Judging by the lyrics on 8MM’s second full-length album, Between the Devil and Two Black Hearts (ChelseaGirl, September 2012), it might not be obvious that the band is led by husband Sean Beavan and wife Juliette Beavan, who actually appear to be a very happy couple. “You’re the devil and you’re killing me,” Juliette sings on the title track. “I breathe you in and you just bleed me out,” she cries on “Kin,” adding, “Every love’s a scar,” on “Around the Sun.” Formed in 2004 in California, 8MM was initially considered a trip-hop industrial group, but they have burst out of any confining mold on the new disc, from the Fleetwood Mac–esque title song and the hard-rockin’, anthemic “Kin” and “Around the Sun” to the bluesy “The Weight of You” and the country ballad “Everyone Says,” evoking such forebears as Aimee Mann, Fleetwood Mac, PJ Harvey, and Hank Williams along the way. Juliette, a Stop Staring! celebrity model, and Sean, a longtime producer of such powerhouses as Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Guns N’ Roses, exchange verses and harmonize together more than on their previous releases, going off in myriad directions and absolutely exploding on the hot, sexy “The One,” which ends in an orgiastic frenzy. 8MM, which also includes drummer Jon Nicholson, will be at Pianos on December 7 at 11:00 with Emily & the Complexes, Sophie et la Femme, the Henry Millers, the Middle Eight, and Wolff & Tuba.
this week in music
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “LIONESS EYE” BY XAVIER RUDD
“Do you feel like any of this is wrong? Do any of you feel like any of this is wrong? Coz I feel like some of this is wrong,” Australian musician and activist Xavier Rudd declares on “Comfortable in My Skin,” one of thirteen eco-friendly tracks on his seventh studio album, Spirit Bird (SideOneDummy, June 2012). A one-man band who fights for the environment, indigenous cultures, animal rights, and other causes, Rudd again plays a multitude of instruments on the new record, including numerous guitars, keyboards, harmonica, drums, a stomp box, and the yidaki, (didgeridoo). In addition, several songs feature bird and whale samples; one of Rudd’s current causes, and whose call can be heard on Spirit Bird, is the endangered black cockatoo. Rudd recently participated in an online auction sponsored by the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation Centre, where he’s visited. He donated a specially commissioned, signed Tjukurtjarra Didgeridoo on which he has written, “One love / One mob / For country / Arms up / Thank you, Kaarakin!” Rudd’s world music sound mixes elements of folk, pop, dance, and reggae with African and aboriginal rhythms that often border on New Age before picking up speed, especially on the epic, mostly instrumental ten-minute “Full Circle.” The album ends with Rudd pleading, “Please patience please patience please / I’m creating a dream.” You can join Rudd’s ever-growing movement on December 3, when he plays Irving Plaza in a show rescheduled from October 28, which was postponed because of Hurricane Sandy; Chris Berry opens up.
FIRST SATURDAYS: GO
GO: A COMMUNITY-CURATED OPEN STUDIO PROJECT
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, December 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
During its December free First Saturday program, the Brooklyn Museum will be collecting supplies for people and public schools affected by Hurricane Sandy, asking visitors to bring such items as baby diapers and wipes, hand sanitizer, construction paper, pencils, crayons, and notebooks. Among the special events scheduled for the evening are concerts by Underground System Afrobeat, Maya Azucena, and Avan Lava; screenings of Flex Is Kings, followed by a dance demonstration and a Q&A with directors Deidre Schoo and Michael Beach Nichols, and Jim Hubbard’s United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, in honor of a Day With(out)Art / World AIDS Day; a Book Club talk with Cristy C. Road about her new graphic novel, Spit and Passion; an excerpt from Parachute: The Coney Island Performance Festival; an interactive hunt led by Ben McKelahan; a talk with some of the artists included in the new exhibition “GO: a community-curated open studio project”; community-action art talks with Laura Braslow and Ian Marvy; a dance performance by L.O.U.D.; and more. Also on view at the museum now are “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe,” “Materializing ‘Six Years’: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art,” “Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way,” “Raw/Cooked: Duron Jackson,” and “Aesthetic Ambitions: Edward Lycett and Brooklyn’s Faience Manufacturing Company” in addition to long-term installations and the permanent collection.
