this week in music

VILLAGE HALLOWEEN PARADE: MEMENTO MORI

Parade theme of Memento Mori will include focus on Mexican calaveras and the Day of the Dead

Sunday, October 31, 7:00
Sixth Ave. South & Spring St. to 15th St.
Admission/participation: free, but donations accepted
www.halloween-nyc.com

The Village Halloween Parade is now in its thirty-eighth year of scaring more than two million New Yorkers and visitors from around the world watching some fifty thousand marchers as they make their way through the downtown evening streets in decidedly decadent and wildly creative costumes. This year’s theme is Memento Mori, which translates as “Remember you will die,” and will feature Haitian carnival figures designed by Didier Civil, who will also participate with the music group DjaRaRa in a dance tribute to Gede spirits. Civil will also be teaming up with master puppeteer Basil Twist and Superior Concept Monsters to provide a special focus on Day of the Dead skeletons, including a new Illuminated Ghost Train. Attending or marching in the parade is a rite of passage you must do at least once in your life, so why not tonight?

DAY OF THE DEAD

Attendees can learn to make sugar skulls and more at Mexican Day of the Dead celebration at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery

St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery
131 East Tenth St. at Second Ave.
October 30-31, free, 12 noon – 8:00
212-587-3070
www.manoamano.us

Mano a Mano: Mexican Cultures Without Borders will be celebrating the Day of the Dead with a weekend of free activities at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, with Saturday’s events kicking off at 12 noon with a traditional dance procession beginning in Union Square, making its way to the church for the Ceremony at the Altar. Each day will feature a Mexican marketplace. Saturday’s workshops are “Building Individual Altars / Making Paper Flowers” and “Making Pan de Muerto Bread,” with “Calaveras de Azúcar/Sugar Skulls” and “Calaveras: Day of the Dead Poetry” scheduled for Sunday. Saturday will also include a musical performance by Radio Jarocho, with Mariachi Tapatío de Álvaro Paulino playing on Sunday.

BOO AT THE ZOO

The animals will be celebrating Halloween too at area zoos and aquarium (photo by Julie Larsen Maher © WCS)

Bronx Zoo, $12-$16
New York Aquarium, $6-$17
Prospect Park Zoo, $5-$8
Queens Zoo, $5-$8
www.wcs.org

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s annual Boo at the Zoo promotion continues through this weekend with a full slate of family-friendly activities. At the Prospect Park Zoo, children can engage in bat arts and crafts, keeper chats focusing on nocturnal animals and pumpkin treats for baboons, haunted attractions, a costume parade, face painting, the spook-tacular Discovery Center, and Wildlife Witch Shows. At the Queens Zoo, children can go trick-or-treating, get their face painted, visit the Haunted Habitat, decorate their own pumpkin (first two hundred zoogoers only), and watch pumas and Andean bears get pumpkin treats. Up at the Bronx Zoo, the Halloween celebration features a haunted safari, live music by Gigi and the Lend Me a Hand Band, a hay maze and hay ride, treat stations, craft workshops, pumpkin-carving demonstrations, animal-themed magic shows, puppet shows, animal enrichment activities, a costume parade, and an extinct animal graveyard. And the New York Aquarium in Coney Island will be hosting Halloween at the A-Scarium, with a haunted sea-fari, magic shows, spooky storytelling by LuAnn Adams, live music from Annie and the Natural Wonder Band, pumpkin-carving demonstrations with Janelle Iglesias, arts and crafts with Robin Waschberger, treat stations, alien stingers, and THE CURSE OF SKULL ROCK 4-D movie screening.

AN EVENING OF VINTAGE NYC PUNK ROCK

Punk trio Futurex will be part of old-fashioned punk rock Halloween party at the Local 269 on Saturday night

The Local 269
269 East Houston St. at Suffolk St.
Saturday, October 30, $7, 9:00
www.myspace.com/futurexnyc
www.thelocal269.com

Over the summer, longtime CBGB regulars Futurex emerged from the Kennel (recording studio) with their latest album, a twenty-six-minute epic featuring such songs as “Basement,” “Monotone,” and “Road Closed.” With ex-wives Sue on guitar and Mary on bass, along with Paul on drums, the trio will be part of a special Halloween show on Saturday night at the Local 269 on East Houston St., along with Crybaby, Bunch of Girls, and Shirk Circus, who used to play CBGB with Futurex some twenty years ago. We have it on good authority that part of the festivities will include a Halloween-themed Jewish wedding performed onstage; watch out for breaking glass, from both the very loud punk rock and the marriage ritual.

