If you’ve ever been curious what it would be like to be stuck inside a washing machine on spin cycle, or trapped inside a warehouse full of Emperor geese during mating season, then free jazz/black metal duo Ettrick are just the band for you. Jacob Felix Heule and Jay Korber both play drums and sax, bashing and skronking their way through every permutation possible: two drummers, two saxophonists, drummer and saxophonist. Whatever the instrumentation, the resulting maelstrom is overwhelming and undeniable—like being swept up in a tornado or walking outside naked when it’s 20 below zero. The samples on their website are mind-altering enough to be classified as Schedule I narcotics, should the FDA ever come across them. Live, they’re sure to be even more exhilarating. You don’t listen to Ettrick—you submit to them. Bring earplugs. ( www.ettrick.org ) Ruby Green —JACK SILVERMAN MUSIC THURSDAY, 19TH ETTA JAMES & THE ROOTS BAND Attending an Etta James concert can seem like accidentally surfing onto a granny porn site. At 68, this senior R&B chanteuse remains as sexed-up as ever, taking time at every concert to perform a sort of mock fellatio with her microphone. It can make your skin crawl, yet James has pipes (we’re talking about music now) and after losing a startling amount of weight looks pretty good. Raunchy or otherwise, it’s hard not to feel a little nostalgic anytime she croons her hit wedding song “At Last.” The show also features R&B singer James Hunter, whose sterling blue-eyed soul evokes his heroes Sam Cooke and Van Morrison. Ryman Auditorium —JOHN PITCHER FANCY TRASH Acoustic rock with a punk aesthetic has certainly been done, but it retains an ironic charm, especially when tackled with the sloppy idealism of a band like Fancy Trash. Frontman Dave Houghton’s raw warble and his band’s welcome embrace of dissonant beauty recall bands like Clem Snide or the Violent Femmes. Their debut, Three Cheers for the Cheated, doesn’t quite sound like a finished product, but that’s part of its appeal. The songs are sad, clever and delightfully whiny, and Houghton has a quirky underdog charisma—his naked expression of emotion at times suggests Conor Oberst at his most unhinged. ( www.fancytrash.com ) The 5 Spot —LEE STABERT AEROSMITH They were the anti-disco soundtrack of the ’70s and helped break down the walls between rock and hip-hop in the ’80s. They stormed MTV with a trifecta of then-cutting-edge videos from 1993 juggernaut Get a Grip. And lighter-boosting ballad “Dream On” still packs as much firepower today as it did in 1973. It’s undeniable: Aerosmith is America’s greatest rock and roll band. A bit overblown? Perhaps, particularly in light of such adult contemporary missteps as “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” or “Jaded,” not to mention that this month’s Devil’s Got a New Disguise is the band’s fourth greatest-hits repackaging since 1998. Showing a bit of wear and tear? Most definitely. But no other live act steadfastly oozes lust, leather and swagger and delivers the goods through the decades with such consistency. ( www.aerosmith.com ) Starwood Amphitheatre —JULIE SEABAUGH FRIDAY, 20TH-SATURDAY, 21ST LADYFEST! MUSIC CITY In the misogynic world of popular music, if women musicians aren’t oiled and lubed for hypersexual leering, chances are they won’t gain much notice. Thank God for the independents. Begat in 2000 from the Riot Grrl movement—with major backers such as Cat Power, Rilo Kiley and Neko Case behind them—the LadyFest phenomenon has made its way to Nashville, and we have Southern Girls Rock ’n’ Roll Camp founder Kelley Anderson to thank. Spread out over six venues through Saturday, Anderson’s festival to female empowerment is sure to stir some dander. On Friday, check out buzzed-about band Umbrella Tree at The 5 Spot, whose warbled paeans to naïveté are like Highlights for Children brought to life. On Saturday, rising Nashville act Cake Bake Betty play The End with Six Gun Lullaby and Happy Birthday Amy, while across the street Forget Cassettes and Riot Grrl foremother Allison Wolfe’s new project Partyline headline at the Exit/In. ( www.ladyfestmusiccity.com ) —JOEY HOOD FRIDAY, 20TH CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE Of all the white bluesmen to rise in the 1960s, this Mississippi