ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Weathering Heights
Michael Gordon’s triumphant chamber ensemble mash up.
By Molly Sheridan

Some music you have to work at, peeling away the layers in your head over multiple listenings until suddenly there is a feeling of enlightenment, if not love. If you’ve ever heard Elliott Carter’s string quartets, I think you’ll know what I’m talking about. Michael Gordon’s Weather, on the other hand, had my attention in the first 30 seconds, and kept it until it reached its conclusion an hour later. (Though sitting there, with my headphones on, I think I might have been half-hypnotized by the pulse and repetition that drives much of the piece).

New York minimalist and Bang on a Can co-founder, Gordon has a habit of taking a chamber ensemble and making it something more than you thought it could be. His piece Weather exploits rhythms that make you want to follow it like the Pied Piper, turns around and stabs you in the chest with the mournful wailing of a solo violin line, and then chases you back out into the rain.

Critics of Gordon’s work like to point out the fact that, for better or worse, he melds classical and rock influences, an idea that sounds almost quaint. I’m suspicious of any composer who grew up in the second half of the 20th century and cared so little for music they were unaware of what other people were using sound to say. But the Yale-trained Gordon, it seems, hasn’t shied away from pasting together whatever he likes to articulate his point–Vivaldi-influenced string lines, beat box-like rhythms and/or electronic processing effects.

"In classical training one gets the idea that there is a logical progression of ideas in music," explains Gordon. "But I think that being a composer today is more like shopping at an outdoor market: one gets to choose what one likes."

Weather, seemingly meant here in the unpredictable, slightly terrifying sense of the word, draws on a range of techniques and technologies–like running the entire orchestra through a "Tube Screamer" guitar pedal or cranking up a series of harmonized air raid sirens to drive home that whole "bad storm" concept.

Perhaps most importantly, Gordon’s piece begins with the talented German-based Ensemble Resonanz. The 16-member ensemble (most of them are friends from their days in the German Youth Philharmonic) specializes in new music. In the "this would never happen in America" category, a small German town gave the ensemble an abandoned army base in exchange for a series of concerts. Resonanz, as a result, now has a rehearsal/living space that they’ve used to great advantage to collaborate with artists like Gordon.

Gordon recalls a working environment many composers would kill for. "Since everyone was living together for extended periods, I would show up for 10 days at a time, during which we would rehearse twice a day. After rehearsals there were communal meals and partying."

In its original version, Weather was a multimedia work with video projections and the orchestra placed on a three-tiered vertical stage, designed in collaboration with video artist and director Elliot Caplan. During a train ride in Europe, Gordon remembers, "Elliot took a napkin and drew a picture of an orchestra straight up in the air. I looked at it, and it looked terrifying, undoable. How could an orchestra play like that?"

As it turned out, of course, they could, and it inspired Gordon to create the sounds that became Weather. But it also pushed the ensemble, which I’m guessing will be evident when we hear them this week. Since there was no conductor and the players couldn’t see one another, they actually practiced in a circle with their backs to each other and only the sound to guide them.

The Miller production will not be staged in this elaborate fashion, which I confess disappointed the hell out of me, but Gordon doesn’t see it as a problem. "I never intended the music to be incidental or film music," he says. "I hope, and it is my intention, that the music is strong enough to stand on its own."

Gordon will be in attendance for a pre-concert chat with Frank J. Oteri at 7 p.m., so plan to arrive early.

Michael Gordon’s Weather, Ensemble Resonanz, Thurs. Feb. 12, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, 116th St. at Broadway, 212-854-7799, 8, $20. (Pre-concert talk at 7).

 

Jimmy Scott
Thurs., Feb. 12-Sun., feb. 15

Does anyone remember when "Little" Jimmy Scott was but a ghost of a presence, merely a rumor of the bad label deals, crooked management and missed opportunities of a bygone era in R&B? How Scott, jazz’s littlest man with the giantest, highest, tightest vibrato of the 50s, had his prodigious vocal range squandered on lousy producers and lousier gigs? How he wound up part of pop’s dirty laundry, playing dives Tina Turner wouldn’t have hit for Rotary Club concerts with threats from unscrupulous bar owners and taunts from unknowing blockheads as to whether he was gay (he’s not) or a trannny (he’s not)?

