Agenda

This year, the Summer Solstice Celebration squeezes in more than two dozen performance art, music, dance and eclectic happenings — all for a very reasonable price. Political strategist and consultant Robert Shrum has spent nearly three decades creating excuses for politicians, so it seems rather ironic that his new memoir is titled No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner.

With its fusion of Middle Eastern sounds and classic American rock, Israeli-born/Los Angeles-based trio Moshav blends anthemic, jam-band energy with an earnest spirituality. Brooklyn-based Jayson Green and his not-so sleek pals in Panthers found a way to better the raging cluttered screamo of their first album, Things are Strange: compression. Like the home game of a particularly brutal house show, Technicolor Hell documents 11 examples of Philly's flowering — no, that's out of character; better make it festering — harsh electronics scene. Brooklyn quartet The Shondes know how to work a traditionalist sound and they know how to fucking rock, possibly because they've got hard-held beliefs driving them.

It takes reading 13 pages of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Mariner) to know this isn't your typical comic book. The local collective of artists and intellectuals known as Fine Print want to celebrate with a dance and music party that also dubs as a fundraiser for AIDS coalition, ACT UP. Charlie DelMarcelle and Leonard Kelly team up again for another thorny two-hander, the American premiere of Fabrice Roger-Lacan's Members Only. These five scientists made a motto out of "Explore your world" long before it was Discovery Channel's catchphrase.