The Beach Boys
Beacon Theater
Wednesday, May 9

Better than: You were almost definitely expecting.

Yes, John Stamos introduced them. And, yeah, they filed onstage, called out one by one by their bandleader in true showbiz style while the backing musicians—twice as many as original members—struck up a tasty groove. But then, there they are, the Beach Boys. "For fifty generations they are still going strong," Stamos says during the intro, a tongue slip, but it makes more sense with the sight of Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston. All around 70, theirs are faces that seem to have occupied vast tracts of time—'60s sunshine, '70s implosion, '80s chintz, '90s wilderness730151;and somehow survived into the second decade of the 21st century to arrive at the Beacon Theater for two shows this week. To point out that they are grandparents many times over is besides the point, which is that they're the Beach Boys.

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The Beach Boys on The T.A.M.I. Show.

Beach Boys YouTube wormholes can take many paths, from sunshine-draped reveries to sudden decisive turns towards the seriously depressing. But no clickbait-enhanced listicle of questionable Mike Love sartorial/dance/aesthetic moves, horrifying Brian Wilson zombie moments, made-for-TV movies, or John Stamos appearances could ever possibly top the legendary bootleg Endless Bummer: The Very Worst of the Beach Boys, which has all the Brian rap, Budweiser ads, drunken in-studio rants by stage-father Murry Wilson, and Spanish versions of "Kokomo" that one might (hopefully) ever desire. With the band coming to town for two shows at the Beacon Theater this week, and at least a few people planning to go—plus the onset of actual summer and all that—it's good vibrations only today. You can Google the rest yourselves.

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Chris Corsano
The Stone
Thursday, May 4

Better than: A drum solo.

At Chris Corsano's solo performance at the Stone last night, the punchline was on anybody who's ever made a drummer joke. The 36-year-old musician played an astounding set that both redefined the instrument and created a coherent 35-minute piece of music that never ceased in its hallucinatory and resourceful improvisation. Chatting with friends in the crowd, Corsano—who has a new solo drum album, Cut—stationed himself behind a traditional kit, and casually prepared it, tying a cloth to one drumhead, placing small metallic sculptures on others. He began with a pair of bows, scraped along a bowl pressed onto the floor tom to create a rich drone. A small set of strings was strung across a second snare, and he bowed this too, making a chord. Overtones shifted as he alternated the bows' patterns against one another. Gradually and almost imperceptibly the drone shifted into rhythm, Corsano's wrists flitting microscopically, like insect wings—the kind of heartbreakingly articulate motion normally ascribed to violin prodigies—and some seven or eight minutes into the show, he finally played his first beat.

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The Feelies
The Bell House
Friday, April 27

Better than: Talking.

Even 35 years later, the Feelies aren't terribly loquacious. Watching them on stage, in fact, can make one feel like a positive extrovert. "We're going to play a few more songs, and take a break," was the most compelling thing any one of them said for most of their two-set, six-encore show at Bell House on Friday. It took them until the end of the second half to get to their theme song, "Crazy Rhythms," with Glenn Mercer's beautifully meta plea, "I don't talk much 'cause it gets in the way, don't let it get in the way." But nobody in the sold-out room probably needed to be reminded. "STOP TALKING!" somebody in the crowd shouted ironically at one point.

Not that the Feelies seemed unhappy to be there. Their between-song silence only reinforced the authenticity of the frequent moments when the band—Mercer in particular—would churn into motion, falling around the stage in unreserved ecstasy. Like Mission of Burma and Dinosaur Jr., the Feelies' 2008 reunion is of the blessed pick-up-where-they-left-off variety, focused on great new songs. The two sets were anchored by tunes from last year's Here Before, as well as favorites from 1979's Crazy Rhythms and 1986's The Good Earth.

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Furthur
Beacon Theater
Tuesday, April 17

Better than: String Cheese Incident.

In the ongoing tussle between Deadheads and straights, the straights seem to have won—definitely this battle, and possibly the War. A handful of vendors, selling pot paraphernalia and Steal Your Face blankets, lingered outside the Beacon Theater before the sixth show of a seven-night stand by Bob Weir and Phil Lesh's Furthur, as did plenty of sketchy-looking young'ns with dreadlocks and mangy dogs, ex-longhairs, current longhairs, and other signs that members of the Grateful Dead were in town. But inside the semi-recently reopened Beacon was a different story, the theater's new crack security team herding Deadheads from the aisles, away from their friends, and into—harshest of mellows—their assigned seats. And the Deadheads mostly went. Pot smoke was almost entirely absent.

The majority of the crowd was on its feet from beginning to end, at least theoretically ready to boogie. But there were few noodle dancers and fewer spinners to spot, and not even many onely ex-fratboys unskinnily bopping. Thanks to a somewhat reasonable ticket price (most expensive orchestra seat: $69.50), the crowd was made up of far more than baby boomers, but—perhaps not surprisingly to many—far less than a Dead concert. Despite their seemingly silly circumstances—two original bandmembers, a fake-Jerry, and a pair of stunt-vocalist backup singers—Lesh and Weir have often been able to make magic for the still-significant amount of people who still care to be in a room with fellow Deadheads, hearing the band's songbook recombined and sharing its subcultural meanings in real time by singing along and cheering in the right places, paying good money to do it multiple nights in a row, and all that. But circumstances may've changed again. (Though not the part about paying good money; all seven nights were quite sold out.)

