THE MOVING FRONT as THE CLASH, 2008

  • THE MOVING FRONT as THE CLASH, 2008

“THE GREAT HALLOWEEN COVER-UP”
6:30 p.m., Vino’s. $7-$10.

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“HALLOWEEN COVER-UP 2010”
9 p.m., White Water Tavern. $5.

Every year since 2003, the Arkansas Community Arts Cooperative has thrown a big Halloween blowout in which local acts impersonate national ones in look and song. Inevitably the line-up is hit or miss. Bands either go all-out and practice like crazy and recruit girlfriends to sing back-up (like the American Princes did when they played, near flawlessly, as The Pixies) or they spend too much time finding the perfect wig, don’t practice and spend their time onstage muddling through your favorite songs. If this year’s roster follows the former path, it’ll be epic. The line-up includes Mandy McBryde as Loretta Lynn, Mad Trucker and Jen Shaw as Portishead, Real Live Tigers as Bruce Springsteen, (clap!)Kidzpop as Belle & Sebastian, Osyrus as Common and The Flaming Death Faeries as KISS. Dress-up and you’ll save $3 on the $10 cover charge.

White Water Tavern came later to the party, but its track record — The Libras as Fleetwood Mac, The Good Fear as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (check out “Breakdown” for proof), The Moving Front as The Clash (again, “London Calling”) — has been just about uniformly great. This year, three acts try to keep the streak alive. The Moving Front take on punk-pop icons The Jam, while two collectives take on perhaps the most beloved albums of ’90s indiedom: A large group of friends of the late Little Rock musician Luke Hunsicker, who movingly paid tribute to him at a memorial service, come together to do Neutral Milk Hotel’s spectral “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” while members of the local literary collective [we at the book] try on songs from Weezer’s emo classic “Pinkerton.”

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