G. Love & Special Sauce

Say what you will about frat dudes and sorority chicks, they collectively have the power to keep the musical dead alive — actual dead (like Bob Marley and Jerry Garcia) and those merely left for dead (like Counting Crows and 311). Now, I'm not suggesting that the Philly-born G. Love(and backing band Special Sauce) had that in mind when he sang, "I like cold beverage, yeah" on his eponymous 1994 debut album. But once that song reached the ears of besotted Greeks, they adopted the former street busker like a puppy. And so, after a half-dozen or so discs containing rumpled blues grooves crossed with white-boy hip-hop and '60s garage-soul — and without the benefit of widespread radio play or much press attention — he's still filling venues and moving respectable units.

— Michael Alan Goldberg

8 p.m. Friday, July 13. Budweiser Main Stage, on the Arch grounds, as part of Live on the Levee. Free. 314-434-3434.