E-Mail This Article to a Friend A night like this The Cure brings the Curiosa tour to Mansfield, plus Dispatch says good-bye and more

Just like Heaven

Adding to what’s already a jam-packed alterna-rock summer — and we still haven’t heard from the Pixies! — comes the Curiosa Tour, which unites big fat Robert Smith and the Cure with their younger, skinnier offspring, from New York dance-punk hipsters Interpol and the Rapture to painfully sincere emo heartthrobs Thursday. Landing at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield on August 7, the tour also features performances by Muse (who we admit owe a little more to Radiohead’s Britain and Coldplay’s than to Smith’s), Mogwai, Cursive, the Cooper Temple Clause, Head Automatica, and — hell, yeah! — former Hole/Perfect Circle bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, whose solo debut (and personal-appearance schedule) is much more reliable than that of her old band mate Courtney Love. Tickets are $35 to $50; call (617) 931-2000

Clockwork meets "Coin Operated Boy"

When Alex and his droogs suck back their moloko and go pillaging for a bit of the ol’ in-out, in-out in Company One’s production of A Clockwork Orange later this summer, they’ll be doing so to the sounds of the only band in town who share their fashion sense — the Dresden Dolls. The Dolls’ Brechtian cabaret punk is an obvious fit for Anthony Burgess’s ultraviolent epic, and Company One — whose Jesus Hopped the "A" Train won this year’s Elliot Norton Award for Best Local Fringe Production — is using Burgess’s own stage adaptation, which London’s Royal Shakespeare Company undertook in 1990. It helps that Dolls frontwoman Amanda Palmer knows her Beethoven (Switched-On Bach gal Wendy Carlos’s score for the Kubrick film version synthesized the Ninth). But though the Dolls composed and recorded an original score, they won’t be on hand to play it — the Clockwork run coincides with the group’s performances at Lollapalooza, ending, in fact, on the very day the group, and the tour, reach Boston. A Clockwork Orange runs July 22 through August 14 at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End. Tickets are $25, $15 for students; July 25 is pay-what-you-can. Call (617) 426-2787, or visit www.companyone.org

Dispatching with Dispatch

In a city that fiercely guards its punk-rock lineage, the biggest Boston DIY success story of the past decade was a group who played the enemy’s music — a college-bar mix of funk, reggae, and pop. This probably explains why Dispatch never quite became home-town critics’ faves (though their 2000 disc, Who Are We Living For?, made Rolling Stone’s Top 10 year-end list). But that only makes their homegrown, grassroots triumph the more amazing: having built a nationwide fan base on word-of-mouth and a Herculean touring schedule, they sold out a pair of gigs at FleetBoston Pavilion last summer, and their indie catalogue is still selling about 1500 copies a week — even as they’ve announced that they’re breaking up at the end of next month. For a farewell, they’ve booked a free, all-day festival-type July 31 show at the MDC Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade that will include numerous special guests and fan contests. They’re expecting a crowd of as large as 100,000, and they’ll be filming the whole deal for a posthumous CD and DVD. For more information, visit www.dispatchmusic.com

Ragin’ Cajuns

Whether you were born on the bayou or you just like a fais-do-do down there from time to time, your best bet for catching swamp-boogie action in the wilds of New England comes each Labor Day in the form of the annual Rhythm and Roots Festival, which imports the finest musicians of the Cajun diaspora for a weekend-long hootenanny at Ninigret State Park in Charlestown, Rhode Island. This year’s fest runs September 3 through 5 (Friday through Sunday) and includes performances by the Gourds, Bill Kirchen & Too Much Fun, the Duhks, and the Red Stick Ramblers (Friday, beginning at 5 p.m.); Leftover Salmon, Robert Earl Keen, Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, and CJ Chenier (Saturday, beginning at noon); and the Radiators, NRBQ, Peter Rowan & Crucial Reggae, Beausoleil, Dexter Ardoin & the Creole Ramblers, and Adrienne Young & Little Sadie (Sunday, beginning at noon). In a switch from past festivals, the host band isn’t a native New Orleans act but instead, by popular request, upstate New Yorkers Donna the Buffalo — who are nonetheless drafting legendary Creole accordionist Preston Frank into their line-up for the occasion. If you order tickets before June 30, a three-day pass with camping privileges is $95. Thereafter, they’re $115, or $80 without the camping. Single-day tickets are $35, $20 for Friday night. Call (888) 855-6940, or visit www.rhythmandroots.com