Freak folksters CocoRosie are one of the headliners of the 2012 Tinderbox Music Festival at Webster Hall
Webster Hall
125 East 11th St. between Second & Third Aves.
Saturday, November 11, $25-$30, 1:00 – 12 midnight
www.websterhall.com
www.tinderboxmusicfestival.com
Perhaps more than any other recent election, this year’s presidential battle featured intense debate over who would do more for women. One event that has been doing a lot for women recently is the Tinderbox Music Festival, now in its third year of highlighting female artists and building a community where underserved high school girls can foster their musical and literary abilities. Founded by singer-songwriter Alyson Greenfield, Tinderbox is associated with the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, a nonprofit grass-roots organization whose mission is to “empower girls and women through music education, volunteerism, and activities that foster self-respect, leadership skills, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration,” as well as Girls Write Now, which concentrates on “mentoring the next generation of women writers.” This year’s festival, in which a portion of the proceeds will also go to New York Cares’ Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, takes place November 11 at Webster Hall, with more than three dozen female-fronted bands and solo performers from multiple genres playing on three stages for eleven hours. Among the highlights are indie favorite CocoRosie, the unpredictable Jean Grae, the hard-rocking Hard Nips, electro-popsters I Am Lightyear, experimental singer-songwriters Greenfield and Lili Haydn, pop-rockers jENNiNGS, and such other acts as Charlene Kaye & the Brilliant Eyes, Computer Magic, Ducky, Michelle Citrin, Shuteye, Likwuid, Vagina Panther, and Pink Veins, representing Willie Mae. Don’t be surprised if the phrase “binders full of women” shows up more than a few times.
The delightful new documentary David Bromberg Unsung Treasure sings the well-deserved praises of a rather unusual character — a white, Jewish bluesman from ritzy Tarrytown, New York. For more than forty years, masterful guitarist and songwriter David Bromberg has been singing his entertaining brand of the blues and bluegrass, either solo, with his Big Band, or with the Angel Band. A consummate musician, engaging raconteur, and outstanding live performer, he trained with the Rev. Gary Davis before going on to play with such superstars as Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, Jerry Jeff Walker, and a litany of others. A big man with an ever-present beard, mustache, and glasses, Bromberg is an utterly charming figure, speaking honestly and openly about his life and career, often mentioning how deeply he was affected by the way he was raised and how that helped instill the blues in him. Beth Toni Kruvant (The Right to Be Wrong, Heart of Stone) traces his early years through wonderful archival footage and old photographs, then delves into his departure from playing music in the late 1980s and 1990s, when he and his wife, singer Nancy Josephson, moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he established a well-respected 
New York Doll is an unforgettable documentary about Arthur “Killer” Kane, a man who went to the heights of ecstasy as a member of the New York Dolls in the early 1970s, hit the depths of depression in the late 1980s, and rediscovered himself in the 1990s as a Mormon librarian. As bassist for the New York Dolls, Kane, dressed wildly in heavy makeup and women’s clothes, anchored the glam rock idols, which also included David Johansen, Sylvain Sylvain, Johnny Thunders, and Jerry Nolan. The band dissolved after only two studio albums, and while the rest of the band remained in the music business (Thunders and Nolan died in the early ’90s), Kane’s drug- and alcohol-addled life spiraled downward. As Johansen started showing up in mediocre Hollywood movies (Married to the Mob, Scrooged, Car 54, Where Are You?) and his alter ego, Buster Poindexter, could be heard singing “Hot, Hot, Hot” at every bar mitzvah and wedding in town, Kane languished in obscurity until, in 1989, after a ridiculous suicide attempt, he became a Mormon. Fellow Mormon Greg Whiteley follows Kane around with a handheld camera as the former underground rock star goes about his daily life, working in a Mormon Family History Center library in California, taking the bus to work, hanging out with old ladies, paying “rent” on his pawned basses, and living a simple existence — until he gets a call from British pop star Morrissey, who wants the Dolls to reunite for the 2004 Meltdown festival in London. Kane is a soft-spoken, earnest, gentle man who seems a little bit off yet genuine, but this is what he’s been waiting for — although he is also afraid of failure yet again. Whiteley intersperses classic Dolls songs (“Looking for a Kiss,” “Lonely Planet Boy,” “Private World,” “Puss ‘n’ Boots,” “Trash,” and Johnny Thunders’s “You Can’t Put Your Arms Round a Memory”) with talking heads who share their love of the band (including Sir Bob Geldof, Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jones from the Clash, Blondie’s Clem Burke, and especially Morrissey, who is always seen in extreme close-up and is oh-so-serious), although we wish the film included more music, of a higher quality. Yet the remarkable story and ridiculously bizarre ending, which has a This Is Spinal Tap quality to it throughout — except it’s very real — rises above it all to create one of the best rockumentaries we’ve ever seen.