It’s funny. All those lost moments and all that sorrow spent seem fairly far off for a guy who not only regularly releases older albums scented by the majesty of "classic"–The Savoy Years & More on three CDs; legendary lost sessions from his one-time mentor Ray Charles–but new ones to boot. Now Scott can write mournful autobiographical works just by opening his mouth on, for instance, 2001’s Over the Rainbow, where at age 75 he sings with session guys like David "Fathead" Newman and Joe Beck–and calls the shots. Now Scott can croon longingly and cracklingly in a delicate, feline voice atop elegant, whispering pianos and haunted floating vibraphones, creating works evocative of a quiet storm without having to live under a cloud of thunder, real or imagined. Now Scott can sing sparse blues and jazz standards, crisper than fall, chillier than winter. He can, as he did on the title track to Heaven, utilize a melancholia that loses all traces of irony, anticipating the empty barroom and the blankness of eternity without having to live it.

I bet he remembers, and hasn’t forgotten a second of it all. Which is why you’re seeing him tonight.

Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. (betw. Park & Lexington Aves.), 212-576-2232, call for times, $25-$30.

–A.D. Amorosi

A child’s garden and the serious sea
Through Thurs., Feb. 12

A Child’s Garden and the Serious Sea
Directed by Stan Brakhage

As an avant-garde agnostic, a lover of narrative above all, I’ve always been a little leery of Stan Brakhage and the other eminences of the American high-art filmmaking tradition. Brakhage has often been acclaimed as a cinematic poet, but in his fascination with texture and shade, color and light, and his vigorous defense of abstraction, he is more akin to high Abstract Expressionist painters like Rothko and Newman.

A Child’s Garden and the Serious Sea, made in 1991 but which began its premiere theatrical run at Anthology Film Archives last week, coming from Brakhage’s later period, is an abstracted testament to his second wife, Marilyn. Shot on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Brakhage conceived of the film as an imaginary biography of his wife’s early years. The problem is, it’s difficult to tell the players without a score card, so to speak; the film’s gnarled progression (one would be hard pressed to call it a narrative) gives every impression of intimacy without conveying much in the way of processable information.

Perhaps that’s the point of an artist like Brakhage, whose work, according to critic Adrian Martin, "defies verbal commentary," and perhaps I am hereby revoking my right to work as a film critic in New York City, but the prospect of 80 minutes of blurry shots of the ocean does not inspire me to leap in the air with excitement.

Brakhage is wonderful in small doses; early films like Window Water Baby Moving (1959) and Mothlight (1963) are stunning in their own right. However, A Child’s Garden is simply too long, the film’s stock of extreme close-ups, jagged pans and fade-outs growing wearying with repetition. Ultimately, one is left with the sensation of watching the outtakes of a neighbor’s particularly amateurish home videos of his recent vacation in which all segments involving family members have been excised.

That said, there are moments of incredible beauty. Brakhage returns to a lovely image of the sea at night, in which the silvery, rippling waves lap against each other, eventually subsumed by one larger, overwhelming wave. A sustained shot of the pattern left by dappled sunlight on a patch of grass is particularly stunning as well. A Child’s Garden also plays with color, juxtaposing blue and green as the primary hues of the two titular spaces, expanding the impact of each by the long black gaps stretched in between them. Such moments of satisfaction are few and far between in this late work by the avant-garde master (who died last year), and this film raises, to my mind, the legitimate question of whether a great artist can truly be considered as such if his or her artistic output remains dazzlingly incomprehensible to all but the most knowledgeable insiders.

Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave. (betw. 1st & 2nd Sts.), 212-505-5181, 8,$8.

–Saul Austerlitz

Eden
Through Sun., March 7

The first boy who ever kissed her called her a "pig arse." What a flattering term of endearment, the kind that sticks with you, an obvious set-up for the downward spiral into low self-esteem. It’s the way Breda (Catherine Byrne) thinks of herself. But she only thinks of herself, mind you, when she’s not thinking of her husband and, truthfully, she almost always thinks of her husband, staying home every Saturday night so she can lose weight while he goes out drinking.

In Eden, husband and wife sit separately on an empty stage, never speaking to each other, delivering his/her own inner monologue. Billy begins: Sitting at a bar, he dreams about sexual exploits with beautiful young women, red-faced, wild-eyed, clearly "jarred" from the get go. Ciaran O’Reilly’s Billy looks like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, a frightful visage of a demon heading into a dangerous spree. He’s a compulsive drinker, barely aware of his wife or their two children, and he imagines himself fornicating with Imelda, a young woman in the neighborhood. O’Reilly captures the emotional rage of this self-involved imbecile, instantly eliciting our disdain and our anger.

