For your consideration: Is Don Dixon the American Nick Lowe? Or is Nick Lowe the British Don Dixon? Let's go to the video tape.

• After playing in regionally successful bar bands (Dixon's Arrogance in Chapel Hill to Lowe's Brinsley Schwarz in England), both men produced key albums for future hall-of-famers -- R.E.M. for Dixon, Elvis Costello for Lowe.
• As bass players, support roles come naturally to both. Not coincidentally, each has had success writing hits for others. In 1992, Curtis Stigers' cover of Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" appeared on the mega-massive soundtrack to Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard," while Joe Cocker had a worldwide hit with Dixon's "I Can Hear the River."
• Both have a quirky sense of humor that sometimes manifests itself in oddball album-title puns -- witness Dixon's "(If) I'm A Ham, Well You're A Sausage" and Lowe's "The Abominable Showman."
• Dixon appears on the 2005 Lowe tribute album "Lowe Profile."
• Both are unafraid to deal with adult themes. A few years back, Dixon put out a song called "All I Wanted," sung as an angry lecture by an 85-year-old man. And Lowe's latest album is a crooning set of classy country soul titled, fittingly enough, "At My Age" (Lowe is 59, Dixon 57).

"A lot of the similarity is we're close to the same age and influenced by a lot of the same records," Dixon says. "He was making cheap records in England at the same time I was making cheap records in the U.S., both of us trying to capture some of the things we liked about old records. I love the records he's doing now, too, although he's way more grown-up than I am."

Touring behind "At My Age," Lowe plays Wednesday at the Carrboro ArtsCenter. Dixon has a new album recorded with his wife Marti Jones just out, "Lucky Stars: New Lullabies for Old Souls," and another on the way called "The Nu-Look" -- which should be out by the time he plays Raleigh's Berkeley Cafe on June 13.

David Menconi

In a Cronenberg zone

If you're a David Cronenberg fan, just like many of us sick freaks here at Pop Life, chances are you've already bought your tickets for this month's Retrofantasma double feature at Durham's Carolina Theatre. This evening, the theater will be screening the Canadian horror master's Christopher Walken-heavy adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dead Zone" from 1983, immediately followed by his 1979 squirmfest "The Brood."

PL got prepared for this certain-to-disturb night by talking with Jason Shawhan, film critic for the Nashville-based paper All the Rage, movie theater employee and all-around Cronenberg freak. As a man who has sat through his share of Cronenberg double bills (he's even programmed a couple), he's as psyched about this two-shot as we are. It's just a shame he won't be there for it.

PL: When did you start feeling Cronenberg's work?

JS: My first actual encounter with Cronenberg's work was "Faith Healer," an episode he directed of "Friday the 13th: The Series." I first got hard-core into Cronenberg after seeing "Crash" (on opening day in Tampa, Florida, with my dad). I had gone because of the scandal, because of Holly Hunter and because I try and support any NC-17 film that looks halfway interesting. Ever since then, his films have always been a part of my life.

PL: What are your favorites in the Cronenberg canon?

JS: "Crash." "Naked Lunch." "Videodrome." "eXistenZ." And, even though I think it's probably his weakest film on the whole, the ideas in "Scanners" are so amazing that I'll still show it love whenever I can.

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