this week in music

BOB MOULD PLAYS COPPER BLUE & SILVER AGE

Bob Mould will revisit COPPER BLUE and highlight new SILVER AGE at free show Friday night in Williamsburg (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Lacoste Live Concert Series
Williamsburg Park
50 Kent Ave. at North 12th St.
Friday, September 7, free, 6:00
www.bobmould.com

Twenty years ago, in a small club in New York City, we saw the loudest show we’ve ever experienced, a blistering attack on body, mind, and soul by three dudes making awesomely beautiful music together. Sugar, consisting of singer-guitarist Bob Mould, bassist David Barbe, and drummer Malcolm Travis, were behind this sonic tsunami, powering through songs from their debut record, the instant classic Copper Blue. “I want something like I remember / And I want something that lasts forever,” Mould declared on “Changes,” seeming to look back at the recent arc of his career, which included the brutal breakup of Hüsker Dü in 1988, followed by his acoustic solo debut, Workbook, as well as at his future. Over the last few years, Mould has once again been looking back, particularly on 2009’s almost painfully honest Life and Times and his intimate and revealing 2011 memoir, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, bringin along his acoustic guitar on the book tour. But after bonding with Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters on record and onstage, Mould tossed away the acoustic in favor of more electric madness, going into the studio with live bandmates Jason Narducy on bass and Jon Wurster on drums and coming out with the explosive Silver Age (Merge, September 4, 2012, stream available here), the twentieth anniversary of Copper Blue very much on his mind. “I’m never too old to contain my rage,” he announces on the title song, and he indeed lets his rage soar on such searing tracks as “Star Machine,” “The Descent,” “Steam of Hercules,” and “Angels Rearrange” (which echoes the earlier “Changes”), only slowing down just a bit for the finale, “First Time Joy.” Mould, who will turn fifty-two next month, is on the road right now, celebrating the newly remastered reissue of Copper Blue by performing the album in its entirety, featuring such Mould standards as “The Act We Act,” “A Good Idea,” “Hoover Dam,” and “If I Can’t Change Your Mind.” He’ll then play a second set of songs focusing on Silver Age while also reaching back to the Hüsker Dü and solo years. Mould will be at Williamsburg Park in Brooklyn on Friday night, giving a free show as part of the Lacoste Live Concert Series, with Cymbals Eat Guitars opening up. And be prepared; it should be LOUD. (Mould will also be spinning tracks later that night at his regular Blowoff gig with Richard Morel at the Highline Ballroom.)

MEATOPIA 2012

The annual meat orgy known as Meatopia returns to Randall’s Island on Saturday (photo by Nathan Rawlinson Photography)

Randall’s Island
Saturday, September 8, $140, 5:00 – 9:00
www.meatopia.org

The ninth annual meat orgy known as Meatopia takes place Saturday on Randall’s Island, where meat lovers can devour an unlimited amount of food and drink during a four-hour feeding frenzy beginning at 5:00. Founded in 2004 by New York food writer and James Beard Award winner Josh Ozersky, the Woodstock of Edible Animals will be divided into such locations as Offalwood, Beaktown, Meatopia Heights, Carcass Hill, the Game Reserve, and other culinary districts, where chefs will create exclusive delights (not signature dishes), all certified cruelty-free, hormone-free, and antibiotic-free, using only wood and/or lump hardwood charcoal for fuel to keep things all-natural. Admission to this year’s City of Meat has jumped to $140, but here’s some of what you get: A ferry ride to and from the event, unlimited beer, wine, and spirits, Jeni’s ice cream, Honey Drop Tea, Robicelli’s cupcakes, and specially made dishes, just for Meatopia 2012, with chefs using all parts of the animal. Here is just a handful of the highlights: Michael White’s Marea (grilled pork cheeks with late summer vegetable mostarda), Alex Guarnaschelli’s the Darby (canard a la presse with sauce chasseur), Paul Denamiel’s Le Rivage (beef shin bourguignon with bacon and champignons de Paris), April Bloomfield’s the Breslin (whole Hampshire hog with spicy pepper seasoning), Pat LaFrieda’s whole thousand-pound marinated Creekstone steer, Adam Perry Lang’s fleur de sel bbq short ribs, Marc Forgione’s grilled rib steak with bone marrow maître d’ butter and pickled grilled onions, Naomi Pomeroy’s Beast (wood-seared intercoastal “finger meat” with pickled watermelon remoulade), Joey Campanaro’s sangria-marinated butcher steak with hearts of Romaine alla Caesar), Phillipe Massoud’s zatar and sumac-seasoned pulled lamb shoulder sandwich, Mike Toscano’s grilled quail alla diavola with charred scallions and buttermilk dressing, Harold Moore’s Duo of Squab (rillette of dark meat and roasted breast ancienne), Jonathan Sawyer’s Brains and Bread (scrambled brains and eggs with crispy sweetbreads and lamb liver bottarga), and Takashi Inoue’s beef belly in bbq marinade. There will also be gourmet plates by Franklin Becker, Anthony Goncalves, Aaron Franklin, Santiago Garat, John Stage, Julia Jaksic, Sam Jones, Justin Smillie, Tim Byres, Kris Yenbamroong, Serafim Ferdekis, Rodney Scott, Adam Sappington, Zak Pelaccio, Craig Koketsu, Hemant Mathur, Shane McBride, Nick Pihakis, Noah Bernamoff, and many others. Live music will be provided by American folk rockers Woods, psychedelic garage punks the Living Kills, and reggae punks the Slackers.

