What, Bob Dylan in town again?!?!?

And the answer is yes. Bob Dylan and His Band, as they bill 'em nowadays, will be returning to the Mullins Center on Friday, November 19 at 8 p.m. Presales end Thursday night, with a general public ticket sale starting Friday at 10 a.m.

Phish returns to Amherst

It's been nearly 15 years since a Phish sighting in Amherst, but that's about to change. The tremendously popular Vermont jamband has lined up shows at the Mullins Center at UMass-Amherst on Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24.

The concerts will mark Phish's first gigs at the Mullins since December 4 and December 5, 1995, a pair of shows that followed two stops at the Mullins in 1994, on April 16 and again on November 3. Of course, Phish was an Amherst staple in its early years, frequently making the trek down I-91 to play at Amherst College and smaller UMass venues.

Now there's a band name

A friend from the West Coast emailed me today, more or less out of nowhere, to ask if I'd heard anything about a new version of Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band that's appearing out in Oakland, which I had -- Yoko has dusted off the old name that she and John Lennon had used back in the '70s for a new outfit with her son Sean and some of his younger cohorts from the New York area. So I was slightly jolted about a half-hour later, walking into downtown Northampton, to see the flier at right.

Turns out this is one of the bands that'll be appearing at an arson victims benefit at the Elevens on Saturday night. The poster was adjacent to the full benefit poster, which is repro'd below. Great, eye-catching way to draw attention to this most worthy cause. (And sometimes, plain black letters on a white background is still the best design. Frankie says "Relax!")

Pet sounds

It's fascinating to me to see the news that Brian Wilson -- head Beach Boy, pop genius and somewhat-troubled artist -- will be returning to the Calvin Theater nine years after his first appearance there in June of 1999.

He was the first musical act I ever saw at the Calvin (I did precede that with a drive up from Connecticut, where I lived at the time, to see Beatles producer George Martin do his multimedia career retrospective about his time with the Fabs). And the Calvin show was part of his first real attempt at touring after many, many years spent largely off the music scene, most of that time spent battling his mental troubles. In fact, Wilson had largely dropped out of live performance as far back as 1965, to work exclusively on his studio masterpieces; he was replaced at first by Glen Campbell (yes, the longtime star of country-pop music and TV) and then by Bruce Johnston, who remains a Beach Boy to this day. Wilson did pop up on many of the Beach Boys' tours of the 1970s, but as a spent, drugged and largely silent force behind the incessant mugging of Mike Love and the stronger presence of his late brother Carl.

Thus, in 1999, the idea that Brian Wilson was coming out as the frontman on his own tour was, frankly, astonishing, and for the Calvin to get one of his first shows was a major coup at the time. The show provided evidence that Wilson wasn't entirely comfortable in the live environment; he sat behind an electric piano that was clearly unplugged and there only as a steadying prop, and his gaze was straight and fixed as he worked through his songs. But he had (and has to this day) a large, crack band behind him that was able to faithfully reproduce his pop gems in a way that the Beach Boys had never mustered; he had a phenomenally supportive audience rooting for him; and he really pulled off a fine show in the end. Sitting in the balcony of the Calvin, watching his band launch the second set with a note-perfect of "Sloop John B," is to this day one of the many moments of real magic I've experienced in the Valley.

In the intervening years, the stage has become a much more comfortable environment for Wilson; he's performed all over the world and done shows featuring his opus Pet Sounds and the 30-years-in-the-making Smile. He's still writing, too -- this tour promotes a new album, That Lucky Old Sun. It's kind of good to know that the long road he's traveled has smoothed out over the past decade, and that it'll be bringing him back this way in what's becoming one of the Calvin's more memorable years for bookings.

Drive-By Truckers at the NBO

Patterson Hood (left) and Mike Cooley, the core of the excellent rootsy American band Drive-By Truckers, did an acoustic set for 93.9 The River on Friday afternoon at the Northampton Box Office. They're playing at Pearl Street tonight, and it should be well worth it. Alas, I couldn't make it to this one, so for me the three-song NBO set was sort of a consolation prize. The guys looked a little bit worse for wear after driving down from Canada and enduring a Customs check at 6 in the morning, but they sounded fine.

Really, this is one of those little types of things that makes living around here so worthwhile. I mostly lived in or near big cities before this, and you can get to take this kind of stuff in the likes of Boston or San Francisco for granted. But the quality differences are noticeable in a place like the Valley. For one thing, just try finding commercial radio as consistently decent in either of those cities as it is around here. The stations here fit the local feel prety well; go to a city, and you're into cardboard-cutout sound. (People look at the record business as an area where business models make life tougher than it once was, but radio is generally a far, far more awful product, and that business did it all to itself.) For another, an in-store like this would be mobbed in a city. Here, it's mellow, just a nice add to the workday for some fans, and yet this area will turn out a good crowd for a band like this tonight.

Must say, it's good to get outside the Cube now and then....