IAN HUNTER & THE RANT BAND
Ian Hunter wants your vote on hard-rocking new album (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Paramount
370 New York Ave., Huntington
Sunday, December 2, $25-$49.50, 8:00
www.ianhunter.com
www.paramountny.com
Hey, if it were legal, perhaps we’d seriously consider voting for Ian Hunter for leader of the free world. “I’m gonna lean on the one percent / when I’m president / No more bargains in the basement / when I’m president,” the Shropshire-born rocker sings on the title track of his latest album, the excellent When I’m President (Slimstyle, August 2012). “Washington — Jefferson — watch out, baby, ’cos here I come / Abraham — Theodore — you’re gonna see my ugly mug up on Mt. Rushmore.” Hunter, who used to live in Waterside Plaza before moving to Connecticut, rants about the state of the world on the new disc, backed by his appropriately named Rant Band, a crack group featuring James Mastro and Mark Bosch on guitar, Paul Page on bass, Andy Burton on keyboards, Steve Holley on drums, and Andy Burton on keyboards, who have been playing with Ian for years now. Lyrically and musically, they reference Hunter’s past as lead singer of 1970s glam rockers Mott the Hoople and as a solo artist, making allusions to such Hunter classics as “All the Way from Memphis” and “All American Alien Boy” as they power through such tracks as the hard-driving “Comfortable (Flyin’ Scottsman),” the bluesy “I Don’t Know What You Want,” the bouncy “Saint,” and the gorgeous “Just the Way You Look Tonight.” Hunter also takes on America’s Wild West history, playing the role of Crazy Horse on “Ta Shunka Witco,” praising Jesse and Frank James on “Saint,” and celebrating Sam Peckinpah’s ultra-violent Western on “Wild Bunch.” Now in his early seventies, Hunter shows no signs of slowing down, continuing to put out consistently solid records every two or three years (such as 2001’s Rant, 2004’s Strings Attached, 2007’s Shrunken Heads, and 2009’s Man Overboard) and playing great live shows highlighting songs from throughout his five-decade career while looking at life as only he can, through his ever-present dark glasses. “I hope you had a good time / hope your time was as good as mine,” he sings on the new album’s closing track. “My, you’re such a beautiful sight / I can’t believe after all of these years / you’re still here and I’m still here.” Curly golden locks and all, Ian Hunter is indeed still here, and he and the Rant Band will be at the Paramount in Huntington on December 2 with another English ex-pat known for his biting lyrics and beautiful ballads, Graham Parker, who has reunited with the Rumour for a new album and tour. It should be more than just another night when these two team up for this one-time-only gig. (Hunter will also be playing February 9-10 at City Winery.)
REEL ROCKERS: COME GET CRAZY IN THE EAST VILLAGE
Malcolm McDowell gets plenty crazy as rock god Reggie Wanker in Allan Arkush’s GET CRAZY
GET CRAZY (Allan Arkush, 1983)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, December 1, $45-$70, 2:00
Series continues through August 9
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
www.gvshp.org
One of the most underrated, little-seen rock-and-roll movies ever made, Get Crazy should be a cult classic. Directed by Allan (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) Arkush, Get Crazy evokes the closing of the Fillmore East as Neil Allen (Daniel Stern) and Willy Loman (Gail Edwards) help put together a New Year’s Eve farewell concert for the beloved Saturn Theater, which the conniving Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr.) is trying to steal out from under Max Wolfe (Allen Garfield). Among the special guests at the show are Bill Henderson as the Muddy Waters clone King Blues, Captain Cloud (Howard Kaylan of the Turtles) and the Rainbow Telegraph, and Nada (Kid Creole Coconut Lori Eastside) with Piggy (Lee Ving of Fear), but the movie is stolen by Malcolm McDowell as the Mick Jagger ripoff Reggie Wanker, who literally lets his member do the talking, and Lou Reed as the Dylan/Donovan homage Auden, a folksinger desperate to write a song before the show, so he spends most of the film riding around in a cab, rambling on about whatever is right in front of him. And be sure to keep an eye out for John Densmore, Fabian, Bobby Sherman, Clint Howard, Linnea Quigley, and Paul Bartel. In addition to the live numbers, the soundtrack includes songs by Sparks, Marshall Crenshaw, the Ramones, and Reed, whose awesome “Little Sister” plays over the closing credits. Extremely silly but still loads of fun Get Crazy is screening December 1 at 2:00 at Anthology Film Archives as a fundraiser for the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and will be followed by a panel discussion about the history of the East Village cultural scene with members of the cast and crew and Joshua White of the Joshua Light Show, moderated by Jesse Kornbluth. The festivities will then continue at the after-party at Veselka Bowery, with a two-hour open bar and appetizers.