WEST INDIAN AMERICAN DAY CARNIVAL

Extravagant costumes, loud music, bawdy dancing, and great food help make West Indian American Day Carnival one of the best parades of the year (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eastern Pkwy. from Rochester Ave. to Grand Army Plaza
Monday, September 3, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-467-1797
www.wiadca.com
2011 parade slideshow

Every Labor Day, millions of people line Eastern Parkway, celebrating the city’s best annual parade, the West Indian American Day Carnival, waving flags from such nations as Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, the Cayman Islands, Antigua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Aruba, Curaçao, and many more. The festivities begin at 2:00 am with the traditional J’Ouvert Morning, a precarnival procession featuring steel drums and percussion and fabulous, inexpensive masquerade costumes, marching from Grand Army Plaza to Flatbush Ave. and on to Empire Blvd., then to Nostrand Ave. and Linden Blvd. The Parade of Bands begins around 11:00 am, as truckloads of blasting Caribbean music and groups of ornately dressed dancers, costume bands, masqueraders, moko jumbies, and thousands of others bump and grind their way down Eastern Parkway to Grand Army Plaza, participating in one last farewell to the flesh prior to Lent. Don’t eat before you go; the great homemade food includes ackee and codfish, oxtail stew, breadfruit, macaroni pie, curried goat, jerk chicken, fishcakes, rice and peas, and red velvet cake. The farther east you venture, the more closed in it gets; by the time you get near Crown Heights, it could take you half an hour just to cross the street (although the police this year are opening more areas to cross to reduce the outrageous congestion), so take it easy and settle in for a fun, colorful day where you need not hurry. This year’s theme is “Unity, History, and Culture . . . New Leadership, New Vision, and New Energy.”

BRAZILIAN DAY IN NEW YORK 2012

Brazilian Day is always one of the best — and most crowded — street festivals of the summer (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

46th St. between Sixth & Madison Aves.
Sunday, September 2, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
212-382-1631
www.brazilianday.com
brazilian day in new york 2011 slideshow

Now in its twenty-eighth year, Brazilian Day in New York is a colorful celebration of the culture of the South American nation and of the many Brazilian immigrants who now live in the tristate area, believed to number more than 300,000. Following Saturday’s ritual Cleansing of 46th St., Sunday’s festivities in Little Brazil will include two stages of live entertainment, with music from Latino, Jorge & Mateus, Armandinho Macedo, and others, hosted by Serginho Groisman, as well as traditional Brazilian cuisine (keep a look-out for whole hog, feijoada, fresh sugarcane juice, and caipirinha), arts and crafts, information about traveling to Brazil, capoeira demonstrations, and more, with some 1.5 million people expected to attend what is always a blast of a party, with little pockets of music and dance liable to break out anywhere at any moment.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “LOOK HOMEWARD, HEATHEN” BY GRASSFIGHT