VILLAGE HALLOWEEN COSTUME BALL

Theater for the New City hosts its annual celebration of thrills, chills, and much weirdness

Theater for the New City
155 First Ave. at Tenth St.
Sunday, October 31, $20, 3:30 – ?
www.theaterforthenewcity.net/halloween

Crystal Field’s annual Halloween Costume Ball at the Theater for the New City is another massive extravaganza of music, theater, dance, performance art, astrology, numerology, magic, and general mayhem, taking place on the bandstage outside and in the lobby as well as in the Ballroom, the Cauldron, the Cabaret, the Womb Room, and in the House of Horrors deep in the basement. Among the myriad performers are Jennifer Blowdryer, Penny Arcade, Alien Surfer Babes, Clowns with Gowns, Evan Laurence, Annie Wilson’s Haunted Pianoforte, the Hell Souls, the Hot Lavender Swing Band, the Love Show, Bambi Killers, Flahooley, Suspended Cirque, and Emperor Satan’s Rococoach, in addition to such productions as “The Land of Investment Banking,” “Clutter: I’m Saving My Life & It’s Killing Me,” and “The Red and Black Masque.” At midnight, the costume parade and contest gets under way, with such celebrity judges as Judith Malina, Matt Morillo, and Sabura Rashid. And believe it or not, admission to everything is a mere twenty bucks.

TWI-NY TICKET GIVEAWAY: NEON INDIAN / PRINCE RAMA / APACHE BEAT

Brooklyn Bowl
61 Wythe Ave.
Friday, October 29, $15, 9:00
718-963-3369
www.brooklynbowl.com

If you missed CMJ this month, you can get a great taste of what it was like by checking out three of the festival’s most-talked-about bands, who will be teaming up for a hot triple bill at Brooklyn Bowl on Friday night. Taking the stage first is the local group Apache Beat, who played a cool set at the Siren Festival this summer and are highlighting songs from their inaugural full-length, LAST CHANTS (Beverly Martel, October 2010). Next up are sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson and Michael Collins, who met on a Gainesville Hare Krishna commune and later formed Prince Rama of Ayodhya, now known as just Prince Rama. The trippy trio are touring behind their fourth record, SHADOW TEMPLE, which was just released on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label. The headliners, Neon Indian, formed by Alan Palomo in Denton, Texas, last year, have been making a name for themselves all over the indie map, scoring big with the psychedelic electronic tape music featured on their well-received debut disc, PSYCHIC CHASMS. The night will also include a Halloween costume contest.

Tickets are $15 each, but twi-ny has a pair to give away to one lucky reader. To enter the contest, send your name and daytime phone number to contest@twi-ny.com no later than Friday, October 29, at 12 noon. All entrants must be at least twenty-one years of age. One winner will be chosen at random. Good luck!

McKIM BUILDING RESTORATION

New-Trad Octet will help welcome in restored McKim Building at the Morgan (photo by Schector Lee)

Morgan Library
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Saturday, October 30, free with museum admission of $8-$12, 4:00
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
www.new-trad.com

After a nearly five-month restoration, the Morgan Library’s 1906 McKim Building will reopen to the public on Saturday with a full day of celebratory activities. From 12 noon to 3:00, musicians from Mannes College will perform. At 1:00, Morgan director William M. Griswold will give a lecture about the restoration of the landmark structure and the museum’s collections. And at 4:00, Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet will give a concert featuring their unique brand of early American music, with a focus on the splendid exhibit “Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress.” Newell notes on the band’s website, “We’ll be playing our ‘restored’ arrangements of historic music from the Gilded Age, including some of Twain’s favorites.” Tickets for the events are free with museum admission on Saturday. Also on view at the Morgan are “Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968,” “Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks,” and “Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France, 1917-1924.”