10 minimum donation. 9 p.m.atMercyLounge —TRACY MOORE

Performance Art MINTON SPARKSIt’s fitting for Minton Sparks to appear at Vanderbilt’s Visiting Writers Series Spring Symposium, because, despite being a longtime Nashvillian, the entire American South might as well be her hometown. Sparks is the kind of genre-bending writer—and expectation-defying performance artist—who seems to have sprung, fully formed, from the forehead of some rural god. Her characters are country people caught in the intergenerational angst of families and the despair of limited options, but exist in a land that’s still inexplicably gorgeous. Onstage, she wears her grandmother’s dresses, regularly busts out in a whoop of clogging and seems to be on a first-name basis with the devil. There are quiet moments too—moments when it’s clear that what she examines isn’t rural or working class at all: “Suddenly I’m certain who I am and what I want are two very different things.” This is not your mother’s Minnie Pearl. 6 p.m.atVanderbilt’sAllFaithCenter —MARGARET RENKL

Nostalgia GEORGE “GOOBER” LINDSEY AT GEORGE JONES UNIVERSITY Remember when Goober took Gilly Walker’s car apart and reassembled it inside the sheriff’s office? How about the time—check that, times—when Barney made Goober an honorary deputy? Or when, tired of his fifth-wheel status, Andy and Barney taught Goober the fine art of wooing, only to end up with two people tagging along on their double dates? Relive such classic AndyGriffithShow moments—as well as a whole mess of Hee Haw hilarity—when Minnie Pearl Lifetime Achievement Award winner, UNA Film Festival founder and namesake of Birmingham, Ala.’s George Lindsey Highway appears at the kickoff hot-dog cookout of the two-and-a-half day music-biz clinic known as George Jones University. March27-30;visitgeorgejonesuniversity.nettoregister.—JULIE SEABAUGH

PoetryR.T. SMITHIn his new collection, OutlawStyle, poet R.T. Smith manages to illustrate both Ezra Pound’s famous statement that poetry is “news that stays news” and William Faulkner’s belief that “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Smith’s sly, subtle poems are often monologues in the voice of historical figures, some of them reviled—John Wilkes Booth figures prominently in the new book—but all of them intensely human, the kind of people we know and the kind of people we are, whether we admit it out loud or not. Underneath the empathy and imaginative extension is recognition of both troubling beauty and inescapable violence. As the narrator of one of his older poems says, “Don’t people know the world is an emergency?” Smith will read and sign books. 7:30p.m.attheDorisSwangChapelintheEzellCenterofDavidLipscombUniversity —MARGARET RENKL

CD Release UPSIDE OF ENVYThis local quartet is fronted by 22-year-old former StarSearch contestant Melissa Montgomery, a girl with pipes and a rocker’s heart. If Paramore’s Hayley Williams is Joan Jett, then Montgomery could be Lita Ford, working the hard rock side of the street with an outsized vocal strut. Thedrama of tracks such as “Life Is Beautiful” and “Dirty Laundry” suggests Matchbox Twenty trashing their room at Styx’s Paradise Theatre. The playing is remarkably crisp and assured on their debut release, FullBloom, which is being celebrated at this show. The slinky rocker “Torn Between” and the acoustic ballad “My Downfall” hint at the band’s radio-ready potential. 8:30p.m.atTheRutledge —CHRIS PARKERFRIDAY 3/28

Music THE CABSeems Vegas has more creative outlets than stripping, costume design and explaining to the spouse exactly how you lost four grand in one night. In recent years, Sin City has spawned The Killers, Panic at the Disco, Escape the Fate, The Higher and Jenny Lewis. Following suit comes The Cab, a youthful fivesome who, having recently survived a nasty van accident and nerve-rattling SXSW gig, offer up an intriguing blend of pop, punk, soul and emo on their debut WhisperWar. Don’t hold the Fueled By Ramen/Decaydance signing against them—even after completing their largest tour to date with labelmates Cobra Starship, their vibe remains more Justin Timberlake than Fall Out Boy. We the Kings, Valencia, Charlotte Sometimes and Sing It Loud round out the bill. 7 p.m.atRcktwn —JULIE SEABAUGHSeasons of LoveRENTIts 12-year run on the Great White Way may be coming to a close in the next two months, and the 2005 film version may have failed to garner the critical acclaim heaped upon, say, Chicago, but the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history still packs the same energy, emotion and enthrallment. Based on Puccini’s LaBohème, this is the musical for artistically blessed but monetarily deficient hipsters—the lovelorn songwriters, the overly cautious sellouts, the sexually deviantjunkies and everyone inbetween. Thecurrent national tourstars AmericanIdol finalist Anwar Robinsonand SouthAfricanIdol winner Heinz Winckler. As the line goes, there’s no day like today.... March28-30atTPAC’sAndrewJacksonHall —JULIE SEABAUGH