BEST BETS Friday 5/4

SANTA ANA

8pm

Pop Music

In the finest tradition of “the show must go on,” members of the Jerry Garcia Band haven’t let a little thing like a dead namesake slow them down. Actually, Arista Records recently released a new JGB album, “Shining Star,” consisting of previously unreleased performances. So his former cohorts--touring as Melvin Seals & the JGB Band--keep his spirit alive doing what they always did in Garcia’s Grateful Dead side project: playing Jerry-ized versions of other writers’ songs.

* Melvin Seals & the JGB Band, Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. With Family Tree, Solomon Grundy. 8 p.m. $15 to $17. (714) 957-0600.

SANTA ANA

8pm

Theater

“Joined at the Head” is about Maggie, a successful but lonely novelist who hooks up with her old high school flame years later while on a book tour. Jim, a humble schoolteacher, is deeply in love with his wife, but she is fighting a desperate battle with cancer. Playwright Catherine Butterfield, who based the story on events that happened to her, spices the play with humor and plays games with narrative form. She lets the other characters interrupt Maggie, the narrator, to clue in the audience about her evasions and misunderstandings. The 1992 play, staged in 1997 by the Laguna Playhouse and now presented in a Cal State Fullerton student production, is entertaining yet clear-eyed in its look at lives led in isolation and love forced to live in the shadow of sickness and mortality.

* “Joined at the Head,” Grand Central Art Center, 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Opens tonight. Thursday and Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 6:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10. (714) 278-3371 or https://www.tickets.com.