Dean & Britta will reprise their audiovisual Andy Warhol tribute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 6 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Saturday, October 6, $35, 7:00
www.metmuseum.org
www.deanandbritta.com
Two years ago, at the CMJ Festival, Dean & Britta announced that they would play “13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests” for the last time ever in New York City at the Skirball Center in October 2010. Well, it seems that the Met has gotten them to change their mind, as they will once again be performing their outstanding set piece on October 6 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, in conjunction with the new exhibit “Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years.” In 2006, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh commissioned Dean & Britta to compose scores for screen tests that the silver-haired artist shot at the Factory from 1964 to 1966; they searched through hundreds of the black-and-white films (each four minutes and sixteen seconds in length) until they decided on Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, Paul America, Susan Bottomly, Ann Buchanan, Freddy Herko, Jane Holzer, Billy Name, Richard Rheem, Ingrid Superstar, and Mary Woronov. The result is a stunning collection of gorgeous instrumentals (“Silver Factory Theme,” “Incandescent Innocence”), covers (Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It with Mine” and the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore”), “Knives from Bavaria” from the Dean & Britta record L’Avventura, and other trippy tracks, including the phenomenal “Teenage Lightning (and Lonely Highways),” that the duo, accompanied by Anthony Lamarca and Matt Sumrow, performs live while the screen tests are projected behind them. Dean, who was previously in Luna and Galaxie 500, introduces most of the songs/films with a little historical detail about the subject, adding both nostalgia and, unfortunately, tragedy to the proceedings, as most of the people being shown on the screen are no longer with us.