this week in music

CREST FEST ’10

Crest Hardware
558 Metropolitan Ave. between Lorimer & Union
Saturday, June 19, free, 12 noon – 11:00 pm
Exhibit runs through July 30
www.cresthardwareartshow.com
slideshow

The third annual Crest Fest, a celebration of art, music, and hardware, takes place today on Metropolitan Ave., benefiting the City Reliquary Museum. More than one hundred artists have taken over fifteen thousand square feet of space with exciting multidisciplinary works. The opening will feature food, drink, a design market, and live performances by such bands as Deluka, the Sundelles, Motel Motel, Oberhofer, Zongo Junction, Darlings, and Wizardry, along with DJ sets by DJ Teenwolf, Faux Mex, Lucas Walters, and others. Curated by Joe Franquinha, the manager of Crest Hardware (a store that was founded by his father, Manny, in 1962), the show has very quickly become a Brooklyn tradition and is an absolute blast, as the artists generally use materials found in hardware stores to create pieces that comment on hardware, incorporating screws, saws, blades, plungers, air fresheners, plaster, paint, metal, sockets, switches, buckets, wire, cords, mops, planters, and even toilet seats into their work. The nearly two hundred paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, and other creations are then placed throughout the store and outside garden, many hidden within the long, narrow aisles as if they were just another product. So be careful; that shovel might be a lot more than forty bucks if it’s one of the ones Dave Tree painted on. Most of the pieces are for sale, ranging in price from twenty bucks to thirty thousand, although most fall in the $100-$1,000 range. Some of our favorite works and titles include Fanny Allie’s “Crossed Fingers,” white plaster fingers cleverly stored in the electric saw case; Xian Lee’s romantic painting “Love Screw”; Larry Heintjes’s “Silicone Stalagmite”; Kim Beury’s “The Nail That Stands Up Gets Pounded Down”; Leslye Learess’s “For a Feminine Touch” air fresheners; Wendy Klimperer’s “African Crested Porcupine”; Ted Stanke’s “Claw Hammer” and “Wrench,” both made out of pocket change; Alexandre Sazonov’s “Hammer and Jesus” painting; and Mike Houston’s playful signs. It’s a riot that while you’re searching for all the art, that person next to you is actually looking for a power drill, a paintbrush, or a pale to finish up some work on his apartment. You’ll also develop a whole new love of the tool, as not everything you might think is art is art; a hammer, after all, is sometimes just a hammer.

NEW YORK BREWFEST 2010

Governors Island, Water Taxi Beach
Saturday, June 19, $55, 3:30 – 8:00
www.nybrewfest.com

More than 120 international breweries, with a heavy emphasis on New York and the United States, will be pouring cold brews on June 19 on Water Taxi Beach on Governors Island at the fourth annual New York Brewfest. We highly recommend trying the fineries of Brewery Ommegang, Middle Ages, Goose Island, Magic Hat, Otter Creek, Smuttynose, Duvel, and Samuel Smith, among plenty of others. The event will feature live music by Alexis P. Suter, Mikey Powell, Dark Hollow, the Horseshoe Lounge Playboys, and Bagpipe Dudes; the seminars “Beer & Chocolate,” “Women in Beer,” and “The State of New York State Hops”; and food from Van Leeuwen, the Sullivan St. Bakery, Sigmund Pretzelshop, and Brewfest sponsor Heartland Brewery. And you don’t have to worry about finding a designated driver, as transportation to and from Governors Island will be handled by free water taxis all day.

THE GOODNIGHT LOVING

The Goodnight Loving will be all over the tristate area this weekend

Thursday, June 17, the Silent Barn, 915 Wyckoff Ave., Ridgewood, 8:00
Friday, June 18, Bruar Falls, 245 Grand St., Williamsburg, $8, 8:00
Saturday, June 19, Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St., Manhattan, $10, 8:00
Sunday, June 20, Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington St., Hoboken, $12-$14, 9:00
www.myspace.com/thegoodnightloving

