ANITA BAKER, BABYFACE (Tomorrow) When she sings about love, as she almost always does, Anita Baker pours her lavish voice into songs that dissolve into wordless raptures. Babyface - Kenny Edmonds - has built a dynasty of smooth R & B, with both his own deep confections and the songs he's written and produced for the likes of Boys II Men and Mariah Carey. 8 p.m., Jones Beach Theater, 1000 Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, N.Y., (516) 221-1000, $20 to $85.

(Jon Pareles)

ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS (Thursday) The transvestite warbler and outré art fixture Antony first took up the chanteuse mantle in homage to Isabella Rossellini's tragic character in "Blue Velvet." His falsetto is affecting, its imperfections heightening a sense of torchy anguish. Having scaled back his band to the barest elements, he makes the most of these quavering tones. 8 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 307-4100, $22.50 to $26.50. (Laura Sinagra)

BACKSTREET BOYS (Wednesday) This boy band's sugary yet muscular mid-90's ballads like "I Want It That Way" melded R & B and machine-tooled Swedish pop. They suffered some when the fresher 'NSync brought hip-hop into the mix. All grown up, they've taken to crooning vaguely spiritual anthems. 8 p.m., Radio City Music Hall, (212) 247-4777, $34.50 to $74.50. (Sinagra)

BORICUA FESTIVAL: EDDIE PALMIERI Y LA PERFECTA II, WILLIAM CEPEDA'S BOMBASHE, AND OTHERS (Tomorrow) The Spanish-Harlem-born pianist Eddie Palmieri's full-tilt blend of Latin rhythms and jazz dissonance has fueled a half-century-long career. The Puerto Rican trombonist Mr. Cepeda's Bombashe group mines Carribbean styles. Bimbo "El Oso Manoso" rides hip-hop's reggaetón wave. Other performers include the Boys Harbor Conservatory Youth Ensemble. 2 p.m., Celebrate Brooklyn, Prospect Park Bandshell, Prospect Park West and Ninth Street, Park Slope, $3 suggested donation. (Sinagra)

COHEED AND CAMBRIA (Tonight) In a departure from the more self-referential bands in their emo cohort, Coheed and Cambria play a rough brand of metallic rock that veers into the prog preoccupation with supernatural lore and legend. 8 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800, $18 (sold out). (Sinagra)

HOWIE DAY (Tuesday and Wednesday) Mr. Day is a stalwart of Boston's folksy coffeehouse scene, but now at the ripe old age of 23, his tastes have drifted closer to alt-rock, trading confessional acoustic outpourings for Radiohead-style refinement. 8 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824, $25. (Sinagra)

THE DIRTBOMBS (Thursday) The Detroit garage rocker Mick Collins's raw outfit tears through its live sets, unafraid of dissonance and rough edges. Mr. Collins has a more resonant voice than some of his shouty contemporaries. 9 p.m., Maxwell's, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703, $12. (Sinagra)

BUDDY GUY, SHEMEKIA COPELAND (Sunday) The Chicago blues guitarist Buddy Guy found a potent outlet when he recently joined forces with the spunky Delta preservationists at Fat Possum Records. His amused and incendiary licks at Radio City's 2003 blues summit stole the show. And at that same event, the flirty Shemakia Copeland's gravel and sass sent the concert's neo-soul stars back to diva school. 7 p.m., North Fork Theater at Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury, N.Y., (516) 334-0800, $42.50. (Sinagra)

BEN HARPER AND THE INNOCENT CRIMINALS (Wednesday) In the 10 years since his debut, the bluesy rock guitarist Ben Harper has evolved from lone spiritual singer-songwriter to groovy globetrotting collaborator. His work last year with the Blind Boys of Alabama showcased an easy, inspired give and take. 8 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800, $37.50, $40 at the door (sold out). (Sinagra)

GARY HIGGINS (Tomorrow) Mr. Higgins's lone album, "Red Hash," from 1973, is a meandering set of dewy psychedelic folk-rock incantations. After recording it, he fell into obscurity but retained a following among free-form rockers. 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501, $12. (Sinagra)

