Rock Music

It looks like a typical Saturday night at the club: The band is belting out high-energy sounds and the crowd is sweaty from dancing with abandon. Only it is not the midnight hour, but Sunday afternoon at the Plough & Stars in Cambridge, and the audience is decidedly tilted to an older crowd that may not rock like they used to, but won't miss out on a thriving music scene they say keeps them vital. For many boomers, rock music is a defining element of their generation and remains an essential source of both entertainment and inspiration.

It looks like a typical Saturday night at the club: The band is belting out high-energy sounds and the crowd is sweaty from dancing with abandon. Only it is not the midnight hour, but Sunday afternoon at the Plough & Stars in Cambridge, and the audience is decidedly tilted to an older crowd that may not rock like they used to, but won't miss out on a thriving music scene they say keeps them vital. For many boomers, rock music is a defining element of their generation and remains an essential source of both entertainment and inspiration.

Jim James is on a spiritual quest of sorts, and you’re invited to listen in. The My Morning Jacket frontman sat in the prayer room of a church in a quiet neighborhood of his hometown last month, talking about old records, religion, philosophy and his perpetual yearning for understanding. These things color the Kentucky quintet’s much-anticipated new album, “Circuital,’’ and James says the record reflects a search he’s been on for some time. “I just want to be peaceful,’’ James said.

CONCORD - In the past decade or two, classical music performers have increasingly cultivated something approaching the amplified energy and impact of rock music. At its concert in Concord on Sunday, the Brentano String Quartet demonstrated the merits - and occasional demerits - of going in the opposite direction. The group, celebrating its 20th anniversary this season, is united by a pursuit of a more old-fashioned musical virtue: refinement. In Beethoven's F-major String Quartet, Op. 18 No. 1, the Brentano method was on full display.

AUSTIN, Texas - The first truth about South by Southwest is the hardest one to accept. You cannot see and hear it all. No matter how bloodshot your eyes become, no matter how many shows you cram into a single night, this five-day music conference and festival is designed to overwhelm the senses. You might want to see Fiona Apple at 8 o'clock on a Thursday, but then you'd be missing the Shins playing down by a lake. No amount of breakfast tacos and cold Shiner Bock, the local beer of choice, will make you feel better about that.

Former Globe music critic Steve Morse is set to teach the online course "Rock History" at Berklee College of Music starting in April. The course description says that students will "look at the past, but also where rock music is going, treating rock 'n' roll as a vibrant, fluid attitude where nothing is sacred or predictable. " We hope that means there will be more than a little Steven Tyler on the syllabus.

CONCORD - In the past decade or two, classical music performers have increasingly cultivated something approaching the amplified energy and impact of rock music. At its concert in Concord on Sunday, the Brentano String Quartet demonstrated the merits - and occasional demerits - of going in the opposite direction. The group, celebrating its 20th anniversary this season, is united by a pursuit of a more old-fashioned musical virtue: refinement. In Beethoven's F-major String Quartet, Op. 18 No. 1, the Brentano method was on full display.

LOS ANGELES -- Esther Wong, who booked a who's who of punk rock and new-wave bands at her popular Madame Wong's clubs in the 1970s and '80s, died Sunday at her Los Angeles home. Mrs. Wong, 88, suffered from emphysema and cancer, said her daughter, Melinda. Mrs. Wong, who earned the nickname the "godmother of punk," showcased such groups as the Police, X, the Go-Gos, Oingo Boingo, the Motels, the Knack, and the Textones, giving many groups their first major break. The China native originally booked Polynesian bands at her restaurant, but when hardly anyone...

CLEVELAND - The city that bills itself as the birthplace of rock 'n' roll is going through some rocky times of its own. Cleveland's foreclosure rates are alarmingly high, unemployment is skyrocketing, its steel mills are going idle and federal officials are investigating alleged government corruption. A high-flying rock party might be just the distraction this troubled city needs. Tomorrow, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will hold its induction ceremonies in the city where it is based for the first time in more than a decade.

Nostalgia goes up in smoke on "Iggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit," an incendiary record of the group's first hometown show in 29 years, as Iggy Pop is reunited with the surviving members of his original band. The group's apocalyptic garage punk was the root and source of a huge percentage of today's rock music -- the Stooge legend has grown even as Pop's own musical career has settled into a pattern of reliably athletic underachievement. Can they pull together some sort of return to a former intensity?

