Also this issue: Once More, With Feeling After an 18-year break, Mission of Burma's Clint Conley returns with a brand-new band. -Sam Adams Local Land-Marc One of the greatest living piano virtuosos calls Philly home. -Lou Camp Beat Box Hip-Hop & You Don't Stop -Ain� Ardron-Doley The Gig -Nate Chinen They Survived Philly -Patrick Rapa

May 9-15, 2002

musicpicks

Joe Pernice and Peyton Pinkerton

Rock/pop

He may have turned "I hate my life" into a T-shirt slogan, but watch Joe Pernice's face as he sings the line on stage: He's beaming, not frowning. Think of Pernice's music -- released, with largely the same backing musicians, under the manifold monikers of the Pernice Brothers, Chappaquiddick Skyline and Big Tobacco -- as make-out music for the Sylvia Plath set, the kind that makes you feel positively giddy about being depressed. Although he dropped a line from the plane-crash allegory "Flaming Wreck" after Sept. 11, Pernice largely operates just slightly outside the real world, in that space where imagined obstacles take on a life of their own, at least until a rhapsodic chorus throws open the windows and lets the sunlight in. This time around, Pernice has left his band, with the exception of stellar guitarist Peyton Pinkerton, behind. But don't take the lack of a rhythm section for an invitation to chat up a storm, or the audience may show you all the ways black-frame glasses can be used as an offensive weapon.

Sat., May 11, $8, w/ Warren Zanes, American Altitude, the Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888.

÷Sam Adams