harmonica master has often returned to the Delta sound that provided his initial inspiration. He’s occasionally experimented and expanded his sound, recording gospel, jazz, rock and Cuban music, but his new Delta Hardware plunges into the lean, mean electric blues of heroes Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter (whose “Just a Feeling” is a highlight). Both of Musselwhite’s parents died in 2005, and Hardware sounds like an emotional exorcism—all guttural shouts, piercing guitar chords, slow-but-wicked rhythms and Musselwhite expressing his pain with fierce dynamics. At 62, his gruff voice is more limited, but he wrings as much emotion and as many inventive thrusts from his instrument as any living harpist. The San Francisco resident rarely performs in Nashville, so this small-club date is a special treat. ( www.charliemusselwhite.com ) B.B. King’s Blues Club —MICHAEL MCCALL P.O.S. W/MINUS THE BEAR Rap-rock artists have generally squandered the opportunity cross-genre experimentation brings, flopping around onstage to generic metal flipping a middle finger that signals aimless rebellion. P.O.S. takes full advantage, ripping into songs that meld Public Enemy’s sonic intensity with melodic modern rock on his latest, Audition. The Charles Bronson-obsessed, balls-out intensity and suspiciously Tupac-like flow make even the weakest tracks palatable. You’ll be excused if the oddly booked Minus the Bear give you memories of the nascent days of alt-rock with their discordant licks and ambient soundscapes and singer Jake Snider’s listless vocals. Fortunately, their newest, Menos el Oso, uses those tools to great effect, dipping into a variety of styles from shoegazer to jangly pop and a taste of ska. Exit/In —MARK MAYS LUDACRIS Ludacris could write a song that’s little more than end-to-end catch phrases like, “Wake up and smell the coffee / It’s time to make the donuts,” and the record would still top the charts. It happened with his latest, Release Therapy, where a more self-serious Ludacris strikes a Rodin-like pose and sports newly shorn cornrows. Even though he’s made the it’s-so-hard-to-be-a-famous-rapper mid-career recording, he’s still as unintentionally funny as Donald Trump at the Playboy mansion. But for his brand of party rap it’s the beats that matter, and a rapper with his track record can afford the best—like Pharrell, who contributed the sultry bounce to Ludacris’ current hit “Money Maker.” He shares the bill with Common and Shareefa. Memorial Gymnasium, Vanderbilt —MARK MAYS CASEY DIENEL The way Casey Dienel bobs and weaves through a song, it can feel more like a prose poem or a delicately sung, free-associating jazz monologue culled from scrapbooks and postcards, full of oddly misshapen souls and inchoate emotions. All the while, she takes quirky, unexpected strides in her piano playing. Live, Dienel projects two distinct senses: first, it’s as though she’s been waiting all day just to play music again, rarely keeping her fingers off the keys, even as she’s introducing a song or explaining a wrong turn she took somewhere earlier in the tour; second, it’s as though she’s incredibly glad to meet you, and is already considering including a line about you in the song she’s about to play. ( www.caseydienel.com ) The Basement —STEVE HARUCH SATURDAY, 21ST YOUNG BUCK Given Nashville rapper Young Buck’s self-identification with guns, you likely won’t find many city officials vowing support. But Buck shouldn’t be judged so simply: he’s a proven champion of Nashville educational funds, and his video for “Shorty Wanna Ride”—a song about sex—ends with Buck and his 615 crew kicking the doors down in rooms filled with Florida ballot boxes and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. His by-the-bootstraps ascension as a rapper, and now as an entrepreneur, could be a fitting symbol of inspiration for country entertainers still stuck in Cashville waiting for an archaic system to spit them out as commodities. Buck joined 50 Cent’s G-Unit, became a bona fide star and then used that capital to start his own imprint, unveiled tonight as Cashville Records. Rcktwn ( www.young-buck.com ) —GRAYSON CURRIN SUNDAY, 22ND BIRDIE BUSCH On her debut, The Ways We Try, Emily “Birdie” Busch marries the folkie aesthetic with something