The problem with punk rock is it’s kind of weird and scary. Thank God for Simple Plan, then, the well-scrubbed Montreal outfit that has done as much as any band since Sum 41 to turn the genre into something safe to play in your mom’s SUV while she’s giving you a lift to the mall. And hey, make sure she’s loaded up your official Simple Plan MYplash gift card so you can score a bunch of Role Model Clothing, by Simple Plan.

Cashing in on the reunion dollar is a tricky business. Obviously, if your band has achieved legendary status, you can pull the old “when hell freezes over” thing. And sometimes, just sometimes, if your group has enough retro-camp appeal (à la Duran Duran), you can depend on your greying fans to come through at the box office. Seeing as Stone Temple Pilots doesn’t fall into either category, God knows how the outdated faux-grunge phonies are going to pack GM Place on Saturday (August 30).

What ever happened to Chevy Novas with mag wheels and a lot of Bondo? Why do so few people cut their mack jackets off at the waist anymore? These questions don’t bother the members of Australia’s Airbourne, because as far as they’re concerned, 1979 never ended.

A mere six million people worldwide speak Finnish. So why, in the sweet name of Jyrki Lumme, would a Finnish folk-metal band like Finntroll choose to sing exclusively in Swedish? The Swedes don’t need any language-preserving help: with their domestic population of nine million, the extinction of Swedish is as unlikely as ever getting ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” out of your head. Original Finntroll vocalist Jan “Katla” Jämsen once claimed it’s because Swedish sounds “so damn trollish”.

The bullet-headed bozos of 3 Doors Down must be very proud of themselves these days, after landing their song “Citizen/Soldier” in a TV commercial for the U.S. National Guard, no less! Serving God and country makes a lot of sense if your tunes ain’t good enough for the devil, and cozying up to the cold steel of the American war machine never hurt Elvis’s career or anything. You want a world that’s safe for your kids and more importantly your favourite nu rock and alt-metal bands?

Fuck man, it’s been seven years since John Jackson first started giving us a reason to blaze up, and we’re still riotously baked. Right after Jack Johnny put out In Between Dreams in 1995, we quit our jobs as corporate lawyers and began spending our days on the beach, chowing down on weed-flavoured bananas and pancake-flavoured weed, all the while spinning ultra-mellow tunes like “Banana-Pan Weedcakes”. A bowl full of Maui wowee and a little bit of John Johnson, and we’re fucking set for the day.

It must truly blow to be bigger than Camilla Parker Bowles’s knockers in England, and yet be seen in North America as monobrowed cavemen whose last Stateside hit was 1995’s “Wonderwall”. There are many reasons to pity Oasis, at GM Place on Wednesday (August 27).

Priscilla Ahn’s old-school credentials go beyond sporting the same first name as Elvis’s ex. While many solo artists augment their sound with laptops, the Pennsylvania-bred singer-songwriter opts for the stripped-down Dylan-Shakey setup: acoustic six-string and harmonica neckgear. But don’t expect the weird grit of “Maggie’s Farm” when Ahn comes to play the Media Club on Monday (August 25).

There was a time when certain members of Radiohead swore blind that they’d never come back to Vangroover. The year was 1995. The Oxford-based boffins had just released their second album, The Bends, when a weird little acoustic tour brought them to the Railway Club, where a handful of, let’s say “high-spirited” hecklers managed to drive Thom Yorke off-stage by the fourth song.

There’s a wonderful clip on YouTube of Mighty Sparrow performing his classic ditty about interracial cunnilingus, “Congo Man”, and then admitting that—contrary to any claims made in the song—he has indeed eaten “the white meat”.

Armed with two drum kits, four basses, two samplers, and—most crucially—two vocoders, Edmonton’s Shout Out Out Out Out makes exuberantly kitschy indie-dance music that will have even the most too-cool-for-school scenesters shaking their skinny-jeans–clad asses when it plays Richard’s on Richards on Sunday (August 10).

Those guys again? Really? Oh, well. Even if Mötley Crüe has yet to write a good song, at least the veteran Sunset Strip sleaze-rock quartet doesn’t take itself too seriously, most of the time. That’s a sound policy when the rest of the world refuses to take you seriously, by the way. And, in spite of its musical shortcomings and enough “character quirks” to keep the Betty Ford Center in business for the next two decades, the Crüe understands the value of spectacle.

After a day of stuffing your stomach with salmon shioyaki and your ears with taiko drumming at Oppenheimer Park, why not continue your Powell Street Festival experience with something soft and strange? Tokyo’s Shugo Tokumaru (above) and Los Angeles–based Mia Doi Todd share a PSF–sponsored double bill at the Firehall Arts Centre on Saturday (August 2).

Frank Black (aka Black Francis) certainly has himself a good little gig going—and who can begrudge him, considering he practically invented the loud-quiet-loud template that nine out of 10 “alternative” bands have spent 18 years ripping off? Should he require a down payment for that third house on the ocean in Fiji, he simply grits his teeth and gets back together with the Pixies, who spent the middle part of this decade pulling down obscene paycheques on the reunion-gig circuit.

Sound-sculptor Lee Hutzulak describes the new Dixie’s Death Pool CD as “the remarkable collision of a hazy, magical past and a brilliant, imagined future”, and that’s entirely apt. Scarlet Lake is based on Hutzulak’s four-track recordings from the early 1990s, elaborately reinvented here using contemporary digital technology. The result combines the unfettered imagination of an artist just beginning to explore his medium with the sonic sophistication of a mature experimentalist.