Alternative-rock fans will find October a little less blue with the area arrival of Blue October, the musicians' October 25 concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center boasting performances from a 21-year repertoire that includes 11 top-40 singles and such chart-topping studio albums as Any Man in America, Sway, and Home.

One of the provisions of the sweeping state pension-reform law passed in 2010 has always stuck in the craw of first-responders.

Police and (especially) firefighter unions fought the local government lobby for decades to increase survivor benefits, and then they watched many of those hard-fought wins get wiped away when the General Assembly decided it had to lower pension benefits for new hires to avoid a fiscal catastrophe.

If you're a fan of globe-trotting action thrillers, and a fan of Will Smith, what could be more fun than Gemini Man, director Ang Lee's stunt-heavy entertainment that gives you two Smiths for the price of one? Just about anything, it turns out, because Lee's latest is a crushing bore: heavy-spirited when it needs to be light – which is pretty much all the time – and so serious about its objectively ridiculous plot that we're given little choice but to laugh at it. Speaking on behalf of my fellow Gemini males, we deserve better representation than this.

A giant, marathon-style bill of noise, ambient, and experimental music – primarily sourced from the Quad Cities, but extending its reach across the Midwest and beyond – lands at Rozz-Tox on October 19 under the title Weird Town 6.

On October 11 and 12, an autumnal celebration of art will fill five venues in downtown Rock Island as MidCoast Fine Arts hosts Rock the Arts, with live music, demonstrations, and more taking place at the Quad City Arts Center, the NormaLeah Cancer Initiative, The Shoppes on 2nd, DeSoto Pottery Studio, and The ARTery/MidCoast Gallery West.

The winner of a staggering 10 Tony Awards that the New York Daily News deemed “vivid and smart” as it “brilliantly weaves plot, music, and dance together,” the stage sensation Billy Elliot: The Musical hoofs its way into Moline's Spotlight Theatre October 18 through 27, this joyous celebration of community and individuality leading Bloomberg News to rave that the show “really does have something for everyone – and that something is, gloriously, art.”

Drawings and photographs by a pair of gifted Midwestern artists will fill the Quad City Arts Center Gallery from October 18 through December 6, with the Rock Island venue housing the exhibits Sky Weave, featuring new works by Des Moines' Emily Newman, and The Set Table: Forks on the Left, Metaphors on the Right, boasting the talents of Muscatine-based photographer Randy Richmond.

Arriving just in time for Halloween, monsters – albeit family-friendly ones – will be haunting the halls of Bettendorf's Family Museum on October 20 in the venue's special event Scarecrow Shenanigans: Monster Takeover, a holiday-themed day boasting activities, crafts, experiments, presentations, displays, performances, and plenty of ghoulish guests.

Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Greta Ruth brings her strain of lush, progressive folk to the Rozz-Tox stage on October 17.