A little alt-country clarification for you. If your friends have been buzzing about Neko coming to town, they’re not talking about the tasty little rainbow-colored wafers that still come in wax-paper rolls. Those are Neccos (NECK-ohs), and they’ve been in town for quite some time, available at the hip candy store near you. Neko (KNEE-koh) Case is an alt-country singer who, despite her flaming locks, is rarely rainbow-colored, prefering fashionable black. With a voice like the sweetest foghorn, Case has climbed steadily into the consciousness of American music, so much so that a recent review spent most of its ink complaining about adulatory heckling from the crowd. So sure, buy her latest and best, Middle Cyclone, plug in your earphones and tune in to her throaty thunderstorms while web-surfing through her glamorshots. But hearing her fill the epic space of the Riverside Theater will be something else entirely. Just keep your mouth shut—we know you love her.
There’ll be some sonic auditorium filling down the street as well, as Andreas Delfs starts to wind down his tenure w
ith the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra with a string of big-ass romantic epics. This weekend, Delfs gets his Brahms on, tackling his fourth symphony (the first is a few weeks ahead) along with the Schumann A-minor piano concerto with Argentine soloist Ingrid Fliter. In coming weeks, Delfs and the MSO will tackle another Brahms Symphony (the first) along with Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and Mahler’s bohemoth Eight Symphony.
If you’re looking for something a little more intimate, why not relive all of those family gatherings in which a Slide Show was the main attraction. Ever curious about the potential of defunct technology, the UWM Film Department sponsors its third annual “Invitational Slide Show.” A while ago, Naomi Shersty & Carl Bogner sent out rolls of 35 mm slide film to American artists, and asked them to work their magic. There’s no predicting the end result, but past shows have included animation, audience participation, and live banjo music. Who knows? You might even see those Hoover Dam shots your uncle Herb showed you 20 years ago. 
Lots of other music to sample this week—just in time for the weather to lighten up and tempt you with that quiet evening on your favorite bar patio. But tempt us they will. The Killers bring their appropriately sweaty sound to the Rave on Thursday. And folkie Robbie Fulks brings a more quiet and introspective vibe to Shank Hall on the same night. For classical lovers, The Fine Arts Quartet wraps up its non-summer season challenging and 
rewarding program on Sunday afternoon (Haydn, Shostakovich and Dvorak). MSO Associate Concertmaster Jeanyi Kim plays a concert divided between music for solo violin and string quartet. Other Pabst/Riverside/Turner Hall performers include M. Ward, Rocco Deluca and the Burden, comedian Sinbad, and Men at Work alum Colin Hay.
And then there’s the indescribable delights of Mondo Lucha, which takes over Turner Hall Saturday with its blend of Mexican Wrestling, burlesque, Elvis tributes and pop music from Milwaukee’s own Maritime. Trust me, there is only one place in town this weekend where you’ll be able to judge whether Lola Van Ella does indeed possess “The Derriere Beyond Compare.”
But if you’re looking for uplift of a different sort in your dance performances, Danceworks annual “The Wide Sky Is Falling” performance is for you. Dani Kuepper and the Danceworks ensemble base their choreography on the work of the group’s "inter-generational" project, which brings together school kids and the elderly to share life stories and other creative impulses. 
And speaking of derrieres, another kind of retro body-worship is winding up its run at the UWM Theater’s production of Hair. Now I’m a little embarrased to admit that my first exposure to Hair‘s brand of…um…hairiness was via the very un-hairy group known as The Cowsills, a sort of low-rent Partridge Family who recorded several songs from Hair back in the days of kerchiefs and Nehru jackets.