Breda, on the other hand, is deliberate, describing every detail in her mind with absolute clarity, "feckdom...husband and wife...Billy and Breda." Never tiring of her lovemaking fantasies, or thinking of her husband, Breda believes they will be a properly married couple again Saturday night, the first Saturday she’s gone out since she started losing weight. And sitting at the dance hall, Breda sees only Billy, waiting for him to ask her to dance, imagining that he may be thinking the same thing, reinventing for herself the night they met, their first dance, the bridge they walked on, the river.

As written by Eugene O’Brien, these monologues create a total eclipse. The interaction that never appears on stage exists in this emotional space between actors and audience. But these images of the selfish husband and selfless wife are overly disturbing, a symphony in which discord is played, over and over. In fact, the characters are so embedded in their behaviors, so characteristically the alcoholic Irish husband and the abused wife, that one thinks it is a fait accompli from the beginning. What a wonderful tour de farce, then, when Billy slips away to conquer his fantasy. What a sense of justice! Catharsis enough to make Aristotle smile.

Directed by John Tillinger, Eden is an actors’ play, and both Byrne and O’Reilly do a fabulous job, bringing to life their inner thoughts as well as a handful of characters, all in this small Irish town. She brings amazing life to even the most quotidian thoughts, creating levity in spite of her obvious despair; he, a sweet-faced man, is totally transformed by his self-indulgent fantasies.

Outside of the two chairs and the pub-like interior walls, the stage is empty, filled only by the images these actors evoke, and finally by the peace Breda achieves when she surrenders to her own needs.

Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22nd St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-727-2737, call for times, $40-$45.

–Isa Goldberg

Wed. 2/11

Paul Auster
Most people don’t think of poetry when they think of Paul Auster. They think of the New York Trilogy, the screenplay for Smoke or the 10 novels he’s written since 1985. Anyway, Auster stopped writing verse 25 years ago. Like his prose, Auster’s poetry is full of simple, declarative sentences full of mystery and depth. In his last poem, he states he wants "to say the simplest thing possible." Simple’s not the same as trite–that’s setting the bar to the near-impossible. But somehow he pulls it off. Paul Auster reads from Collected Poems (Overlook Press). Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10th St. (2nd Ave.), 212-674-0910, 8, $8.

How to Attract & Seduce Men
Whatever happened to old-fashioned short skirts and laughing at every joke a rich guy makes? Until they put out Being a Slut for Dummies, this is your best bet to shed your wallflower wilt and plain-Jane pain. Learn the "skill of enticing, enamoring and drawing in" dudes in order to become "the best flirt in town." Cap 21 Studios, 18 W. 18th St., 6th fl. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 888-89-EVENT, 7, $30, $25 adv.

Thurs. 2/12

Atmosphere
Emo-hop? Perish the thought. But there is, according to lovers of the likes of Aesop Rock, Aceyalone and EL-P, a lit-based rap that’s as conversational and confessional as it is forceful and freaky. Literary referencing, love and assent aren’t new to hiphop; check the Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni, Gil Scott-Heron, Melvin Van Peebles. Still, in an era of dumbassedness and bling-dee-dee-bling’s boredom, anything that’s seemingly in tune to the psychological/sociological sensitivity of its listeners or speakers is eeeeemo.

Then there’s Atmosphere. Despite Sean "Slug" Daley’s (aka Seven) lyrical yearnings for lost love and true romance without hiphop’s heavy hints of braggadocio, calling him emo doesn’t give him or his crew enough credit. As majordomos of Minneapolis’ Rhymesayers mob, Atmosphere aren’t new to emotional mirth-making. Along with Slug, there’s the comical, cloying tones of rapping partner Eyedea and the cold, lo-fi crush of beat-maker Ant and layer-conscious DJ Dibbs to contend with as far as HIP and HOP goes. Yes, Slug’s prose-rapping élan about love’s ruminations–a major part of Overcast!, and Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs–is always present. Cynical fare like "Hair" (with, of course, another hate note to his old girlfriend on "Fuck You, Lucy") will always be there. But that doesn’t take into effect that 2002’s God Loves Ugly was both densely De La-esque and rife with pop songs about the "Modern Man’s Hustle"; it also ignores the fact that 2003’s Seven’s Travels mixes the achy-breakiness of the past with a socio-consciousness that’s strikingly surreal yet succinct.

