Also this issue:

Nashville's Back Lot
The Folk Alliance Showcase reveals the gears of the music-licensing machine.
-Mary Armstrong

Keep Moving
The Secession Movement is a band with a plan.
-Paul Burress

Old Gods Alive Again
The Choral Arts Society exhumes our musical lineage.
-Peter Burwasser

Aereogramme
-John Vettese

The Aislers Set
-Sam Adams

Lo-Hi
-M.J. Fine

Mary Timony
-M.J. Fine

Dysrhythmia
-Paul Burress

March 27-April 2, 2003

musicpicks

TV Smith

The Adverts' TV Smith made his name singing about bored teenagers and mass murderers' spare parts, but he's evolved into a pissed-off troubadour, a leather-jacketed, spike-haired Woody Guthrie. Smith's punk training holds fast, though, in that he never forgets to take the political personally, which is why of all the well-meaning anti-war singles that have popped up on the Internet these last few months, Smith's "Not in My Name" cuts the deepest. Billy Bragg's "The Price of Oil" reduces Bush's hard-on for Iraq to ossified clichés, while Beastie Boys' "In a World Gone Mad" tries to sugarcoat its political broadsides with goofball humor. (How much does Bush look like Zoolander now, guys?) "Not in My Name" just goes for the jugular. "It's the bullet's exit hole/ Where the blood and money flow," Smith sings over a simple acoustic-guitar backing, the rasp in his voice more urgent than any scream. Bragg and the Beasties sound like they're just getting their objections on record, but Smith sounds like he believes an mp3 can change the world -- or at least save himself. "All my heroes died/ While they were still alive," he sings; he's trying to escape the same fate.

Thu., March 27, 10 p.m., $7, with The World/Inferno Friendship Society, The Pontiac, 304 South St., 215-925-4053.

—Sam Adams