The Vollrath Tavern gets all heavy and stuff tonight with Off With Their Heads, Junker, The Slow Death, and Stand and Deliver.

Big Car Gallery returns to the swing of things with a First Friday opening that features the music of Burnt Ones and The Perennials.

Naptown Juice goes all bluegrass and stuff with Andy DeCarlo tonight and Judd Juggs tomorrow.

And, of course, there’s live jazz at Maria’s Pizza tonight and some form of live entertainment at the Brass Ring Lounge as well. Have at it!

And, of course, there’s always the Playboy Psychonauts show at the Knickerbocker in Lafayette on Saturday. Tunnel your way there, if you can.

The Playboy Psychonauts play up in Lafayette Saturday, barring delay or Snowpocalypse™©®, and thus you have a chance to hear a real sitar in action. However, a friend of mine shared this article on the iPhone pocket sitar with me, so you’ve got that to fall back on when the snow drifts engulf your house. It’s definitely not the same experience, but at least you don’t have to tune the thing.

Radio Radio jams it out tonight with Midwest Hype, Red Moon, and Post Script tonight. Enjoy your tasty grooves.

The Vollrath crams five bands (those bands being Goliathon, Dudes of Lord, Doc Brown, High Tide Trio, and OMNIFI) onstage tonight. Tomorrow, they spread out a bit with Shadeland and A Thieves Parade.

Naptown Juice has Joe tonight (no, not that Joe, another Joe) and Mr. Take It Easy tomorrow.

And, as always, there’s live jazz at Maria’s Pizza. Think I’ll stop by there before tonight’s Mel show. ‘Cause I like pizza and jazz and stuff. Enjoy!

The local edition of Metromix provided a guided tour through a night in Fountain Square this week, and it hits some good spots that I highly recommend. However, please don’t forget that Arthur’s Music and the comic book store aren’t open at night, so you might want to drop by a little earlier to drop the little ones off for some music lessons and pick up some prime reading material. Or get some lunch, too. Really, it’s not that I don’t want Fountain Square to blossom as a late-night destination of choice – when you sport Peppy’s Grill, it’s your destiny to host those who do, indeed, go on and on ’til the break of dawn. And I love love LOVE being able to walk to music gigs down here. It’s just okay if we see you in the morning, too.

And speaking of that, a lovely neighbor of mine pointed me towards these artist’s renderings of what’s on tap for the Fountain Square area itself – gawd, that’s gorgeous. I can see this becoming a destination for adventurous buskers, and good for them. The only representation so far has been the saxophonist moonlighting as a human sign for the tax place down the road. He sounded good, but the Lady Liberty costume kept getting in the way. Come on back and play for real, sir.

The Jazz bass is still in the shop for the new Nordstrand pickups, so I’m not sure how it sounds just yet. I found these samples on the Youtubes that come from a remarkably similar bass, so if it comes out sounding like this, I’ll be okay with it.

The Vollrath has Kate Myers, Jascha, A Lull, and Mia Riddle. Tomorrow, look for Lovely Houses, Reno Bo (of the Mooney Suzuki), and Holy Ghost Canyon. Sunday, I imagine they’ll be shutting down like the rest of Indianapolis for the Colts game.

There is most definitely music tonight at the Naptown Juice Restaurant and Wine Bar, and it is most definitely Swing Night at the Fountain Square Theater. I can also state with certainty that were you to stroll into Maria’s Pizza this very evening, you would hear live jazz. So there you go. Enjoy.

This has been tried already, of course, by mp3.com. The results were brutal lawsuits and a shutdown of the “music locker” service. But times have changed, different companies have felt financial downturns that make this seem like a better option, and now the possibility is there to make it happen. Like Spotify and MOG have already made it happen. Although not as well as they could have – Spotify is Europe-only at this point, and I personally let my subscription to MOG lapse because I was a little frustrated by incomplete listing of albums (although the overall selection was pretty good).

So it’s not like Apple is breaking any ground here. It’s just that the ground has shifted under the music industry and the technology has finally caught up. If they’re going to back up my entire library and make it available to me, wonderful. How much is it going to cost, and what will you do with the tracks I ripped from CD? Otherwise, there’s Simplify. The task here isn’t breaking new ground – it’s making what’s available work easily.

I do like what’s available for indie artists now, though. Tunecore + iTunes streaming = trackable plays and maybe some royalties out of the whole thing. Very streamlined and effective. I wonder what the cut will be?