Eeriest foreshadowing of the World Trade Center attacks? That's easy: the planned cover of the Coup's Party Music (75 Ark), a photo of DJ Pam the Funkstress and mouthpiece Boots, his finger on the detonator, and behind them the two WTC towers engulfed in explosions -- they even got the floors about right. Although the San Francisco duo's new Party Music (Tommy Boy) was still more than a month from release on September 11, a review of the disc had already gone to press in Spin magazine, and so it appeared on newsstands, accompanied by a shot of the offending cover. The new cover is an urbane Molotov cocktail -- not exactly an apology. Neither is the album itself, on which the duo offer up another heady dose of bomb-throwing radical-political æsthetics; it's an authority-baiting romp informed as much by another landlord-lynching San Fran collective, the Dead Kennedys, as by Public Enemy and the Coup's comrades-in-arms Dead Prez, who make a guest appearance. This month, the Coup are on tour with illbient intellectual DJ Spooky, whose new mix CD, Under the Influence (Six Degrees), leaps from Moby to Mix Master Mike, from Anti-Pop Consortium to Kutmasta Kurt, and from Saul Williams to Sonic Youth. First, Spooky's on a panel at MIT's annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art (617-253-4680) in Cambridge at 2:30 p.m. on December 1, where he and a coterie of pointy-headed types including curator Andrea Miller-Keller, conceptual artist Dan Graham, and critic Laura Cottingham discuss the marriage of avant-garde art and popular music through the lens of the marriage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Then later that night, Spooky and the Coup get it on down the street at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge. They'll also be at the Higher Ground (802-654-8888) in Winooski, Vermont, on Sunday and at the Met Café (401-272-5876) in Providence on Monday. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Anti-Pop Consortium play twice today (Thursday, November 29) in Cambridge: this evening at Other Music (617-491-4419) and later on at T.T. the Bear's Place (617-492-BEAR).

Where else can you hear the spirits of Public Enemy and Sonic Youth mingling in the same æther? As it happens, Thurston Moore narrates Money for Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music (Media Education Foundation), a video documentary on the evils of music-biz consolidation that includes interviews with PE's Chuck D, rock scribe Dave Marsh, and riot grrrl hero Kathleen Hanna. There's a screening Saturday at Flywheel (413-527-9800) in Easthampton.

At the other end of the musical/political spectrum, Senator John Kerry is getting his 2002 re-election campaign ya-yas out with a big boomer bash at the Wang Theatre (800-872-8997) in Boston on Monday night that'll feature Democratic stumpers Don Henley, James Taylor, and Carole King plus local funnyman Steve Sweeney. Then Henley teams up with David Crosby and Jimmy Tingle for a "September 11 Children's Benefit" concert at Tsongas Arena (978-848-6900) in Lowell on Wednesday.