Friday 6
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RAISE THE RED LANTERN Chicago’s Raise the Red Lantern released their debut full-length, Breathe Fire (Seventh Rule), this past fall. It’s an inventive fusion of up-tempo stoner rock, posthardcore, the avant-rock of Neurosis, and classic Brit metal. Tracks like “Daggers and Men’s Smiles” and “Brethren We Built This” surprise with electronic manipulations: they appear without warning yet still sound strangely fitting, carrying things naturalistically beyond the limits of what a live loud rock band can normally do. Wolf & Cub, the Pines, and Raining Bricks open. a 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, 773-281-4444, $7, 18+. –J. Niimi
MELVIN RHYNE TRIO WITH PETER BERNSTEIN Peter Bernstein backed into the jazz mainstream: like many guitarists of his generation (he’s 38), he first discovered Jimi Hendrix, then B.B. King, and finally Wes Montgomery, the exemplar of the deceptively easygoing style that Bernstein has made his own. Bernstein’s playing–like that of Montgomery (and Grant Green, who has become a stronger influence on him)–has a surface facility that masks the intensity of his technique and the ferocity of his thinking. He packs in lots of ideas but reduces them to clean, crisply defined summations; even when he’s flying through quick-tempo tunes he doesn’t waste many notes, which accounts for the measured, almost understated quality of his improvisations. Bernstein’s tasteful but galvanic approach has made him a favorite in several modern jazz-organ groups, most notably those led by keyboardists Larry Goldings and Dr. Lonnie Smith and tenor man Javon Jackson–and this one, the product of a long partnership with Indianapolis’s Melvin Rhyne, who in the late 50s played organ on the first Wes Montgomery recordings to feature the instrument. See also Saturday. 9 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552, $10. –Neil Tesser
SPITS These Seattle punk terrors are notorious for their obnoxious costumes–cardboard robot suits, rubber Reagan masks, jock-hawks, Unabomber outfits, whatever–and their even more obnoxious sound, so stubbornly and brutally primitive it forces you to admit just how polished the Ramones really were. On their 2004 tour they started selling a limited-edition DVD (still available at www.thespits.com) that proves they used to be even rawer, something I wouldn’t have believed possible if I hadn’t seen the footage–you get a few episodes of their televised mid-90s puppet show, Chucky & the Spits, which went where even public access fears to tread, a couple music videos, and bits and pieces from a handful of shows, including their 2002 appearance at Horizontal Action’s Chicago Blackout. Not a band to be shot with Vaseline on the lens–though you can be sure something’s gonna get smeared on it. The Busy Signals, M.O.T.O., and Mandy & the Twins open. The Get Drunk DJs spin between sets. 10 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, 773-278-6600 or 800-594-8499, $10. –Monica Kendrick
Thursday 12
