Tuesday @ Symphony Hall

To those of you who didn’t know that comic legend Steve Martin is also an accomplished banjo player (like, really accomplished, some people have too much talent for their own good): where have y’all been? Martin is an avid bluegrass aficionado, and has been more focused on his music career than his cinematic one lately. He comes through town to perform with the Steep Canyon Rangers and our own Boston Pops in “An Evening Of Bluegrass And Comedy” for not one but two shows that showcase all of Martin’s considerable talents. Read more

Tuesday @ Brookline Booksmith

Parents say the darndest things. Especially crotchety ones with no filters and a taste for salty language. That was the premise for Justin Halpern’s now-famous Twitter feed-turned Tumblr-turned best-selling book Shit My Dad Says, wherein the then-struggling writer/comedian simply recorded all the shit his dad said, like “Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.” And people loved it. Halpern follows up that book with his new memoir, I Suck At Girls (It Books), a record of all the many and varied ways he’s been unlucky in love throughout his life. Dad, of course, plays a large role in both his failed romantic and sexual exploits and the book. Read more

Tuesday @ Comcast Center

Is there another band as big and arguably mainstream as Radiohead that is as consistently and doggedly dedicated to exploring new sounds and playing with form and function? Maybe, but not many. If last year’s somewhat sonically difficult The King of Limbs and the fact that, at the time of publication, their arena show was all but sold out are any indication, Radiohead are a band uniquely able to walk that line. Get those last tickets fast for their show at the Comcast Center. Read more

Wednesday @ Paradise Rock Club

Rappers love weed. They love it. Smoking it, rapping about it, smoking more of it, rapping about it while smoking it. But few — with the exception, perhaps, of Snoop Dogg — so much as Curren$y. The N’awlins rapper proved as much on his critically acclaimed last album Weekend at Burnie’s on which he shouted out his drug of choice often . . . and well. A confident emcee with swagger that comes naturally, Curren$y is joined tonight by a crew that includes Styles P, the Jets, Smoke DZA, Fiend 4 Da Money, Corner Boy P, Trademark, and Young Roddy. Read more

Wednesday @ Middlesex Lounge

Come on down and check out the inaugural night of SM, a new mid-week dance night at Middlesex that seeks to incorporate not one but all “fringe and non-mainstream cultures.” And yes, that might even include #seapunk. Opening night features BMP-nominee Earthquake Party! and Thunders, and DJ sets by Branden Paillant and EL Poser . Adam Anslan (The IOA, ACKA Fun Factory) hosts the new dance night that’s all about diversity and exploration at Middlesex. Read more

Thursday @ Savin Bar & Kitchen

Do you love cooking, but just wish a crazed chef with a foul temper and flair for the dramatic would hover over your shoulder and scream while you saute? Boy, are you in luck, because Gordon Ramsay wants you. If you want him, show up with your resume (and pictures/video of you workin' it in the kitch if you'd like) to Savin Bar & Kitchen. You've got to be at least 21, which makes sense, since you'll probably need a few shots when Ramsay's done with you. Read more

Thursday @ Ryles

Some of the most adept, insightful, and swinging Brazilian jazz-and-pop practitioners in town get together to pay tribute to one of the kings of the genre in the Sergio Mendes Project: To Sergio With Love. That would include singers Evelyn Rosenthal and Linda Roberts, pianist Molly Flannery, guitarist Steve Kirby, flutist Hiro Honshuku, bassist Jason Davis, drummer Steve Rose, and percussionist Marcus Santos. Read more

Saturday @ Steven Zevitas Gallery

In an age where crazies keep calling for the end of days, perhaps Alex Lukas‘s work is quite timely. Lukas makes large-scale, compellingly dystopic pieces, created from a mixture of water and media on appropriated book pages and heavy paper. His pieces show cities in ruin, half submerged in flood or reduced to various states of rubble. And yet, the works in the young Cambridge-born artist’s exhibit Alex Lukas: Recent Works are strangely beautiful. Read more

Saturday @ Harvard Art Museums

Feininger is best known as a cubist and German Expressionist painter, or a major early-20th-century newspaper cartoonist. This show delves into the artists’ photography archive, now owned by Harvard, to consider his avant-garde experiments with the camera. The rhythmic modern design of a Bauhaus building’s balconies, a double-exposed street scene, a New York rooftop vista, and a street reflected in a store window show his development between the Bauhaus — the famed German art and design school where he took up photography in 1928 — and New York, where he settled permanently in 1937. Read more

Sunday @ Boston Children's Museum

"Oddanimalogist Jef Czekajkids" (an alterego created for this exhibit) worked with local kids to invent weird creatures a/k/a/ Oddanimal, then interpreted them as the art on display in this unique exhibit at the Boston Children's Museum (adults will like it too) that includes fake books, fake records, fake radio programs, and more... all based upon the artist's invented character. Should be odd, all right. Opening party Friday, March 16 at 5:30 pm Read more

