this week in music

BASTILLE DAY ON 60th STREET 2015

Can-Can dancers are part of the fun at annual Bastille Day festivities on 60th St. (photo copyright Sasha Arutyunova, 2014)

60th St. between Fifth & Lexington Aves.
Sunday, July 12, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
www.bastilledaynyc.com

On July 14, 1789, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, a symbolic victory that kicked off the French Revolution and the establishment of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Ever since, July 14 has been a national holiday celebrating liberté, égalité, and fraternité. In New York City, the Bastille Day festivities are set for Sunday, July 12, along Sixtieth St., where the French Institute Alliance Française hosts its annual daylong party of food, music, dance, and other special activities. There will be a Wine, Cheese, Cocktails, and Beer Tasting in FIAF’s Tinker Auditorium from 12 noon to 4:30 ($25), as well as luxurious ninety-minute Champagne & Chocolate Tastings in Le Skyroom at 12:30 and 3:00 ($65) featuring delights from Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart, La Caravelle, Piper-Heidsieck, Pommery, Chocolat Moderne, Neuhaus, Valrhona, and Le Cirque. The annual raffle ($5 per ticket) can win you such prizes as trips to France and New Orleans, concert tickets, beauty treatments and gift baskets, and more. Food and drink will be available from Bar Bordeaux, Financier, Barraca, Rotisserie Georgette, the Crepe Café, François Payard, Épicerie Boulud, Mille-feuille, Ponty Bistro, Maison de l’Éclair, Macaron Parlour, le Souk, and others. Among those taking the stage will be DJ Ol’ Stark (12 noon), Can-Can dancers (12:45 & 1:30), Benjamin Swax (1:00), Ginkgoa (2:00), the Hungry March Band (3:15), and the Arpège Choir of the Saint-Joseph de Cluny School in Martinique (4:00). The festivities also include a fencing demonstration by the Sheridan Fencing Academy, free half-hour French language workshops for beginners as well as advanced experts, the annual Citroën Car Show, and family-friendly film screenings in Florence Gould Hall, with shorts by Michel Ocelot and studios in Poitou-Charentes and the 2013 feature film Minuscule, Valley of the Lost Ants by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo. So there will be plenty of opportunities to immerse yourself in French culture at this always entertaining block party.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: MEATBODIES LIVE ON KEXP

Who: Surfbort, Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: L.A. band Meatbodies, led by guitarist Chad Ubovich, who has played with Fuzz, Ty Segall, and Mikal Cronin, will be bringing its brand of California garage punk to 4Knots. With Patrick Nolan on guitar, Killian LeDuke on bass, and Ryan Moutinho on drums, Meatbodies has released one well-received full-length, an eponymous record that features such songs as “The Master,” “Dark Road,” “Wahoo,” “Disorder,” and “Tremmors,” which also delve into psychedelia. There should be plenty of shaking and grooving when the band takes the stage in Hudson River Park on July 11.

Surfbort — 12:00
Heaven — 12:40
Heaters — 1:25
Meatbodies — 2:05
Happyness — 2:45
Screaming Females — 3:45
Mikal Cronin — 4:45
Twin Peaks — 5:45
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks — 6:45
Super Furry Animals — 8:30

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “JUNK ESTATE” BY SURFBORT

Who: Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: Anarchy rules on Surfbort’s debut release, October 2014’s R.I.P. Die Old, an update of their March 2014 demo. “This album laughs in the face of the end of the world and gets emotional about the slushie streets,” the Brooklyn punks declare on their Bandcamp site, welcoming people to “dive into a silky sea of decaying dolphins filled with trash as drops of ice-cream run off the cone onto your fingers with the one and only, super teen bobbers from your 2008 wet dreams = *** SURFBORT ***” On such original songs as “Slushie,” “War,” “Suburbia,” and “Blobs” and a cover of the Trashwomen’s “Perversion,” vocalists Dani Miller and Hellena Eisenhart, guitarists Charlotte Wimberley and Matty Birdflu, and drummer Josh Wolpert let it all out with reckless abandon. When you hear Miller spit out “I don’t care about you” on “Junk Estate,” she sure sounds like she means it. Have fun Googling the name of the band, which became an Internet meme after Beyoncé sang “surfboard” that way on “Drunk in Love,” her hit duet with husband Jay-Z. Surfbort claims that R.I.P. Die Old was “recorded in an abandoned animal testing lab on an 8 track,” and we don’t doubt it.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: MIKAL CRONIN LIVE ON KEXP

Who: Surfbort, Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: Laguna Beach native Mikal Cronin has divided his third solo album, MCIII (Merge, May 2015), into one side of lush pop songs (“Turn Around,” “Made My Mind Up,” others), and a second side that tells his very personal coming-of-age story, a six-song suite of “Alone,” “Gold,” “Control,” “Ready,” “Different,” and “Circle.” “It’s about a pivotal moment in my life that changed things, just within a couple of months,” Cronin, who plays most of the instruments on the record, explains in a statement. “It was a shifting point that sent me on the path to doing what I’m doing right now.” Cronin, who has also recorded with Ty Segall, Epsilons, Charlie and the Moonhearts, Party Fowl, and Okie Dokie, will be playing the 4Knots Music Festival in Hudson River Park on July 11.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: “HOPELESS” BY SCREAMING FEMALES