JAGUARES (Tonight) The Jaguares include former members of a leading Mexican rock band, Caifanes, and they add some alternative-rock touches to Caifanes's moody, dynamic songs. 8 p.m., B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 997-4144, $35 to $38. (Pareles)

TOBY KEITH, LEE ANN WOMACK, SHOOTER JENNINGS (Sunday) With his wholesomely dirty ditties, the country superstar Mr. Keith gets the most patriotic church ladies and their bar-lovin' hubbies singing about illicit sex in Mexico while still towing the family-values line. His plainspoken cleverness complicates the bombast of his star-making post 9/11 hit, "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." Ms. Womack is enshrined for the motherhood anthem "I Hope You Dance." Shooter Jennings is the son of Waylon. 7:30 p.m., PNC Bank Arts Center, Exit 116, Garden State Parkway, Holmdel, N.J., (732) 335-0400, $33 to $68. (Sinagra)

DANIEL LANOIS (Wednesday) Mr. Lanois, the producer (U2, Bob Dylan) whose own songs have a spacious, yearning quality that hovers in his slide-guitar lines. 7 p.m., Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City, Lower Manhattan, free. (Pareles)

LIGHTNING BOLT (Tonight) Holding the microphone in his mouth, Brian Chippendale, the drummer of this Providence, R.I., noise band, hollers through electronic processors while the bassist Brian Gibson hammers on his strings till overtone squalls splice and recombine into new sonic arrangements. 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501, $10. (Sinagra)

LOGGINS & MESSINA (Tomorrow and Sunday) After this seminal West Coast folk-rock duo split up in 1977, Kenny Loggins went on to fame as a footloose 80's radio hitmaker. The two now revive their songs about hazy love, watery peace and Winnie the Pooh, reprising their enduring hippie-family idyll "Danny's Song." Tomorrow at 8 p.m., PNC Bank Arts Center, Exit 116, Garden State Parkway, Holmdel, N.J., (732) 335-0400, $20 to $75. Sunday at 8 p.m., Jones Beach Theater, 1000 Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, N.Y., (516) 221-1000, $20 to $75. (Sinagra)

JOHNNY MATHIS (Tonight and tomorrow) The smoothy of smoothies, Johnny Mathis has been crooning for romantic moments ever since the late 1950's, setting a standard for effortless seduction that many pop Romeos still envy. 8 p.m., North Fork Theater at Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury, N.Y., (516) 334-0800, $56.50. (Pareles)

THE JUAN MACLEAN (Tomorrow) These know-it-all hipster musicologists play electro disco ornamented by clang and moogy warps. It's the sound of post-indistrial slackers partying in a junk shop, dancing freely. 10 p.m., TriBeCa Grand Hotel, 2 Avenue of the Americas, at White Street, (877) 519-6600, free. (Sinagra)

THOMAS MAPFUMO (Tomorrow) A musical pioneer with a rebel's courage, Thomas Mapfumo made music for the revolutionaries who unseated the white-ruled government from what was Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. The music transferred the brisk patterns of traditional thumb-piano music to guitar; the words sometimes sent coded messages. 10 p.m. and midnight, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155, $20 to $25. (Pareles)

OZZFEST FEATURING BLACK SABBATH, IRON MAIDEN, ROB ZOMBIE, MASTADON, ETC. (Tuesday) The heavy-metal rocker (and reality TV patriarch) Ozzy Osbourne still projects a weird menace onstage with convincingly dire pronouncements over Black Sabbath's guitar sludge. This lineup also features the 1970's crypt rockers Iron Maiden, the overweaning industrial metal of Rob Zombie and the drum-heavy monster rock of Mastadon, as well as several others. 9 a.m., PNC Bank Arts Center, Exit 116, Garden State Parkway, (732) 335-0400, $50 to $125. (Sinagra)