altogether more rhythmic, felt and astringent. The record stands as one of the year’s strongest, yet Busch, who lives in Philadelphia and soaked up Miami’s Caribbean funk while attending school there, never betrays any untoward effort. Her melodies bear comparison to Syd Barrett’s, while her lyrics address the gritty reality of her big-city surroundings. In “Drunk by Noon,” she sings, “I get more lost and found / In these scattered-about American towns,” and she displays the born songwriter’s structural knack and flair for the unobtrusive hook. It’s an endlessly charming, funky and magical record that proves neo-folkies can pick up their acoustics and dance. Her short set at the Bluebird will mark Busch’s first Nashville appearance. ( www.birdiebusch.com ) Bluebird Café —EDD HURT DEVIL MUSIC ENSEMBLE This trio of music school refugees from Boston perform original scores to old silent films with healthy irreverence for classical convention and a stubborn disregard for categorization as a whole. Purists may bristle at how the films seem dislocated from their original time period alongside DME’s modern, amplified sound, but the band members focus a great deal of attention and discussion on whether their accompaniment is or isn’t appropriate—at least in terms of their own personal reactions to a given film. Moreover, they incorporate the then-burgeoning avant-garde movement, such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg, which they assert was overlooked by the film establishment of the time. This tour spotlights a horror classic, John S. Robertson’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Belcourt —SABY REYES-KULKARNI MONDAY, 23RD MICHELLE MALONE With its stuttering backbeats, elegant slide guitar and stop-time boogie, Michelle Malone’s new Sugarfoot gives the blues aesthetic a shot in the arm. “Black Motorcycle Boots” sports an irresistible riff, the song itself putting a satisfying twist on the basics. The Georgia native has been recording for nearly 20 years, and on “Downs” and “Miss Miss’ippi” she sounds mature, fresh and confident. The stop-time rocker “Traveling and Unraveling” is a variation on the oldest of road narratives, while “Tighten Up the Springs” demonstrates Malone’s mastery of blues convention. She’s got a sense of humor to go along with her sense of history, so that lines like, “I was run out of town / Never going back,” sound totally earned. In short, Malone closes the Bonnie Raitt gap. ( www.michellemalone.com ) 3rd & Lindsley —EDD HURT TUESDAY, 24TH COLD WAR KIDS There was no better example of the fickleness of the indie-rock rat race than when Cold War Kids, openers on the bill at The Basement last June, drew a larger crowd than headliners and critical darlings Tapes ’N Tapes. With the release of their full-length debut Robbers & Cowards, the San Francisco quartet have finally reached the crest of buzz mountain. Frontman Nathan Willett’s rangy, unencumbered wail floats above bright, quirky guitar lines and idiosyncratic arrangements that recall soul, punk or even the theatrics of a movie score. Willett has a real talent for presenting an idea or character with a fresh conceit. On “Hang Me Up to Dry,” he sings, “All mixed up in the wash, hot water, bleeding the colors / Hang me up to dry, you’ve rung me out too, too, too many times,” leading a friend to remark, “That’s the best song about laundry I’ve ever heard.” ( www.coldwarkids.com ) Exit/In —LEE STABERT WEDNESDAY, 25TH ROBERT RANDOLPH In the past year, Robert Randolph & The Family Band have become relative fixtures in these parts. In addition to performing at Bonnaroo and opening for The Black Crowes at Starwood earlier this year, RRFB recorded their second studio album here, Colorblind, with the help of local producer Tommy Sims, featuring guest appearances from Eric Clapton and Dave Matthews. In an effort to give the band greater improv freedom live, the new stuff lacks the lengthy pedal-steel guitar solos upon which Randolph’s reputation as a virtuoso has been built—a potential disappointment to those who’ve grown accustomed to their innovative jam sessions. Randolph’s genius doesn’t translate as well from the stage to the studio, but both newcomers and the faithful will still have plenty to keep them bobbing their heads and slugging their