With A.J. out of rehab, the Backstreet Boys retake the FleetCenter (617-931-2000) this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, belatedly appearing for the final three nights of the five-night stand that was aborted back in July. At the time, the official reason for breaking off the tour was given as Nick Carter's broken hand; but the next day the band showed up in tears on TRL, and A.J. got shipped off to the drunk tank. BSB: now new and improved, with Sisqo! At press time, tickets remained for all three dates.

The Worcester Palladium (508-797-9696) throws its annual Skatefest -- a heavier, regionalized version of the Warped Tour -- on Saturday, offering extreme sports outside and two stages indoors with Converge (see "Cellars by Starlight," in Arts), Catch 22, Piebald, Grade, American Nightmare, the Movie Life, the Hope Conspiracy, the Benjamins, River City Rebels, and a dozen more. Elsewhere in indiedom, a sibling-rivalry tour featuring Lou Barlow's Folk Implosion and his sister Abby's band Hospital hits the Iron Horse (413-586-8686) in Northampton on Sunday, Lilli's (617-591-1661) in Somerville on Monday, and the Skinny (207-871-8983) in Portland on Tuesday. In other indie-sib news, Jon Spencer's sister's band Brassy hit the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on Sunday. Olympia's Unwound tool through in support of their new double album Leaves Turn Inside You (Kill Rock Stars), with gigs Sunday at Amherst College (413-542-2000) and Tuesday at the Middle East, the latter with Mecca Normal and Thrones. And the "Who Killed the Robots?" tour, an indie hip-hop caravan starring Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, and Cambridge's own Mr. Lif, hits the Middle East on Friday and Pearl Street (413-584-7771) in Northampton on Saturday.

The world's greatest wedding band, and possibly post-punk's only useful world-music group, are run by a bunch of New York City degenerates called Firewater -- a bustling collective under the direction of one Tod A., who in another life led a completely different sort of band called Cop Shoot Cop. Firewater's latest missive -- imagine Nick Cave's Bad Seeds playing Hell's Kitchen bat mitzvahs -- is titled Psychopharmacology (Jetset); the band make their only New England stop at the Middle East on Saturday with Skeleton Key and the David James Motorcycle.

Ron Levy is known as much for his production credits as for his keyboard playing (with Albert King, B.B. King, and a zillion others), so the sound of the new Rod Levy's Wild Kingdom Live! (Levtronic) may at first come as a shock -- it's a bootleg-quality affair recorded on a Sony Walkman from a single stereo mike sitting atop his Hammond B-3 organ on a club date in Colorado. But Levy's command of the B-3's orchestral voicings -- from piping high notes to throbbing bass pedals -- and his authoritative grooves draw you in. He plays CD-release parties tonight (September 6) at Club Helsinki (413-528-3394) in Great Barrington; Friday at Theodore's (413-736-6000) in Springfield, and Saturday at Ryles (617-876-9330) in Cambridge.