The last weekend of the year starts out with a bang tonight at Mick's with singer-songwriter Joe Budenholzer's annual live music/tribute show. Budenholzer is a Nebraska native residing in Scotland whose band, Backworld, is influenced by "English folk music, certain aspects of '60s psychedelia, and Christian mysticism," according to the Backworld website. "Recently, while recording the upcoming album, Good Infection, he enlisted the talents of Isobel Campbell (Belle & Sebastian, Gentle Waves), David Tibet (Current 93) and Drew McDowall (Coil) to contribute vocals and other textures to the new songs." Sounds interesting. For the tonight's live set, Budenholzer will enlist the talents of Dereck Higgins on bass, Gary Foster on drums and Bill Eustice on keyboards. The show will be divided into three sets. The first is devoted to Backworld music. The second is a performance of Iggy Pop's 1977 classic The Idiot in its entirety, while the last set will be a free-for-all under the moniker Small Creatures that will feature guest artists (among them, The Faint's Todd Baechle?), a performance of a Higgins song as well as a Digital Sex song featuring Sex frontman Stephen Sheehan. I suspect this will be an SRO event. $7, 9 p.m.

Then there's New Year's Eve and, not surprisingly, no shows that I'm aware of. That's nothing new. New Year's is notorious for its lack of original music -- cover bands rule the night, as it should be, I suppose. While you're all out dodging drunken cars, I'll be checking out this brave new talent named Ryan Seacrest (Dick Clark's heir apparent? Let's hope not.).

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