MARGARET MEAD FILM FESTIVAL: WHOSE STORY IS IT?
BAY OF ALL SAINTS examines the water slums of Bahia, Brazil, known as the palafitas
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th St.
November 29 – December 2, $12-$45
212-769-5200
www.amnh.org
The thirty-sixth annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, held at the American Museum of Natural History in honor of the revolutionary work done by the master cultural anthropologist, focuses this year on the narrative itself. “The stories build bridges, dissolve ownership,” North American ethnology curator Peter M. Whiteley explains in the festival brochure. “Whose story is it? It is mine, yours, now via film, all the world’s. The local is made global, the unfamiliar familiar, and the universe of human understanding is expanded.” From November 29 through December 2, viewers will be taken to contemporary Pakistan in Saida Shepard and Samina Quraeshi’s The Other Half of Tomorrow, India and Burma in Patrick Morell’s Nagaland: The Last of the Headhunters, the slums of Bahia, Brazil, in Annie Eastman, Diane Markrow, and Davis Coombe’s Bay of All Saints, a “shack side” district of South Africa in Benjamin Kahlmeyer’s Meanwhile in Mamelodi, and Tajikistan for a look at an unusual sport in Najeeb Mirza’s Buzkashi! Two food-themed films, Valérie Berteau and Philippe Witjes’s Himself He Cooks, which goes inside the Sikh tradition of langar in the Golden Temple of Amritsar, and Rob and Lisa Fruchtman’s Sweet Dreams, about a group of Rwandan women opening the country’s first ice-cream shop, are being presented in conjunction with the museum’s new exhibit, “Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture.” There will also be a tribute to legendary filmmaker George Stoney, featuring screenings of Man of Aran and How the Myth Was Made, a Bhangra Dance Party with DJ Rekha, an African drumming performance in the Hall of Birds of the World, a Mead Arcade with online games, and several Mead Dialogues, including “Re-Seeing the Century: The Expedition on Film,” “Through Navajo Eyes,” and “Sun Kissed.” The Mead is one of the city’s most important film festivals, offering penetrating, educational, joyful, and frightening looks at a world outside our own — and sometimes a lot closer to home that we could ever imagine.
