A Musical Guide to Inauguration Weekend

9. The People's Inaugural Ball, featuring Blaqstarr (Tuesday at the Rock and Roll Hotel. $10). The venue sounds kinda strange (the day after the inauguration, they offer "amateur female jello wrestling"), but it'd still be fun to spend inauguration night getting crunk with a legend of Baltimore club music.

8. Adele (Saturday at the 9:30 Club. Sold out). Not sure whether she'll be good live. But at least you can count on hearing that one song. Hard to imagine that one being less than great.

7. Raveonettes (Saturday at the Black Cat. $15-17). Remarkable that this show isn't yet sold out. Get your tickets now, boys and girls. 

6. Rock The Vote presents "Hey, America Feels Kinda Cool Again," featuring the Beastie Boys, Sheryl Crow and Citizen Cope (Monday at 9:30 Club. Sold out). If America is cool again, that fact has very little to do with Sheryl Crow. Still, it's great to live in the country that gave the world the Beastie Boys. 

5. The Big Shoulders Inauguration Ball, featuring Andrew Bird, Ted Leo, Tortoise, Waco Brothers, Jon Langford, Sally Timms, David "Honeyboy" Edwards and author Thomas Frank. (Monday at the Black Cat. Sold out). Between sets, see if you can get Honeyboy, who was born in 1915, to tell you stories about the Depression. 

4. Let Freedom Ring, featuring Aretha Franklin (Monday at the Kennedy Center. Free tickets distributed at 4 p.m. on the day of show). If you're willing to stand in line, you can see the Queen of Soul for free. What a country! 

3. Frightened Rabbit (Monday at the Rock and Roll Hotel. $12). A former Paste intern tipped me off to this show, which seems likely to take the indie-rock overflow crowd that couldn't get into the Black Cat.  

2. Jay-Z (Monday at Warner Theatre. $100-500). Exorbitant ticket prices aside, this one could be hard to beat. 

1. We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration At The Lincoln Memorial, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Bono, Mary J. Blige, Garth Brooks, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, John Mellencamp, Usher, Stevie Wonder, Shakira and more (Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial. Free). The grandaddy of all inaugural concerts. There will also be readings by Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III and, yes, Queen Latifah. If you can't be there, HBO will—according to the official inaugural blog, y'all—broadcast the show from 7 to 9 p.m. "on an open signal, working with all of its distributors to allow Americans across the country with access to cable, telcos or satellite television to enjoy the Opening Celebration for free."