If I wasn’t heading down south to Portland for Cave Singers/Fleet Foxes part deux at the Doug Fir, here’s what would be on tap:Tonight! Friday, December 7 Some of the best things goin’ tonight:A benefit for Seattle Books to Prisoners at the underrated Conor Byrne in Ballard. They’re raising dough with Bad Livers and Broken Hearts a Tom Waits tribute on his 58th birthday with Armitage Shanks, The Blue Healers, Miss Mamie Lavona’s White Boy Band, and burlesque dancer Go-Go Amy.The Comet’s got the always entertaining and indie BOAT and Awesome, $6, 9 p.m. Chop Suey sports not to miss hip-hop with Macklemore taking the stage with Gabriel Teodros, Rajnii + Language Arts, KnowMads, Hella Maze, DJ Marc Sense. All ages, $7, 8 p.m. Saturday Tractor Tavern hosts the 5th Annual Double Album Christmas Show featuring Blonde on Blonde as performed by North Twin, Sean Nelson, the Tripwires and more. . . I’m Not There fan Brian J. Barr had this to say in this week’s Short List:The organist Al Kooper once said that Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde is the sound of 3 a.m. Dylan himself referred to the album’s tone as “that thin, wild mercury sound.” Either way, Blonde on Blonde sounds like nothing else you’ve ever heard. You don’t really listen to it so much as you experience it. Over two LPs, Dylan presents a world of such dizzying emotions it’s impossible to come out on the other end having any clue what just happened. It’s a world of wonky characters and a world of wonky American sounds: Salvation Army bands, guilty undertakers, blues riffs, railroad gin, country croons, cowboy mouths, jazz, leopard-skin pillbox hats, balladry, Shakespeare hitting on a French girl, ragtime, and even Mona Lisa wracked by the highway blues. It’s a big, wine-and-amphetamine stew Dylan has concocted here. And who would have the gall to tackle such insanity in its entirety in tribute form? Well, North Twin, Sean Nelson, the Tripwires, and others, that’s who. No matter the outcome, these brave souls deserve our support for trying to cover what surely must be painstaking.$7, 9:00pm.KEXP throws down at Showbox (at-the-market) with their annual Yule Benefit. Rachel Shimp says: KEXP’s big events throughout the year are hit-or-miss . . . for example, who is Pela (this summer’s station BBQ)? Does anyone with a personality like Citizen Cope (members’ gig at the Triple Door)? OK, I know the answers are “a band we should hear” and “yes,” but of all the great music the station plays, its live lineups can be less than incendiary. And don’t you want to get down during the holidays? Energy will be generated at this bash, thankfully, by the promising Brooklyn band Yeasayer, whose single “2080” is as good as their neighbors (geographically and sonically) Animal Collective’s work. And before them, Atlanta-based psych-rockers Dead Confederate will try to outshine our own mighty Feral Children and the Valley. So, everybody say yea. $20 adv./$25, 8 p.m. Former locals the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players roll back into town to the Crocodile, as a part of “The 8”, a series of worldwide concerts tonight celebrating Hanukkah. Says Rachel:In a series of worldwide concerts on the same day celebrating Hanukkah, it’s fitting that while N.Y.C. and L.A. get hip-hop and world-music acts, smarty-pants Seattle would be granted this avant-garde troupe, which is always well-received here. The Trachtenburg family’s melding of indie rock and vintage slideshows gives an unusual meaning to the phrase “performance art” by turning the imagined minutiae of strangers’ daily lives into folk-music epics. Their tour mates for this celebration (organized by Matisyahu’s former label, JDub Records) are Golem, reportedly “the biggest, baddest, and most raucous six-piece Gypsy punk band in the world.” $10 adv./$15, 8 p.m.