Some observations, rants, and ramblings, as the 32nd annual Rock and Roll Rumble preliminary week heads into a much-needed day off.

-- Off the top, if you view the Rumble as a competition, you’re approaching it the wrong way. This is, at its root, a Boston music festival, where two-dozen bands get to take over a club for an entire week and play for new faces, different crowds, and not just a room full of friends.

Perhaps the most famous ribs in Boston last year were the ones Jacoby Ellsbury fractured, ribs that forced the Red Sox outfielder to sit out most of the 2010 season. Now that the Fenway heartthrob is all healed up, 2011’s ribs to watch are of the rock-n-roll variety. One of the louder members of our Class of 2011, RIBS the band are poised for a breakthrough.

Sometime this year, we’ll get a fresh new studio album from HALLELUJAH THE HILLS. Until then, there’s this internet-only live cut of “Nightingale Lightning,” which they recorded last summer on Woody Guthrie’s birthday at a gig in Toronto while on tour with Titus Andronicus. The show has a special place in the hearts of the folksy rock band after they were detained by the border patrol for more than three hours and their van was torn to shreds, en route back to the States.

Before the local music community got together en masse at Sunday's Boston Music Awards, there was a sort-of pre-party for the rock scene a day earlier at T. T. The Bear's Place in Cambridge. Organized by Boston Band Crush, six acts -- as well as friends and family of the Di Guardia family -- rallied together for the Calling All Angels: Friends of Emilia benefit show, which raised money for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

STEREO TELESCOPE are feeling the love.

Last week, the year-old Brighton-based electro-pop duo received a nomination for Best Electronic Act in the 2010 Boston Music Awards (a beat-fest grudge match with Bodega Girls, Mystery Roar, Coralcola and Southern Belle), then over the weekend at Great Scott they repped our city proud alongside white-hot Brooklyn cats Class Actress and Small Black.

Here's the final schedule and lineup for tonight's Billy Ruane Memorial Birthday Bash at both the Middle East and T.T. The Bear's Place in Cambridge. The song in the above video is "Beluga" by Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, who closes up the Mid East gig before everyone joins up on stage for one last salute. Should be a hell of a night, and advance tickets to both venues are strongly encouraged.

There’s something about Woven Bones’ static garage sound — sharing that fossilized Jesus & Mary Chain DNA with the likes of modern noise-polluters A Place To Bury Strangers, the Vandelles and Screen Vinyl Image — that always makes me close my eyes real tight and envision armies of skeletons dancing disjointedly across graveyards.

If yesterday featured the spirit of CMJ in Allston, as a bunch of cool bands played across multiple venues within blocks of each other, then a taste of real-deal one-stop CMJ is provided under a single roof tonight in Cambridge. Four bands hit up T.T. The Bear’s Place in Mental Square, from all parts of the world (infantree out of Los Angeles, Australia’s Philadelphia Grand Jury, Ume from Austin and Japan’s Boom Boom Satellites), all in town tonight as a pitstop before dolling up NYC to play for kids with badges at CMJ.

Phoenix contributors P. Nick Curran and Addison Post recently spent a night with this week's Cellars by Starlight subjects Night Fruit, and in case you missed that on our music page, we decided to post it here to On The Download.

Night Fruit kick off a fantabulous bill this Saturday at T.T. The Bear's Place in Cambridge, alongside Film School, The Depreciation Guild, and fellow Bostonians Static of the Gods.

Bettie Serveert couldn’t get to Cambridge last week, but that’s not stopping them from taking Boston out on tour with them.

Phoenix cover sensations Mean Creek have been tapped to open three midwest dates for Matador Records' Dutch indie veterans later this week, right after wrapping up a short run with Dead Confederate that hit the Middle East last night and concludes tonight at Jerky’s in Providence.

Part of the fun in our annual "50 Bands in 50 States" feature is unearthing new, up-and-coming acts in those pesky landlocked states that may not have hit our collective coastal pulse. Nebraska, perhaps the grandest fly-over state of them all, is the proud home of Laura Burhenn's the Mynabirds, who hit T.

It was an action-packed night in Central Square last night, with each of the three Cambridge rock-club rooms hosting more-than-solid Thursday Night bills -- Dragonette, Shy Child and Stereo Telescope at the Mid East down, Tracy Bonham and Bleu upstairs and T.T. The Bear's offering up a stacked lineup of Miniature Tigers, Spinto Band, Magic Magic and Mt.

This just in: the original lineup of '90s Boston indie rock luminaries Come -- Thalia Zedek, Chris Brokaw, Arthur Johnson and Sean O'Brien -- will re-form for a one-off at T.T. The Bear's in Cambridge on Sept. 26. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 9 a.m. through TicketWeb.

Come will then perform later in the week at the Matador Records 21st anniversary party in Las Vegas.

A nice moment during the dust cloud from Bear In Heaven on Vimeo.

With Brooklyn synth-gazers Bear in Heaven rolling into T.T. The Bear's Place tonight, we figured it was appropriate to fondly recall those pre-Gulf Coast oil spill halcyon days, when our lone ecological threat was an angry volcano in Iceland.