E-Mail This Article to a Friend Revive all Hair-metal throwbacks The Darkness debut in Boston, Sly Fox returns, and more

Permission to tour

Love, as British lycra-rock impresarios the Darkness put it, is only a feeling. And it wasn’t the only feeling engendered by the band’s Permission To Land (Atlantic), an album that divided the rock faithful like no other last year. Although we have been firmly on the side that wants more, we had some residual worry that perhaps we’d oversold the relevance of a band who’ve brought back ’70s FM hard rock, bad teeth, grizzly hair, bodysuits, and outrageous falsetto. So we placed the record before a friend of ours: 62-year-old lawyer, critic, and long-time Phoenix contributor Michael Freedberg, who’s been reviewing rock and dance music since they were the same thing. He pronounced screechy frontman Justin Hawkins "a combination of Sylvester and Tiny Tim" and added, "He sounds like Kiss looks!" Those dozen words now constitute our favorite assessment of the Darkness. Mr. Freedberg is now beseeching the dance-music community to give us a Eurodisco remix of "I Believe in a Thing Called Love." We second the motion. In the meantime, we’re selling off our Journey and Night Ranger collections in anticipation of the Darkness’s Boston debut at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street, on April 3. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m.; call (617) 423-NEXT.

Gold rush

Harking back to the days when Boston regularly served as a pre-Broadway testing ground, a blockbuster revival brings shock-and-awe starpower to the Hub later this month in the form of Sly Fox, the Larry Gelbart–penned comedy about a merry band of Gold Rush–era swindlers. A hit on Broadway in 1976 (following a Boston tryout starring George C. Scott), it’s being revived with the original production’s director, Arthur Penn, who now leads a close encounter with Richard Dreyfuss and Pulp Fiction’s Eric Stoltz. The 17-member cast also includes Bronson Pinchot, Rachel York, René Auberjonois, and Professor Irwin Corey in an "outrageous tale of greed and guile" adapted from Shakespeare pal Ben Jonson’s Volpone. Sly Fox runs February 20 through March 7 at the Shubert, 265 Tremont Street in the Theater District — after which it transfers to the Great White Way. Tickets are $21 to $88; call (800) 447-7400.

Planet rock

Early reports on Fly or Die (Star Trak/Arista), the new joint from the Neptunes’ rockist alter ego N.E.R.D., have wonder-twin producers Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams veering from their patented electro-funk and reaching back to Brit pop and classic rock for inspiration. They also ditched Midwestern fusion collaborators Spymob and played all their own instruments, so it’ll be interesting to see what they’ve got up their sleeves when the group — who made their live debut at the 2001 Phoenix Best Music Poll Party sans Spymob but with a dozen strippers in G.W. Bush masks — hit Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston, on April 13. They’ll bring with ’em the Black Eyed Peas, who had a breakout 2003 thanks to their Grammy-nominated hit "Where’s the Love?" with Neptunes client Justin Timberlake. Tickets are $22.25 and go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m.; call (617) 423-NEXT.

Otherworld cinema

Does Captain Kirk speak Esperanto? He does in the 1965 space oddity Incubus, which features a pre–Star Trek William Shatner in a film written entirely in the aforementioned "universal" language. And if that’s the kind of scenario that keeps you up at night, then you’ve probably already got tickets to SF: 29, the 29th annual Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, a 24-hour cavalcade of vintage cinematic mutation. This year’s features will also include the local premiere of the Japanese import Godzilla Vs. Megaguirus, a specially struck new print of the 1957 big-bird flick The Giant Claw, the director’s cut of the original Alien, the Three Stooges’ interstellar travelogue Have Rocket, Will Travel, such recent faves as 28 Days Later and Demonlover, and a few selections from the way-back animation vault, including the 1938 Krazy Kat feature Krazy’s Race of Time. Plus the usual wacky assortment of trivia games, costume contests, and surreal trailers. SF: 29 kicks off at noon on February 15 at the Dedham Community Theatre, 580 High Street in Dedham. Tickets are $45 in advance, $55 day of show. Call (781) 326-1463, or visit www.bostonsci-fi.com.