A unique blackbox theater opens its doors tonight, far outside of the Theater District, in the Great Arrow Industrial Center. The new theater’s founder and artistic director Amy Taravella (pictured) says, “As an artist myself, I’ve always looked for this kind of space. Since I never found it, I decided to create it.” Taravella is also co-director, choreographer and dancer with Buffalo Contemporary Dance, and what she’s created is a large yet intimate venue that can host all kinds of productions and multi-media performances. The opening night event will feature Buffalo native gone jazz star Bobby Militello in a special guest appearance, along with the premiere of Bikini Launch, a dance theater piece concieved and choreographed by Taravella. The following night’s performance features David Kane of Them Jazzbeards, who composed the original score for Bikini Launch. ALT Theatre’s seating allows for direct and unobstructed sight lines, a layout carefully designed for both audience and performers. ALT plans to host dance, theater, burlesque, cabaret, stand-up, spoken word and more, if there can be anything more. The stage space is large, the directors are open to innovate ideas and a host of local (and some imported) talent is involved. What more could you want? Look for an upcoming five-performance run by Buffalo Contemporary Dance as well, scheduled for November 10-17.

As a teenager in East Aurora, I had a friend whose engineer father calculated the optimal length and attitude an antenna needed to be to pick up WBNY, so that his two sons could hear the music that they craved and that only Buffalo State’s student-run radio station played. This was no mean feat; a car radio could hardly pick up WBNY’s signal below North Street at the time (and it still struggles, most unfortunately for Allentown denizens). In that groundbreaking era, WBNY was helmed by Tom Calderone, now general manager for VH1; locally renowned alumni include Rich Wall, Tina Peel, Gabe DiMaio and Byron Brown. This weekend the station celebrates its 25th anniversary with a weekend of programs, including a panel discussion called “The Multi-Platform World: Information 24/7” to be presented on Friday, October 26, at 3:30pm in the Bulger Communication Center. The discussion features Judith Regan (pictured above), best known for publishing celebrity biographies such as Howard Stern’s Private Parts. She made headlines in the last year for her attempt to publish O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It. For a complete list of seminars and speakers, visit wbnyalumni.com. If you’re still mostly interested in the music, tune in to 91.3FM: Alumni DJs will be filling slots all weekend. Or check out the return of the English Beat on Saturday, October 27 at 8pm; they were the first band WBNY ever brought to Buff State, back in April 1983.

So you decided to dress up as vintage W. Axl Rose, Flavor Flav or maybe MC5’s Rob Tyner complete with a giant afro. You need somewhere special to wear your costume this All Hallowed Eve? Maybe Mohawk Place is not a bad stop. It’s normally the first stop for the Queen City’s rock enthusiasts anyway, so it’s a natural on the most rock and roll holiday. The venerable downtown music club just happens to be hosting a heck of a show that night, to boot. Direct from the Isle of Man—the tiny, self-governing Celtic stronghold clustered in the British Isles—comes Back Door Slam, a power trio with no member over 21 years that is making a lot of noise on stage and off. Earlier this year, Seattle Time writer Patrick McDonald said hearing them was like hearing “the spirit of Jimi Hendrix.” That’s no mistake. Davy Knowles, the band’s 20-year-old guitarist, singer and principal songwriter says they draw heavily from Hendrix and British blues guitarists like Peter Green, John Mayall, Rory Gallagher and Eric Clapton. Back Door Slam’s version of Blind Joe Reynolds’ “Outside Woman Blues” is worthy of the version popularized by Clapton and Cream on Disraeli Gears. Support on this Halloween show comes from two of Buffalo’s bands who can alchemistically meld rock, garage-psych and a touch of the blues: Chylde and the Found.

Mount Eerie is Washington State’s Phil Elverum, and various friends with whom he collaborates on records that blend grandiose artistic ambitions with lo-fi introspection. Mount Eerie is also the title of the last album Elverum released with the Microphones, a band that similarly consisted of Elverum with friends. A conceptual successor to the Microphones’ underground classic The Glow Pt. 2, 2003’s experimental Mount Eerie found Elverum dying, and ultimately discovering “the face of the Universe.” The album, which consisted of five long songs that confounded some fans, appeared to represent the culmination of Elverum’s output with the Microphones. “I went on an endless tour and stopped for the winter in northern Norway and died,” he once said. “The next spring I returned and pretended I was a different person and a different ‘band’ and ‘artist’ and ‘singer’ and everything. I began calling my songs ‘Mt. Eerie’ songs and working slowly on a new idea: Dark mountain, Mount Eerie, cold songs, grandmother’s face, and so on.” In both incarnations of his musical persona, Elverum is a cult figure adored for the cerebral musical riddles he presents, as well as the unusual packaging of his work—like the No Flashlight album, a vinyl release wrapped in a 6’x5’ double sided explanation sheet covered in notes, poems, drawings and photos alongside a CD version of the record. Possibly culminating this stage of his evolution, this year saw the release of both Mt Eerie pts. 6 & 7, a photographic coffee table book (plus a 10” record) and Don’t Smoke/Get Off the Internet, a 7” issued under the Microphones moniker. If all this seems confusing, you’ll just have to experience Elv(e)rum’s current songs of contented solitude for yourself when he rolls into Soundlab on Halloween, along with Privacy and Al Larson.