• Dean & Britta (formerly of critically-acclaimed Indie dreamscapers Luna) bring their unique multimedia show, "13 Most Beautiful … Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests," to Over-the-Rhine's revitalized Emery Theatre. The project originated four years again after Dean Wareham received a phone call from a curator (and big Luna fan) at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh asking if he'd be interested in writing some music to go with the stockpile of 500 or so "screen tests" Warhol had accumulated in the ’60s. The clips feature Warhol's video of friends and acquaintances, including many familiar faces from the Factory days. Wareham talked to CityBeat's Brian Baker about the process of writing songs for the 13 "tests" chosen, describing it as being like making a music video in reverse. Read Brian's full feature story here. Tonight's performance — featuring Dean & Britta's quartet performing in front of large projections of the screen tests — is at 8 p.m. Tickets (if it doesn't sell out) are $25 at the door. Here's some of the soundtracked video to get you in the mood. The event is being co-presented by the Contemporary Arts Center, which is currently exhibiting Image Machine: Andy Warhol and Photography. • After a tough previous week when she was stuck in New York City during and after “Frankenstorm” Sandy, tonight at 8 p.m., veteran singer/songwriter Aimee Mann performs in Cincinnati at 20th Century Theatre in Oakley.For 30 years, Mann has built a dedicated core of adoring fans swept away by her smart, clever and emotionally resonate take on Pop music, driven partly by her uniquely inviting vocals (which former CityBeat writer Brad Quinn once brilliantly described as “egg-shaped”). She first came to the attention of the public at large with her group ’Til Tuesday, which received massive support from MTV and radio for the hit “Voices Carry." Mann and some funny pals recently parodied the of-its-era clip in a hilarious video for "Labrador" from her latest album, Charmer.Mann went solo at the start of ’90s, releasing her debut Whatever in 1993 and then capping off the decade with her brilliant songs written for and prominently featured in the film Magnolia. Departing the major label system at the start of the new millennium, Mann founded SuperEgo Records to release her own material, most recently issuing Charmer, another critically acclaimed gem that provides further evidence that Mann is still one of the great, somewhat under-heralded songwriters of her time. Another gifted writer deserving of more attention, Ted Leo (of “and the Pharmacists” fame), opens tonight's show solo. Tickets range from $20-$35. • Blues Rock cult sensation, soulful singer and modern-day geetar hero Joe Bonamassa swings through the Taft Theatre tonight for a 9 p.m. show. Tickets range from $49-$79.  Bonamassa is one of the more celebrated guitarists of our time and he's built a rabid following mostly by word of mouth and without the benefit of a big label corporation behind him. Bonamassa's latest album Driving Towards the Daylight was released this spring, but live and in-concert is where he thrives, as evidenced by his discography since 2000 — he's had nine studio albums but also four live albums and three live DVDs. Check the title track from Driving below and read more about the Blues/Rock star from this week's CityBeat here. • Acclaimed for its detailed, theatrical recreations of Pink Floyd concerts, Cleveland's Wish You Were Here is bringing its "Classic Floyd Albums Tour 2012" to Bogart's in Corryville tonight for an all-ages, 8 p.m. performance. Tickets are $12. The "tour" (spread over three months) has featured shows across Ohio where the crew has played the albums Wish You Were Here, The Wall and Animals in full. Tonight, the group is doing Dark Side of the Moon at Bogart's. The band is able to accurately replicate Floyd's intricate sound and concert experience by using a large ensemble of at least nine musicians, plus their own lighting and sound crew. Cincinnati musician Jamie Combs (of 4th Day Echo and various other projects) joined the band in 2006 as guitarist and vocalist. Here's a clip from a 2007 appearance in Cleveland of the band performing "Time/Breath Reprise." Click here for even more live music events in Greater Cincinnati tonight.

