this week in music

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: BIG BAD WOLVES

Cop (Lior Ashkenazi) must determine how far he will go to get the truth out of suspected child killer (Rotem Keinan) in brutal black comedy

Cop (Lior Ashkenazi) must determine how far he will go to get the truth out of suspected child killer (Rotem Keinan) in brutal black comedy

BIG BAD WOLVES (Navot Papushado & Aharon Keshales, 2013)
Monday, April 22, AMC Loews Village 7, 4:00
Wednesday, April 24, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 10:00
www.tribecafilm.com

Israeli film critic Aharon Keshales and his former student Navot Papushado follow up their 2011 Israeli slasher flick, Rabies, with the gory, ultraviolent black-comedy thriller Big Bad Wolves. Award-winning actor Lior Ashkenazi stars as Miki, a cop who is sure that Bible teacher Dror (Rotem Keinan) is behind the grisly kidnap, rape, and murder of a young girl. Miki and his partner, Rami (Menashe Noy), and two thugs try to beat the truth out of Dror, against the direct orders of their commanding officer, Zvika (Dvir Benedek). When the illegal interrogation winds up on YouTube, Miki is relieved of duty — with Zvika’s blessing to continue to go after Dror. But when Gidi (Tzahi Grad), the father of the dead girl, joins the chase, things threaten to get out of control — and quickly become even crazier. Big Bad Wolves is a sly, smart take on such genre pictures as Oldboy, Se7en, and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds, featuring generous amounts of brutal torture along with some very funny bits involving Jewish mothers. Writer-directors Keshales and Papushado keep the audience guessing right up to the very end as the main characters rarely do what is expected and hysterical comic scenes show up at rather inopportune moments. While playing with the standard elements of the revenge flick and the cop-on-the-edge tale, the dark, atmospheric Big Bad Wolves also explores the unbreakable bond between parents and children, lending more than a touch of gravitas to the wild, unpredictable proceedings, which are not for the faint of heart.

MOTOWN THE MUSICAL

Hitsville, U.S.A. comes to Broadway in new jukebox musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Hitsville, U.S.A. comes to Broadway in new jukebox musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 West 46th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through December 30, $49-$159
www.motownthemusical.com

Motown: The Musical opens with a battle of the bands between the Temptations and the Four Tops from the 1983 Motown 25 television special, setting the too-fast pace for this watered-down ride through the history of the legendary record label and its founder, Berry Gordy. With a book by Gordy based on his 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown, the jukebox musical features snippets from nearly sixty songs from the Detroit label’s stellar catalog, whipping past in sped-up fury, re-created by a talented cast of performers who, of course, “ain’t nothing like the real thing” (a tune that, by the way, is not in the show). Brandon Victor Dixon is solid as Gordy, a dreamer who goes from odd job to odd job until deciding to start his own music company. He puts together an amazing group of singers, from Marvin Gaye (Bryan Terrell Clark), Smokey Robinson (Charl Brown), Stevie Wonder (Raymond Luke Jr. and Ryan Shaw), and Mary Wells (N’Kenge) to the Marvelettes, Gladys Knight (Marva Hicks) and the Pips, and Martha Reeves (Saycon Sengbloh) and the Vandellas. But this by-the-numbers story of Hitsville, U.S.A., directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, focuses too much on the relationship between Gordy and Diana Ross (Valisia LeKae), feeling more like a public apology than a realistic depiction of their years together, both personally and professionally, particularly her solo debut in Las Vegas that involves forced audience interaction. Gordy also forces in set pieces related to the civil rights movement and such tragedies as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King that are driven by clichés.

Raymond Luke Jr. nearly steals the show as young Michael Jackson (played alternately by Jibreel Mawry), channeling the superstar on such Jackson 5 classics as “ABC,” “I Want You Back,” and “I’ll Be There,” but that also is a major problem with the production, which works so hard to impress the audience with its re-creations, resulting in truncated versions that come off more like a talent show, albeit a pretty darn good one. There are also a few new songs written by Gordy and Michael Lovesmith that are standard Broadway musical fare. Motown: The Musical is like an old record spinning on an even older turntable, going a little too fast, filled with skips and scratches as the needle follows the grooves, but in the end, the songs are so good that you just might not even care about all those hiccups.

