His guitars were all lined up on the stage, so when the lights dimmed, it was surprising to hear a jangling Rickenbacker coming from somewhere in the hall.

Were they playing a Byrds record over the PA? No, from behind the curtain, out stepped Roger McGuinn, dressed in black with a black fedora, already a riff and a half into "My Back Pages."

It was a dramatic entrance for a solo show Saturday at the sold-out Carnegie Lecture Hall that found the former Byrds frontman tracing his folk roots back to the Old Town School in Chicago and playing everything fans would want to hear.

McGuinn -- who comes off like the Mister Rogers of psychedelic folk-rock -- presented the Calliope concert in a Storytellers format, introducing each song with a pithy anecdote. He talked about how he first had the notion to "put a Beatle beat to folk music," how Dylan tossed him the songwriting credit for "Ballad of Easy Rider," how David Crosby didn't want to do "Mr. Tambourine Man" and how McGuinn and the Martin Company crafted the idea for the HD-7, a guitar with a second G string -- for an extra ring.

And, man, can he play that thing. McGuinn, far from being just a rocker and Dylan interpreter, is a master acoustic folk and blues picker. There were many "How does he do that?" moments as McGuinn delivered Byrds classics such as "He Was a Friend of Mine" and "Bells of Rhymney," while unearthing gems such as Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd," the Clancy Brothers' "Finnegans Wake," Cab Calloway's "St. James Infirmary Blues" and Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee."

Somehow, McGuinn's voice at 65 is almost indistinguishable from the one he had at 25, and for some songs, he heightened the drama with a gorgeous echo effect.

The show-stopper was a version of "Eight Miles High," blending, as he says, "Coltrane, Ravi Shankar and Segovia" into something that can make your head spin and jaw drop. From there, he climaxed the set with electric versions of "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "Feel a Whole Lot Better."

Whatever McGuinn told us last week about not needing to fly with any other Byrds -- he was right.

-- Scott Mervis, Post-Gazette pop music critic

Without some seriously good balance, hip-hop shows and high heels can be a lethal combination. But you wouldn't know that from looking through the audience at Saturday night's Lupe Fiasco concert at Pitt's Fitzgerald Field House, a students-only show sponsored by Pitt Program Council.

Opener and Pittsburgh wunderkind Wiz Khalifa rolled on stage with a posse of no fewer than 15, bouncing his way through singles "Youngin' on His Grind," "Say Yeah" and the slower, glimmering "Be Easy." He bounded from side to side, flashing his "412 in flames" tattoo to ensure that the crowd wouldn't, or couldn't, forget he was a hometown talent. Still, Wiz seemed more focused on the showiness of it all (stage moves, water-bottle throwing, the sheer mass of his crew) than spitting words into the mic, making for an entertaining, if not particularly musical set.

After a quick break and with little introduction, Lupe Fiasco hit the stage in leather pants and black vinyl Converse sneakers with quite the smile, diving right into the bars that broke him -- his verse from Kanye West's "Touch the Sky." His sparse stage setup proved entirely beneficial; DJ Simon Says bobbed along accordingly on risers, while only rapper/hype man Bishop G and singer Sarah Green stood at his right and left, leaving the center empty for Fiasco to fill with his explosive energy.

As a spokesman for intelligent, anti-bling hip-hop (see also: Common, The Roots and Kanye), Fiasco was intent on proving that his talent wasn't hidden under the hook. During "Sunshine," Fiasco repeated the first verse three times, each with a different beat and rapped at a different speed. "Kick, Push" was performed with vein-in-forehead intensity, complete with a deafening, audience-performed chorus.

Fiasco hit his stride as he moved to tracks from "The Cool." He rhymed "The Coolest," a song that embodies his substance-over-singles musical mentality, entirely a cappella, with such a ferocious, focused delivery that he silenced the usually rowdy crowd. Unstoppable from there, Fiasco blazed through crowd favorites "Superstar" and "Daydreamin'" balancing frenzied movements with perfectly tight rhymes.

-- Justin Jacobs, for the Post-Gazette