AUSTIN, Texas - The first truth about South by Southwest is the hardest one to accept. You cannot see and hear it all. No matter how bloodshot your eyes become, no matter how many shows you cram into a single night, this five-day music conference and festival is designed to overwhelm the senses. You might want to see Fiona Apple at 8 o'clock on a Thursday, but then you'd be missing the Shins playing down by a lake. No amount of breakfast tacos and cold Shiner Bock, the local beer of choice, will make you feel better about that.

Former Globe music critic Steve Morse is set to teach the online course "Rock History" at Berklee College of Music starting in April. The course description says that students will "look at the past, but also where rock music is going, treating rock 'n' roll as a vibrant, fluid attitude where nothing is sacred or predictable. " We hope that means there will be more than a little Steven Tyler on the syllabus.

CAMBRIDGE - For all that it's called "Futurity," Brooklyn band the Lisps' new rock musical, which will have its world premiere Friday at Oberon, is a look back to the Civil War. Presented by the American Repertory Theater, it's a love story of sorts: Julian Munro meets Ada Lovelace and they find they have a lot in common. Julian is a Union soldier, a member of the Ohio 34th Infantry who, even as he's smashing Confederate railroad ties in Virginia, dreams of becoming an inventor. Ada is an English mathematician who's written about Charles Babbage's...

HORROR SOUNDS: A SYNESTHETIC EVENING OF HORROR FILMS AND SICKENED, BLEAK ELECTRONIC MUSIC With Reviver, Xela, the Vomit Arsonist, Zerfallt, Xiphoid DementiaDVJ Deftly-D 1 At: Yes Oui Si , 19 Vancouver St. , Boston , Thursday, 7 p.m. . Tickets: $5 , http://www.yesouisispace.com On the first night of last year's Xiphoid Dementia tour, Egan Budd found himself billed at a coffee shop in Burlington, Vt., set to perform right...

BOY WITHOUT GOD With Sleepy Very Sleepy and Tamsin Wilson At: Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre, 820 Mass. Ave., Central Square, next Thursday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $10. 617-661-9622, www.cambridgeymca.org NEW YORK — Gabriel Birnbaum’s arms fly up into the shape of a “V’’ right as he calls out an enthusiastic, “Yes! Awesome!’’ That’s how he reacts when told that his new album is nearly impossible to classify. “V’’ is definitely for victory. Birnbaum records under the name Boy Without God, a project he started when the Brookline native was still...

Jim James is on a spiritual quest of sorts, and you’re invited to listen in. The My Morning Jacket frontman sat in the prayer room of a church in a quiet neighborhood of his hometown last month, talking about old records, religion, philosophy and his perpetual yearning for understanding. These things color the Kentucky quintet’s much-anticipated new album, “Circuital,’’ and James says the record reflects a search he’s been on for some time. “I just want to be peaceful,’’ James said.

HORROR SOUNDS: A SYNESTHETIC EVENING OF HORROR FILMS AND SICKENED, BLEAK ELECTRONIC MUSIC With Reviver, Xela, the Vomit Arsonist, Zerfallt, Xiphoid DementiaDVJ Deftly-D 1 At: Yes Oui Si , 19 Vancouver St. , Boston , Thursday, 7 p.m. . Tickets: $5 , http://www.yesouisispace.com On the first night of last year's Xiphoid Dementia tour, Egan Budd found himself billed at a coffee shop in Burlington, Vt., set to perform right...

BOY WITHOUT GOD With Sleepy Very Sleepy and Tamsin Wilson At: Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre, 820 Mass. Ave., Central Square, next Thursday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $10. 617-661-9622, www.cambridgeymca.org NEW YORK — Gabriel Birnbaum’s arms fly up into the shape of a “V’’ right as he calls out an enthusiastic, “Yes! Awesome!’’ That’s how he reacts when told that his new album is nearly impossible to classify. “V’’ is definitely for victory. Birnbaum records under the name Boy Without God, a project he started when the Brookline native was still...

Any high school yearbook from the past 30 years can confirm it: Rock ’n’ roll has given any number of budding adults a few words of advice, a catchy aphorism to pass along, even, in some cases, something like a moral compass. For Mark Edmundson, a mellifluous writer and notable scholar and professor in the English department at the University of Virginia, rock was apparently a Zenlike religion in his formative years in the 1970s. Were it not for the title of his book, however, rock music would seem just one source among many for the writer’s youthful accumulation of...

CLEVELAND - The city that bills itself as the birthplace of rock 'n' roll is going through some rocky times of its own. Cleveland's foreclosure rates are alarmingly high, unemployment is skyrocketing, its steel mills are going idle and federal officials are investigating alleged government corruption. A high-flying rock party might be just the distraction this troubled city needs. Tomorrow, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will hold its induction ceremonies in the city where it is based for the first time in more than a decade.