German weekend is upon us. Cincinnati hosts the largest Oktoberfest in North America, bringing 500,000 people downtown to enjoy beer and bratwurst, music and dancing. Oktoberfest takes over Fifth Street between Broadway and Vine from noon-midnight Friday, 11 a.m.-midnight Saturday and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. Between filling up on Dunkel and sauerkraut, stop by the CityBeat booth to pickup the official Oktoberfest guide, register for prizes and buy tickets to next week’s MidPoint Music Festival. We’ll be accepting credit cards only because staff members can’t be trusted with cash it’s 2012, so come see your favorite staffers and get a wristband while they last! If the food, booze, polka dancers and giant crowds don’t interest you, The Wahl Mobile Barbershop will be on hand Saturday and Sunday offering free shaves and facial hair trims to area gents. They’ll also be scouting for the Wahl Man of Cincinnati, so if you think you’ve got the best beard or mustache in town, show off your scruff! The winner will receive $500 and go on to compete for a national title. Whisker Wars much? What contemporary pop art lover hasn’t dreamed of going back in time and hanging out at Andy Warhol’s Factory? Imagine: artists and socialites gathering to see and be seen, creative producing interesting works, music and drinks abound. Warhol may have come and gone, but on Friday night we can get a taste of what it was like as the Contemporary Arts Center hosts Machine: Andy Warhol and Photography. Coinciding with the Warhol exhibit is Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots, which looks at farming as activism and an art form. Friday’s dual opening reception is will be a feast for the senses with a DJ set by VHS or Beta and a photo booth projecting Factory-style screen tests across the museum. The party beings at 8 p.m. and is $10, free for members Buff your bowling ball and mix up a White Russian, because Esquire Theatre hosts The Big Lebowski Quote-a-thon  Saturday. Don your bed Dude ensemble for a costume contests, test your Lebowski trivia knowledge and participate throughout the screening by quoting your favorite lines. The movie begins at 10:30 p.m. Nerds unite! The Cincinnati Comic Expo runs through Sunday at Duke Energy Convention Center, kicking off with a Geek Prom Friday. The expo will also feature arcades, panels, cosplay and even something called sci-fi speed dating! Of course, many attend to meet stars involved in comics, television and movies – guests include Star Wars’ fight and light saber choreographer Nick Gillard, Green Power Ranger Jason David Frank and Chandler Riggs, better known as Carl "Get out of here!" Grimes from The Walking Dead. Go here for ticket pricing, a full event lineup and more information Back-to-school ads and fall fashion spreads can often lead to budget woes. A change in seasons inspires finding fresh duds, but if you’ve got a full closet and empty bank account, you’re kinda stuck with what you’ve got. Enter Swappy Seconds, Casablanca Vintage and Chicken Lays an Egg’s clothing swap. Here’s how it works: Pick at least five items from your wardrobe that are clean and in great condition, drop ‘em off at Mayday in Northside starting at 2 p.m Sunday. The ladies of Chicken and Casablanca will sort and arrange all these clothes, shoes and accessories, then open the doors at 3:30 pm. For $3 you can return and pick through the goods while enjoying Mayday drinks and dogs. And guys: this isn’t just for the ladies! The more who participate, the more treasures for the pickin’. You’ll clean out your closet and supplement your wardrobe for (300) pennies! Check out our To Do picks and full calendar for more arts, theater and events to check out this weekend.

Before blogs and screens and sites made information-sharing almost instantaneous, the Linotype type casting machine was crucial to printing newspapers. In fact, before this “Eighth Wonder of the World” (Thomas Edison’s description) was invented in 1884 by Ottmar Mergenthaler, not a single newspaper in the world surpassed eight pages. Of course, the topic is particularly interesting to those in the journalism field, but the Linotype truly changed the world for everyone. Being obsolete today, nearly every Linotype in existence has been scrapped and melted down.Learn about this incredible machine of the past and how it impacts us today as the Contemporary Arts Center screens Linotype: The Film at 6:30 p.m. Admission is just $5; free for CAC and AIGA Cincinnati members. If you’re considering playing hooky tomorrow, why not take a mini roadtrip to Vevay, Ind. for the Swiss Wine Festival. The four-day fest kicks off tonight, 5-10 p.m., with Little Swiss Polka and Edelweiss Dancers, the Kent Family Magic Circus, a parade and plenty more activities to distract the kids while you booze it up in the beer and wine tents. The fun continues all weekend with grape stomping competitions, live music, a 5K, fireworks and a flea market. Admission and parking are free tonight; tickets to the tasting pavilion are $13, two for $25. If that’s too long of a drive for drinks, we’re hosting a happy hour at Newport’s Star Lanes tonight. Hassle staff writers Hang out with us CityBeaters, enjoy $1 well drinks and $2 beer specials, munch on apps and sign up to win prizes, all from 5:30-8 p.m. We’ll be giving away two wristbands to next month’s MidPoint Music Festival and a Star Lanes bowling party. Standard bowling rates apply, but, hey, one dollar drinks.

