The stack of rock & roll books on my desk was barely mined in this week’s review section. Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock & Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker (Farrar Strauss Giroux, $14, 226 pages) accompanied my reading of Morgana Welch’s Hollywood Diaries. In this book, Welch is grown up and her voice is one of many that paints details in this picturesque book about the fabled Los Angeles canyon. Walker eschews personal musings and lets the inhabitants reflect on the magic that lined streets with names like Wonderland Avenue. Graham Nash, Michael Des Barres, Mark Volman, Henry Diltz, and Gail Zappa are among the glittery whose memories of it are untarnished by time.

Walker excels in making the canyon come alive at its best, with the sounds of the Byrds drifting through the trees, Crosby, Stills & Nash lifting their voices together for the first time, and a particularly warm portrait of Cass Elliott of the Mamas & Papas. It was the Doors, Steppenwolf, Joni Mitchell, the Turtles, Frank Zappa, John Mayall – the California dreamers who rode the peaceful canyon breeze, if only until the idyll was shattered by the dark shadow of the Manson Family. If you loved Positively 4th Street, about adventures of Dylan, Baez, Farina, et al in the West Village, Laurel Canyon is its bookshelf neighbor.

Some of you are going to snicker, but I’ve grown fond of Avenged Sevenfold for much the same reason that I’ve been listening to a lot of 101X lately: Teenagers have invaded my house. That means Linkin Park’s “Bleedin’ Out” and Rihanna’s “Shut Up and Drive” rank way up on my current Top 10 (which actually is more of a Top 6), and I can identify two members of Fallout Boy. None of these causes as much uproar around my house as the recent release of Avenged Sevenfold’s new self-titled CD.

Johnny Christ is 23 years old and on tour with Avenged Sevenfold, one of the hottest alt-metal bands around, but the bassist is quick to point out he did not drink the blood of a king cobra during their recent jaunt to Jakarta, Indonesia. Aside from that, life with the Huntington Beach, Calif.-based quintet suits him just fine, especially coming off the band's smokin’ summer, which included headlining both the Warped Tour and Ozzfest followed by their fourth release that went No. 1 immediately on MTV’s Total Request Live. Currently on tour to promote the album, Johnny Christ called from the road to chew the phat before their La Zona Rosa gig this Saturday, Dec. 1.

Let us stop and reflect for a moment on Booker T. & the MGs. They returned to Austin for the second time this year last Thursday, and it was sweeeeeeeeeeeet soul music by the chairmen of the board. That they returned with William Bell and Eddie Floyd and had Jimmie Vaughan guest on guitar was merely icing on that black-and-white confection of a band.

Plus, I got to meet Eddie Floyd by accident and thanked him for doing the show by telling him about my nephew Tyler, who attends the American YouthWorks program, the recipients of the evening’s proceeds. Naturally, the best part was the schmoozing and seeing unexpected longtime friends like Seventies Playmate Janet Quist. It was such a glittery affair, I fully expected to run into my brother, and voila! There he was, two tables down, surrounded by more beautiful women than Brad Pitt announcing he’s single.

When I got the Redwalls' new self-titled CD a few weeks back, it hit the CD player immediately and has lingered nearby ever since. I even pulled out their 2005 release, De Nova, and played them back-to-back for an afternoon of butt-rockin' Britpop with a dollop of Chicago rock chutzpah. When I play the Redwalls, I'm 20 years old and nothing can go wrong.

Except I'm nowhere near 20 any longer and that cussin' you'll hear tonight is me looking for parking spot near Emo's, where the quartet plays with Rooney and the Polyphonic Spree. That's OK. I'll just hum "Modern Diet" and "Little Sister" as I walk the blocks just to watch their shaggy heads bob and their skinny butts shake.

My Chicago buddy Cynthia Plaster Caster loves these boys too, and they were cool (and smart) enough to pay homage at her birthday party in May. I love it when young bands are savvy enough to recognize getting the thumbs-up from old school groupies like Cynthia is as good as a four-star review in whatever the hip publication of the moment is.

Of course, I could be persuaded to drop by Waterloo Records and see their in-store at 5pm today as well. That way I can ask if they named themselves after the Brian Jacques books with all those cute little mice dressed as pirates. If so, their next album should be called Mossflower County.

November gets such a bad rap, represented by all those turkeys and pumpkins and pilgrims with muskets. The weather might dump freezing rain here but more likely we’ll see balmy days like the ones of late. That’s good news for the Texas Book Festival, which may soon need to change its name to the Texas Book and Music Festival if the entertainment gets any more ambitious.

