Roadtrips

The Providence Phoenix -- that's us -- does its Best Music Poll festivities at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) and the Met Café (401-861-2142) on Saturday with help from undie hip-hop sensations Dilated Peoples and Black Star's other half, Talib Kweli. Maine alterna-rock dudes Rustic Overtones are also on the bill.

If you're in the neighborhood of Easthampton next week, the Flywheel (413-527-9800) co-op's got a promising spate of gigs, starting on May 20 with the mighty Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the death/grind/ noise champions whose lacerating tempos and under-a-minute song lengths come closer than anyone we know to the pain of Anal Cunt. They're on a bill with the Thrones, from the Kill Rock Stars stable. On May 22 the Chicago school of minimalist/free-improv/postgrad-electronicats hit Flywheel in the person of Kevin Drumm, on a bill with the reeds/cello/guitar/bass quartet Pillow. Then the Elephant 6 pick-up team known as the Music Tapes arrive on May 23, touting such bleeding-edge musical technologies as a seven-foot metronome, an organ-playing helmet, a "clapping-hands machine," and some sort of human-television hybrid. Left-coast mod punks the Aislers Set set up shop with Teenbeat's Aden on May 24; both bands continue on to the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes (617-524-3740) in Jamaica Plain on May 26. And Flywheel hosts underground-comics gal Dame Darcy's Meat Cake: The Play -- which includes Milky Way booking agent Darcy Leonard as half of a pair of Siamese twins -- on May 25, with the band 27 along as well. The production also plays Fort Thunder (401-521-1851) in Providence on May 24 and the Tannery (978-463-1744) in Newburyport on May 26, then travels to Bad Girrls Studio (617-971-0082) in Jamaica Plain and the Coolidge Corner Theatre (617-734-2500) in Brookline on May 27.

We haven't been too fond of Anthrax since John Bush took over for Joey Belladonna -- replacing a skinny castrato guinea (we have enough vowels in our last name to use the epithet lovingly) with a lunkish meat-and-potatoes alterna-rock crooner seemed a decent metaphor for the band's gradual veer into the middle of the road. And we were even less fond of Bush's old band, Armored Saint -- we'd take, say, Sacred Reich over those poseurs any day. Turns out Bush never officially left his old band -- they were just sleeping -- and Armored Saint show up this week at the Palladium (508-797-9696) in Worcester.

Last but not least: the Wellfleet Beachcomber (508-349-6055) -- our favorite oceanside cabana, and the official Cape summer-bungalow retreat of Boston rock and roll -- opens for biz next Thursday, May 25. If you show up for that night's gig by SuperHoney -- who just might be Beantown's best funk band -- or the following night's show by the Incredible Casuals, who reunite for a 20th year at the joint, you'll get a season pass that'll entitle you to reduced admission all summer long.
-- Carly Carioli