Goodnight Loving, where have you been all our lives? We can’t believe we’re only just discovering this amazing Milwaukee band, which has been around since the early 2000s. All that time lost! Well, we’ve been catching up with such fine tunage as the frantic “Mad Is the Man,” the rollicking “Colin Attends a Party,” the acoustic shanty “Purple Death,” and the country-tinged “Dead Fish on the Banks” from such earlier records as THE GOODNIGHT LOVING (2008), CROOKED LAKE (2006), and CEMETERY TRAILS (2005) as well as the groovy “The Pan” from their latest, SUPPER CLUB (Dirtknap, July 2010). Fans of the Black Lips, Drink Up Buttercup, and the classic Nuggets collections will fall in love with the GL’s garage band psychedelia, girl-group harmonies, Brit-pop melodies, and 1960s ephemera. James, Ross, Paul, and Jerome are in the midst of a nonstop U.S. tour right now that brings them to the Silent Barn on June 17 with Big Troubles, Bright Lights, and Fire Season, Bruar Falls on June 18 with Bass Drum of Death, Ex Humans, DJ Daed Pizza, and free ice cream, Cake Shop on June 19 with Prince Rupert’s Drops, and Maxwell’s on June 20 with Reigning Sound, giving everyone a chance to party to their infectious party rock.

ROCKS OFF: RAILROAD EARTH

Railroad Earth will be setting sail June 17 aboard the Rocks Off Concert Cruises (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

41st St. & the West Side Highway
Thursday, June 17, $25-$30, 8:00
www.rocksoff.com
www.railroadearth.com

June in the city doesn’t get much better than a sunset music performance aboard a ship sailing down the Hudson River. The Rocks Off Concert Cruises have become a staple of the season in New York, offering a couple dozen of these three-hour tours each summer, where patrons can dance, drink, and groove up close with an astounding variety of musical acts while they ply the waters around New York Harbor as evening settles in. On board the Temptress this Thursday (the flagship vessel, with a capacity of five hundred, and one of a half dozen in the Rocks Off armada), New Jersey roots rockers Railroad Earth will be providing the musical entertainment in a setting that’s as unique and enjoyable as one could imagine. While their music defies a straitjacket definition genrewise, Railroad Earth has been compared to such acts as the Band and WORKINGMAN’S DEAD–era Grateful Dead while resolutely channeling their own musical path — one that mixes string-band instrumentation with drums, great songwriting, the ability to improvise on a tune (don’t say the “J” word — RRE is far from the archetypal jam band), and what can only be described, perhaps, as a spiritually exploratory take on musical ideas ranging from folk to rock to Celtic to bluegrass . . . all set to a groove that will have both passengers and boat swaying from the moment it leaves harbor.

This will be RRE’s first NYC show with bassist Andrew Altman, who signed on at the beginning of the year. As far as the band’s repertoire goes? Well, their last time headlining one of these cruises saw them performing an apropos and full-throttle rendition of Gram Parsons’s “Luxury Liner,” and it would seem keeping in character for them to bust out their original powerhouse “Mighty River” this time afloat. The group has been woodshedding material for a new album in a Brooklyn warehouse as of late. While these compositions have yet to see the light of day in their live show, it’s assured that the band will be playing enough well-loved material from their catalog to please their seafaring followers and create some genuine rocking, river-borne revelry. In other words, it should be a cruise to remember.

And don’t forget that This Week in New York has four pairs of tickets to give away to any of this summer’s Rocks Off concerts. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and event choice to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, June 17, at 3:00 pm. Winners will be selected at random and must be at least twenty-one years of age. Only one pair of tickets can be given out for each show. Good luck!

THE WHIZ: OBAMALAND

The Wizard of Oz heads to Obamaland at Abrons Arts Center

NICHOLAS LEICHTER DANCE + MONSTAH BLACK
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
June 16-19, $20, 8:00
212-598-0400
www.henrystreet.org
www.nldnyc.org

Since 1996, nicholas leichter dance has specialized in what it calls “cultural narratives where movement tells the story,” creating such works as KILLA, FREE THE ANGELS, CARMINA BURANA, and SWEETWASH. The company’s latest piece of musical dance theater, made in collaboration with Monstah Black (who also participated in KILLA), reinterprets THE WIZ and THE WIZARD OF OZ through the lens of the Obama generation. Leichter, who previously danced with Ralph Lemon, Jennifer Muller, Ronald K. Brown, and Gus Solomons jr., will ease audiences down the yellow brick road and into Obamaland at the Abrons Arts Center June 16-19, examining America’s hopes, fears, dreams, and recession-busting fantasies.

