Picks
IT'S NOT THE SIZE OF THE SHIP
The point of this talk, hosted by Robert Woodworth, is best described as "Hoorah for the little guy!" Artwork celebrating wee little ones will be displayed, and drinks will be served. No word on whether magnifying glasses will be provided or if pretty cheerleaders will be on hand to point and laugh. We'd run a penis photo with this item, but the last cock to appear in this space got us in Dutch with a whole lot of people. LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-620-7310, 7, $10.
IMELDA
All those Reagan obits have got you thinking about Imelda Marcos again. But jones not: Tonight Film Forum premieres Ramona S. Diaz's authorized documentary on the glamorous she-monster of Manila. What's more fascinating: her 3000 pairs of shoes, or the 17,000 political prisoners that she and her husband Ferdinand had locked up in the Philippines' prisons? Judge for yourself. 209 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.), 212-727-8110, call for times, $10.
THURSDAY JUNE 10
NEW YORK FENCING WORLD CUP
En garde, Zoro. Rattle your sabres and buckle your swashes. The United States Fencing Association sieges New York today with its finest pokers and stabbers. There are few visual spectacles as simultaneously violent and subtle as fencing. With the white suits, the grills and the constant hand on the hip, this sport is impossible to deny. Especially after seeing and hearing the blades slice and dice the air. Athletic Center, Hunter College, 68th St. (Lexington Ave.), 917-697-6673, call for times, $5.
EMBRYONIC VISIONS
The Philip K. Dick title should tell you this is no ordinary event. Doctors, artists and scientists hold court on modern-day Frankensteins who create life with petri dishes, cryogenically stored embryos and (gasp!) cloning technology. The moral and ethical questions of creating life without fucking may be unanswerable. But discussing the impact that sexless life has had on philosophy, politics and singles night at TGI Fridays is terrifying and irresistible. Gallery of Arts & Science, New York Academy of Sciences, 2 E. 63rd St. (5th Ave.), 212-838-0230, 6, $20, free st.
STEVIE WONDER
Every once in a while, it's okay to stay up all night drinking and snorting to keep from nodding off in mid-Pabst. We recommend doing so on a Thursday, taking Friday off and spending the weekend drinking water and choking down Advil. The problem with a serious bender is what to do when the sun comes up. The bars are closed and sleep is not an option. Solution: Stevie Wonder is playing at Bryant Park shortly after dawn. Freak out when he plays "Higher Ground," and pass out on the library steps. Bryant Park, 6th Ave. (betw. 40th & 42nd Sts.) 212-768-4242, 7 a.m, free.
KERRI BLACK'S BIRTHDAY BASH
The mistress of the downtown NYC indie rock scene is throwing a birthday party to celebrate her birth and give props to her favorite bands. Featuring the Danglers, the Fashion, Scout and the Billionaire Boys Club (who despite their name, are willing to share more than just their wealth). We'll be there with bells on, praying our ice cream cake doesn't melt before then. Sin-é, 150 Attorney St. (betw. Clinton & Ridge Sts.), 212-388-0077, 9, $8.
SATURDAY JUNE 12
A NIGHT OF DIRTY SONGS
Each Saturday, the "Schoolhouse Roxx" music show at P.S. 122 puts on a different line-up of curiously themed acts (such as a recent night of all-ukelele performers). Tonight is especially promising, as the theme is dirty songs, and features a variety of freaky talent-from the epic accordion anthems of Corn Mo, to the acid-casualty lyrics of Jason Trachtenburg, to the consistently offensive metal songs of Nachi. They also offer audience members the chance to be "designated hecklers" for the night. 150 1st Ave. (9th St.), 212-477-5829, 11, $7.
AIR GUITAR CONTEST
Last year's most overwritten, most stupidest, most drunk-white-guy competition is back. According to the official website (airguitarusa.com), the air guitar judges make their decisions based on "the extent to which air guitar performance transcends the imitation of a 'real' art form and becomes an art form in and of itself." Interested contestants should visit the site in advance and be prepared to provide 60 seconds of music to air guitar along to. Inside track tip: Choose a Django Reinhardt song and chop off a couple of fingers for realism. Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3006, 11, $12, $10 adv.