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Still Better Than The Beatles: A Tribute To The Shaggs / A Benefit for the Fremont, N.H. Historical Society & 250th Anniversary Committee
The Bell House
Friday, April 13

Better than: The Kraftwerk tribute.

YouTube recently declared a new Worst Band Ever. Whether or not the hapless outfit from Pennsylvania—first seen covering Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" under gloriously bizarre giant letters spelling out MUSIC—is truly deserving of the title remains to be seen. But they and countless other YouTube sensations yet to come have both marginalized and validated the Shaggs, the band of sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire that recorded one privately pressed album in 1969, gigged for a few more years at their local Town Hall, called it quits, and—since their late 1970s rediscovery—have traditionally held rock's Worst Band Ever title. In a better-indexed society, though, "Worst" is no longer the most accurate word to describe them, if it ever was to begin with.

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Sonic Youth.

This weekend, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its class of 2012, which consists of Donovan, the Beastie Boys, the late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, the Small Faces and the Faces, blues guitarist Freddie King, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Guns N' Roses, although not lead singer Axl Rose, who declined the induction earlier this week. Rose notwithstanding, dozens of artists have been snubbed for the Hall over the years; it took the Stooges—the Stooges!—a half-dozen ballots to make it in. The Hall's official party line states that it honors "the influence and significance of the artists' contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll." But the list of artists who issued their first records 25 or more years ago (the Hall's qualification for nomination) who would be first-ballot shoo-ins in any Rock and Roll Hall of Fame committed to the continuous, vital culture of rock music is long. Even without considering influential jazz, folk, hip-hop, electronic, dance, pop, funk, dub, and dance artists, staggering amounts of genuine and important rock artists have never even reached the ballot.

Here are 10 artists who've made legitimate contributions to rock and roll as the term is generally understood (even by baby boomers). Sure, to actually enshrine any of them would also negate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's symbolic importance for all that is hilarious about itself, and that would be a loss. But it's only rock and roll.

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Marianne Faithfull & Marc Ribot
City Winery
Thursday, March 15

Better than: Stones tributes.

If the billing of a stripped-down duo performance between Marianne Faithfull, the 65-year old pop singer, and Marc Ribot, the master guitarist of the downtown jazz scene, seemed too good to be true, it was. Instead, those nestled in City Winery's vibe vacuum—$70 for a barstool, $80 for a table—got something one player different than advertised. But probably most weren't paying to see Ribot, anyway. "I always wanted to Ornette Coleman everything up," Faithfull said midway through her set, during which she pattered with devastating charm, and sang with an emotional force underscored by a richly rasped voice that was never anything less than pleasure to listen to.

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Even via Skype, Rhys Chatham remains profoundly, permanently enthused. The giddy 100-guitar maximalist/minimalist yin to Glenn Branca's foreboding 100-guitar maximalist/minimalist yang, Chatham's '70s/'80s innovations—rounded up by Table of the Elements on 2002's An Angel Moves Too Fast To See—remain a cornerstone of contemporary music. But, give or take performances like 2007's mammoth 400-guitar Crimson Grail (staged with 200 guitars at Lincoln Center two years later), Chatham has moved on. Born and raised in Greenwich Village, studying with avant-garde stalwarts like LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, Chatham, 59, famously discovered the power of electric guitar after seeing the Ramones at CBGB. In recent years, he has returned to trumpet, for a series of albums that tip into tender, third stream improv.

This Saturday, he will take the stage with Oneida—and guitar in hand—as part of the Ecstatic Music Fest, which spotlights music that seems poised to reconnect his two modes of music. Paired by festival organizers, the night won't be the 10-hour Ocropolis extravaganza that he and the O-brahs originally proposed, but—with a half-dozen new collaborative pieces between them—it'll be assuredly be something new. Though Chatham moved to Paris in 1989, he remains a New York musician in absentia, befriending successive generations of underground Gothamites passing through Paris. When he caught Liturgy on a recent trip to New York—where he also played violin with Kid Millions' Matter Waves—he was surprised to see guitarist Bernard Gann, who he'd last seen as a 15-year old crashing on his Paris floor.

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Greg Fox.

XPRMNTL <3 FSTVL: Greg Fox / Metal Tongues / Hubble
Roulette
Friday, February 17

Better than: Trying to listen to music over a beer line.

The recently relocated Roulette (it's now on Atlantic Avenue, a few blocks from BAM) provides one of the city's perpetual needs: a small, accessible concert hall for avant-garde jazz, experimental music, and other not-particularly-poppy stuff that's sometimes nice to hear without the din of a drinking crowd. There's a small bar, but the focus is on the monastically plain auditorium, the former Y.W.C.A. Memorial Hall. (There's even a proper stage!) Tickets are cheap and seating is general admission.

The five-night XPRMNTL <3 FSTVL brought a cluster of vital musicians more accustomed to Northside DIY spots into the warm bosom of Roulette's respectful and unpretentious listening environs. After a long G-train ride from the noise-lined streets of Williamsburg, Atlantic Avenue feels somewhat uptown—or, at least, far away.

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