brews. War Memorial —DAVE RUDOLPH LENNON Not many sensitive singer-songwriters grow into raging hard rockers, but then not many artists draw on the conflicting influences, and conflicting pasts, of Lennon. In the late ’90s, Lennon Murphy was a raven-haired Hendersonville High pianist who drew instant label attention for her quietly intense songs about abuse, failed relationships and personal identity. Along the way, she overcame her father’s abandonment and her mother’s premature death while assuming responsibility for a younger half-sister. By her 2001 debut on Arista, she’d morphed into a seething heavy-metal chick, screaming her poetry over crashing chords and beats. On her newest, Damaged Goods, Lennon merges the two personas, still rocking to industrial-strength noise but giving more emphasis to the musical nuance of her piano. She detours from her gig as opener on the Aerosmith/Motley Crue tour for a club show in the town where she got her start. Exit/In —MICHAEL MCCALL DANCE TANGO NASHVILLE AT THE FRIST This most sensual style of music and dance got its start in the mean streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1880s and, thanks to the genius of composer Astor Piazzolla, has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. Tango is the ultimate melting pot dance, a blend of European waltz and polka and Latin habanera that’s so red hot it may as well be choreographed intercourse (or in the very least choreographic heavy petting). Tango Nashville, a group founded in 2003 to spread the good news about tango in Middle Tennessee, will hold a tango showcase that covers all of the dance’s bases. Tango Nashville’s resident troupe will demonstrate the different styles of dance—classic, modern, fusion and tango waltz. There will also be an intensive, 30-minute “Tango Basics” class along with a performance by the group Trio Tango P.A.D. and free gallery admission for Tango Nashville and Frist Center members ($8.50 for nonmembers). The event runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20, at the Frist Center Auditorium, 919 Broadway. —JOHN PITCHER THEATER GREATER TUNA Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre has only sparingly used its Backstage performing space in recent years, but the intimate venue goes back into service for this exceedingly familiar comedy written by Joe Sears, Jaston Williams and Ed Howard. For years, Sears and Williams have acted in a touring version (including several runs at TPAC) that has consistently entertained audiences with its portrait of goofy characters in a small Texas town. This mounting features some of Nashville’s favorite home grown actors, including Bobby Wyckoff, Buddy Raper, Derek Whittaker and Eric Tichenor, who will alternate performances (two actors per show) for its month-long run, Oct. 24 through Nov. 25. Wyckoff directs. For reservations, call 646-9977.—MARTIN BRADY MARY ALICE’S LADDER This play by Barry Kitterman—professor of English at Austin Peay State University and the coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at APSU’s Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts—is billed as a dark comedy about an eccentric family. Mary Alice’s Ladder started out as a series of monologues, then was workshopped at the Roxy Regional Theatre in Clarksville under the guidance of Roxy artistic director John McDonald. Now an ensemble led by Sally Welch and Jay Doolittle presents its first formal staged reading at the Roxy’s upstairs lab space. Performances are at 6 p.m. Oct 19 through 21. Recommended for mature audiences. For more information, call (931) 221-7031. —MARTIN BRADY THREE DAYS OF RAIN Tennessee Repertory Theatre opens its 2006-7 season with this Richard Greenberg drama from 1997, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The play—a seriocomic rumination on love, family and communication, featuring a clever structural device—was revived on Broadway last spring, serving as a star vehicle for the heavily promoted stage debut of film star Julia Roberts. Local audiences, however, will know it best from its 2002 mounting by the now-defunct Mockingbird Theatre, whose artistic managers (David Alford and Rene Copeland) are now running the Rep and revisiting their prior work, with Copeland returning as director and Alford re-creating his