Roadtrips

Barely out of high school when their Rage Against the Machine-ish metal caught the ear of Elektra, Massachusetts's Reveille are starting to take their first tentative baby steps out into the wide world of "touring." The label's hoping the band's friendship with Godsmack will translate into record sales, but for now it's letting the kids find their legs with a few choice gigs at suburban rock clubs. The product: Laced, an album of fair-to-middling rap-metal tunes, with a guest appearance from Cypress Hill's B-Real -- who signed on after his guest appearance on Korn's last album (produced, as was Laced, by Steve Thompson) wound up on the cutting-room floor. You can catch Reveille at the New Rockpile (781-233-7400) in Saugus, Massachusetts, that former bastion of cheeseball hair metal that got revived with a series of WAAF new-metal gigs. A slightly more intensive tour is in progress from New Orleans grindcore dudes Soilent Green -- whom even those old fogeys at Spin singled out as among the 10 best metal bands in the land -- and it brings them to the Met Café (401-831-4071) in Providence on July 2 and the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on July 7 with Isis and Dissociate.

If you can't head to Jamaica, the island will come to you this weekend. The 72-year-old granddaddy of ska, Laurel Aitkin, has tapped our own Allstonians as his backing band, and they hit the road together beginning July 8 at the Middle East and July 9 at the Beachcomber (508-349-6055) in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff -- of The Harder They Come (1972) fame -- is at the South Shore Music Circus (781-383-9850) on July 2 and the Cape Cod Melody Tent (508-775-9100) on July 3.

For those who can't get enough of him through reruns of Sesame Street, James Taylor presides over Independence Day weekend with shows on July 3 and July 4 at Tanglewood (617-266-1200), the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Lenox. And week three of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (413-243-0745) brings the Trisha Brown Dance Company to the Ted Shawn Theatre in Becket -- including the world premiere of Brown's Five Part Weather Invention, with original score provided, in person, by the Dave Douglas Ensemble -- beginning July 7 and continuing through the 10th.
-- Carly Carioli