New York City band Grassfight has followed up its October 2011 EP, Icon, with another five-track, creatively titled Icon, EP 2. Released on July 24, the EP evokes 1970s Joy Division, 1980s Jesus and Mary Chain, and 1990s/2000s Interpol as well as Sonic Youth, with a big, brash, propulsive sound that can shake your bones and rattle your soul. Formed in Denton, Texas, in 2006, the trio of guitarist-singer Nathan Forster, bassist-singer Tamsi New, and drummer Mark Demiglio put Forster’s drony, commanding voice in the forefront, from the aggressive “Look Homeward, Heathen” to the bold, in-your-face “Hailey” and “Rhodendron” to the deeply intimate “Until You Sleep (Icy Slope).” On “Look Homeward, Heathen,” Forster sings, “I don’t want to know how it ends.” For Grassfight, perhaps things are only really just beginning. Grassfight will be at Arlene’s Grocery on September 1 at 11:00, preceded by Captain Baby at 10:00 and followed by Troublemakers at midnight. To get a taste of what you’re in for, you can check out the new EP for free here.

ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA

Shirley Clarke’s portrait of free jazz legend Ornette Coleman is back in a beautiful new 35mm restoration

ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA (Shirley Clarke, 1985)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, August 31
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.milestonefilms.com

In September 1983, innovative saxophonist and Fort Worth, Texas, native Ornette Coleman received a key to the city of his hometown and then helped open the new Caravan of Dreams arts center by performing the world premiere of “Skies of America,” a specially commissioned work that teamed Coleman and his band, Prime Time, with the Forth Worth Symphony. Director Shirley Clarke uses this celebratory event as the central focus of her 1985 documentary, Ornette: Made in America, which is being rereleased in a beautiful new 35mm restoration overseen by Milestone Films as part of its continuing Project Shirley, which began earlier this year with a dazzling new print of Clarke’s 1962 film about jazz and drugs, The Connection. In Ornette: Made in America, Clarke combines footage she shot of Coleman back in the 1960s for a never-completed film with new material that offers an inside look at Coleman and his relationship with his son, Denardo, a musical prodigy who has played drums with his father for decades, since he was a young boy. Clarke also includes staged scenes of young versions of Coleman wandering through his old neighborhood of Fort Worth, then turning to the camera to deliver determined stares, in addition to shots of a theater troupe dancing joyously down the street, Coleman performing through the years in San Francisco, New York City, and Nigeria, and interactions with such prominent figures as music critic Robert Palmer, artist Brion Gysin, writer William S. Burroughs, and architect Buckminster Fuller, who had a profound influence on Coleman’s unique free jazz sound. “As Buck says, you can’t see outside yourself, but we do have imagination,” Coleman explains inside a geodesic dome. “The expression of all individual imagination is what I call harmolodics, and each being’s imagination is their own unison, and there are as many unisons as there are stars in the sky.” Clarke puts the film together like one of Coleman’s free jazz compositions, filled with harmolodics, going from black-and-white to color and back again, cutting between interviews and live performances, moving from relaxing images to propulsive moments, and regularly bordering on the goofy, including talking heads in an animated television set, brief explanatory text in marquee scrolls, and shots of Coleman riding a spacecraft over the surface of the moon. Despite such silliness, Ornette: Made in America is a thrilling portrait of a national treasure, a one-of-a-kind musician who is still playing his unique brand of music in his eighties.

TICKET ALERT: THE KILLERS UNSTAGED

In a rather unexpected collaboration, the Killers are teaming up with legendary German director Werner Herzog in the latest edition of American Express Unstaged, in which a live performance is streamed in real time via YouTube and VEVO. The Las Vegas band, led by Brandon Flowers, will be playing at the Paradise Theater in the Bronx on September 18, the day their new record, Battle Born, is being released. Their fourth studio album, which follows 2004’s Hot Fuss, 2006’s Sam’s Town, and 2008’s Day & Age, features such tracks as “Flesh and Bone,” “The Way It Was,” “Miss Atomic Bomb,” and the first single, “Runaways.” The Killers handpicked Herzog to direct the show and were shocked when the filmmaker, who has made such landmark works as Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man, and Rescue Dawn, agreed to helm the project. Tickets ($58.50) go on sale August 31 at 12 noon for the September 18 show, which will stream live (and free) from the Bronx beginning at 7:00.