starring role. According to Alford (now the Rep’s artistic director), this new rendition offers the opportunity to do the script greater justice and to take advantage of the more interesting set possibilities in TPAC’s Johnson Theater. The talented Shelean Newman also returns from the previous production. Ross Brooks is a newcomer to the cast. The show opens Oct. 19 and runs through Nov. 4. For tickets, call 255-ARTS. —MARTIN BRADY ART BARRY BUXKAMPER: “CREATURES OF HABIT”/JAMES LAVADOUR: “RAIN” This exhibit at Cumberland Gallery features two of the gallery’s best artists. Buxkamper paints complicated, exquisite surreal scenes that combine the workaday world of offices and lawn equipment with the natural realm. In his current series, a hot-pink ape screams its way through a fractured environment of jungles and control rooms. Lavadour, from eastern Oregon, is known for luminous paintings that portray the landscape as something dynamic, filled with tension angles and the potential to shift into motion at any time; in the most dramatic of them, wildfires explode out of a dark background. The opening reception takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 21. —DAVID MADDOX ANNA JAAP: “THE INFINITE LANDSCAPE: PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS 2001-2006” Vision trouble would seem like the worst possible thing to befall a visual artist. Then again, some painters have made the most of the situation, whether it’s Claude Monet’s late, nearly abstract work or local artist Carol Mode’s placement of visual “floaters” across the surface of her paintings. Anna Jaap, who used to construct careful still lifes, suffered vision trouble in recent years. Those problems have cleared up, but they inspired her to loosen her style and introduce more chance elements. She has taken the still-life flowers and botanical forms, knocked apart perspective by overlaying their forms, and surrounded them with blots of charcoal and dripped paint. The results of her work over the last five years are on display at the Main Library’s art gallery. An artist reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24. —DAVID MADDOX BILL BRIMM: “URBAN FRESCOES” Art and Invention Gallery presents new photographs by local artist Bill Brimm. Brimm recontextualizes graffiti, street signage and urban detritus in unique, two-dimensional compositions. Many of the photographs in this show are the result of recent trips to Mexico and Peru. These images go beyond representing colorful street art, exploring the social and political issues behind their inspiration. In addition to photos, Brimm will be displaying his furniture, which makes use of scraps of metal, glass and other found objects, complementing the theme of the show. In addition to Brimm, work by graffiti artist Smok will grace the wall of the Alley Gallery outside of Art and Invention. An opening reception takes place on Saturday, Oct. 21 from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. —JOE NOLAN SALON SATURDAY October’s installment of the Arts Company’s monthly open house presents a diverse array of exhibits for the attention-deficient art lover. April Street presents “Acid Wash,” a new exhibit of her illustrative, fantasy-inspired paintings that mix fairytale-like narratives with Art Nouveau styles. Jack Isenhour’s “Pin-Ups Then and Now” presents his simple, graphic design-inspired paintings exploring the female body as a cultural object. In addition, the Arts Company opens a show for the shutterbugs with Emerging Nashville Photography, featuring the work of Hollis Bennett, whose exquisite, haunting prints signal an arrival more than an emergence. Other photographers showing work include Virgil Fox, Adair Freeman, John Nikolai and Heidi Ross. Salon Saturday runs from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21. —JOE NOLAN FILM DAYS OF HEAVEN You’d go to a museum if one of the world’s most blindingly beautiful paintings were hanging there for just a few days only, right? Don’t treat this movie any differently. From 1973’s Badlands to last year’s The New World, Terrence Malick’s movies have the power to elate or piss off audiences beyond reason. Yet even his haters agree that this utterly unique 1978 period piece is among the most visually rapturous movies ever made—famously