Thursday, July 30

Vans Warped Tour @ Marcus Amphitheater, 11 a.m.
Political punk curmudgeons Bad Religion and Anti-Flag sharing tour dates with electro-quirk bands like 3OH!3 and InnerPartySystem? It must be time for another Vans Warped Tour. As usual, the tour’s emphasis is on quantity over quality, so there’s no shortage of acts to choose from: All Time Low, Big D and the Kids Table, Bouncing Souls, Breathe Carolina, Forever The Sickest Kids, Less Than Jake, Meg and Dia, P. O.S., Senses Fail, Streetlight Manifesto, The Devil Wears Prada, The White Tie Affair and Underoath are all among the headliners. Among the gems buried in the schedule are Dr. Madd Vibe, the latest who-knows project from Fishbone weirdo Angelo Moore, and a rare country performer: outlaw revivalist Shooter Jennings.

Jamie Foxx @ Milwaukee Theatre, 8 p.m.
What a difference a decade makes. In 1994, Jamie Foxx, then a little-known “In Living Color” cast member, released his first album to widespread indifference. After Foxx moved away from comedy to focus on dramatic acting, a career shift that culminated in an Oscar win for Best Actor in Ray, he found that audiences were more willing to take him seriously as a musician, and in 2005 his sophomore album, a collection of sultry R&B called Unpredictable, went double platinum. Assisted by the ubiquitous T-Pain and an irresistible sample lifted from The-Dream’s “I Luv Your Girl,” Foxx continued his hot streak this year with “Blame It,” his highest-charting single yet.

Friday, July 31

KingHellBastard @ Stonefly Brewery, 10 p.m.
Milwaukee’s ragtag hip-hop crew KingHellBastard can count Brand Nubian’s Sadat X among its supporters. On KingHellBastard’s “It’s the Crew Again” last year, Sadat X bragged about getting his Ph.D. from KHB, before launching into a verse about drinking Pabst and “squashin’” girls from Oshkosh, proving that even the Bronx can get down with the Milwaukee group’s preferred forms of recreation. Over bombastic, boom-bap beats that celebrate hip-hop’s mid-’90s heyday, the crew drops slippery verses that celebrate drinking and partying.

Jurassic Park @ The Times Cinema, 11:50 p.m.
Milwaukee’s The Warped Cast has given the midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show-styled shadow cast treatment to cult movies like Clue and Little Shop of Horrors, but tonight they take on their most ambitious project yet: a live re-enactment of Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 dinosaur thriller. No doubt much of the entertainment will arise from the way this modestly budgeted but ever-resourceful troupe recreates the groundbreaking, expensive special effects from one of the most successful blockbuster films of all time. (Also Aug. 1.)

Signaldrift w/ Pressboard, Rich Dad and Made of Oak @ The Cactus Club, 10 p.m.
Four Milwaukee live electronic acts are challenging themselves to break away from the wallflowery, experimental sounds they gravitate toward in favor of more dance-floor-friendly grooves for a night they’re billing, with more than a little sarcasm, as the Monsters of Techno. Among the not-quite monsters are the ambient duo Signaldrift, Pressboard (the nom de plume of Collections of Colonies of Bees’ Jim Schoenecker), Rich Dad (All Tiny Creatures’ Thomas Wincek) and Made of Oak (Decibully’s Nicholas Sanborn).

Beatallica @ Liquor Sweets, 9 p.m.
The joke should have grown stale by now—band mashes up Beatles favorites with Metallica lyrics and a thrash-metal attitude—but Milwaukee’s Beatallica keeps finding ways to keep it fresh on its latest album, Masterful Mystery Tour, which they celebrate at tonight’s release party. The album contains punny hybrids like “The Battery of Jaymz and Yoko,” “Got to Get You Trapped Under Ice” and “I Want to Choke Your Band.”

Art to Art @ Danceworks, 7:30 p.m.
Danceworks continues to pair choreography with other art forms in its “Art to Art” concert series. The latest program unites five choreographers—Simon Andreas Eichinger, Jade Jablonski, Julianna LaRosa, Cassandra Motta and Sarah Wallisch—with collaborators from seemingly disparate mediums, including composer Luke Wieting, sculptor Gregory Brulla, harpist Mary Keppeler, percussionist Scott Roush, lithographer Pat Smyczek and pianist Jen Van Brunt. (Also Aug. 1.)

