It’s been a breakthrough year for former Further Seems Forever frontman Chris Carraba, whose acoustic-emo outfit Dashboard Confessional have with "Screaming Infidelities" scored the biggest punk-unplugged hit since Green Day’s "Good Riddance." The group have an MTV Unplugged set in the can (a little redundant, though?), and it’ll be released as a CD/DVD double-disc package on December 3 as a holdover follow-up to last year’s The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most (Vagrant). Carraba and crew bring chiseled good looks, sincere semantics, and a workbook’s worth of melodramatic melodies to the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Saturday and to the Webster Theatre (860-525-5553) in Hartford on Monday. Meanwhile, good old-fashioned plugged-in emo returns to the Palladium on Sunday in the form of Hot Water Music (see Sean Richardson’s interview in Music), Thrice, and Coheed and Cambria (see Sean’s review in "Off the Record," on page 23 of Arts). And emo of the boy-band-harmonizing, major-label variety — we’re talking about Epic signees the Juliana Theory — takes a stab at winning over Our Lady Peace’s audience at the State Theater (207-780-8265) in Portland on Tuesday; at the Palladium on Wednesday; and at the Webster Theatre next Sunday, October 20.

One of the linchpins in the O Brother tour was the otherworldly dobro-slide player Jerry Douglas, whose feats of speed, dexterity, inventiveness, and (when absolutely necessary) traditional bluegrass fervor place him at the very top of the Down from the Mountain cast. Douglas is currently on a solo tour; he hits the Somerville Theatre (617-931-2000) on Friday and Higher Ground (802-654-8888) in Winooski, Vermont, on Sunday.

Like a reject from that live-action version of Masters of the Universe, the mid-’80s Viking-metal singer Thor is a bodybuilder who sports loincloths, broadswords, and leather body armor that’d make Ted Nugent blush; if you don’t remember his band, you might remember his off-the-scale ridiculous horror film Rock N Roll Nightmare. Thor’s comeback hits the Coolidge Corner Theatre (617-734-2501) in Brookline on Friday for a performance that includes both a full-on rock show and clips from the film. We’re assured by metal maniac Seth "Anal Cunt" Putnam that this is a can’t-miss fiasco. Thor is also at the Trash American Style record store (203-792-1630) in Danbury, Connecticut, on Saturday; both dates are opened by masked black-metal dude Damien Storm and brute-punks Nasty Disaster.

Issue Date: October 10 - 17, 2002
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