BLUES FOR SMOKE

Rodney McMillian, “Asterisks in Dockery,” mixed-media installation, 2012 (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Rodney McMillian, “Asterisks in Dockery,” mixed-media installation, 2012 (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 28, $14-$18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In 1960, jazz pianist and composer Jaki Byard released his solo debut, Blues for Smoke, an improvisatory record that features on its cover a train puffing out dark clouds as it makes its way down the tracks. The album lends its name to an exciting multimedia exhibit at the Whitney that examines the impact of the blues on the arts. The show is highlighted by David Hammons’s extraordinary 1989 installation, “Chasing the Blue Train,” which greets visitors on the third floor. A blue train makes its way across tracks that take it through a tunnel covered in coal and a landscape with upturned piano tops as John Coltrane’s 1957 Blue Train album plays from a boom box, the work riffing on Coltrane’s name (coal, train) while celebrating the blues. Zoe Leonard’s “1961, 2002-Ongoing” consists of a row of suitcases of different shades of blue, evoking impermanence and creating a mystery about what might be inside; nearby, Martin Kipperberger’s “Martin, into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself” is a life-size replica of the artist standing in the corner, suffering from a case of the blues. Specially commissioned for the show, Kori Newkirk’s “Yall” consists of a shopping cart nearly completing a circle of blue on the floor, calling to mind exclusion, homelessness, and failed capitalism. Kira Lynn Harris lines a stairwell and entrance with silver Mylar in “Blues for Breuer,” paying tribute to the architect of the Whitney building, which will be taken over by the Met in 2015 when the Whitney moves downtown.

Installation view, Blues for Smoke (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Works by Martin Wong, Martin Kipperberger, Zoe Leonard, and others form a blues aesthetic at the Whitney (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Curated by Bennett Simpson in consultation with Chrissie Iles, “Blues for Smoke” also features works by Romare Bearden, Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Liz Larner, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rachel Harrison, Mark Morrisroe, Alma Thomas, Beauford Delaney, Kara Walker, William Eggleston, and Lorraine O’Grady, all contributing to the overall examination of the blues aesthetic. A media room includes viewing stations where people can watch classic performances, while Stan Douglas’s “Hors-champs” plays continuously in its own space on the first floor, offering a unique view of a live recording on the front and back of a screen hanging from the ceiling. In addition, the Whitney is hosting a series of live events that continue through the end of the exhibition, which closes April 28, including “Blues for Smoke: Matana Roberts, Keiji Haino, and Loren Connors” on April 20 at 8:00 (featuring a solo performance by Roberts and a duo guitar improvisation by Haino and Connors), “Through the Lens of the Blues Aesthetic: An Evening of Short Films Selected by Kevin Jerome Everson” on April 25 at 7:00, the live concert “Blues for Smoke: Annette Peacock” on April 26 at 7:00, and the three-day “Blues for Smoke: Thomas Bradshaw,” in which the playwright will be creating a new piece that will be shown April 26-28.

SONG OF THE DAY: “THE NEIGHBORHOOD” BY DARCY JAMES ARGUE’S SECRET SOCIETY

In November 2011, composer Darcy James Argue and visual artist Danijel Zezelj presented the multimedia Brooklyn Babylon at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, an audiovisual commission documenting the building of a futuristic Brooklyn, coming at a time when Brooklyn was indeed beginning to go through a major transformation, particularly around BAM’s home in Fort Greene. Argue, a Vancouver native who resides in the World’s Greatest Borough, has now recorded the show’s wide-ranging score with his band, the eighteen-piece Secret Society, resulting in the vastly entertaining Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam, April 30). The fifty-three-minute suite slides effortlessly from jazz, Klezmer, and power pop to psychedelia, Balkan folk, and swing and back again as it moves chronologically through such songs as “The Neighborhood,” “The Tallest Tower in the World,” “Construction + Destruction,” “Missing Parts,” and “Coney Island”; it also includes such empowering interludes as “Infuse,” “Enthrall,” “Bewail,” and “Arise.” The outstanding band features such performers as Erica von Kleist on piccolo, flute, alto flute, soprano sax, alto sax, and electronics, John Ellis on clarinet, bass clarinet, and tenor sax, Ingrid Jensen on trumpet, fluegelhorn, and electronics, Ryan Keberle on trombone, and Gordon Webster on acoustic and electric piano and melodica, with Argue as ringleader. It all comes together like the soundtrack for an unseen film that the listener gets to create in their head. In conjunction with the album, the Brooklyn-based Zezelj, who hails from Croatia, is publishing the limited-edition graphic novel Babilon. On April 20 at 10:00, BAMcafé Live will be hosting the Brooklyn Babylon album release party, a concert without the visuals; admission is free, and advance copies of the new record, Argue’s follow-up to his debut, 2009’s Infernal Machines, will be available for purchase.

