Yearly Archives: 2011

LOU REED AND LAURIE ANDERSON VALENTINE’S DAY DUO

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed will team up for a special Valentine’s performance February 15 at the Stone (Photo by Guido Harari)

The Stone
Ave. C at Second St.
Tuesday, February 15, $40, 8:00
www.thestonenyc.com

Together since 1995, Laurie Anderson and the ubiquitous Lou Reed finally tied the knot in April 2008. During their domestic partnership, they have collaborated on record, but they rarely have performed live as a duo. This month they have been curating the calendar at the Stone, with free open houses every Sunday. On February 15, the longtime couple will take the stage for two special shows, at 8:00 and 10:00, with Buke and Gass (Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez) opening up. Admission is forty bucks, and if you’re wondering why it isn’t sold out, that’s because the Stone sells no tickets in advance, only at the door the night of the performance. But get ready for some very long lines. Anderson will be back February 23 playing with guitar legend Fred Frith; other highlights through the month include Marc Ribot on February 17, Rob Wasserman on February 18, A. M. Homes on February 22, Greg Cohen on February 24, and Ryuichi Sakamoto on February 26.

TWI-NY TALK: KYLE THOMAS SMITH

Kyle Thomas Smith will read from his well-received debut novel, 85A, on Wednesday night at Cake Shop

Cake Shop
152 Ludlow St. between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
Wednesday, February 16, free, 7:00
212-253-0036
www.85anovel.com
www.cake-shop.com

“Every detention, every chip of glass piercing my forearm from the inside, every minute the 85A is late drives me that much closer to London.” So begins Kyle Thomas Smith’s harrowing debut novel, 85A (Bascom Hill, August 2010, $14.95), the brutally honest story of Chicago teenager Seamus O’Grady, who is desperate to get out of a city, school, and family that relentlessly beats him down both mentally and physically. Although the plot of the book is not based on Smith’s real life — he was born and raised in Chicago and moved to Brooklyn in 2003, where he currently lives with his partner and cats — the setting is, and he does a marvelous job capturing the heart and soul of the dark underbelly of his hometown over the course of one long day in January 1989. Smith, a passionate, engaging young man with an infectious joie de vivre, has written for websites and magazines including Sentient City: The Art of Urban Dharma, Boston’s Edge, and The Brooklyn Rail, is an ardent Buddhist practitioner and meditator, and is a multidimensional, enthusiastic individual who feels right at home whether at a punk-rock show or a classical music concert, at experimental theater or an opera at the Met. Smith will be participating in the latest free monthly Mixer event at Cake Shop on February 16 hosted by Melissa Febos and Rebecca Keith, with fellow writers Jami Attenberg (The Melting Season), Deenah Vollmer (The New Yorker, The Rumpus), and Rohin Guha (Relief Work) and a live performance by the Scamps. Smith discussed his first New York City reading of 85A and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: Seamus is a fascinating character who doesn’t quite understand that with actions come consequences, at least not always the desired kind. How much did you play with Seamus’s lack of/dawning self-awareness?

Kyle Thomas Smith: I was always careful to keep Seamus’s naïveté front-and-center. On the one hand, he’s a city kid who coolly assesses every environment he enters. On the other hand, he’s a misfit and a dreamer. He’s in a bad situation at home, he doesn’t have many friends, he’s not learning in school, so he copes by escaping into fantasy. He projects these fantasies on to the wrong people and builds all sorts of castles in the air. I have always been preoccupied with the notion that there are different types of intelligence. Seamus is hopeless when it comes to academics but his imaginative capacities are off the charts. Yet it’s his imaginative intelligence that could also plunge him headlong into an abyss. In order to illustrate that conflict, I had to constantly ground Seamus’s character in “ungroundedness.”

twi-ny: Music plays a key role in 85A, but you have said that the music that inspires Seamus is not the music that inspires you. What music inspired you when you were Seamus’s age, and what music inspires you today?