Saturday, Aug. 1

Crosby, Stills and Nash @ The Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.

Let’s be honest: Under normal circumstances, a Crosby, Stills, and Nash tour without Young isn’t anything to get excited about these days. Performances last year at the Riverside Theater and the Milwaukee stop of the “Get Out and Vote” tour suffered even further from the absence of Stephen Stills, who was recovering from prostate cancer. But with Stills back in the fold and this year marking the 40th anniversary of the group’s opening performance at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the trio’s latest tour takes on an air of celebration. At least two songs from the band’s famed 3 a.m. set can be heard in their early conceptual stages on Demos, a new collection of unreleased CSN material that explores the earliest days of these songwriters’ careers.

 

Social Distortion w/ Civet and The Strangers @ The Rave, 8 p.m.
One of the most celebrated originators of the hardcore punk movement in the early 1980s, So-Cal rockers Social Distortion remain best known for their radio singles “Ball and Chain” and “Story of My Life,” as well as their iconic cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” from their 1990 self-titled album, which blended their brand of punk with mainstream hooks and Western guitars. Led by Mike Ness, the band’s only remaining original member, on lead guitar and vocals, Social D has survived drug addiction (heroin), the death of founding guitarist Dennis Danell (brain aneurysm) and several hiatuses throughout its tumultuous history. The ever-evolving group is writing new material for its upcoming seventh studio album, which it plans to begin recording in December.

Social Distortion

Sunday, Aug. 2

CKY @ The Rave, 8 p.m.
Lending the abbreviation of his band Camp Kill Yourself to brother Bam Margera and Brandon DiCamillo (pre “Jackass” and “Viva La Bam”) as the name of their CKY skateboarding video series paid off beautifully for Jess Margera. The success of the videos, which were more about violent pranks and dick and fart jokes than actual skating, gave Margera’s band CKY plenty of soundtrack exposure and the brand loyalty of thousands of Jackasses in the making. After the wheels fell off for them at Island in 2006, the skate-metal band signed with Roadrunner Records. Now, they return to the road with their fourth studio album, Carver City, which features “Hellions on Parade,” the final installment of their Hellview Trilogy.

Monday, Aug. 3

Lewis and Clarke w/ Caroline Weeks and Corridor @ Lewis and Clarke Sugar Maple, 8 p.m.
Named not for the famous explorers, but rather the authors C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke, the indiefolk ensemble Lewis and Clarke were lumped in with the freak-folk movement of earlier this decade, but as freak-folk fell out of fashion in favor of plain-old folk, they’ve stripped their sound, toning down the theatrics of British folk in favor of a decidedly more modest, made-in-the-mountains American sound, perfect for those who like their music hushed and their musicians bearded. Co-headliner Caroline Weeks, a frequent backing player in Bat for Lashes, shares Lewis and Clarke’s ear for finger-picked prettiness, adding Spanish accents to her guitar work, while one-man opener Corridor breaks from the bill’s peaceful, organic theme, preferring instead uneasy, live electronic compositions.

Tuesday, Aug. 4

Tori Amos @ The Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.

While Tori Amos made her name constructing hauntingly beautiful piano melodies accompanied by her angelic voice, and though she’s an accomplished songwriter with a knack for almost violently emotional material, arguably some of her best work has been performing songs written by others. From covers of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” to The Cure’s “Love Song,” Amos seems to find a way to take songs already loaded with passion and reinterpret them to suit her own distressed soul. Though the songs on her latest album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, carry a lighter tone than usual, Amos still manages to live vicariously through others’ struggles with songs like “Maybe California,” about a mother contemplating suicide and what it would mean for her family.

Wednesday, Aug. 5

River Rhythms w/ Paul Cebar @ Pere Marquette Park, 6:30 p.m.
Over the years Paul Cebar has hit the road with a variety of different bands, while never straying from Milwaukee for too long. The same cannot be said for his eclectic style of music, however, which usually draws far more from the sounds of the South than the Midwest. From his days with the R&B Cadets in the early ’80s coffeehouse scene to his more jazzed-up tenure with the Milwaukeeans and most recently his jump into African and Latin rhythms, Cebar has celebrated the spirit of Milwaukee while looking beyond it.