NEMO RECORD RELEASE
New York Press' own Dennis Tyhacz is one of those trainspotty GBV fans who, thankfully, has accepted the downfall of that once-great band. Perhaps to fill the void left by Bob Pollard's early retirement, he's part of Nemo, a local gang whose debut CD, Signs of Life, is celebrated tonight. Like Pollard and his crew, these boys can drink like, uh, fish while offering up fine new, um, wave melodies. Unlike those old guys, the members of Nemo usually stay on their feet. Pianos, 158 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-505-3733, 8, $8.
WILD IN THE STREETS
On June 15, 1904, the steamship General Slocum was packed with German immigrants from the Lower East Side as it moved up the East River. Before the boat reached the Upper East Side, it was in flames. The fire spread and the boat sunk, killing more than a thousand people. Until 9/11, it was the worst disaster in NYC history (far worse than the oft-cited Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which killed 146 workers). The tragedy was forgotten for decades, but centennial events exploring the ramifications of the General Slocum disaster abound, including this walking tour of the Kleindeutschland, aka the East Village, which was the nucleus of the tight-knit German immigrant community. The neighborhood itself was a victim of the disaster, as residents moved away and it rapidly lost its German identity following the sinking. Meet at St. Marks & Bowery, 212-242-5762, 1, $12
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MONDAY JUNE 14
TRIBUTE TO LEONARD COHEN
Hearing countless coffee shop folkies cover "Bird on a Wire" has done nothing to diminish our love for Leonard Cohen. That sonorous voice singing all-hope-is-lost poesy over sparse instrumental backing is like beautiful depression in a bottle. The panel speakers that follow tonight's Makor screening of the documentary Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen are fittingly askew. Lenny's weary body of work will be discussed by rabbis and religious experts, as well as by pop music writer Alan Light. 35 W. 67th St. (betw. Columbus Ave. & Central Park W.), 212-601-1000, 7, $20.
THE 29 QUESTIONS PROJECT
Fresh off last week's off-off-Broadway opening at 7P, The 29 Questions Project settles into its home tonight at Middle Eastern American restaurant Yaffa's T Room, where it runs every Monday through October 4 (except in August). Developed by the Bull Family Orchestra, 29 Questions comprises four one-acts dealing with themes related to 9/11. The second of the four, by Hillary Rollins, is a show-stopper about two friends, one of whom was killed in the attacks. A post-performance gathering featuring live world music and house food is part of the show. Yaffa's is a natural venue for this moving and thoughtful production, as it never shut its doors throughout the 9/11 rescue and recovery effort. 353 Greenwich St. (Harrison St.), 212-352-3101, 7, $20.
WOMEN WRITERS
If you've never been to a reading at Brooklyn Brewery, you're missing out on one of life's better combinations: liquor and literature. Or if not literature, then at least literary-mindedness. Tonight, our friends at Akashic Books and the Brooklyn Rail present, with Soapbox, an evening with six women writers. On hand will be Nicole Blackman, Mónica De La Torre (poetry editor of the Brooklyn Rail), Elana Greenfield, Dawn Lundy Martin (co-editor of The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism), Wendy Shanker (The Fat Girl's Guide to Life) and Louise Wareham. Come for the beer, stay for the work. Or vice versa. 79 N. 11th St. (Wythe St.), Williamsburg, 212-433-1875, 7, free.
BENEFIT FOR RICHARD FOREMAN'S ONTOLOGICAL-HYSTERIC THEATER
FRI., JUNE 11
WHETHER OR NOT you do or don't want to give money to Richard Foreman and his Ontological-Hysteric prickly performance-art theater doesn't matter. To see this treasure trove of heated avant music is worth it. For Robert Ashley-the minimalist composer whose feedbacking marvels like the recently issued Wolfman and In Sara Mencken Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women still stand as benchmarks of operatic locution and vocal frippery-this is another night out on the town.
