Back in 1984, or even 1994, no one expected that Southern California punks would end up improving with age, but this week brings two bands who’ve done just that. Having paved the way for moronic bubblepunks like Sum-41 and Blink-182, Green Day returned this year with American Idiot (Reprise), an ambitious concept album with their best three-chord buzzsaw-pop songs since Dookie. They’re at the Worcester Centrum (508-755-6800) next Thursday, October 28, with New Found Glory and Sugarcult. The last Social Distortion album, 1996’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash, proved that Mike Ness’s pain was still louder, stronger, and more vital than that of bands half his age; eight years later, Sex, Love, and Rock ‘n’ Roll (Time Bomb) is the one where Ness starts to feel autumn coming on and grudgingly — but also gracefully — passes the torch to a new generation as the world begins to pass him by. Tonight (October 21), Social D are at the Webster Theatre (860-525-5553) in Hartford; Friday they’re at Avalon (617-262-2424) in Boston; and Saturday they’re at Lupo’s at the Strand (401-331-5876) in Providence.

St. Louis’s Story of the Year told their producer — Goldfinger’s John Feldman, who also discovered the Used — that they wanted to make a Skid Row record. And though they’re way closer to the Used than to Whitesnake, they’ve got the kind of glam-metal choreography that no one in pop punk (except maybe AFI) dares to try to master anymore. With a hit under their bullet belts, they’ll attempt to prove they’re not this decade’s Britny Fox when they headline a Nintendo-sponsored tour with My Chemical Romance and others; it’s at Avalon on Wednesday and at Lupo’s on October 28.

If there’s been a better protest album this year than Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts . . . Now (Artemis), we haven’t heard it. Matt Ashare’s interview with Earle is on page 23 of Arts; Steve plays Monday at Toad’s Place (203-624-TOAD) in New Haven, Tuesday at Avalon, and Wednesday at the Camden Opera House (207-236-7963) in Maine. The San Francisco crypto-folk outfit Vetiver — last seen in these parts with Devendra Banhart, a sometime-member — play Zeitgeist Gallery (617-876-6060) in Cambridge on Tuesday (9:30 p.m. late show), Pearl Street (413-584-7810) in Northampton on Wednesday, and AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence on October 29. The Cocoon ‘Zine Tour brings a trio of Northwest micropublishers to AS220 on Sunday and the Zeitgeist on Tuesday (7 p.m. early show), the latter with local indie-pop wizards Harry and the Potters. David Greenberger began publishing his interviews with elderly Jamaica Plain nursing-home patients in a ‘zine called Duplex Planet; for his latest effort, he’s set monologues based on interviews with Portland (Oregon) nursing-home patients to music with a group called Three Leg Torso. They’ll perform Monday at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (617-734-2500) in Brookline, Tuesday at the Iron Horse, and Wednesday at AS220.