Saturday, June 09, 2012 @ Lyric Stage Company of Boston

“Everyone’s a little bit racist” is just one of the guilty truths told in the Tony-winning play Avenue Q. Lyric Stage Company (with help from Brookline’s Puppet Showplace Theater) presents Boston’s staging of the much-lauded play, which stars a cast of puppets and their human counterparts. Avenue Q tells the story of a college grad who moves into a shabby apartment on the titular NY avenue and meets a motley array of puppet friends including “Lucy the Slut” and “Rod the Republican.” Stereotypes have never been fleshed (felted?) out so boldly . . . or so hilariously. Read more

Sunday, June 10, 2012 @ Hyannis Harbor Arts Center at Guyer Barn

Perhaps most well-known for his ’80s and ’90s rock posters (parlayed into a successful clothing line), Boston artist Joey Mars has showcased work across the country, from Worcester to Venice Beach. He brings it all back home for a new solo exhibit out on the Cape, Hybrids Of The Singularity, a series of trippy drawings and paintings blending graffiti, surrealism, and modern art that explore the interface between technology and nature. The exhibit opens with a reception on May 24. Read more

Sunday, June 24, 2012 @ Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts

Who was it that first said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? Shakespeare, or some ancient Greek dude, or someone. Doesn’t matter, because it still rings true. Take runway models for instance. They’re considered — by some standards — the very epitome of beauty . . . and yet when we look at one of them all we want to do is offer a sister a bacon cheeseburger. The dichotomy between the beautiful and the grotesque — and the grey area that so often falls between — is the subject of Pretty Ugly: Deviant Materialism, a new exhibit that uses painting, sculpture, photography, and video to create art both beautiful and hideous, aiming to elicit visceral reactions of attraction and repulsion . . . sometimes simultaneously. Much of the art focuses on the human form, juxtaposing body parts like anuses and tongues to interesting effect. The reception tonight is followed by a performance from Charmaine Wheatley, who’ll serve chocolate casts of her ass to visitors — who are encouraged to get a little dirty with ’em. Read more

Friday, June 29, 2012 @ Fourth Wall Project

From this fall’s excellent — and touching — artistic exploration of the media’s role in urban violence, Anonymous Boston, to their recent Odd Future pop-up shop, the Fourth Wall Project consistently proves their dedication to thinking outside the box. Must be why they were nominated as one of the best art galleries in town in this year’s Phoenix Best poll. They maintain that standard with this latest exhibit Algorhythms, a series of canvas paintings juxtaposing abstract compositions with calligraphy. The compositions are representative of conversations between Bay Area graffiti artist Jurne and Portland designer/illustrator Matt W. Moore. The exhibit opens with a reception on May 18. Read more

Sunday, July 08, 2012 @ MIT List Visual Arts Center

The New Yorker’s photos and videos probe the wonders of the invisible world: a 16th-century scientist who sought to communicate with the dead, a spastic dance meant to ward off the poisons of a tarantula bite, photos left behind by a doomed Arctic expedition, and the occultist Aleister Crowley’s abandoned residence in Sicily (accompanied by the drums from the Rolling Stones’ "Sympathy for the Devil"). Read more

Sunday, July 29, 2012 @ Museum of Fine Arts

Six decades ago, the New Yorker developed his signature cool, urbane, offhand manner in the aforementioned paintings of his wife Ada, as well as art- and literary-world friends, and the landscapes of Maine (where he has long summered). His canvases are like sophisticated bon mots tossed out at a cocktail party. The MFA surveys his printmaking via some 150 prints, cutouts on aluminum, illustrated books, paintings and drawings — including Rush (1971), the artist’s recent gift to the museum: 37 silhouetted oil-paint-on-aluminum portraits that depict New York’s cultural glitterati of the ’60s Read more

Sunday, July 29, 2012 @ TD Garden

Tuesday, August 28, 2012 @ House of Blues

Friday, August 31, 2012 @ Oberon

Booze is a sly mistress. That wicked temptress gets us going and then, all too often, fucks us over. Ain’t that just like a woman? Everyone’s had one of those evenings when they should have called it a night but then went ahead and took that fifth shot of Jack (one of those nights in college, of course. Yeah, college . . . ) and subsequently woke up using the toilet for a pillow. That’s exactly what Bye Bye Liver: The Boston Drinking Play is all about. From the girl who shouldn’t be allowed near tequila to the one-night stand who looked a whole lot better through those beer goggles you were sporting the night before, Bye Bye Liver covers all the hazards of drinking in hilarious detail. Audience members are brought into the participatory performance — engaging in those familiar games of “Never Have I Ever” and the like — which premieres tonight and will be reprised every Friday through the end of August. Read more

Monday, May 27, 2013 @ Peabody Essex Museum

The Boston artist and MassArt teacher is known for her panoramic photos surveying the American landscape — the largest trees of each species across the country; hunters, birds, life along Montana’s Bitterroot River. This small show examines two decades of photos of her family and her childhood home in Novelty, Ohio, for a meditation on youth and aging, home and time Read more