In a world that's wild for kabbalah, John Zorn is a genuine articulate zealot. Or a zealous genuine article. Starting with 1994's Vol. 1: Alef and continuing through 1998's Circle Maker, the Masada String Trio have continued with the equally mad religious pursuit of Zorn's Jewish chamber music. Yet for Glenn Branca, this is time to rejoice-not always a word or idea meant for Branca. The composer who invented the guitar-army sound of big amplification and bigger rhythm finds his first CD, Lesson No. 1, re-released with added tracks. As macro-tonal privates in General Branca's weirdly harmonic army, there are breezes of melody that linger longer on threadbare traditional frames than you remember from No. 1. Beyond the relic of history that it should have been-and Branca could have been-this is one lesson that the very best of that era's primal screamers took with them into the present.
Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw. Delancey & Rivington Sts.), 212-358-7501, 8, $20.
A.D. AMOROSI
THE DECEMBERISTS
THURS. & FRI., JUNE 10 & 11
I FINALLY FIGURED OUT why I like the Decemberists more than other Belle & Sebastianesque bands:
1) Because B&S are?uh?just that. Belle & Sebastian. Unchangeable. Even Belle & Sebastian is a pale imitation of what Belle & Sebastian should mean, if you know what I mean.
2) Unlike other B&S-sequel ensembles-Neutral Milk Hotel, namely-there's something truly mad, bad and even exasperatingly eccentric about others along the B&S line. Namely the Decemberists.
A.D. AMOROSI
MC5/DKT
MON. & TUES., JUNE 14 & 15
IN TERMS OF reunion tours-and there's plenty of funny ones left to come, what with Ultravox, the Electric Prunes, Southern Death Cult, Spandau Ballet and Air Supply, all of whose members are no more or less undead than when they started-the one that finds MC5 tied together once more is the strangest. And not just because of who guitarist/leader Wayne Kramer has chosen to stand in for dead vocalist Rob Tyner-the yucky likes of Mark Arm and Marshall Crenshaw would confound even a reality show exec as to the shocking improbability.
Born of the manic White Panther socio-political, post-psychedelic scene of Detroit (and its founder, John Sinclair) circa 1967, the Motor City Five were punks with a communal attitude. This was a band with a radicalism far greater (and better sounding) than its music. Still, dressing in flags and calling for revolution made for a good package, one that was good enough to be signed to Elektra in order to release the anthemic, "Kick Out the Jams." Say what you will about their importance, but I dare you to hum anything off High Time, let alone remember much of Back in the U.S.A. Several documentaries-MC5: True Testimonial and Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5-would argue that point. That is, if Kramer would let the previous one, the better one, get released. With Cobra Verde.
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111, 11, $25.
A.D. AMOROSI
TIESTO
SAT., JUNE 12
CALLING YOUR ALBUM Just Be permits, even announces, laughter. But on the planet where Holland's DJ Tiesto lives, that's fine. Even admired. With its slurpingly slow grand orchestras, lilting but electrifying synth symphonies and dreary dreamy Post-Linn drum sounds that emulate epiphany without ever seemingly experiencing it, haughty languor is required of him. Tiesto's made a career of that sound, having run through the hoodoo of various DJ series-Basic Beat Recordings' Forbidden Paradise, Black Hole Recordings' Space Age and a series called In Trance We Trust-as well as maintaining his "artist" CDs along similar sweeping sonic paths.
Yet, as much as he's regarded for making instrumental majesty his own, it's his big (name and sound) remixes that's minted him cash; femme-filled fussy remakes for ethereal queens like Sarah McLachlan, Mandalay's Nicola Hitchcock and Sixpence None the Richer's Leigh Nash. Okay. Not my cup of lukewarm tea either. But don't sneeze at dance music that makes money, honey.
Avalon, 662 6th Ave. (20th St.), 212-807-7780, 12 a.m., $30.
FRI., JUNE 11
MY FIRST IMPRESSION of Chicago's Bobby Conn was that he was a dithering, slithery mess-a soul-snow- blinded Leonard Cohen and a not-so-fried Julian Cope-whose ability to transmute the gloom of his tunes with his raw-silk falsetto was wild beyond compare. Through his theatricality often allowed you to forget the wronged-romanticism and scourged-earth premise of his doom-laden lyrics, his music formed a queer wall of sound throughout. It should be no surprise that his newest album, Homeland-quivering hilariously with falsetto, quaking as it peels to loosen to his baritone range-is a humorous, decadent but tightly played take on all of the above styles. And then some, what with his band, the Glass Gypsies, unfurls a brand of disco-glam cabaret that neither Hedwig nor his Inch could've managed so grandly.