RECORD STORE DAY

Print

Multiple locations
Saturday, April 20
www.recordstoreday.com

Once upon a time, teenage boys and girls, and those a little older, collected small and larger black discs that would spin around and make sounds when a needle was dropped into its grooves. The bigger discs came in packages that sometimes would fold out and serve as an exceptional surface on which to clean out the seeds from a bag of marijuana. Among the favorites for this important project were the Beatles’ White Album and Frampton Comes Alive! Those two elements — music and weed — will interact this Saturday for the annual Record Store Day promotion, which this year falls on April 20, when many around the world celebrate the consumption of cannabis. In New York City, you can find special one-day-only limited-edition releases, limited-run regional focus releases, and first-day releases at such stores as Rock and Soul Records, Academy Records & CDs, Second Hand Rose Music, Big City Records, Rockit Scientist Records, Kim’s Video & Music, turntable lab, Permanent Records, Disc-o-Rama, Good Records NYC, Other Music, In Living Stereo, Downtown Music Gallery, Record Runner, Generation Records, rebel rebel, Bleecker Street Records, Cake Shop, Deadly Dragon Sound, Sound Fix, earwax, normans sound and vision, and others. Not all records are available at all locations, so you might want to check in advance to see if your coveted disc will be in stock there. Below are some of the hundreds of singles, EPs, LPs, colored vinyl, picture discs, and even cassette singles that will be on sale, including the soundtrack to Dazed and Confused, which comes in a very appropriate weed-green vinyl disc.

Ani DiFranco, Buffalo (Official Bootleg)
Ben Harper, By My Side
Best Coast, “Fear of My Identity” bw/ “Who Have I Become”
Big Dipper, “Joke Outfit
Big Mama Thornton, Jail
Big Star, Nothing Can Hurt Me (Special Pressing)
Billy Bragg, “No One Knows Nothing Anymore” b/w “Song of the Iceberg”
Black Lips/Icky Blossoms, “Cowboy Knights” (colored vinyl)
Bob Dylan, “Wigwam”
Brian Jonestown Massacre, “Fist Full of Bees” b/w “Food for Clouds”
Buddy Guy, Hold That Plane
Built to Spill, Live
CAKE, “Sheep Go to Heaven” b/w “Jesus Wrote a Blank Check”
Calexico, Spiritoso
Captain Beefheart, Frank Freeman’s Dance Club (purple vinyl)
Cheech & Chong featuring Alice Bowie, “Earache My Eye” b/w “Turn That Thing Down” (Green Vinyl/Picture Sleeve)
Dan Deacon, “Konono Ripoff No. 1”
Dave Brubeck Trio, Distinctive Rhythm Instrumentals (Fantasy 3-2) (red vinyl)
David Bowie, “Drive-In Saturday Night” b/w “Drive-In Saturday Night” (Russell Harty Plus Pop Version)
dB’s, Revolution of the Mind (orange vinyl)
Dutch Uncles, “Slave to the Atypical Rhythm”
Emerson Lake and Palmer, The First Five: A Picture Disc Collection
Fela Kuti, “Sorrow Tears and Blood” b/w “Perambulator”
Flaming Lips, Zaireeka 45 RPM box set
Free Energy, “Wild Life”
Garbage, “Because the Night” (Coke bottle clear vinyl)
Grateful Dead, Rare Cuts & Oddities 1966
Hold Steady, “Criminal Fingers”
Husker Du, “Amusement”
Jimmy Eat World, “Damage”
Joy Formidable, “A Minute’s Silence”
Justin Townes Earle, “Yuma” (colored vinyl)
Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, Rattlin Bones
Marshall Crenshaw, “Stranger And Stranger”
MGMT, “Alien Days” cassette single
Mike Watt & the Black Gang, “Rebel Girl” b/w “30 Days in the Hole”
Moby and Mark Lanegan, “The Lonely Night”