KTS: Well, when I was Seamus’s age, the music I listened to and the music that inspired me were two different things. In early high school, I let the scene dictate my tastes. So I listened to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Ministry and a lot of their industrial-goth side projects, but inside I was much more drawn to Bauhaus and Joy Division and even softer stuff like the Smiths, Cocteau Twins, and Robyn Hitchcock. But things changed for me when the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking surfaced. That was incredible shit and it inspired me to abandon what I was supposed to be listening to and go straight for what I wanted. I went way, way, way back to basics at that point and steeped myself in the Stones (pardon my orgasm), Bowie, Lou Reed, John Cale, and Dylan (especially) — my soul was much more in alignment with all of them. I still love them and I still love the Pixies, but I’m more hooked on Miles Davis and Nina Simone these days. My partner is an opera and classical music aficionado, so my ear has become trained on the Brahms and Chopin that he’s always playing. I keep going back in time. I’m afraid I don’t know much about what’s going on in music anymore, though I do like Gnarls Barkley and Danger Mouse a lot. That’s some deep, inventive stuff right there.

twi-ny: You’ve had readings in your native Chicago, where the book is set, and now will be having your first major event in New York City, your adopted hometown. Has reaction to the book been different in each city? Based on your personal experience, what are some of the major differences between the two cities?

KTS: 85A has been well received in New York. Maybe it’s because there’s been too much written about New York already and New Yorkers are sick of always reading about themselves; they want to read about another dynamic American city for a change. And a lot of nostalgic, homesick Chicago transplants in New York tell me how much the book brings them back.

As for Chicago itself, I can’t tell you how over the moon I was when the Chicago Tribune gave 85A a great review. It was one of those hometown-boy-makes-good experiences. But Chicago is another kettle of fish. It’s an extremely proud city, and people in its music, lit, and art scenes can be incredibly territorial. I recently saw a spot-on documentary about Chicago’s 80s punk scene called You Weren’t There. The title perfectly sums up that chest-thumping, I-was-there-you-weren’t attitude that some people still cop to this day. And that attitude was on flagrant display on this one major Chicago website that posted a poorly written review of 85A that bashes Seamus and completely misrepresents the book. It set off a shit-storm of parochial, internecine comments from people who admitted that they’d never even read 85A. The day it was posted, I had just come to town and was supposed to do a reading at Quimby’s Books the following night. I had no idea how I was going to get through it. But when I got up in front of the audience, a more confident spirit overtook me and people couldn’t have been more receptive to what I was reading. So . . . Chicago can be a tough crowd but it can give a lot of love too.

The difference between the two cities — that’s a damned good question. Chicago winters are never easy, but I never knew why they got such a bad rap until I first moved to New York and then went home for a visit. Holy witch’s tit in a steel bra! How I got through daily life for so many years in that town I have no idea. I like Chicago’s modern architecture better, but New York and Chicago are both world-class cities with some of the best cultural offerings on the planet. Many New Yorkers who have moved to Chicago say they don’t miss New York at all. They say they have just as good a time in Chicago and it’s much cheaper and more manageable. I would probably see Chicago the same way if I wasn’t from there, but there just seems to be more here and you never know what you’re going to stumble upon next when you explore New York neighborhoods, no matter how long you’ve lived in its boroughs.

WESTMINSTER KENNEL CLUB DOG SHOW 2011

Scottie was named Best in Show at the 135th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show last year

Madison Square Garden
Seventh Avenue to Eighth Avenue between 31st & 33rd Sts.
February 14-15, $30-$162.05, 8:00 am – 11:00 pm
www.westminsterkennelclub.org
www.thegarden.com

