Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, Vanyaland‘s guide to help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Bush at TD Garden
From senior writer Michael Christopher: Several months ago, we sat down with Gavin Rossdale for a Vanyaland 617 Q&A where we hit on a vast assortment of topics, including his cooking show, favorite Keanu Reeves films, the effects September 11 had on the music industry, and Bush being unfairly labeled a ‘90s band. While that decade may have been the most fruitful period for the group, other than a short eight-year breakup while Rossdale pursued an ill-advised solo career, they’ve been much more reliable than most post-grunge acts – certainly more so than, say, Grinspoon or Crossfade. At the time of our chat, he and the band were touring in support of a greatest hits collection, one which reads like an alt-rock essentials playlist: “Glycerine,” “Comedown,” “Greedy Fly,” “The Sound of Winter,” “Bullet Holes,” et al. Saturday night at TD Garden, Bush is featured as support along with Morgan Wade as part of Shinedown’s “Dance, Kid, Dance” tour. Call it a soft opening for their 10th album, I Beat Loneliness, which drops today. Lead single “The Land of Milk and Honey” has been bouncing around for a few weeks, raising eyebrows with lyrics like, “I see stars when I fuck the system / I see stars when I fuck.” But hey, who are we to judge? This is Gavin Rossdale here – he probably does see stars when he fucks. — MC
SHINEDOWN + BUSH + MORGAN WADE :: Saturday, July 19 at TD Garden, 100 Legends Way in Boston, MA :: 7:00 p.m., all ages, $56 to $249 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Music: Pixies at MGM Music Hall at Fenway
It’s a Pixies weekend for us here in Massachusetts, and that’s the type of event we’ve been celebrating properly since like 1988. The iconic and influential indie band delivered a new album last fall in The Night the Zombies Came, and now hold court tonight and Saturday at Boston’s MGM Music Hall at Fenway. Each evening will have its own flair: Tonight, with Momma, finds the Pixies performing fan-favorite albums Bossanova and Trompe le Monde in full; while night two, with Kurt Vile & the Violators, promises a mix of classics from across their storied and often-imitated catalog, including songs from the new record. It should be a special homecoming doubleheader. The Night the Zombies Came is the band’s 10th overall — if counting their classic 1987 4AD mini LP Come On Pilgrim, as suggested by pixiesmerch.com — and first dose of new music since 2022’s Doggerel. It was recorded at Vermont’s Guilford Sound studios with producer Tom Dalgety, and features new bassist Emma Richardson. Around when the gigs were announced, they also gave reunion advice to Oasis, and that feels rather timely as the weekend rolls around.
PIXIES :: Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages :: Event info and tickets
Film: ‘Scum of the Earth’ at The Coolidge
It’s impossible not to scan the movie listings around Boston this weekend and stop dead cold on Scum of the Earth. In 2025, the subject matter could be literally anything, and we have a fairly long list of targets and people whom the title might apply. But the Coolidge Corner Theatre is throwing it back more than 50 years with a brand-new 4K restoration of S.F. Brownrigg’s “hillbilly horror classic,” screening the flick at a pair of midnight showings tonight and Saturday. It looks fantastic. Here’s the word from the Brookline house of film: “On a romantic vacation at a lakeside cabin in Texas, city gal Helen Fraser (Norma Moore) flees into the backwoods after a lurking, unseen psycho slays her husband with an axe. Lost and panicked, she runs into Odie Pickett (Gene Ross), the mean, moonshine-swilling patriarch to a degenerate clan of hillbillies. Helen becomes trapped in Pickett’s isolated rural shack, confronted with the family’s wretched life of poverty and abuse, while the maniacal killer stalks the woods, striking again and again…”
‘SCUM OF THE EARTH’ :: Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19 at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St. in Brookline, MA :: 11:59 p.m., $17 :: Event info and advance tickets