Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• James Brown may have been the hardest working man in show business, but Khalid Tabbara will be the hardest working man on Halloween.

The Austintown native will be doing triple duty for a show Friday at Westside Bowl in Youngstown.

His current music project is MUNNYCAT, the L.A. based indie pop duo featuring Tabbara as Khaledzou and his wife, Hubbard native Katianne Timko-Tabbara, as K808. It will be their first local show since the release of MUNNYCAT’s album “til death do us art” in August.

Before MUNNYCAT, Tabbara fronted the Youngstown indie rock band The Zou, and Friday’s event also will serve as a Zou reunion with the band playing its first show together in nearly a decade.

Tabbara and Timko-Tabbara (who played some dates with the band before they left for L.A. but describes herself as “The Zou’s No. 1 fan”) will be joined by Robbie Thorndike, guitar and vocals; Bernadette Lim, keyboard and vocals; and Dean Anshutz, drums. Anshutz played with The Zou in the aughts before joining Red Wanting Blue.

The night will end with what used to be a Halloween tradition locally — The Zou playing a set of music from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

MUNNYCAT offered a preview of what to expect last week at The Summit, where the group recorded a Studio C session I was lucky enough to attend. It included acoustic versions of MUNNYCAT songs like “Honest” and “Taco Truck” (it was a testament to the strong bones of those songs that worked so well stripped of Tabbara’s production wizardry) a couple of Zou songs and “Science Fiction/Double Feature” from “Rocky Horror.”

The music starts at 8 p.m. Friday at Westside Bowl. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

• If April showers bring May flowers, what do October goblins bring? In the Mahoning Valley, it’s November Rain.

The annual fireworks display, presented by Dave & Buster’s and Phantom Fireworks will fill the sky with color above the Eastwood Mall Complex in Niles at 9 p.m. Saturday, with a soundtrack simulcast on WHOT-FM.

I’m sure Trumbull New Theatre will be happy November Rain falls the week before the opening of its November show.

More than once, I remember reviewing plays where the actors had to compete with the sound of explosions only a few blocks away.

Before the big bang, there will be a preparty starting at 6:30 p.m. with music by The Prince Project, featuring Warren native Shane T. Golden as at the purple-clad Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.

Beers and seltzers will be available at the preparty with all proceeds benefiting the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County.

Activities earlier in the day inside the mall include a family fun day from noon to 3 p.m., including an animal show by Outback Sky at 1 p.m. Junior Achievement of Eastern Ohio’s Youth Market Day also will run from noon to 3 p.m.

• Longtime readers of Ticket won’t be surprised that I’m a big Bruce Springsteen fan, but I have to admit I went into the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” with a lot of apprehension.

I loved Warren Zanes’ book about the making of the 1982 album “Nebraska” on which the movie is based, but I thought some of the dialogue in the first trailer was cringe worthy. The general consensus of the reviews was positive, if not quite raves, but the reviews that disliked it seemed to really hate it.

I feared the worst, but I left a Sunday matinee in Austintown pleasantly surprised. It eschews many, but not all, of the rock biopic tropes and it is a film that shows how real-life trauma can fuel art.

It’s definitely not a movie filled with rousing, fist-pumping concert scenes like the Live Aid sequence in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” although it does open with a bit of “Born to Run” from the final date of “The River” tour in 1981 in Cincinnati. I was at that show (whoever played me, sitting side stage about 8-10 rows up parallel to Clarence Clemons, did a wonderful job).

Jeremy Allen White doesn’t really look like Springsteen, but there were moments where his ability to capture Springsteen’s essence was uncanny. The best performance in the movie may be Odessa Young, who plays a composite character, a single mother Springsteen was dating while writing and recording the “Nebraska” songs.

“Deliver Me from Nowhere” is not for everyone. Those who’ve never had an interest in listening to “Nebraska” probably will be less excited about a movie chronicling the experiences that influenced that record, but it’s well done.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com