Though there’s still a longing sensibility and a breathless vulnerability ("Bird Sings Why the Caged I Know") to Atmosphere that’s undeniably touching and poetically on the money, Slug has found as much pissed-off gravitas in idol-worship ("National Disgrace," perhaps based on their recent dances with the majors) and one-on-one violence ("Always Coming Back to You") as he has the wilted flowers of romance. Top that with a chilling chilly-chilled soundtrack and beats deeper than the River Kwai, and you get emotions than run thicker than any emo-ite could.

Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800, 8, $20, $18.50 adv.

–A.D. Amorosi

The Color Bars
Maybe it’s the four candy bars talking, but the Color Bars album sounds great right now. Organs, horns, jangly guitars, sun-smoothed harmonies and sound manipulation so soberly "far out" you’d swear it was 1998 and this was some lost Elephant 6 release. In fact, Eliza sounds exactly like Olivia Tremor Control, and there just isn’t enough late-60s-filtered-through-mid-90s nostalgia around these days. Other suitable name-drops include Ben Folds Five, Beulah and the New Pornographers. With Ferdinand the Bull, the Cardia Brothers and Julian Coryell. Sin-é, 150 Attorney St. (betw. Stanton & Houston Sts.) 212-388-0077, 7, $8.

Alice Lee
On her lush, atmospheric new CD The Art of Forgetting, the Williamsburg soul siren hitches eerie and sensual guitar and keys to a hypnotic downtempo beat. Live, she recreates the ambience with the aid of a laptop. Her lyrics get evil sometimes, pretty much what you’d expect from a girl who learned to sing in a cemetery. Café 111, 111 Court St. (betw. State & Schermerhorn Sts.), Brooklyn Heights, 718-858-2806, 8, free.

D.A. Pennebaker & Friends
Remember that scene in Gimme Shelter where the Hell’s Angel is on acid and totally flipping out? Or in Don’t look Back, when Dylan plays "It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue," just to make Donovan look like an asshole? Or in Monterey Pop when Otis Redding tells the hippies to take their shoes off? The directors of all of the above classic rock docs will be present for this panel discussion–this is your chance to get Chris Farley on them. Remember that? That was awesome. Makor, 35 W. 67th St. (betw. Columbus Ave. & Central Park W.), 212-415-5500, 8, $20.

You’re right to be nervous. Stan Brakhage’s A Child’s Garden and the Serious Sea is 80 minutes long. And it’s a long long. Tonight is the last night of its premiere run at Anthology Film Archives. More from Saul Austerlitz, p. 36.

How to Move from Print to Broadcast Journalism
Emmy-winning news producer Angelina Cicala teaches you how to choose the proper hairstyle, what plastic surgery you’ll require, how to be really vacuous and the correct way to bandy between-story chit-chat that’ll make the news team seem like one big happy family. Mediabistro, 494 B’way (betw. Spring & Broome Sts.), 212-966-4466, 7, $65.

Fri. 2/13

Black Dice
It’s not often that a band gets booed offstage, but that’s just what happened to Black Dice a couple of weeks ago at the Hammerstein Ballroom. True, most of the crowd were there to witness Karen O’s spastic Jagger-isms and probably didn’t know what they were in for when the Brooklyn noise agitators took the stage anyway. But mere unfamiliarity can’t account for the seething contempt the largely college-agers crowd directed at the stage.

"They think they’re so weird," one sniffed, up in the nosebleed mezzanine section. "Fuck that."

This from the same guy who heaped praise on Liars, whose preceding set didn’t amount to much more than an unwavering din.

Black Dice have four guys who twiddle the knobs and switches of their gear with all of the showmanship of watch repairmen. Though the lack of stage theatrics is probably a result of the complexity of their music, Black Dice nonetheless fit a stereotype that’s as old as art school: self-serious, scrawny white boys assaulting the world with their horrible noise. What Lightning Bolt get away with because of a frenetic stage show and a lively mosh pit, and Merzbow because of critical reverence, Black Dice are ultimately punished for. Even supposed connoisseurs of experimental music are dismissive of them, likely bringing up the band’s hardcore past as proof of their dilettantism.

But they’ve left hardcore behind. Instead of physically assaulting audience members as they once did, Eric Copeland, Bjorn Copeland, Aaron Warren and Hisham Bharoocha entrench themselves stoically on stage and let cascading waves of violent sound do the roughing up. It’s a little bit like being beaten suddenly and savagely by your math instructor: Their calm demeanors make them seem that much more ruthless.

