Indie-rock group Gin Blossoms, best known for its 1990s-style jangle-pop sound derived from R.E.M. and the Replacements, performs at the Mahaiwe on Friday, March 6, at 8pm. The Grammy Award-nominated Gin Blossoms were one of the top alt-rock bands of the 1990s. The group’s Top 40 hits like “Hey Jealousy” and “Follow You Down” kept the band’s fresh, bright, melodic sound on the radio at a time when grunge-rock ruled the airwaves. Hook-filled, harmony-laden numbers like “’Til I Hear It From You” and “Found Out About You” looked back to the Beatles and the Byrds, more in sync with Counting Crows than Pearl Jam.

 

Trans standup comedian Becca Blackwell brings a provocative and funny personal tale of being adopted into a religious Midwestern family, molested, trained to be a girl, but plagued by the question, “How do I become a man, and do I even want that?” to Club B10 at MASS MoCA on Saturday, March 7, at 8pm.

 

Chris Brashear, Jim Henry, and Paul Kochanski join forces to pay tribute to legendary roots musician Doc Watson at Dewey Hall in Sheffield on Friday, March 6, at 7:30. Doc Watson influenced generations of acoustic guitarists with his patented flatpicking and fingerpicking styles, soulful singing, and rich repertoire of ballads and popular songs.

 

Cabaret-rock singer-songwriter Nellie McKay brings her uniquely eccentric blend of pop, rock, jazz and hip-hop to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, March 8, at 8pm. McKay has released seven full-length albums, including “Normal as Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day” and “My Weekly Reader,” featuring music of the 1960s, produced by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. Most recently, she released a pair of albums, “Bagatelles” and “Sister Orchid,” in which she put her idiosyncratic touch to pre-rock pop standards.

 

Barrington Stage Company’s 10X10 New Play Festival continues its run tonight through March 8, on the St. Germain Stage, located at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center  in Pittsfield, Mass. Where else can you see 10, new, 10-minute plays all in one sitting? And the great thing is, if you don’t like a play, in less than 10 minutes it will be over.

 

The Berkshire International Film Festival screens The Story of Plastic, a seething exposé uncovering the ugly truth behind the current global plastic pollution crisis, at the Daniel Arts Center at Simon’s Rock College on Sunday, March 8, at 3pm. The film features striking footage shot over three continents illustrating the ongoing catastrophe: fields of garbage, veritable mountains of trash, rivers and seas clogged with waste, and skies choked with the poisonous runoff from plastic production and recycling processes with no end in sight. Original animations, interviews with experts and activists, and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the flood of plastic smothering ecosystems and poisoning communities around the world — and the global movement rising up in response.

 

Recent work by painter Gregory Amenoff will go on view in Disposition, the inaugural exhibition at the new Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday, March 7, with a reception at 5-7pm. Amenoff (American, b. 1948) has had over fifty one-person exhibitions in museums and galleries nationally and internationally. His work is in the permanent collection of more than thirty museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He served as President of the National Academy of Design from 2001-2005, is a founding board member of the CUE Art Foundation, and has taught at Columbia University for more than 25 years, where he holds the Eve and Herman Gelman Chair of Visual Arts.