In retrospect, it was silly in the extreme to expect greatness from the Wailers as they performed their 1977 album, "Exodus," in its entirety at First Avenue on Friday night.

Nashville is justifiably regarded as the Wal-Mart of country music, hawking highly functional dreck and dross for the undiscerning hordes. Session musicians are justifiably regarded as technically advanced mercenaries, who will string up a banjo or a kitten if the price is right. So you can imagine the caliber of soulless heathens who lurk among teeming cadre of Nashville session musicians.

An opinionated take on the week in live music, Nov. 28 - Dec.4

"Keeping it real" is probably the most hackneyed catch-phrase in the argot of contemporary black music. Once upon a time it stood for integrity: For describing life's conditions the way you saw them, for staying loyal to the "'hoods" in which you were raised, and for resisting creatively crippling commercial compromises to follow your muse.

You're damn right they're dirty old men. You didn't really believe they'd have the decency to retire, did you? I'm talking about Aussie hard rockers AC/DC, of course, particularly founding member Angus Young, now 53, who almost certainly will take the Xcel stage clad in short schoolboy pants, and may or may not extend his tradition of mooning the audience.

An opinionated take on the week in live music, Nov. 14-20

The 19th century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner was an intensely religious man who wrote massive, spiritually meditative symphonies that were nevertheless bold enough to make him a descendent of Beethoven, a cohort of Wagner and a mentor to Mahler.

The kora is an instrument standing 4 feet tall, containing 21 strings. Thirty years ago, the Malian griot Sidiki Diabate was dubbed (in translation) "King of the Kora," only to watch his son Toumani convincingly usurp the throne by taking the centuries-old kora tradition into radically expansive new frontiers.

When the soulfully charismatic folk singer-songwriter Martin Sexton announced he was touring by his lonesome in tandem with his just-released live disc, "Solo," it was logical to think he was returning to his roots, coming full-circle back to the earliest days of his career busking on the streets of Boston.

Boz Scaggs has crooned his way through the genres and the decades without ever really changing his vocal style. He broke in with his old Dallas prep-school and Wisconsin college buddy Stevie Miller playing hippie-tinged blues out in 'Frisco in the 1960s, then went to Muscle Shoals for his own debut and wailed out with guitarist Dwayne Allman on the incandescent "Loan Me a Dime."