Jackson Free Press

Election Day is next week. Get ready to call a personal moratorium on watching those wrenching Musgrove/Wicker ads, and then get thyself to loud music and hard liquor.

The rocker in you can kick off Thursday night at Club Fire with a triple bill featuring Another Black Day, Lynam and Allyria. It's a Rock 93.9-sponsored event and Halloween costume contest, so it will be a party. It's $9.39 to enter if you're 21 or older; $15, for ages 18-20.

The animal rescue group CARA is having a live auction benefit at the Mississippi Museum of Art on Thursday, Oct. 30, 6-10 p.m. $40 gets you into the high-brow affair with music by The Earth Angels. For the classical connoisseur, the Mississippi Academy of Ancient Music will bring John Paul to St. James Episcopal Church Thursday night, 7:30 p.m. John Paul will play a Bach concert on his harpsichord. $10, $5 for students. The Academy will also host a fortepiano concert of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven on Nov. 13 at St. Philips. Call 601-977-7782 or 601-852-4848 for details.

If you're a friend of Seven*Studioz poetry nights, you should check out the JSU poetry club's OutSpoken this Thursday, 6-9 p.m. in the new JSU Campus Union Theater. It's free and will feature more than a dozen of the area's most prolific poets.

If you find yourself in Oxford Thursday night, bluesmen The Campbell Brothers will perform at the Ford Arts Center at Ole Miss at 8 p.m. $25, visit olemiss.edu/fordcenter.

Club Fire will host a second Halloween costume contest Friday at 9 p.m. with One Less Reason. Just down the street, Martin's is bringing in two of the areas most poplar bands for a Friday double bill: indie rock outfit Roosevelt Noise and Goodman County. It's been a while since Goodman County's last gig, so it'll be an overdue show for the fans.

There are two choice options for Saturday, Nov. 1. The Juke Joint Duo featuring Cedric Burnside and Lightnin' Malcolm will throw down at Martin's for their CD release party, 9 p.m. Their new album "2 Man Wrecking Crew" includes "R.L. Burnside," a song about Cedric's famous granddad. This fun, juke-meets-Mississippi-hill-country music comes as natural as good chemistry.

Following Fondren Theatre Workshop's live musical production of "The Rocky Horror Show," on Saturday, stay for a midnight screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in the Pix Capri Theater. Bring your blankets (the Pix doesn't have heat), chairs and rocky wares. Costumes and participation is encouraged for the movie but not the play. It'll be raucous.

Stay tuned for Crossroads' DVD release party for "Christmas on Mars" by psychedelic alternative rockers The Flaming Lips. The soon-to-be cult classic is seven years in the making and as weird as you like it. Get on the mailing list for details at crossroadsfilmsociety.com.

Next Saturday, Nov. 8, is the fifth Annual Mississippi Delta Blues Challenge at Indianola's Fletcher Park. All Mississippi blues acts compete for the top spot. Check out the new B.B. King museum while you're there. Visit indianolablues.org for more info.

Tickets are available now for the Mississippi Opera's season opener, Verdi's "Rigoletto," Saturday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 p.m. $20-$55. If you've never experienced the high-caliber performances bt the Mississippi Opera, this are the perfect time to do so. Tickets and info is available at msopera.org or 877-MS-OPERA.