Who: Surfbort, Heaven, Heaters, Meatbodies, Happyness, Screaming Females, Mikal Cronin, Twin Peaks, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and Super Furry Animals
What: Fifth annual Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival
Where: Pier 84, Hudson River Park, West 44th St. at 12th Ave.
When: Saturday, July 11, general admission $25, VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
Why: New Brunswick’s Screaming Females, who tore it up at the 2010 Siren Festival, will be playing 4Knots on July 11, led by super-shredder Marissa Paternoster on guitar, along with bassist King Mike and drummer Jarrett Dougherty. The band is touring behind its first studio album in three years, Rose Mountain, (Don Giovanni, February 2014) which features such tracks as “Empty Head,” “Ripe,” “Burning Car,” “Triumph,” and “It’s Not Fair,” which need to be played loud.

FARE THEE WELL: LIVE FROM SOLDIER FIELD

CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF GRATEFUL DEAD, 1965-2015
AMC Empire 25
234 West 42nd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
July 3, 4, 5, $18, 8:00
212-398-2597
www.dead.net/50
www.fathomevents.com
www.amctheatres.com

Following a brief flirtation with Bob, I became a Jerry man, tried and true. I had never seen RatDog or Bobby and the Midnites, two of Bob Weir’s solo projects away from the Grateful Dead, but seeing the Jerry Garcia Band on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1987 was phenomenal, even as promoter Bill Graham was running up and down the aisles, yelling at people to put out their joints. When Jerry died in 1995 shortly after his fifty-third birthday, I gave the reconfigured Dead a chance, as well as Phil Lesh & Friends, but I just couldn’t get into it. No Jerry, No Dead became my motto, much to the dismay of many of my friends, who continued to go to various shows during the past twenty years. But now that the Dead is saying farewell forever with a three-night stand at Soldier Field in Chicago, I’ve finally relented; I’m not going to the Windy City, but I will be at the AMC Empire in Times Square, which is broadcasting each show live. (You can also watch the concerts at home via pay-per-view and live streaming, with packages running from $29.95 to $109.95.) Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir will be joined by such special guests as Trey Anastasio, Jeff Chimenti, and Bruce Hornsby as they play for upwards of five hours each night at Soldier Field, where the Grateful Dead performed with Jerry for the very last time on July 8-9, 1995. As always, every show will be very different; to get you in the mood, below are the two setlists from the Santa Clara shows this past weekend. (Yes that’s right; the second night featured “Dark Star” into “St. Stephen.”) Perhaps all that’s left to say is “Fare you well, fare you well / I love you more than words can tell / Listen to the river sing sweet songs / to rock my soul.”

June 27
Set One: Feel Like A Stranger, New Minglewood Blues, Brown-Eyed Women, Loose Lucy, Loser, Row Jimmy, Alabama Getaway, Black Peter, Hell in a Bucket
Set Two: Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo -> Wharf Rat -> Eyes of the World -> He’s Gone -> *Drums/Space -> I Need a Miracle -> Death Don’t Have No Mercy -> Sugar Magnolia
Encore: Brokedown Palace

June 28
Set One: Jam -> Truckin’, Uncle John’s Band, Alligator -> Cumberland Blues, Born Cross-Eyed > Cream Puff War, Viola Lee Blues
Set Two: Cryptical Envelopment -> Dark Star -> St. Stephen -> The Eleven -> Turn on Your Love Light -> Drums/Space -> What’s Become of the Baby -> The Other One – > Morning Dew
Encore: Casey Jones

4KNOTS 4-PACK TICKET BUNDLES

4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL
Pier 84, Hudson River Park
West 44th St. at Twelfth Ave.
Saturday, July 11, general admission $25 (buy 3 GA tickets, get one free), VIP $50, 12 noon – 10:00
villagevoice.com

For the first time in its five-year history, the Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival, which grew out of the beloved Siren Festival in Coney Island, is charging admission, and the music will be held on one stage instead of two. The event, which is moving to Pier 84 in Hudson River Park, is reaching into its past, as two Siren veterans will be taking part in 4Knots this year, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks (2008) and Screaming Females (2010). General admission tickets are $25, but for a limited time you can get one free with every three you buy, which essentially reduces the cost of each ticket to $18.75. VIP tickets ($50) give you access to the Hornblower Cruise Ship on the dock. (Proceeds benefit the Friends of Hudson River Park.) There will also be a food court on the pier, with such booths and trucks as Dos Toros, Papaya King, Crafty ’Cue BBQ, Harlem Public, Luzzo’s Pizza, and Ti Amo Gelato. The final lineup and set times have been announced and are as follows: