Quick Hits

by LUKE BAUMGARTEN & r & & r & & lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & A & lt;/span & nother week, another benefit. This time it's the ROCK THE RIBBON CANCER BENEFIT featuring atmospheric rockers Character Flaw, Exit Zero and Seven Cycles.





The format is a little strange. Tickets are free, making it the least expensive benefit ever. It's still technically a benefit because the venue is kicking in one dollar for every ticket turned in. So, you go see a rock show, you spend nothing, and, on top of that, you get to feel like a philanthropist. Pretty nice.





Of course, it's not the full philanthropic experience. Since you didn't actually give any money, you don't get to write anything off on the ol' 1040.





-- LUKE BAUMGARTEN





American Cancer Society Benefit with Character Flaw, Exit Zero and Seven Cycles at the Big Easy on Saturday, April 28, at 7 pm. Free. Tickets can be picked up at Mark's Guitar, Hot Topic, Atmosphere, All-American Tattoo and Boo Radley's, and, on the day of show only, at the Big Easy.





& lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & I & lt;/span & t's usually a bad sign when one of the three MySpace genre-designators a band uses is "comedy." It puts them in dubious company with such acts as Nuns With Guns, the Evasive Tripwires and Paco the Lowrider Clown. If the latter isn't a grotesque caricature yet, he will be.





Indeed, that's kinda how all those bands end up -- if not in sickening cultural caricatures, than in caricatures of themselves. Remember Presidents of the United States of America? A good album of cute songs about cute animals turned into several more really atrocious albums of songs about cute animals. Seattle's A GUN THAT SHOOTS KNIVES, though, is only on its first album. As such, the band really isn't all that bad. Or maybe these are musicians who are so bad, they're good. Or maybe we're just too enamored with the clouds covering their genitals and the cloth rainbows issuing from their guitars to notice that they really suck. One way to find out...





-- LUKE BAUMGARTEN





A Gun That Shoots Knives with Thunder Monkey and Lack of Respect at the Spread on Monday, April 30, at 8 pm. $5. Call 456-4515.





& lt;span class= & quot;dropcap & quot; & Y & lt;/span & ou know you've succeeded at keeping an ultra-low profile when you're introduced on The Merv Griffin Show as Andy Kaufman and no one seems to know you're not him. It means that, not only is your personality amorphous, no one's even really sure what you look like. By that point, LEON REDBONE had been on Saturday Night Live, he'd been in Rolling Stone and he'd put out an album or two for Warner Brothers. Thirty years later, we're still not sure exactly what he looks like.





Google Image-search him. Find anything other than a dude in jet-black glasses, brimmed hat (most likely a fedora) and push-broom mustache? We didn't either.





Redbone is one of those people whom everyone recognizes but few can put a name to. Counterintuitively, it's probably exactly that quirky mystery that's earned him his fame. Ragtime isn't much of a star vehicle, so he's had to make it up along the way.





-- LUKE BAUMGARTEN





Leon Redbone at the Bing on Wednesday, May 2, at 7:30 pm. $37. Visit www.ticketswest.com or call 325-SEAT.