Mazarin

THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE By Umberto Eco Translated from the Italian by William Weaver Harcourt Brace. 515 pp. $25 As a famously erudite and mischievous Italian professor of semiotics, Umberto Eco demands some latitude as a novelist, which is another way of saying you can't equate him with anyone else. Extravagant with ideas the way big spenders prove wayward with cash, Eco expects people who buy his books to experience the joy of learning - chiefly the joy of absorbing antique arcana - as he does: with the fervor of a religious ecstatic, slightly cooled by modern irony.

Evidence abounds that the Philadelphia indie- rock scene is the picture of good health. The signs: Bands as disparate as the Capitol Years, Bardo Pond, Lilys and the Spinto Band gaining national attention. Park the Van records signing up a trio of Philadelphia bands - Dr. Dog, the Teeth and National Eye - and then packing up and moving from New Orleans to Schwenksville. New venues such as the M Room and Starlight Ballroom popping up for hipsters to hang out in, and cool compilations like last fall's Songs From the 6th Borough offering a Whitman's Sampler of sounds.

England is abuzz this week over the possibility of another royal wedding now that Prince Andrew's latest flame has shown up twice in public with the royal family. Sarah Ferguson, Princess Diana and little Prince William got a personal tour of the HMS Brazen, the navy ship on which Andrew is serving, on Wednesday in London. Yesterday Ferguson showed up in Switzerland on a ski trip with Diana and Prince Charles. Unlike most of Andrew's past girlfriends (will we ever forget soft-porn movie star Koo Stark?

As the Mellon Jazz Festival unfolds, its mixed bag of mood-swinging music - cinematic trumpeter Terence Blanchard, honorees "Papa" John & Joey DeFrancesco, Pat Martino - reveals a trick bag within. Space-funk, including Sun Ra's Arkestra and George Clinton's angular R & B, makes Mellon intergalactic. And if space is really the place, singer-pianist Shirley Horn is queen of the galaxy, thanks to her sauntering melody. Horn performs Tuesday - the first night of Mellon, which runs through June 17 - and Wednesday.

If Nancy Sinatra continues her collaboration with artists like Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker, perhaps she should look up Holly Golightly. The songs on Holly's latest, "Slowly But Surely," would fit Nancy like a pair of go-go boots - in black. Golightly, who really is named after Audrey Hepburn's character in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," saunters her way through world-weary blues, country and vintage girl group sounding like she's always on her way to Sugar Town - even if it's the Heartbreak Hotel.

If you tried unsuccessfully to see Death From Above 1979 during its packed Vice Records tour at Silk City a month ago, here's your chance again. The Canadian bass-drums duo, who create a heavy-yet-danceable racket, return to Making Time at Transit (9 tonight, 600 Spring Garden St., 215-925-8878, $10 before the band, $8 after, www.igetrvng. com.) Chamber pop ensemble Wayward Wind, which collaborated with the Headlong Dance Theater in "Hotel Pool" at the Live Arts Festival, returns with "Accumulation Process," featuring dancers from Headlong, as well as Jeb Kreager (New Paradise Laboratories)

'There is no room for folk music in the commercial music business anymore, and I'm doing my best to keep it alive on the Internet, where hopefully these songs will live on," Roger McGuinn says. Along with his band, the Byrds, McGuinn essentially invented the genre of folk-rock in the mid-'60s by electrifying Bob Dylan's acoustic songs with Beatlesque harmony and chiming guitars. He had cut his teeth on folk music, playing with the Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio before forming the Byrds in 1964.

In its 20th year, the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, which ended Sunday, is a numbers game, with more than 1,300 acts playing at 62 official venues, and hundreds more at non-SXSW events. The music industry comes, increasingly, from all over the world to Texas' capital every March for a margarita-and-barbecue-fueled working vacation. From the ridiculously hyped Brits Arctic Monkeys to the outrageous Japanese heavy rockers DMBQ, bands come to showcase their music - and insiders to figure out, in an age of illegal downloading and diminished CD sales, how to still make money off it. With veterans like Neil Young, the Beastie Boys, the Pretenders, Morrissey and Ray Davies on hand to revive their own careers and provide inspiration, up-and-comers are told that if they follow their muses and refuse to compromise, maybe things will work out. And maybe they will.

At nearly 200 objects, "Picturing Women" is a museum-scale exhibition, but because it's spread over three venues it seems much smaller. It's also ambitious conceptually in addressing female identity: how society has depicted women over several centuries through images, artifacts and texts. Because it's insistently didactic - it feels more like a book or a doctoral thesis - the show needs to be all in one place. (It does have its own Web site, www.picturingwomen.org.) However, to absorb the full message one must visit the Canaday Library at Bryn Mawr College, which houses the largest and longest-running segment; the Library Company of Philadelphia; and the Rosenbach Museum & Library.

Matt Pond is nervous, talking quickly about the sensory overload of his new record, Measure (Esque). "I think that's what drives me," Pond says of his anxiety. He looks so innocent in his librarian glasses and unkempt hair. He razzes himself - about how he's too often caught smiling in pictures, about how Measure compares to new music from other lovely locals like Lenola, Mazarin and Eltro. He's amazed that his lyrical themes are so similar to theirs. Pond treats locals not as competition but as comrades, folks who fuel inspiration.