While a bevy of beautiful babes and hunky hotties will be marching up and down catwalks during Fashion Week, a parade of pampered pups will be circling around Madison Square Garden for the 135th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Among this year’s participants are a half dozen new breeds: Boykin Spaniel, Bluetick Coonhound, Redbone Coonhound, Cane Corso, Leonberger, and Icelandic Sheepdog. Because of renovations under way at the Garden, the benching layout will be somewhat different than usual, but that shouldn’t cause too much of a predicament for the champion canines. Among Monday’s section variety groups going before the judges are Toy, Hound, Non-Sporting, and Herding, with Tuesday featuring Terrier, Working, and Sporting. Judge Leonard S. Reppond of San Leandro, California, might have the toughest job of all, responsible for judging Silky Terriers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Miniature Pinschers, Pomeranians, Maltese, and Yorkshire Terriers in Ring Six on Monday. We’re tempted to make some kind of snide comment about how the Garden has been going to the dogs of late, with both the Knicks and the Rangers in the midst of bad slumps, but we decided not to bark up that tree.

ANDY WARHOL: MOTION PICTURES

“Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures,” installation shot, 16mm film (black and white, silent), © 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The International Council of the Museum of Modern Art Gallery, sixth floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through March 21, $20 (includes admittance to same-day film programs)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

From 1964 to 1966, Andy Warhol attempted to film nearly everyone who entered the Factory, capturing them in four-minute silent black-and-white segments he called “Screen Tests,” with the subjects usually just staring directly into the camera the entire time. MoMA has turned one of its sixth-floor spaces into a moving-portrait gallery, as twelve of the Screen Tests are being shown concurrently, hung on the walls like a series of large-scale paintings, with visitors feeling like they’ve just walked into a (rather introspective) Factory gathering. Shot at twenty-four frames per second but projected at sixteen, the shorts have a beautiful, slow, loving pace to them, but several of them have tragic elements if you are familiar with the person’s ultimate fate. For this rare display, curator Klaus Biesenbach has selected the following Factory celebrities and would-be Superstars: poet-activist Allen Ginsberg; musician Lou Reed; actor and painter Dennis Hopper; Kathe Dees; actress and art collector Baby Jane Holzer (who brushes her teeth); Japanese actress Kyoko Kishida; writer-activist-theorist Susan Sontag; art patron Ethel Scull; actress and socialite Edie Sedgwick, who died of an overdose of prescription medication and alcohol in 1971 at the age of twenty-eight; model-actress Donyale Luna, who died of an overdose in 1979 at the age of thirty-three; actor Paul America, who died in a car accident in 1982 at the age of thirty-eight; actress and Velvet Underground singer Nico, who died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1988 at the age of forty-nine; and Italian actor and musician Gino Piserchio, who died in 1989 of an AIDS-related infection at the age of forty-four. The Screen Tests are supplemented by several of Warhol’s heavily influential, controversial films, from the same early 1960s period, that deal with humanity’s deepest needs and desires, including BLOW JOB, EAT, SLEEP, and KISS, the latter shown in the seated back screening room. On March 2, the full five-and-a-half-hour SLEEP will be screened in the rear gallery, while the complete eight-hour EMPIRE will be shown on alternate Fridays, February 18 and March 4 and 18. Also, in conjunction with the exhibit, there will be a MoMA Talk on March 3 at 6:00, “Warhol, On Screen, Off Screen,” with writer John Giorno and artist Conrad Ventur, moderated by curator Klaus Biesenbach. And finally, if you visit the above website, you can even make your own Warhol Screen Test.

FASHION WEEK: THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR DANCIN’

Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday, February 15, free with RSVP, 8:00
www.bootsbykora.com