As Rilke noted, it’s a short trip from terror to beauty, and such is the tiny conceptual space that Black Dice occupy. Even so, they’re loosening up their approach. Largely leaving behind the swelling and receding psych of Beaches and Canyons, the Hammerstein show had them crafting punchy sound collages that recalled the laptop music made on Austrian label Mego. The dub influence they’ve so insistently peddled in interviews of late was also much more explicit, though it was dub without the rhythmic low end.

What hadn’t changed was the sheer physicality of their music. Going to a Black Dice show is, if nothing else, a reminder that sound is rapidly vibrating air that can be felt.

Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B’way & Church St.), 212-219-3132, 9, $10.

–Dustin Roasa

Mos Def
The inexhaustible talent of Mos Def cannot be contained to one genre; it can’t even be contained to one medium. When he was still a newcomer to hiphop, Mos had already been a part of two classics, the Black Star collaboration with fellow Brooklynite Talib Kweli and his solo project Black on Both Sides. He’s also broken into the acting world, with a role in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, as Alicia Keys’ love interest in the video for "You Don’t Know My Name" and a turn in the Tony-nominated play Topdog/Underdog. Most recently, he’s signed on to play Ford Prefect in an adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Somewhere along the way, Mos found time for his first love, music, and his much-anticipated sophomore effort is rumored to be set for a February release. Then there’s his rock band, Black Jack Johnson, that has toured but has yet to release an album.

This Blue Note show promises to expand the Brooklyn MC’s body of work–neither hiphop nor rock, but spoken word with jazz accompaniment. Which isn’t, strictly speaking, new territory. Mos appeared on The Rose that Grew from Concrete, Vol. 1, a showcase of artists reciting Tupac’s poetry, and hosts Russell Simmon’s Def Poetry Jam on HBO. Tonight, he’s backed by jazz artists Will Calhoun (the drummer for Black Jack Johnson), Orrin Evans (piano), John Benitez (bass), Wallace Roney (trumpet) and Antoine Roney (sax).

131 W. 3rd. St. (betw. MacDougal St. & 6th Ave.), 212-475-8592, 8 & 10:30, $20.

–Sean Griffin

Charles Darwin Day
Tonight it’s survival of the fittest, so bring your gameface. Author, historan, anthropologist and songwriter Richard Milner recently appeared on the A&E documentary Biography of Charles Darwin. He’s gonna serve up a dish of evolution. Source of Life Conference Center, 352 7th Ave., 16th fl. (betw. 29th & 30th Sts.), 212-535-7425, 6:30, $10 sugg. don.

Four Decent Bands
Taking bass-heavy to all new heights, the Rogers Sisters play "the Munsters beat on everything" sing/talk with Lolita-esque flair, swaggering to the front of all the too-cool-for-school parties, posters and magazines. The Ex Models, for the uninitiated, provide titillating noise-punk just this side of Captain Beefheart, while Sightings just make noise, but in a healthy anti-social way, and Cause Co-Motion make the best electro-garage rock ever recorded inside a tin can. Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.) 212-260-4700, 8:30, $10.

Sat. 2/14

Rock ’n’ Love ’n’ Skate
If Riff Randell were real, and not just a character in Rock ’n’ Roll High School, she would so be here: pigtails flying; notebook, full of song lyrics that she wants to give to the Ramones, in tatters behind her. No doubt there will be a lookalike rollerboogying to the sounds of Camera and other live performers. The bands play in cages, which is probably where they belong. With Call Florence Pow and a special guest. OfficeOps, 57 Thames St. (betw. Morgan & Knickerbocker Aves.), Bushwick, 718-418-2509, 9, $5.

Valentine’s Day
Back when he still called his band Palace, Will Oldham drawled the greatest thing ever said on the subject of this wretchedly lovey-dovey, obligatory Hallmark card-purchasing day: "it’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m catatonic." It’s the best possible advice for the embittered and lonely. So when you’re standing in line at the Duane Reade, looking at all the heart-shaped sentimental trash and fake flowers, pick up an extra bottle of Robitussin and let the world go screw itself. Your cold and empty apartment, all night long, free.

How We First Met
You and your special lady/man/pre-op show up, sit down and drink up. You’re prompted to tell the story of how you met. Then a couple of idiots who think they’re funny act out that scenario onstage in an improvised skit. Wait until they hear that you met at a swinger’s club–"well at least I thought it was a swinger’s club. Then she asked me for $200! I’ve had her on consignment ever since and, well, unless her meth habit gets out of control, things look like they might just work out." Enjoy! Gotham City Improv, 158 W. 23rd St., 2nd fl. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 917-558-3549; 7 & 9, $10.