Welsh musician Gruff Rhys is bringing his current unique (and brief) tour to Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center tomorrow (Thursday). The show starts at 8 p.m. Click here to grab your tickets. Those attending the tour’s stop at the CAC will also be treated to an extra rare bonus — Rhys’ Neon Neon project-mate and Cincinnati native Boom Bip (aka Bryan Hollon, who now works from out of the West Coast) will be joining Gruff onstage after the main performance for a one-of-a-kind DJ set. Rhys’ band Super Furry Animals released its major label debut, Rings Around the World, in 2001 and the group appeared to be a successor to the throne occupied by fading superstars like Blur and Oasis. The album (following SFA’s excellent debut, Fuzzy Logic, and a trio of experimental-oriented albums put out by king-maker Alan McGee’s Creation Records) put a brilliant, creative spin on “Brit Pop,” highlighted by fascinating sounds between the grooves, but also an extraordinary knack for writing incredibly potent melodies. Rings contained several hit-songs-in-waiting and did well in the U.K., but never fully grabbed the ears of the U.S. mainstream like a few of the band’s predecessors did. While some artists would have simply gone back and cleaned up/out the sound of their potential breakthrough to appeal more to the mainstream, it soon became clear that Rhys and the Furries weren’t interested in pandering. The band had always been underlined by a progressive, adventurous streak (early works embraced Electronic and Ambient music, among other approaches) and it was evident that the opportunity to crossover or become a massive success was less important to Rhys and Co. than following their own creative whims. (By the mid-’00s, SFA had left the Sony family for the artist-friendlier confines of Rough Trade Records). Rhys’ work outside of the Furries’ domain has been even more exploratory. Rhys’ eclectic solo albums have contained songs sung alternately in Welsh, English and Spanish. And he’s a huge fan of collaboration, working with artists like Mogwai, Sparklehorse, De La Soul, Gorillaz, Simian Mobile Disco and Brazilian artist Tony da Gatorra, to name a few. One of his most celebrated collaborations has been with Boom Bip; the pair’s Neon Neon project has been widely acclaimed, earning a Mercury Prize nomination in 2008 for the album Stainless Style (a loose concept piece about the life of John De Lorean). Rhys’ current project/tour is a follow-up to Separado!, a feature film/multimedia venture during which film crews followed the musician as his “investigative concert tour” traveled through South America. The film followed Rhys on his journey to learn more about his “long lost, guitar-playing, poncho-wearing uncle, Rene Griffiths.” Given his musical output, it was fitting that Rhys’ intellectual and creative curiosity had led him down such another unique path.Here's the trailer for Rhys' "psychedelic western musical," Separado!Rhys’ current “investigative tour” is another adventure in genealogy and travel, as the artist (again trailed by a film crew for a planned movie sequel/music/prose/photo project) journeys through North America to find the burial site of John Evans, another distant relative who allegedly left Wales in the late 1700s on a quest to verify the legend of a Welsh-speaking tribe of Native Americans. Rhys put this call out to anyone with info that could help: “Gruff urges anyone with clues regarding Evans’s unknown burial place; imaginary volcanos; wandering tribes of Welsh Speakers, or lingering river reptiles to come to the shows, where their help with his investigations will be appreciated and featured in the movie.” You might even make the film's final cut just by showing up and checking out the show.Rhys’ performance will include music, discussion, his cutting humor and more. As the trailer above suggests, and anyone who’s seen SFA live knows (the band's criminally under-attended show at the Southgate House many years ago was one of my all-time favorite concerts), don't go into one of Gruff’s appearances with too many expectations because, most likely, they’ll be blown out of the water.

There’s a tremendous breach between a life of stardom and a life of ordinariness; it’s a point of view most of us Joes take. Constantly forming idols for ourselves, we forget that those deemed as “famous” perform such mundane tasks as even putting on underwear in the morning. For some reason, famous people don’t wear underwear — that’s too routine. They don’t have routines, they have fabulous, spontaneous lives. Perhaps they were never even children. Their birth was the moment that you fell in love with what they do. They are an entirely different kind.Shut Up and Play the Hits bridges that gap for us, though. The documentary, directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, was screened in select theatres for only one night — a seemingly arrogant tactic, though I think it was done mostly just because it was the easiest and most affordable (the opposite of arrogant). Lucky for Cincinnati, the Contemporary Arts Center showed it in the lobby of its stone, skate park-like building to a full audience.Shut Up and Play the Hits tells the visual tale of dance/punk band LCD Soundsystem’s final moments as one of the world’s most respected and adored musical entities. The band’s ending, oddly constructed as it was, provoked curiosity: Why stop at the pinnacle of your career? Did you have this planned all along?Using shots of the band’s last show to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden on April 2, 2011, mastermind James Murphy’s life before and after the show, and an actually informative interview, Shut Up and Play the Hits does some explaining, which was what Murphy really wanted. Not only that, but it also takes us through the inevitable emotional roller coaster Murphy and his bandmates rode on, anywhere from feeling “disturbingly normal” to breaking down in the presence of the band’s now jaded yet memorable musical equipment.The film takes a spiral shape, starting and ending at the same spot — the cleaning up of LCD Soundsystem’s farewell show — but with two very different dispositions. At the beginning, we’re still confused as to why, but by the end, as that final heavy synth note rings out, we are understanding — content even — with Murphy’s decision to wholly join a life of normalcy.This normal life seems to revolve around Murphy’s dog. Waking up at 10:32 the morning after the final, drunken show, Murphy lays pensively sleepy with his little dog on his belly, just staring at him. Maybe it’s the dog that keeps him from accepting the sadness of the end, or maybe he just hasn’t been able to look — really look — at his dog in quite some time. Either way, it’s an endearing moment that contrasts like a flash of lightening to the madness of their final show. The back and forth filming techniques foster those aesthetics.In the moments of the show, the film actualizes just how much people treasure LCD Soundsystem. Slow-mo shots of the audience, focusing in on particularly passionate people, combined with the circling lights of the massive disco ball and LCD’s absorbing sounds gave life to the movie, like we were there ourselves. Murphy thanked the fans and his family with an authentic sense of farewell, leading into their final song “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” which was almost too fitting for the circumstances — almost.In many moments throughout the film, Murphy’s gaze suggests a complexity of despondency and hopefulness all at once, whether he’s making coffee or glowing in front of an 18,000-person show. The end is near and never has such an ending become so suddenly swallowed up. The film symbolically leaves us with a weeping fan staring at the dispersing stage, gracefully blurring the line of the sacred and profane. Murphy only wished to leave a stain, but that final note of that final song could very well ring out forever.