Rather than find the sorrow and the pity in absolute nothingness, Conn's nihilism seems geared toward politicizing/skewering the current Republican administration and its take on the Ugly American. While that ain't new, the hammy way in which Conn displays an overbearing beauty throughout the freakishly arrogant lyrics of "Relax" (not Frankie Goes to Hollywood but rather an equally hedonistic tune dedicated to George Bush's own pleasuredome), "We're Taking Over the World" and the modish "We Come in Peace" is very new indeed. That Conn has morals, let alone moral outrage, makes Homeland one of 2004's best records as well as one that's become a smash on the socio-political tip equal to anything the Woodstock generation could have mustered.
Trans Am, on the other hand, continues its always-equitable robo-rock with the sort of un-flash-and-filigree stance that'd make Kraftwerk seem animated. And I mean that as a compliment.
Northsix, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103, 9, $12.
A.D. AMOROSI
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
THURS.-THURS., JUNE 10-24
THE HUMAN RIGHTS Watch International Film Festival, a good idea in theory, has been bogged down by reality in its previous incarnations. With an overabundance of preachy, self-important films (and a fixation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the exclusion of anything else), the festival has suffered from a lack of compelling content. This year's series features an improved batch of films from around the world, although there are still some dogs (and the fixation on Israel continues; fully 25 percent of the films being screened here revolve around the Holy Land). At its best, the Human Rights Watch series provides an extended look at the stories that may have gotten lost in the back pages of the newspapers.
With many liberals greatly concerned with the arrest and incarceration of Arab men in post-9/11 sweeps of suspected terrorists, and with the horror of Abu Ghraib still fresh in our minds, Alison Maclean and Tobias Perse's Persons of Interest is an intensely disturbing portrait of Ashcroft's America. In a starkly lit and furnished room reminiscent of a prison cell or torture chamber, a series of interviewees appears before the camera. In response to the questions posed to them by an offscreen interlocutor, they tell their stories or the stories of family members still jailed. Much like the heart-wrenching photographs of Japanese internees during World War II, what is most striking about these individuals and their families is how American they are. The movie is no great shakes cinematically, but in providing a voice for the voiceless and marginalized, and alerting us to the true costs of the national security state run amok, Persons of Interest is essential.
SAUL AUSTERLITZ
JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN
FRI., JUNE 11
JOAN WASSER, all white-blond hair and exuberant laughter, explains the name of her current solo project: "One day a friend looked at me and said, 'You're channeling Angie Dickinson,' and that was that." So after runs with the Dambuilders, Black Beetle, Those Bastard Souls and Mind Science of the Mind, Wasser has created Joan as Police Woman, in homage to the 70s television drama in which Dickinson played her own cast of characters as an undercover cop. She's joined on her new five-track, self-titled EP by Ben Perowsky on percussion and Rainy Orteca on bass, and will be accompanied Friday at Joe's Pub by a six-piece band.
JAPW is even-keeled soul-rock, and the EP (recorded by Bryce Goggin of Pavement and the Lemonheads) has a retro sensibility suitable to the project's name. But Joan as Police Woman is far more than a posture. After years in projects where she did a certain amount of yelling and screaming, Wasser has come back to her first love: singing. Hers is a voice not unlike that of Carly Simon or Karla Schickele. Powerful and commanding, it exudes both sensuality and a sense of homefulness.
The EP's first track, "My Gurl," immediately evokes Stevie Wonder's Talking Book era; its tempo and clean, warm instrumentation have the glow of "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." More than that, it's the song's comfortable, confident joy. Wasser says this song is for that one friend "you can really count on-you call each other 'mine' because you own and care for part of them, and they own and care for part of you." It's a pillow-talk tribute to a friendship that's rock-solid, "amidst the rage, the firing range and fashion." The maturity and ease of "My Gurl" pervades the EP. This is a far cry from the days of the Dambuilders, and that's more than okay with Wasser: "I don't want to ever have to live with boundaries. And it's so natural to move forward and never go back."