TWI-NY TALK: STEVE GOULDING OF THE RUMOUR
Graham Parker and the Rumour (with Steve Goulding, second from right) have reunited after more than thirty years
GRAHAM PARKER & THE RUMOUR
Saturday, December 1, the Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th St., $45-$75, 8:00
Sunday, December 2, the Paramount, 370 New York Ave., Huntington, $25-$49.50, 8:00
www.grahamparker.net
Since the mid-1970s, Graham Parker has been making his unique brand of pub/punk/pop music, featuring smart, incisive lyrics in all-out rockers and sweet, tender ballads. Although he has never stopped putting out outstanding albums and touring with various backing bands or playing solo, the London-born, New York-based Parker came out swinging, releasing a string of seminal records between 1976 and 1980 with the group he is most associated with, the Rumour. Consisting of Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont on guitar, Andrew Bodnar on bass, Bob Andrews on keyboards, and Steve Goulding on drums, the Rumour helped define Parker’s angry-young-man sound on such classic discs as Howlin’ Wind, Heat Treatment, and Squeezing Out Sparks, ending their five-year run with 1980’s The Up Escalator (without Andrews). After thirty-one years, Parker and the Rumour have reunited for Three Chords Good, another exceptional record on which Parker examines the current state of America, taking on the conservative movement, war, and love in these critical times as only he can. (You can stream the new album here.) “I practice mass hypnosis / You’ll get sucked in by osmosis / But here comes my gnostic gnosis / (and guess what my gross is),” he sings on “Snake Oil Capital of the World,” continuing, “I’m suffering from psychosis / But I’ll give you my diagnosis / You need my medicine (in massive doses).” On the lovely “Long Emotional Ride,” Parker, who just turned sixty-two — and plays a musician named Graham Parker in the upcoming Judd Apatow film This Is 40 — acknowledges his past in a song that relates to the Rumour reunion. “I thought I was a cold, cold man / As a writer you have to be / Got to observe everything from a distance / Record it for posterity / But lately I’ve been feeling things / That I’ve never felt before / Maybe I’m just getting old or something / But something broke down my resistance / And opened the door.” Graham Parker and the Rumour will be playing the Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on December 1, with Parker’s previous backing band, the Figgs, opening up, followed by a highly anticipated show December 2 at the Paramount in Huntington with another British legend still making great new music, Ian Hunter & the Rant Band. As Parker and the Rumour rehearsed last week in Poughkeepsie for the tour, which began November 24 in Tarrytown, we corresponded with the irrepressible Goulding, a drummer’s drummer whose wide-ranging resume includes playing with the Mekons, the Cure, Poi Dog Pondering, Elvis Costello, Carlene Carter, Gang of Four, Nick Lowe, and many others.
Drummer Steve Goulding and the Rumour are back with Graham Parker and playing two area shows this weekend
twi-ny: How did you first find out about the reunion?
Steve Goulding: Graham asked me and Andrew Bodnar to play on his new album, so I said, “If you asked Martin and Bob and Brinsley, you’d have a band!” So he did, and much to my surprise, they all agreed, even Brinsley, who used to be hard to get on the road.
twi-ny: Is it something that you ever thought would happen?
Steve Goulding: I didn’t really think we’d get back together until I heard Brinsley had agreed to do the album.
twi-ny: Did you guys gel instantly upon getting back together, or did it take a while to find the old magic?
Steve Goulding: Yes, it was pretty instantaneous. The recording sessions were like buttah.
twi-ny: The tour is about to start. What are your expectations for the live show?
Steve Goulding: I just hope an audience turns up! The show will be more, er, mature. If we remember the beginnings and endings of the songs, and play the bits in the middle okay, I will be happy.
twi-ny: Will it be odd having one of Graham’s other backing bands, the Figgs, opening some of the shows?
Steve Goulding: I think opening the shows may be odder for the Figgs than for us, as they’ve now played with Graham about three times as long as we did. I hope they don’t feel too bad about it.
twi-ny: How is the Graham Parker of 2012 different from the GP of 1976?
Steve Goulding: Graham is probably a bit happier and has a bigger song catalog to choose from. But he’s really not much different from 1976. He still has a certain prickly energy about him.
twi-ny: What about you?
Steve Goulding: I’m much nicer than I was in 1976. And fatter.
twi-ny: Who are some of the drummers who most influenced you?
Steve Goulding: My early influences were Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, Ringo, Charlie Watts — the usual suspects. Later I got into Bernard Purdie, Max Roach, Jim Gordon, Tony Williams, Al Jackson, and a whole bunch more. Everybody I listen to influences me a little bit. It’s hard to stop things sliding into one’s subconscious.
twi-ny: You are also a member of such bands as the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, and you regularly play with such solo artists as Megan Reilly, Laura Cantrell, and Garland Jeffreys. How is your approach to playing the drums different, if at all, in so many musical genres?
Steve Goulding: I try to listen to what people around me are playing and go along with that. The artists you mention are stylistically very different but they all have similar points of reference. So it’s not that difficult to play with all of them. If Sonny Rollins and Slayer were in there, that’d be much more impressive!