Start putting out heartland-ish rock and you're bound to attract an audience partially made up of drunken brodudes. That’s the lesson to take from former D Generation frontman-turned-roots-rocker Jesse Malin’s show last night at TT’s, during which it was hard to tell if the group in the center of the room yelling out over a few of the singer's acoustic numbers and his occasionally verbose song introductions were disciples or haters.

Maybe it was the fact that they were coming after the personality-free Robbers on High Street, maybe I was in need of a good kick in the ass...whatever it was the Red Walls, a band whose records I’ve never been particularly enamored with, damn near blew me away Tuesday night at TT’s. Extremely quick rundown follows:

I for a second thought the very talented local singer/songwriter Jeffrey Simmons was that lanky Inman Square man who stands in a suit under an umbrella, rain or shine, quietly hawking his self-made publication, Geograflight (sp?), from the sidewalk. It's the MySpace photos he has posted of himself that did it. In them, Simmons, another tallish skinny marink, is dressed dapper (admittedly, though, he's snazzier than Geograflight man who looks like a funeral attendant in that dire suit of his) in a blazer.

CLIPSE
February 27 at the Middle East
Tix $22 in advance, $22 at the door
On sale January 25 through Ticketmaster

Pusha T and Malice in the house that indie-rock built? Oh, fuck yes. Frankly, we've never fully understood why hip-hop touring has failed to keep pace with its commercial unit-shifting power: even if you factor in institutional racism, performer unreliability, and ridiculous ticket prices, you still don't get record-of-the-year candle-men like T.