SO PERCUSSION
TUES., JUNE 15
ON A BILL that includes Ethel's brash update of the string quartet, So Percussion bring expansive contemporary drumming to Joe's Pub for a CD release event. So's four drummers peg an inventive slant on percussion-ensemble traditions, those sticks 'n' hands styles that range from Korean court ensembles and Cuban comparsas to Cage's "Constructions" of the early 1940s, and Steve Reich's minimalist foray "Drumming" (recently played at Town Hall as part of the Kitchen's all-star benefit).
And they're getting play for their fresh approach, with touring action and a self-titled CD on Cantaloupe Music that weighs in with two big new works. Evan Ziporyn's cellular, gamelan-esque "Melody Competition" opens, followed by David Lang's "the so-called laws of nature" over the course of which sonic events repeatedly pare down to expanding clacks and pings on pots and pipes, sounds that resonate provocatively over an inlaid, elusive propulsion.
"We grew up as rock 'n' roll drummers listening to Beatles and Radiohead," said So's Lawson White in an email, "but somehow ended up at Yale studying chamber music. We felt an incredible telepathy, and were really interested in doing something new, so in 2001 we commissioned David Lang to write his piece for us.
"We don't consider ourselves a percussion ensemble," White continues, "just four guys who are passionate about playing really great music in an exciting way. We'll play classical music, electronic music, African instruments such as the imbira, and rock. For the Pub show, we'll include the first part of Reich's 'Drumming,' to which Lang's piece is a reaction, and another piece written for us for industrial drum sets."
Ethel rounds out the evening with a release party of their own. Often in the news in recent years and hot off a JCC appearance with clarinet ace David Krakaeur, Ethel capitalize on the post-Kronos visibility of the string quartet, welding a rock and blues flexibility to their taut classical chops. Their CD (also on Cantaloupe Music, also self-titled) features work of Ziporyn (with the composer on bass clarinet), Phil Kline (renowned for his boombox parades and recent Zippo protest songs) and John King's moving, catchy "Sweet Hardwood."
Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. E. 4th St. & Astor Pl.), 212-539-8778, 7, $20.
ALAN LOCKWOOD
JOHN COPLANS
THROUGH SAT., JUNE 26
JOHN COPLANS, who started on the Early Photographs now on view at Skarstedt Fine Art when he was 64, honed his subject down to self-portraiture-though Coplans' self-portraits exclude his face. The results are hide-like, intimate and grotesque, if grotesque includes a commitment to serialism enlivened with a healthy draught of myopic Rabelais.
"The principal thing is the question of how our culture views age: that old is ugly," Coplans stated in an interview. Internationally influential as a curator, critic and founder/editor of both Artforum and Dialogue magazines, "He ceased in those roles once he pledged himself to being an artist," Manuela Mozo of Skarstedt wrote in an email. The results are massive B&Ws that Mozo calls "incredibly evocative, without the emotions conveyed by facial expressions."
Coplans would prop himself upside down for big triptychs, or zero in on a crooked finger. Sarah Boxer, reviewing Coplans' PS1 retrospective in 1997 (other big shows have been at MOMA, SFMOMA and the Centre Pompidou), wrote, "Mr. Coplans walks the line between male and female, and finds something animal."
As Coplans put it in one of his books, when he worked on the self-portraits his thoughts would "travel down my genes and visit remote ancestors, both male and female? I don't know how it happens, but when I pose for one of these photos, I become immersed in the past. The experience," he added, "is akin to Alice falling through the looking glass."
Come see, though be aware that Coplans, an early proponent of Pop Art, Lichtenstein and Warhol, sought to remove "paying attention" from the act of "seeing." More of his work went on view May 21, when Serial Figures opened at Andrea Rosen Gallery in Chelsea.
Skarstedt Fine Art, 1018 Madison Ave. (78th St.), 212-737-2060, 10-6, free.
Andrea Rosen Gallery, 525 W. 24th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-627-6000, 10-6, free.
ALAN LOCKWOOD