Less than a year after emigrating in the fall of 2001 from her hometown of Bucharest, Romania, where she worked as a painter on Costa-Gavras’s AMEN., artist and designer Coralia Nitu had her first solo show in New York, “ARTectonic,” held at the East-West Gallery of the Romanian Cultural Center in Murray Hill. Back then, Nitu, who was pursuing her MFA at Parsons, told us how she loved working with metal, embracing its coldness while twisting it into unique geometric patterns. She also raved about how she fed off the fast-paced energy of New York. In 2006 she returned to designing footwear; back in Romania, she had started redecorating shoes when she was twelve. All of those elements will come together on February 15 as Nitu, now known professionally as Kora Mancini, will present “These Boots Are Made for Dancin’,” a Fashion Week event being held at the Park Ave. Armory. Mancini will show off her Made in America collection of ten shiny metallic styles, crafted in Italian leather, reminiscent of her early painting and sculpture, with an assist from her friend Kate Jewett, dancer and rehearsal director for Shen Wei Dance Arts, who will perform in the footwear. (Jewett is rather familiar with the armory, as the Shen Wei company previously danced in and around Ernesto Neto’s “Anthropodino” installation in 2009 and will be back in the armory November 30 – December 4 for a world premiere and two repertory pieces.) According to the invitation, “The theme is glam, the season is all year round, and the target is young, athletic, and cosmopolitan women (or admirers of women) with a penchant for the flashy and outrageous.” There are very few remaining spots available, so if you wish to attend, you should RSVP immediately for what promises to be a very different kind of fashion show.

THANK YOU

You’ll thank us for recommending you check out Baltimore trio at Death by Audio tonight

Death by Audio
49 South Second St., Brooklyn
Saturday, February 12, $7, 8:00
www.myspace.com/deathbyaudioshows
www.facebook.com/pages/Thank-You

The Baltimore trio of Jeffrey McGrath, Michael Bouyoucas, and Emmanuel Nicolaidis, who make up Thank You, get credit for each playing “everything” on the group’s third album, GOLDEN WORRY (Thrill Jockey, January 2011). The follow-up to 2007’s WORLD CITY and 2008’s TERRIBLE TWO, their latest release contains six tracks that weave and wind their way through a multitude of sounds, with McGrath primarily on guitar, Bouyoucas on bass and organ, and Nicolaidis on drums, with lots of other instruments and vocalizations thrown into the massive mix. GOLDEN WORRY blasts off with the powerful “1-2-3 Bad,” which shoots out in all directions at a fast and furious pace, followed by the more melodic, steady, almost New Agey — um, make that spacey — “Birth Reunion,” which features a fab, freaky finale that works as a great lead-in for the full-force funk attack that kicks off “Pathetic Magic,” which was part of a 2009 twelve-inch with GOLDEN WORRY’s chant-filled “Strange All,” which really gives newcomer Nicolaidis a chance to strut his stuff, taking over for original Thank You drummer Elke Wardlaw, and works well with the great squealing on “Continental Divide” and some high flying on the closer, “Can’t/Can,” so there are no worries that Thank You is worth thanking again for another compelling disc. Yes, that sentence left us breathless too, but from what we’ve heard, that’s what Thank You’s live shows will do to you as well. They’ll be at Death by Audio tonight with Math the Band, Ed Schrader, and labelmate Dustin Wong, who also knows how to weave and wind his way through awesome sounds.

FASHION WEEK: MOBILE MAKEOVER BUS

Mobile Makeover Bus will be giving out free makeovers near Lincoln Center through Valentine’s Day

65th St. & Columbus Ave.
Through Monday, February 14, free, 12 noon – 6:00
www.stylelist.com

Didn’t get your invite to the tents this weekend? New York is in high style for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, when six-foot, hundred-pound fifteen-year-olds strut the runways in all their attenuated glory, dressed in tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of haute couture by everyone from mainstreamers Marc Jacobs and Tory Burch to Vena Cava and avant-garde designers Rodarte and Chado Ralph Rucci and beyond. But every New Yorker can stay fashionable with a visit to the pink-and-white AOL StyleList.com Mobile Makeover Bus. The cheery salon on wheels, parked near Lincoln Center, is filled with stylists ready to do mini-makeovers and brows, dispensing quick lessons in the smokey eye, classic pin-up look, totally wearable bronze goddess, and more. Walk-in appointments are free; the bus will be stationed at 65th St. & Columbus through six o’clock on Valentine’s Day so you can get all jazzed up for your romantic evening. New Yorkers are nothing if not up-to-the-minute: AOL’s StyleList.com bus lets us sport the latest runway beauty trends before the tents are even folded.