Saturday's lineup in the music tent, next to the State Capitol, kicks off in the morning with Djembabes, Gypzee Heart, and Joel Guzman & Sarah Fox, but I love the afternoon bill: Ernie Mae Miller (1pm), Steven Fromholz (2pm), and Jesse Sublett (3pm). Miller’s appearances grow fewer and Fromholz is always a delight but Sublett’s recent solo gigs are a far cry from his days in the Skunks. Bear in mind that “solo” show means him playing acoustic guitar and upright bass plus an appearance by his son Dashiell and Jeff Jacoby. Sublett, who specializes in playing “noir blues and murder ballads” when he’s not script- or book-writing, will be introduced by special guest emcee Michael Connelly, author of Lincoln Lawyer and Black Echo.

Austin, 2007, is a much different place than when David Lowery started playing here in the mid-Eighties with Camper Van Beethoven and later, Cracker. That’s OK, because David Lowery has changed a lot too: Cracker’s recent CD Greenland reaped much critical praise but on this day his job as a parent is to decide whether or not his son is really sick or if this is just a Monday morning don’t-wanna-go-to-school tummyache.

Luckily for the boy, Lowery decides that yes, there’s cause for concern, so after making arrangements with the child’s mother, he turns the conversation to one of his current projects: making videos from songs like “Deep Oblivion” and “Baby, All Those Girls Meant Nothing to Me” and posting them on YouTube. This won’t surprise longtime fans of Lowery, whose dry, wry Nineties-era cult hits “Low” and “Teen Angst” sold out Liberty Lunch on a regular basis.

Though Lowery was born in San Antonio, his music takes its cues as much from folk-rock as alt-rock, reflecting the panoply of sounds from the various places he lived during his military childhood.

For her first full-length concert in Austin, Sinéad O’Connor performed much vocal shoegazing Sunday. She opened with “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” her upbeat hit from 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, followed by “I Am Stretched on Your Grave” from the same recording. “You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart” was a rarity plucked from the In the Name of the Father soundtrack (which made me pine for her glorious one-off “Ode to Billy Joe"), “The Lamb’s Book of Life,” from 2000’s Faith & Courage, and “Never Get Old,” which she introduced as “a song I wrote when I was 15.”

O’Connor sang beautifully, dressed in a man’s gray suit, hair still resolutely cropped, but only a handful of times did she seem truly engaged by her music. O’Connor’s career boasts little gray area but a lot of black and white. For an artistic subculture that loves rebels, her prickly passions have brought her more grief than respect among her fellow rock icons over the years.

Hardcore Country is back at the Broken Spoke. This homey little aggregation of local and national legends has been around since 2004, but they took a hiatus for a few months last year and earlier this year.

Alvin Crow leads the pack on fiddle and vocals, with Jason Crow on bass, Neil Flanz (Gram Parsons) on steel, and Pete Mitchell (Ernest Tubb) on guitar. Sometimes Pinetop Perkins shuffles in and plays a little piano. Spoke owner James White is always on hand to do numbers like “Mr. Honkytonk and Mr. Barstool,” Buck Owens’ “Cinderella,” and “Mountain Dew.” This show was a personal favorite of Clifford Antone.

Tuesday is shaping up for us older folks as a hot night for seeing music, even with the departure of the queen of Tuesday, Toni Price. Dale Watson returns from Europe and picks up his Tuesdays at the Belmont Oct. 23 at 7pm. That’s an opportunity to not only catch his new “Ameripolitan” style, but see the legendary Gene Kurtz, co-writer of “Treat Her Right,” on bass.

If you're a fan of Loreena McKennitt, you've most likely only heard her albums or watched her DVDs. She seldom tours and when she does it's rarely in this part of the country. Her show Tuesday night at Grand Prairie's Nokia Theatre outside Dallas - only her third performance ever in Texas - was a revelation to fans seeing her live for the first time. That voice, so crystalline on album, is even more gorgeous live.

Bathed in stagelights of rich jewel tones amid a set that suggested the Alhambra or perhaps a Gothic chapel, the Canadian-born performer captivated the audience of approximately 1,000 with her divine vocals and playing. Cherry picking songs from her recent CD, An Ancient Muse, and her back catalog, the concert was sublime, an event by a performer of unparalleled talent and vision.

McKennitt's love for Celtic culture found its way into traditional ballads such as "She Moved Through the Fair," "Bonny Portmore," and "The Bonny Swans," and poems set to music such as "The Lady of Shalott." Longtime favorites "The Mystic's Dream," "Raglan Road," and "Santiago" drew a rousing response from the audience, which consisted of a disproportionate number of women in Loreena McKennitt costumes and men with ponytails wearing puffy-sleeved shirts.