Some of you probably expect me pan "Rain," as I'm not one to champion tributes and covers. However the show Friday night at the Auditorium was incredible --- not just in the dead-on mimicry, but in the way it presented The Beatles' beginning, middle, end, and eternal legacy. The music's timeline was performed as sort of a reverse reflection of what was to follow the Fab Four. Every facet, tone, mood, or style the band ever tried, or in many cases forged, hinted at what sort of bands would follow. And I'm probably talking about garage-rockers the least.

So it figures thatI headed over to the Little Theatre Café where Regi Hendrix and Donny Mancuso were working their way through "Yesterday." It's nice to see the joint break it up a bit with some acoustified rock. Hendrix is a soulful singer and accomplished southpaw slinger, and Mancuso is magic on the guitar as well. That being said, the choice of material was rather poor and slapdash. It's one thing to cover, say, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's another to sound bored doing it. I've seen so much more out of these guys. Maybe it was just late.

As a soundman for years, Tim Clark was a miserable prick (he even said so himself). Now he's got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow, with a guitar between him and the world. Clark --- who always smiles as if the joke 's on you --- fronts the excellent country outfit Dang. Dang plays country the way jazzers play jazz: they take the original as merely a suggestion and set out on their own. For the most part this works --- and worked Saturday night when the band played at Abilene. The band's swift swing at "Route 66" was accelerated and cool; however, the same treatment took some of the angst out of "Mama Tried." The guitar and fiddle worked so nice together that, when coupled with the clack and clink of pool balls and longnecks, it made Abilene feel like a righteous downtown honky tonk.

Speaking of honking and tonking, later that night Woody Dodge was chopping away at the bandstand at Monty's Krown. In the spirit of a true American roots rocker, this band still paves a ragged urban swath across rural routes. I hadn't seen the group in something like 10 years, and was immediately taken back to a time when I don't think the term Americana had even been coined yet. It was just good ol' barroom rock back then, just like it was Saturday night.