Monstah Black and nicholas leichter dance ease on down the disco road in a reimagined WIZ for the Obama generation (photo by Steven Schreiber)

Review: A fanciful collaboration between New York City-based choreographer Nicholas Leichter and self-proclaimed Messiah of the Funk Monstah Black, THE WHIZ: OBAMALAND is a campy low-budget send-up and joyful celebration of Sidney Lumet’s 1978 musical, THE WIZ. Black, serving as a sort of emcee à la Joel Grey in CABARET, has adapted songs from the original soundtrack, performing such numbers as “The Feeling That We Have,” “Ease on Down the Road,” and “Slide Some Oil” while wearing some of the most fab costumes this side of 1970s-era Studio 54 and the 1980s PARIS IS BURNING aesthetic. (Oh, those shoes…) Leichter and Black also throw in Missy Elliot’s raunchy “Lick Shots,” Faith Evans’s “Soon as I Get Home,” the Time’s “Jungle Love,” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” to keep up the funk and, in the latter case, add yet more silly humor to what was already a very funny, groovy show. The dancers, including Lauren Basco, Wendell Cooper, Stephanie Liapis, Aaron Draper, Dawn Robinson, Keon Thoulouis, Laurie Taylor, Yozmit, and Leichter, pay tribute to Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Rocky Balboa as they clearly have a ball performing Leichter’s exuberant choreography. Draper brings down the house several times, first holding fans on Robinson to make her dress and feather boa flap in the wind, then coming out as a boxer, his skinny white body soon dancing alongside three men with much, er, bigger, stronger, darker frames. Even at a mere seventy-five minutes it could use a little trimming here and there, but the show is still great fun, with one heckuva surprise near the end that will have you gasping for breath. THE WHIZ: OBAMALAND runs through June 19 at the Abrons Arts Center, but we’re hoping it comes back soon so it can be seen by the wider audience it deserves.

BFF10: BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL

Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette St.
Dash Gallery, 172 Duane St.
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave. at Second St.
June 16-20
Tickets: $10 per film, Sunday pass $25 (five films), festival pass $50 (all films)
www.bicyclefilmfestival.com

The Bicycle Film Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary with another cool slate of hot shorts, features, and special programs that honor the human-propelled two-wheeler that can go a long way in dissipating the country’s addiction to foreign oil. The party gets started tonight at Santos Party House with Bikes Rock, featuring live performances by DJ C.lo, Frances Rose, and Ninjasonik (you can get in free with the BFF password BIKES ROCK). On Thursday, the “Joyride” group show opens at Dash Gallery, with works by WK Interact, Albert Maysles, Spike Jonze, Tom Sachs, and many others and a live set by Kembra Pfahler, followed by an after-party at Lit Lounge. On Friday, Jeff Tremaine’s widely hailed THE BIRTH OF BIG AIR documentary kicks off three days of screenings at Anthology Film Archives and local after-parties; among the other bike-related weekend films are Stephen Auerbach’s BICYCLE DREAMS, about the three-thousand-mile Race Across America; Jorgen Leth’s 1976 cult classic A SUNDAY IN HELL, about the Paris-Roubaix road race; and Christian Thormann and Luke Stiles’s EMPIRE, which takes a look at some of New York City’s leading riders. As always, please do your best not to drive your car to any of these programs….

SIRSY

Melanie Krahmer and Rich Libutti will be downstate for two revolutionary shows this week

Wednesday, June 16, Lakeside Lounge, 162 Ave. B, free, 9:00
Thursday, June 17, the Bitter End, 147 Bleecker St., $10, 7:30
www.myspace.com/sirsy

Albany-based DIY two-piece Sirsy has been around for the better part of a decade, averaging about 250 gigs a year, so it’s not exactly an overnight success story now that their 2007 self-produced album REVOLUTION is being remixed and remastered for release this summer by Funzalo Records. Lead vocalist, stand-up drummer, flutist, and lyricist Melanie Krahmer and guitarist Rich Libutti are dedicated Paul McCartney fans who have been making soulful indie pop on such albums as BAGGAGE, AWAY FROM HERE, and RUBY and covering such tunes as the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down,” the Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again,” and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” On REVOLUTION, Krahmer, whose voice can go from high to low register from one line to the next, sings about love and heartbreak and the sadness of letting one’s life slip by, from the upbeat, groovy title track to the sweet ballad “Still.” Regularly named Best Local Band by the readers of the Albany alternative weekly Metroland, Sirsy’s name is a homonym for the daughter of the Sun God as well as meaning intoxicating or alluring, two words that fit their music as well, including such newer songs as “The Cost of You,” in which Krahmer sings, “Oh, the bet was true / But I spent the cost of you / And I’ve lived for less / But it kills me to confess,” and “Goner,” in which she declares, “Arrest my heart for treason / I don’t want to fall for love / I spy a thousand reasons / I don’t want to fall for love / Our crimes change us like seasons.” Upstate native Krahmer and Providence-born Libutti will be in the city this week for two shows, at the Lakeside Lounge on June 16 and the Bitter End on June 17.