John S. Hall, BOB WISEMAN, Betsy Years 5/9, Lunar Cabaret John S. Hall will probably be remembered as the man who blew Beavis and Butt-head’s minds with “Detachable Penis,” but that’s pop culture for you. As the force behind King Missile, he’s actually got a lot of other jewels under his belt, like “Jesus Was Way Cool,” “Sensitive Artist,” and my personal favorite, “Take Stuff From Work.” Lately he’s been on the spoken-word circuit and lurking on the edge of actual literary respectability. Not so the Canadian Artist Nearly Known as Prince, Bob Wiseman, who has in addition to his own pursuits worked with Eugene Chadbourne, Jane Siberry, and Kids in the Hall’s Bruce McCulloch; his legal problems with the Purple One have made Negativland look golden. Kicking things off are local free-jazz-psychedelic-pop mutants the Betsy Years, who seemed to be taking a country-and-western direction when I last saw them. Expect insufferable cleverness punctuated by flashes of sheer genius.
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DAVID MURRAY & FONTELLA BASS 5/12, Steppenwolf Theatre While I question the long-term wisdom of bringing in music to help promote increasingly dull theater, Steppenwolf does have to justify its “20 Years on the Edge” hype somehow. And they could do a lot worse than hiring Kahil El’Zabar (who will play percussion at this show) to curate a concert series. Fontella Bass, of course, is singing “Rescue Me” on an oldies station somewhere in the country even as you read this, but in real life she’s returned to her soul-gospel roots; it should be fascinating to hear her perform with world-class reedist David Murray, his frequent collaborator, bassist Fred Hopkins, and a host of other stars that doesn’t include John Malkovich.