shot by cinematographers Néstor Almendros and Haskell Wexler only in the golden light of “the magic hour.” A young Richard Gere and Brooke Adams are the lovers who pass themselves off as brother and sister to get dying farmer Sam Shepard’s fortune in turn-of-the-century Texas; with cult favorite Linda Manz from Gummo doing the prairie-flat narration, the movie paints indelible images with firelight and fading sun, including a locust attack that seems to blot out the sky. The movie is the Weekend Classic Matinee this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Belcourt; don’t bother seeing this on TV. —JIM RIDLEY OCTOBER HORROR AND COMIC CONVENTION 2006 Now in its fifth year, Comic City’s annual cornucopia of creepshow celebs and comic-book collaborators comes back to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds to kill, kill, KILL! Tony Moran, who played Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s deathless Halloween, leads a roster of famous monsters that includes Richard Brooker (the first hockey-masked Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part III) and David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London fame. Also on hand will be actors Kevin Spirtas and Lar Park-Lincoln (Friday the 13th Part VII) and Cathy St. George (Star 80); the quiet return of David Heavener, who shot some cheap-ass action movies hereabouts a decade ago; director Donald Farmer (Dorm of the Dead); horror host Dr. Gangrene; authors Jonathan Lampley and Robert Freese; The Goon creator Eric Powell; and Nashville’s own heat-seeking controversy missile Thong Girl, fresh from causing a ruckus in Gallatin a few weeks back. There’ll be signings, screenings and panels Saturday and Sunday, and the event closes 11 p.m. Sunday at the Premiere 6 in Murfreesboro with the first local screening of Jim O’Rear’s The Deepening, a Tennessee-shot shocker starring Gunnar “Leatherface” Hansen and scream queen Debbie Rochon. (The horror faithful can catch the world premiere of David Buchert’s slasher opus Blood Oath the next night at the Belcourt.) For a full schedule and guest list, see comiccitytn.com. —JIM RIDLEY MUTUAL APPRECIATION Writer-director Andrew Bujalski’s deadpan black-and-white comedies of acute observation are the movie equivalent of the unknown lo-fi outfit that suddenly gets a 9.2 in Pitchfork—and they’re drawing almost exactly the same audience. Reminiscent of early Cassavetes and Jim Jarmusch without copying either, his 2005 feature about a coolly self-centered indie popster (Justin Rice) who insinuates himself into his friends’ lives seems uncannily lifelike—more real than the real thing. An audience hit at the Nashville Film Festival, the movie opens Friday at the Belcourt: it’s strongly recommended to anyone who gets the weekly email update from Grimey’s. —JIM RIDLEY HILLBILLYS IN A HAUNTED HOUSE In this corner: country greats Ferlin Husky, Merle Haggard and Sonny James. In the other corner: horror legends Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine—oh yeah, and George Barrows, once again filling the gorilla suit he wore in the notorious Robot Monster. Which will win—pickin’ and singin’, or hackin’ and slashin’? Find out as Husky, Joi Lansing and Don Bowman end up stranded at a spooky manse in this infamous 1967 honky-tonk horror musical, which gets a rarer-than-rare public screening 2 p.m. Sunday at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Free. —JIM RIDLEY BELCOURT LATE SHOW: GHOSTBUSTERS “Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!” It’s Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson vs. Gozer the Destructor, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and a ball of psychic malevolence the size of a 35-foot, 600-pound Twinkie in Ivan Reitman’s snappy 1984 special-effects comedy. In keeping with the event, the first 100 people at the 11:30 p.m. screening Friday at the Belcourt get free Twinkies; there’s a repeat show 11:30 p.m. Saturday—real wrath-of-God type stuff. —JIM RIDLEY ZOMBIE NIGHT The ultimate in public-domain terror continues at Cafe Coco this month with a double dose of the undead: 1936’s Revolt of the Zombies, a sequel to the Bela Lugosi shocker White Zombie (with superimposed footage of Lugosi’s eyes left over from that film), and the Oscar-nomi