The Song-Poem Story
Those magazine ads that promised to "Set Your Poems to Music!" weren’t lying. Thousands of people over the years sent in their poems and a check, and received a professionally recorded single in return. Some of the world’s strangest music was the result–songs like "Blind Man’s Penis" and "I’m a Ginseng Digger." Beneath the winking hipster smirk on its surface, Jamie Meltzer’s new documentary about the song-poem industry is a heartbreaking portrait of some very sad people whose dreams will never be realized. Not just the poor schlubs convinced their poems about skunks or Jimmy Carter would be big hits, but also the guys who have to sing them. Tonight Meltzer celebrates the DVD and CD release of Off the Charts with a screening, followed by a performance by song-poem aficionados NRBQ, who will be joined by Ellery Eskelin (son of song-poem legend Rodd Keith) as well as song-poem composer and singer David Fox. Northsix, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103, 9, $25.

Sun. 2/15

Shocked and Amazed!
What better way to show your love than to spend the day with a bunch of freaks? Sideshow historian James Taylor announces the release of the Coney Island issue of Shocked and Amazed!–his world-renowned journal of sideshow culture–with a well-deserved to-do. A 1:30 signing is followed by a screening of Traveling Sideshow, a new documentary by Heavy Metal Parking Lot’s Jeff Krulik. Then there’s a Q&A with Krulik, Taylor and Kathleen Kotcher–which in turn is followed by a performance by the Sideshows by the Sea troupe. But that’s not all! Those who stick around will also get a discounted admission to the brand-new Bindlestiff Cirkus show at 8! The Palace of Variety, 125 W. 42nd St. (betw. 6th & B’way), 212-575-0010, 1:30, free.

Improdome
The People’s Improv Theater have been offering stripped-down comedy since splintering from the Upright Citizens Brigade a few years back. Sunday nights the PIT host Improdome, their weekly version of improv Olympics. Five two-person teams cobble together 10 minutes of hilarity based on one-word suggestions from the audience–think: "fetus" or "pudding." The audience picks the winner–kind of like Whose Line Is it Anyway, only not so lame. 154 W. 29th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-563-7488, 9:30, $5.

Red Rock West
You already look like a rock star, so drag your leather-pants-clad ass over to Red Rock West Saloon’s rock ’n’ roll revival and get yourself a complimentary kamikaze. In addition to the free beverage, the bar with the hottest (and nastiest) bar bee-yatches in town is running drink specials all night in celebration of the good ol’ rock ’n’ roll. Five bucks will enter you in a raffle to win a Fender guitar and amp so you can finally move out of your momma’s basement and become the axe god you know you are. 457 W. 17th St. (10th Ave.), 212-366-5359, 7, $5.

Mon. 2/16

Gowanus Vaudeville Try-Out
Jugglers, actors, dancers and comedians vie for a spot in an amateur vaudeville show. If you’re a fan of stuff that’s goofy and borderline lame, or if your sense of humor is downright cruel, this will be a feast for the senses. If, on the other hand, you are one of the aforementioned jugglers, actors or dancers and want a spot on the show, well, enjoy your term as the mayor of Lamesville. Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 4th Ave. (betw. Union & President Sts.), Park Slope, 718-857-4816, 6:30, free.

Hank Williams III
Are you ready for some football? Don’t worry. This isn’t that Hank Williams. The NFL shitkicker dude spawned this Williams iteration, but thankfully, the lightly countrified jock-rock gene was recessive in this case. Hank 3.0 looks and twangily sings just like his grandpappy. You’ll be two-stepping and weeping in your Budweiser by song three. With Scott Biram. CBGB, 315 Bowery (Bleecker St.) 212-982-4052, 8, $15.

Tues. 2/17

Jim Garrison
Jim Garrison, you may recall from Oliver Stone’s JFK, was the New Orleans district attorney who charged socialite Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. He died in 1992. Here to carry on the "Jim Garrison" mantle is Jim Garrison, the State of the World Forum President and author of America as Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power? By the way, Jim, the answer is "Yes." NYU Vernon Center, 58 W. 10th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-992-9091, 6, free.

Contributors: Lionel Beehner, Adam Bulger, James Griffith, Jim Knipfel, Ilya Malinsky, Kristina Ramos, Will Sherlin, Alan Young and Alexander Zaitchik.