Green Tea
Monday 3.10
Scale the Summit
High Noon Saloon, 9 pm
Don't care for numbing power chords? Dizzying displays of technique on drums and guitar often make the Houston-based instrumentalists far more prog than metal. Antiprism and the Killer Dolphin With Rabies open.
Tuesday 3.11
Gloria Ladson-Billings
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 7 pm
The UW education professor specializes in teaching practices for students of color. She explains how we can close the achievement gap in a talk called "Keeping the Dream Alive."
Aiden
Loft in the Lussier Teen Center, 7 pm
Goth style and earnest pop-punk collide in Aiden's hormonal repertoire. All ages!
Riverdance
Overture Center's Overture Hall, 7:30 pm. Also Wednesday & Thursday, March 12 & 13, 7:30 pm
The Irish music and step-dancing spectacle comes through town for a farewell performance. Expect dazzling footwork on the journey from primeval mysteries through modern times.
Richard Dawkins
Wisconsin Union Theater, 7:30 pm
Oxford University's eloquent evolutionary biologist discusses The God Delusion, his merciless denunciation of faith. The Q&A session should be fun.
Soil
Annex, 8 pm
Personnel changes haven't stopped the Chicago alt-metal vets from churning out chunky ear-bleeders and swelling anthems. Bobaflex and the Autumn Offering open.
Wednesday 3.12
David Loewenstein
Wisconsin Historical Society, 5 pm
The UW English professor explores heresy, persecution and other ugly stuff, showing its effect on the literary imagination in 16th- and 17th-century England.
Lionel Shriver
Borders Books West, 7 pm
Shriver reads from The Post-Birthday World, her critically lauded novel about a woman who, in deciding between two men, imagines alternate lives with both of them.
Benevento Russo Duo and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
High Noon Saloon, 8:30 pm
Brooklyn's Benevento/Russo are a drums and keyboard duo that can both soothe and rock. They're often classified as a jam band, but the label doesn't do them justice.
Thursday 3.13
Charles Baxter and Richard Price
Overture Center's Wisconsin Studio, 7 pm
A literary must-see, featuring two heavyweights of the contemporary American novel. Baxter reads from The Soul Thief, Price from Lush Life.
Jodi Picoult
Borders Books West, 7 pm
The best-selling novelist specializes in hot topics. She discusses Change of Heart, in which an imprisoned murderer offers to donate an organ for his victim's sister.
Spotlight Film & Video
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 7 pm
MMoCA's series on cutting-edge film features work by Michael Robinson, who does shocking things with a Full House clip, among other subversive gestures.
Jonathan Richman and Vic Chestnutt
Orpheum Theatre's Stage Door, 8 pm
Folks think of the quixotic Richman as the ultimate pop-rock oddball. But he also helped usher in both punk and New Wave with "Roadrunner," his dead-on evocation of the teenage wasteland.
Green Tea
High Noon Saloon, 9 pm
Green Tea top the High Noon's St. Patty's celebration with a set of danceable, world-beat-shaded Celtic tunes. The Pints open.