Get ready for a blazing show at PNC Pavilion: The Donnas in live mode are like a Russian porn star, Rockyer Cockov. For evidence, check out the group's latest CD, the ironically-titled 'Greatest Hits Vol. 16,' which offers up freshly recorded and live versions of old songs, a few B-side rarities and some new material. Fellas, hold on tight. Ladies, keep track of your wigs and keys. It's going to be a Donnas kind of night.  

Tool's viscerally shredding set is designed to elicit gyrational sweat even without the unrelenting, cloudless sun. The mayhem on stage is unstoppable — Tool ratchets up the volume and dark energy with almost psychopathic intent. Metaphorically, this is exactly how every Tool show has felt as the band agitates, cooks, refreshes, repeats. Thus may it ever be.   

Defined scientifically, civil twilight is the time of day or evening when the center of the sun is six degrees below the horizon and terrestrial objects are still visible without the sun's direct illumination. As defined by two South African brothers and their friend, Civil Twilight is a brilliant, thoughtful and energetic amalgam of Radiohead, U2, The Police and Jeff Buckley.  

Jay Farrar reformed Son Volt in 2005 and hooked up with Rhino Records to release 'A Retrospective: 1995-2000.' Four solid albums have followed, the latest being 'American Central Dust,' released by Rounder Records last month. The piano-driven "Cocaine and Ashes" makes for a buzzworthy single because it revolves around the rumor that Keith Richard snorted his father's ashes.  

Opening on the Northern Kentucky University campus a few days after America’s 233rd birthday, I Love a Piano is a reminder of things good, right and foursquare. Irving Berlin wrote tuneful, good-hearted and, well, all-American music.   

It's often been said of larger than life characters that if they didn't exist someone would have had to invent them. Thankfully we had Michael Riley, because it's difficult to imagine the twisted cosmic novelist that would have been necessary to come up with him. Riley was the personification of dichotomy. He was a fixture as an employee in Clifton music stores, but a fatal stroke June 18 ended his reign as the unofficial Mayor of Clifton Music.   

Don’t get me wrong: There is nothing tedious or unpleasant about my job as music critic, and I still have a great abiding love for music in all its complex and sometimes baffling forms. In a lot of ways, I think the problem is that, as a working journalist, I am overinformed. And now my son has introduced me to the world of downloading. Wow.  

I'm once again foregoing my vinyl burn this week and keeping the reviews on the light side. Next week looks to be absolutely packed with titles (a quick count reveals at least 14 discs and a DVD in the stacks that I could cover). This week I check out new CDs from Holly Williams, Candye Kane and Clock Hands Strangle and two reissues from Big Star.  

When Minimum Gauge first read the Los Angeles Times article on a new genre of music called “Jerk,” we thought, “Hmmm, seems odd Gene Simmons would merit an entire genre of music.” Turns out, Jerk is actually a Hip Hop subgenre that bubbled up from L.A. a couple of years ago.  

They can put a man on the moon, so why can't someone engineer the 30-hour day? Between writing and planning to write and the administration of my writing and downloading and listening and that other devourer of time, family life, the only thing left to cut into is sleep. Here's what I've been listening to this week: new albums from Sonic Youth, Adam Freeland, Slim Twig, Rhett Miller and Trey Anastasio and classic vinyl from Chuck Prophet.