This Week's Best Concerts

‘Tis the season for graduations, and consequently many venues around town are booked this week for cap and gown parades. If you will be attending a graduation, here’s hoping that at least there will be a decent commencement speaker. If not, here are a few quotes from some good ones to lay on the new graduates:

“There will be times when your best isn’t good enough. There can be many reasons for this, but as long as you give your best, you’ll be OK.” —Robert De Niro

“Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do.” – Oprah Winfrey

“You will stumble and fall, you will experience both disaster and triumph, sometimes in the same day. But it’s really important to remember that like a hangover, neither triumphs nor disasters last forever.” —Helen Mirren

Ticket Alert

Tickets are on sale for Plano-based prog rockers Polyphia, who will perform on Thursday, November 2, at the Bayou Music Center. This is a band based on next-level virtuosity. I mean, they even got guitar god Steve Vai to sit in for a song on their latest album, the cheerily titled Remember That You Will Die.

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic will be at the House of Blues on Sunday, August 6, for their “Just for the Funk of It” tour, and plenty of seats are available. To be more accurate, there are “seats” up in the balcony, but the floor is GA, leaving you ample room to shake your groove thang.

Concerts This Week

The Juice Box will be rocking tomorrow night, when the Red Hot Chili Peppers pay a visit. Some time back, I read an interview with bassist Flea, who, when asked what the band had learned working with legendary funkster George Clinton (see above), said, “You’ve got to bring the funk home.” He said this while wearing a beanie with a propellor on top, so we must assume that the lesson stuck. The Strokes and Thundercat open, so grab a sock and get ready to rock at Minute Maid Park.

Bush is touring this summer, in support of the band’s latest album, The Art of Survival. The post-grungers were never critics’ darlings, but, as the title of their latest record indicates, they are skilled in the art of perseverance, still making music after 30 years and selling millions of albums. Bush is at the Bayou Music Center on Thursday, with a decent selection of tickets available.

The Sisters of Mercy? Don’t call them “goth.” According to the band’s website, “We are a rock’n’roll band. And a pop band. And an industrial groove machine. We are intellectual love gods.” OK, take your pick. The Sisters are back on the road for the first time in 15 years, so don’t miss them on Friday at the Bayou Music Center.

And if you didn’t get enough funking at the Chili Peppers show at NRG stadium, never fear, because Morris Day and the Time will bring da noise and da funk to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Saturday. The show has an early start time of 5 p.m., since the bill also includes Rose Royce, the Zapp Band, the Ohio Players and Atlantic Starr. “Oh-we-oh-we-oh,” indeed!