Mumford & Sons, Live at Bull Moose
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Animal X” (picture disc)
Nicolas Jaar Remix, Brian Eno’s “LUX” and Grizzly Bear’s “Sleeping Ute”
Oval, Systemisch and 94diskont
Paul McCartney & Wings, “Maybe I’m Amazed”
Phish, Lawn Boy Deluxe
Phoenix, “Entertainment”
Pink Floyd, “See Emily Play” b/w “Scarecrow”
Porno for Pyros, Porno for Pyros (swirl vinyl)
Public Enemy, Public Enemy: Planet Earth — The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Greatest Rap Hits (picture disc)
Public Image Ltd., “Public Image” b/w “The Cowboy Song”
Pussy Galore, “Groovy Hate Fuck”
Richard Thompson, “Salford Sunday”
Rob Zombie, “Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown” b/w “Teenage Nosferatu Pussy” (explicit only)
Robyn Hitchcock, There Goes the Ice
Roky Erickson, “Mine Mine Mind” b/w “Bloody Hammer”
Sharon Van Etten, “We Are Fine” b/w “Hotel 2 Tango”
Shearwater and Sharon Van Etten, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” b/w “A Wake for the Minotaur”
Soundgarden, King Animal demos
Soundtrack, Dazed and Confused (weed green vinyl)
Stephen Malkmus and Friends, Can’s Ege Bamyasi
Superchunk, “Void” b/w “Faith”
South Park, “San Diego” b/w “Gay Fish”
Tegan and Sara, Closer Remixed
Tift Merritt, Markings
Thurston Moore & Loren Connors, The Only Way to Go
Trey Anastasio, Blue Ash and Other Suburbs (EP picture disc)
White Stripes, Elephant (10th Anniversary colored vinyl)
Willie Nelson, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”

NOT SO SILENT CINEMA: BUSTER KEATON SHORTS


92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Friday, April 19, $12-$15, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.forthesakeofthesong.com

Brendan Cooney’s Not So Silent Cinema project comes to 92YTribeca on Friday, April 19, presenting a new live score for three classic Buster Keaton shorts. In The Goat (Malcolm St. Clair & Buster Keaton, 1921), Keaton plays a man mistaken for escaped murderer Dead Shot Dan (St. Clair) and now on the run from the law. In The High Sign (Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton, 1921), Keaton fakes being a sharpshooter and ends up getting hired by the Blinking Buzzards to kill a wealthy man he is also hired to protect by his daughter (Bartine Burkett). And in One Week (Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton, 1920), a pair of newlyweds (Keaton and Sybil Seely) get a plot of land as a wedding present, along with a house-in-a-box that they put together with hysterical results. The trio of early films established the Great Stone Face as a master comedian who commented on the hard socioeconomic times while staging remarkable, extremely dangerous stunts, whether having the side of a house fall on him, jumping from a chair to a table and through a small window above a door, or riding on the front of a speeding train heading directly at the audience. Cooney’s original score, which incorporates American roots music, ragtime, blues, bluegrass, and jazz, will be performed by Kyle Tuttle on banjo, Andy Bergman on clarinet, and Cooney on piano.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “CATALINA” BY BRIEN McVERNON AND THE BLACKOUTS

Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist Brien McVernon has performed solo as well as in such groups as the Fabulous Colours, the Glam Gods, Raiding Party, and Retro Rockets, all names that inspire fast-paced, hard-edged rock and roll. McVernon will be at Arlene’s Grocery on Wednesday night at 7:00 with his latest trio, Brien McVernon and the Blackouts, slashing out to plenty of classic rockabilly. Also on the bill are the LoveHowl, PUNK 77, New York’s Finest, and the Rave-Ons.