MUSIC . Music Picks

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3

Mon., March 26, 7:30 p.m., with Johanna Kunin, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St.


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Published: Mar 21, 2007

rock/pop

Less than a fortnight after his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Peter Buck is playing a midsize club in Philadelphia as part of Robyn Hitchcock's backing band. What's R.E.M.'s axeman doing at World Café Live? Paying a debt, for one thing. Buck stocked records by Hitchcock's Soft Boys as a lowly record-store clerk and freely credits their germinal influence. Although the Soft Boys are well past the HoF's age requirements, they'll probably never make it into Cleveland's hallowed halls. Hitchcock's reedy voice and his surreal, alternately dreamy and menacing lyrics will forever keep him from mass appeal. But Olé! Tarantula (Yep Roc) is as straightforward a rock record as he's made in years, with sidemen Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Bill Rieflin (Ministry) anchoring a thundering beat. OK, so the album's tender ode to a fallen rock icon (New York Dolls bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane, in "NY Doll"), is matched by a sarcastic Dirty Harry tribute ("A Man's Got to Know His Limitations, Briggs"). But with the friends he's got, Hitchcock doesn't need to play to the crowd.

Mon., March 26, 7:30 p.m., $25, with Johanna Kunin, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com.