Are you curious about rock music’s influence in Asia? This weekend offers a couple of examples, plus a rare visit from a Cuban band, a return visit from a soul music veteran, and more.

Friday September 24

Los Angeles band Dengue Fever has a Cambodian lead singer, Chhom Nimol, and instrumentalists in love with 1960s Khmer rock and other international genres. The 2009 documentary Sleepwalking through the Mekong follows the band on its 2005 trip to Cambodia. Zac Holtzman and Senon Williams of Dengue Fever will attend tonight's screening along with director John Pirozzi. 7 p.m.  at the Sackler Gallery. Free.

The NEA National Heritage Fellowships Concert will honor a wide swath of musicians, including Yacub Addy, a Ghanaian drum master from Latham, N.Y. ; Jim "Texas Shorty" Chancellor, a fiddler from Rockwall, Texas; Del McCoury, bluegrass guitarist and singer from Nashville, Tenn.; Kamala Lakshmi Narayanan, Bharatanatyam Indian dancer from Mastic, N.Y.; Mike Rafferty, Irish flute player from Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.; and Ezequiel Torres, an Afro-Cuban drummer and drum builder from Miami. 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore. No advance free tickets are left, but a stand-by line begins at 7 p.m. for seats unclaimed by 7:45 p.m.

Saturday, September 25

Troker performs for free (and over webcast) from 6 to 7 p.m. at Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. This Mexican band melds hip-hop break beats, funk, jazz, fusion, pop, and cumbia.

Trombone Shorty (from New Orlean) and M.I.A. (U.K. via Sri Lanka)  perform at the sold-out Virgin FreeFest at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Sunday, Sept. 26

The Bluebird Blues Festival includes Clarence Carter (the veteran  Southern soul artist known for “Patches” and “Strokin”), Diunna Greenleaf & Blue Mercy (highly touted Houston group), Charles "Big Daddy" Stallings, M.S.G. – The Acoustic Band Trio, Barry Lee Pearson, Phil Wiggins & Rick Franklin, and Warner Williams and Jay Summerour. 12:30 to 6 p.m. at Prince Georges Community College. Free.

Locos por Juana performs for free (and via webcast) from 6 to 7 p.m. at Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. This Miami Latin alternative band plays a combination of cumbia, reggae, rock, and more.

Veteran Japanese pop-punk trio Shonen Knife performs at the Rock & Roll Hotel. 8 p.m.$15.

Orquesta Bamboleo, a large, funky Cuban timba band with plenty of horns and percussion, at performs the Star Lounge in Annandale.  $30-40.

In the beginning of My Appetite for Destruction, Adler half-boasts, half-confesses, “I’m the undisputed all-time booze-chugging, pill-gobbling, drug-shooting, Katrina-caliber fuckup. Throughout my wretched life there isn’t a friend, family member or fantastic opportunity that I haven’t shoved into a blender and mutilated.” It's true—he’s been to hell and back more times than he can remember and it’s amazing that he’s even alive to tell this story. Adler’s antics are definitely worthy of a book. After all, this is the guy who OD-ed so many times you would have thought it was his hobby, took more drugs than all of the Doors combined, managed to piss off everyone from Rod Stewart to Eddie Van Halen, and played on one of the greatest albums of all time. So what went wrong?

Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt and Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods set the bar high when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll bios, so you really need to bring it if you want to impress readers. My Appetite for Destruction is written as a stream of memories—without real scenes or true character development—which will ultimately leave readers bored and uninterested amid the mayhem. They'll desperately want to care, but the book has a whiney, self-righteous tone that may work well for the confessional interviews on Sober House, but fails in book form.

The pacing is incredibly off-kilter (think either Use Your Illusion album). It takes half the book before Adler gets to Appetite for Destruction, but he spends precious little time on this rich artistic period in his career before continuing his me-me-me trip. The second half of the book bemoans the nearly two-decade-long shitstorm that ensued after he was kicked out of the band, but it feels repetitive and dull. Drugs. Girls. Mayhem. Arrests. Brushes with Death. Hospital trips. Repeat. It’s hard to make overdoses, sexual conquests, and felonious behavior boring, but Adler manages to do it. It’s too bad, because there’s a good story here. You just won’t find it in the pages of My Appetite for Destruction.

NPR Music reports that Columbia is releasing Tell Tale Signs—Volume 8 of the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series—on October 7. (Click here for full streaming audio.) The new two-disc album chronicles a period of resurgence for the poet laureate of rock 'n roll, involving several excellent bands, lots of lovely wordplay, and a tasteful minimum of proselytization.

Previous entries in the (thoroughly official and hardly bootleg) series include the 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (Judas, anyone?), Live 1975 (which documents the Rolling Thunder Tour), and the soundtrack from Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home.

So what's new in this iteration? Much over which to rejoice, in fact. Besides offering a far crisper sound than any of the previous seven volumes, Tell Tale Signs features solid alt-takes from Oh, Mercy ("Most of the Time" and "Everything Is Broken," especially), some fun David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley collaborations, two (two!) versions of "Mississippi" (a neat little unreleased tune left in the wake of Time Out of Mind), and a jivin' live version of "Cocaine Blues."

Listen below to "Dreamin' of You," the pre-release single also available for free download here.

Bob Dylan, "Dreamin' of You":

Photo courtesy of JL2003