Happy Mondays

Primal Scream sure knows how to throw a party. Kicking off its American tour at the Trocadero on Tuesday night, Britain's band-of-the-moment may have been a bit ragged around the edges. But Primal Scream's 90-minute set - a hybrid of rock-and-roll rave and psychedelic sock- hop - still dazzled. Drawing from their third and most recent album, Screamadelica (Sire), the Primals married the bite of '60s guitar-oriented rock to the trance-like dance-rock currently in vogue. They excelled at making unlikely connections and at smashing genre boundaries.

Heralded as the advance guard of the rave revival, the Klaxons of Manchester, England, arrived at the First Unitarian Church on Tuesday night riding a wave of ecstasy. A year's worth of hype as only the British press can muster culminated in the Mercury Prize last month, when the band's Myths of the Near Future beat out the widely favored British retro-soul singer Amy Winehouse. But despite the few glow sticks tracing their way through the steamy air and the eponymous sirens scattered through their songs, the Klaxons sound less like the second coming of the Happy Mondays than kin to the recent wave of British guitar bands, including last year's Mercury winner, the Arctic Monkeys.

No one will dispute the assertion that the Beatles and The Who are classic rock bands; now get ready to include the Happy Mondays and St. Etienne in the rock canon. "This is my classic rock," says Andy Selke of the wildly varied British pop and dance music at the Sorted! dance party last weekend at the Trocadero in Center City. "Someone should do this every week. " While The Who's "Can't Explain" drew a crowd to the dance floor, Sorted! courts those who cut their teeth on the Cure and Depeche Mode.

Thunderbirds Are Now! are totally worthy of the exclamation point in their name - and worth trekking to West Philly to see this weekend. Like just about every band on the planet, they are working the super-danceable, post-punk '80s thing, but there also are darker influences from San Diego spazz rockers like Drive Like Jehu and Go Go Go Airheart. The T-birds play with Elevator Parade ('60s psych pop a la Elephant 6) and the Superchunk-meets-New-Pornographers This Radiant Boy (9:30 tonight, Millcreek Tavern, 4200 Chester Ave., 215-222-9194, $8, http://mill creektavernphilly.

Some say that in the future, the boundaries between pop-music genres will be so blurred that nothing will retain its integrity. But Poi Dog Pondering's impossible-to-categorize show at the Trocadero on Tuesday night is evidence to the contrary. The band's mix of world beat, rock and folk, newly leavened with tough techno and rap, at times got rowdy and danceable, at other times soared and swooned, and was always immensely enjoyable. The techno-dance seasonings didn't meld well on Poi Dog's new album, Volo Volo, which found the group on the EMF/Happy Mondays bandwagon alongside such shameless imitators as Happyhead.

Rock newcomers Kasabian, nominated last month for three Brit awards (the U.K. equivalent of the Grammys), came away empty-handed, but the band took it in stride. "We've been around five months; these other bands have been around five years," bass player Chris Edwards says from a London hotel room. "There'll be other award ceremonies. " The group, embarking on its first U.S. tour as it opens for The Music, has already taken the British Isles by storm, beginning with the Glastonbury Festival in June.

Is the British pop-music scene driven by fads rather than fresh sounds? It seemed that way this summer, as highly touted bands such as Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, which made their reputations playing the all-night Manchester dance parties known as "raves," attempted to translate their United Kingdom success into a full-fledged invasion of the States. London's weekly music papers Melody Maker and New Musical Express rhapsodized over the bands' singles and covered just about every performance as if it were breaking news.

It might help to know New Order, to have heard "Love Will Tear Us Apart," and, yes, to be familiar with the legend of Icarus - the wax-winged dude who flew to close too the sun, etc., etc. But I'm betting that even folks who entirely missed the Manchester (England) music scene of the late '70s and '80s, the birth of Factory Records and Joy Division and the band of drugged-up loons known as the Happy Mondays, will get more than a little satisfaction out of 24 Hour Party People - director Michael Winterbottom's ingenious salute to one of those pop-cult Moments when music, fashion, philosophy and questionable hairstyles all coalesce in one dizzying, euphoric whoosh.

As evidenced by her lecture at Temple University last month, Jenny Toomey always stands her ground, whether she's taking on the music industry (with the Future of Music) or jerky ex-boyfriends (on her solo debut, "Antidote"). Tonight's Khyber show finds her with full band, including Nothing Painted Blue's Franklin Bruno (9 p.m., 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888, $8, with David Grubbs and Cynthia Mason). Experimental/electronic forum Gate to Moonbase Alpha joins forces with local record label and collective Nonresponse (www.

From the frigid British Columbia logging town where his 19th-century period film The Claim was shooting, the inspiration to make a movie about the music scene in Manchester, England, struck Michael Winterbottom as more than a little appealing. "It just seemed really attractive to do something that was like going back home," the 41-year-old Brit said. "And to do something in clubs, so we'd be inside, warm. " The result is 24 Hour Party People, opening Friday at the Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ, an exhilarating, funny and stylized production that takes place between 1976 and 1992, when gritty, postindustrial Manchester developed a cutting-edge music scene that bled from punk into the emerging rave culture.

