Also this issue: OK, Here's The Situation Prodigal rocker Christopher Tucker is back with a brand-new invention. -A.D. Amorosi CD Reviews -Nicole Pensiero, Mary Armstrong and A.D. Amorosi The Raveonettes -A.D. Amorosi Gang Starr -Paul Burress Wu Man -Peter Burwasser Carissa's Wierd -Patrick Rapa The Gig -Nate Chinen on Jazz Vienna Philharmonic -Peter Burwasser

February 27-March 5, 2003

musicpicks

Sage Francis

There is life beyond the slam. The Live Band, Dead Poet tour starring Sage Francis is here this week to prove it. Rhode Island son and Anticon affiliate Francis -- who has won both spoken word and MC battles, and once, in a moment of economic weakness, wrote and performed poems for ESPN's X-Game spots -- has been able to turn his stage-perfected delivery of run-on sentences into self-skewering confessional gold. Heartbreak and family drama are the primary concerns on last spring's Personal Journals, which garnered warm reviews for Francis' lyrical showmanship. Ever since, Francis' opus of intimacy has earned him, on the one hand, the reputation as hip-hop's next prophet and on the other, a deeply held suspicion that he is an onanist among middle-class wiggers (Steve Albini, for one, has had nothing nice to say). But Francis, who was an MC before he ever entered a slam, is capable of more than emo-hop and def poetry. Witness "Makeshift Patriot" off last month"s same-titled EP, an acidic commentary on 9/11 and its political fallout, using audio capture from Ground Zero of rescue workers and cheering onlookers. The single, actually recorded a month after the attack, is the anti-The Rising -- likely the most critical 9/11 response on vinyl to date. Francis-doubters, take heed.

Wed., March 5, 7:30 p.m., $10, with Gruvis Malt and Forrest Of Pencils, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 800-594-8499.

—Elisa Ludwig