PORTION CONTROL, CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH (Wednesday) Portion Control was fashioning scary industrial music before Skinny Puppy or Nine Inch Nails came on the scene. The Brooklyn quintet Clap Your Hands Say Yeah recalls the shamanic whine and thrum of mid-1990's lo-fi rockers Neutral Milk Hotel, and sometimes the slippery paranoid quirk of the Talking Heads. 8:30 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700, $15 (sold out). (Sinagra)

THE RASPBERRIES (Tomorrow and Sunday) The Raspberries were beloved for playing music that recalled the innocent harmonies of the British invasion, and they remain a touchstone for power-pop acts. This is the first time their original lineup has toured since 1975. 8 p.m., B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 997-4144, $50. (Tomorrow's show is sold out.) (Sinagra)

TOSHI REAGON (Sunday) Singing about both love and politics with the same sense of independence, Toshi Reagon applies her gutsy voice and syncopated guitar playing to songs steeped in blues and funk. 7 p.m., Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 539-8778 or (212) 239-6200, $20. (Pareles)

PETE ROCK (Tomorrow) This hip-hop D.J. and producer's multilayered tracks for 1990's rappers and the records he released as a duo with C L Smooth exemplified the meditatively deep, jazz-inflected early-90's New York style. Tomorrow he spins a mix of hip-hop soul and funk. 10:30 p.m., Soul Sonic Sunday: Table 50, 643 Broadway, at Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 253-2560, $5 to $10. (Sinagra)

REGINA SPEKTOR (Wednesday) The music of this Russian-born singer and pianist (and Strokes collaborator) is of the jaggedly quirky cabaret variety. It brings punk immediacy into a chamber setting, reveling in knotty rhymes and slightly unhinged melodrama. 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503, $25. (Sinagra)

TEENAGE FANCLUB (Tonight and tomorrow) Spin magazine spent the 1990's regretting that it chose this Scottish band's album "Bandwagonesque" (DGC) as 1991's best over Nirvana's debut. But these days, Teenage Fanclub's sludgy melodicism, realized through sad, dreamy guitar sprawl; spare, clever drums; and pained everyman vocals holds up just as well. Lately the band has been working with Chicago post-rock producers, incorporating electronic beeps and buzzes into its wistful power pop. 9 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111, $22 to $25. (Sinagra)

TSAR (Thursday) Energized but relatively charmless ambition fuels this Los Angeles group's belated follow-up to its 2001 glam-pop debut. That record failed to make the members stars, and naming their latest "Band, Girls, Money" only calls attention to its pop-punk overreach. 8:30 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700, $10. (Sinagra)

THE WAIFS, JIMMIE DALE GILMORE (Tuesday) The Waifs are a young, frisky Australian band in love with older American music like folk-rock and the blues, fronted by two women who sing about trains and city life and huff up a storm on harmonica. The guitar-slung Texas troubadour Jimmie Dale Gilmore has been equating wistful Western expanse with the mysteries of existence for three decades. 7 p.m., Hudson River Festival, World Financial Center, 200 Liberty Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 945-2600, free. (Pareles)

M. WARD (Tonight) The echoing guitar folk-pop songs of this singer-songwriter combine heartfelt campfire zeal with the ruminative sadness of mid-tempo 1970's AM radio hits. His delicate ascents can also lilt upward into a cabaret falsetto reminiscent of Jeff Buckley's. 10 p.m., Maxwell's, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703, $15. (Sinagra)

DIONNE WARWICK (Monday) With a velvety voice that holds gospel fervor in reserve, Dionne Warwick makes songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David sound easy, even with melody lines that hop all over the place and words that have to be articulated just so. 8 p.m., B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 997-4144, $68 to $75. (Pareles)

YELLOWMAN(Tuesday) More proof that Jamaican music is stranger than fiction. Yellowman is a great dance-hall reggae vocalist who also happens to be an albino. He has built his career on tongue-in-cheek sexual boasts, and although his popularity peaked about 20 years ago, he still puts on a good show, mixing wicked wit with sentimental old favorites. 11 p.m., S.O.B.'s, 204 Varick Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940, $18 to $22.

(Kelefa Sanneh)