Southern

Guitar star Tom Morello is best known for intergalactic riffs and the uncanny ability to make his six-string sound like everything from scratching turntables to charging elephants, first with Rage Against the Machine and now Audioslave. As the Nightwatchman, this fervent political activist shows that there s more than one way to take the power back. Instead of his customary bombast, Morello makes a folksy acoustic turn, crafting stark, plaintive musings akin to Woody Guthrie and even Johnny Cash although with his deep baritone croon, Morello s solo vocalizing can sound eerily reminiscent of Leonard Cohen.

His past Hotel Caf shows have been benefits for such outreach collectives as Food Not Bombs and his own Axis of Justice, and friends like Perry Farrell and Serj Tankian often join him onstage, so anything s possible. (Scott T. Sterling)
9 p.

m.; plus, Waz, 8 p.m.

; The Mood, 11 p.m.

Winston Jarrett, another largely unsung hero in Kingston s critical posse of Rastafarian roots-rockers, boasts the classical reggae pedigree: He grew up with reggae spearhead Alton Ellis and began singing and recording with Alton the Flames while still in his teens (a spot he maintained right up until Ellis 1969 move to Britain).

Already a studio veteran cutting stacks of records with Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd Jarrett carried on as leader of the Righteous Flames, participating in the artistic and spiritual shift from ska to bluebeat to reggae, finally coming into his own powerhouse style with late- 70s discs like Kingston Rock and Ranking Ghetto Style. A crooner of lustrous tone and fierce messages, Jarrett should conjure both the militant and poetic, that beguilingly contradictory perspective that has always made reggae such an inescapable pop force. (Jonny Whiteside) The Pasadena Symphony celebrates the life of its former principal clarinetist, who died tragically of cancer two years ago.

See Pick of the Week.
Tenor saxist Big Jay McNeely, one of Los Angeles' R B trailblazers, wielded his honking, squalling, drastically rocking horn with such tremendous, riot-inducing effect that by the mid-'50s, the LAPD routinely shut down any McNeely appearance inside the county; with a trove of classics like "Deacon's Hop" (a record that helped ignite a rhythm blues revolution), the indescribably frantic "3-D" and the peerless ballad "There Is Something on Your Mind," tonight's romp, with local jump R B fetishists Hollywood Combo, should be one mutha of a soulful, savage session.
The author presents and signs You Suck: A Love Story, about romance among vampires and those who hunt them.

The mighty Mr.