The Phillies were more than just a little ornery when they left their clubhouse Monday night at Citizens Bank Park. They were steamed. They couldn't grasp how Major League Baseball waited until the middle of the sixth inning to finally suspend Game 5 of the World Series, when conditions had become unplayable an inning earlier. With monsoonlike conditions and the infield looking more like a pool (or a pond), the Tampa Bay Rays scored the tying run in the top of the sixth inning before the grounds crew mercifully pulled the tarp onto the field.

Heralded as the advance guard of the rave revival, the Klaxons of Manchester, England, arrived at the First Unitarian Church on Tuesday night riding a wave of ecstasy. A year's worth of hype as only the British press can muster culminated in the Mercury Prize last month, when the band's Myths of the Near Future beat out the widely favored British retro-soul singer Amy Winehouse. But despite the few glow sticks tracing their way through the steamy air and the eponymous sirens scattered through their songs, the Klaxons sound less like the second coming of the Happy Mondays than kin to the recent wave of British guitar bands, including last year's Mercury winner, the Arctic Monkeys.

Thunderbirds Are Now! are totally worthy of the exclamation point in their name - and worth trekking to West Philly to see this weekend. Like just about every band on the planet, they are working the super-danceable, post-punk '80s thing, but there also are darker influences from San Diego spazz rockers like Drive Like Jehu and Go Go Go Airheart. The T-birds play with Elevator Parade ('60s psych pop a la Elephant 6) and the Superchunk-meets-New-Pornographers This Radiant Boy (9:30 tonight, Millcreek Tavern, 4200 Chester Ave., 215-222-9194, $8, http://mill creektavernphilly.

Rock newcomers Kasabian, nominated last month for three Brit awards (the U.K. equivalent of the Grammys), came away empty-handed, but the band took it in stride. "We've been around five months; these other bands have been around five years," bass player Chris Edwards says from a London hotel room. "There'll be other award ceremonies. " The group, embarking on its first U.S. tour as it opens for The Music, has already taken the British Isles by storm, beginning with the Glastonbury Festival in June.

It might help to know New Order, to have heard "Love Will Tear Us Apart," and, yes, to be familiar with the legend of Icarus - the wax-winged dude who flew to close too the sun, etc., etc. But I'm betting that even folks who entirely missed the Manchester (England) music scene of the late '70s and '80s, the birth of Factory Records and Joy Division and the band of drugged-up loons known as the Happy Mondays, will get more than a little satisfaction out of 24 Hour Party People - director Michael Winterbottom's ingenious salute to one of those pop-cult Moments when music, fashion, philosophy and questionable hairstyles all coalesce in one dizzying, euphoric whoosh.

From the frigid British Columbia logging town where his 19th-century period film The Claim was shooting, the inspiration to make a movie about the music scene in Manchester, England, struck Michael Winterbottom as more than a little appealing. "It just seemed really attractive to do something that was like going back home," the 41-year-old Brit said. "And to do something in clubs, so we'd be inside, warm. " The result is 24 Hour Party People, opening Friday at the Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ, an exhilarating, funny and stylized production that takes place between 1976 and 1992, when gritty, postindustrial Manchester developed a cutting-edge music scene that bled from punk into the emerging rave culture.

As evidenced by her lecture at Temple University last month, Jenny Toomey always stands her ground, whether she's taking on the music industry (with the Future of Music) or jerky ex-boyfriends (on her solo debut, "Antidote"). Tonight's Khyber show finds her with full band, including Nothing Painted Blue's Franklin Bruno (9 p.m., 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888, $8, with David Grubbs and Cynthia Mason). Experimental/electronic forum Gate to Moonbase Alpha joins forces with local record label and collective Nonresponse (www.

No one will dispute the assertion that the Beatles and The Who are classic rock bands; now get ready to include the Happy Mondays and St. Etienne in the rock canon. "This is my classic rock," says Andy Selke of the wildly varied British pop and dance music at the Sorted! dance party last weekend at the Trocadero in Center City. "Someone should do this every week. " While The Who's "Can't Explain" drew a crowd to the dance floor, Sorted! courts those who cut their teeth on the Cure and Depeche Mode.

Some say that in the future, the boundaries between pop-music genres will be so blurred that nothing will retain its integrity. But Poi Dog Pondering's impossible-to-categorize show at the Trocadero on Tuesday night is evidence to the contrary. The band's mix of world beat, rock and folk, newly leavened with tough techno and rap, at times got rowdy and danceable, at other times soared and swooned, and was always immensely enjoyable. The techno-dance seasonings didn't meld well on Poi Dog's new album, Volo Volo, which found the group on the EMF/Happy Mondays bandwagon alongside such shameless imitators as Happyhead.

Primal Scream sure knows how to throw a party. Kicking off its American tour at the Trocadero on Tuesday night, Britain's band-of-the-moment may have been a bit ragged around the edges. But Primal Scream's 90-minute set - a hybrid of rock-and-roll rave and psychedelic sock- hop - still dazzled. Drawing from their third and most recent album, Screamadelica (Sire), the Primals married the bite of '60s guitar-oriented rock to the trance-like dance-rock currently in vogue. They excelled at making unlikely connections and at smashing genre boundaries.