You should be screaming Niggy Tardust at the top of your lungs

It's tough to get a read on rapper, actor and slam poet Saul Williams. He seems to have a great deal of faith in the average person, but he's not interested in catering to anyone's tastes. His work is at once purely self-assured and fragile. Williams’ poetic verse quietly but forcefully makes the case for change while the riotous sounds behind him demand it.

Musically omnivorous group plays with itself and its audience

Calling Ethel a string quartet is like calling Jimi Hendrix a blues guitarist. It’s perfectly accurate and almost completely misleading.

“Fuck Face!!”

Torture Victim, Last House on the Left, Calling Kevorkian and Vetalas love kittens while simultaneously hating your guts this Saturday, March 29, at the The Compound (all-ages, $7), 7 p.m. (LM)

Kiss spring's perennial blush of coy colors and prim construction goodbye. For the next three months, autumnal layering and earth tones will ram headlong into the nubile silhouettes of summer. The new vernal look is literate, lithe and flecked with mud.