this week in music

NEW YEAR’S EVE 2009

The Detroit Cobras get ready to rock in the new year at the Mercury Lounge

You can say goodbye to the decade with a cornucopia of live concerts in New York City on December 31, starting with Chuck Berry’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve at B.B. King’s Blues Club and Grill ($98, 8:00 show; $120, 11:00 show). The very hot Detroit Cobras will be at the Mercury Lounge, welcoming in 2010 with the Underthings and the A-Bones ($25-$30). The intriguing trio of John Medeski, Robert Randolph, and the North Mississippi Allstars bring the Word to Terminal 5 ($40-$50). Revelers can get their freak on for free at Radegast Hall & Biergarten in Williamsburg, where the Coney Island Circus Sideshow will set up their portable tent, featuring Scott Baker, Serpentina, Kryssy Kocktail, Adam “the First Real Man” Rinn, the Executioner, Dick Zigun, Bad Buka, and more starting at 10:00. Los Lobos will threaten to tear down the house at City Winery with shows at 7:30 ($45-$150) and 11:00 ($75-$225). Roky Erickson won’t need any elevators at Maxwell’s, where he’s on a bill with Muck & the Mires ($35). Former Luna residents Dean & Britta will be playing an early show at Southpaw with Undersea Poem ($20-$25).

MSTRKRFT will mix things up at Webster Hall on December 31

The Living Room on Ludlow hosts a night of bluegrass, Auld Twang Syne, with Fresh Baked, Whistlin’ Wolves, Michael Daves, the Birdhive Boys, and others ($10-$15). Necromantic presents a Blue Moon New Year’s Eve party at the Bowery Poetry Club, featuring goth, synth, wave, dancing, revelry, and more ($10-$15). SOB’s, the Home of Universal Music, will get your booty shaking to a Taste of Latin Paradise with Kazua Band, La Excelencia, Stil, and DJ Spike ($25-$150). The Lovin’ Cup in Brooklyn will be throwing a ‘50s Beach Party, with Lemonade, Surfer Blood, Frankie and the Outs, Beach Fossils, We Are Country Mice, booze and food packages, and more ($15-$99). The Bell House will be providing a free can of Champagne along with Obits, the Subway Soul Club, and Eli Paperboy Reed & the True Loves at the Rock ‘N’ Soul 2010 New Year’s Eve Party ($30-$40). The Club Night New Year’s Eve Ball at Webster Hall is sure to be crazy, with MSTRKRFT, four floors, six adventure rooms, aerial performances, and what is billed as the Largest Balloon Drop in the World ($60-$150). And party planners extraordinaire Gemini & Scorpio promise that plenty of contraband will be on hand at the Bootleggers’ Ball in a vacant Carroll Gardens warehouse space, along with the Mad Jazz Hatters, the Stumblebum Brass Band, the Main Squeeze Orchestra, Alchemy Dance Theater, burlesque performers Mme Renee Rosebud and Jenny C’est Quoi, tarot reader and numerologist Marcy Currier, aerialist Nikki Borodi, mayhem master Dan Glass, host Bastard Keith, a live auction, games of chance, the Den of Sin, Dub Pies, and lots of surprises ($30-$40).

Audrey Hepburn brings class and style to Film Forum for NYE

For a milder New Year’s Eve, the Concert for Peace at St. John the Divine features Harry Smith, Judy Collins, Glen Cortese, Lauren Flanigan, and a thousand points of candlelight ($60), while Music at St. Bartholomew’s will include works by Bach, Böhm, and Langlais in addition to Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” at midnight (free). If music of any sort isn’t quite your beat on New Year’s Eve, you can head over to Central Park for the annual Midnight Run, with a fireworks and laser light show, costume contest, dancing, and a four-mile run. Prospect Park will also host free fireworks, right over Grand Army Plaza. Jivamukti Yoga School will be holding its twenty-first annual New Year’s Eve celebration with more than eight hours of special classes, a vegan dinner, a free kirtan dance party, and three hours of silence leading up to a midnight message (free – $75). Carolines on Broadway celebrates with Bobby Lee headlining at 8:00 ($38.25), while Greg Giraldo leads two shows at Comix (7:30 & 10:30, $45-$149). Sandra Bernhard continues her string of shows at Joes Pub (9:00, $100; 11:00, $150), followed by various members of the cast of HAIR letting the sun shine with DJ Theocracy in 2010: AN EQUALITY ODYSSEY! (1:00, $20). Film Forum is throwing in a free glass of Champagne after the 9:50 screening of THE APARTMENT (Billy Wilder, 1960), followed by BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (Blake Edwards, 1961). And for a little something very different, New Lost City begins at 195 Morgan Ave. at 9:00 pm and continues through 7:00 am with promised fire and ice, art and laughter, love and nudity, and prophetic visions and brief moments of the sublime as well as performances by the Hungry March Band, Baja + the Dry Eye Crew, the Lady Circus, and lots more ($29).

FIRST SATURDAYS: TRANSFORMATION

Cordero will get Saturday night party started at Brooklyn Museum on January 2 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, January 2, free after 5:00 (some events require advance free tickets available an hour or two before showtime)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s monthly First Saturdays program rings in the new year with its monthly array of free activities, beginning at 5:00 with Cordero, a rousing live band formed by Ani Cordero in Tucson in 1999 with members of Calexico and Giant Sand and based in New York City since 2000; Cordero plays smooth, surprisingly subtle Latin pop that is always on the verge of busting loose. At 6:00, Daphne Brooks will talk about funk rock and James Brown. At 6:30, the Midnight Checkout Queens will play live along with a screening of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001). At 7:00, Venus Ensembles will headline the annual Winter Masquerade Ball, so be sure to come in costume. At 9:00, John Sellers will talk about his book PERFECT FROM NOW ON: HOW INDIE ROCK SAVED MY LIFE. Also at 9:00, Expressway Music hosts a karaoke contest for free FELA! tickets, and Jonathan Toubin spins tunes during the always hot dance party. And as always, the evening includes a gallery talk, a hands-on art workshop, and admission to all of the current exhibitions: “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” “James Tissot: ‘The Life of Christ,’” “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets,” “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video,” “Patricia Cronin: ‘Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found,’” and “From the Village to the Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith.”

WILLIAM BLAKE / JANE AUSTEN / CHARLES DICKENS / GIACOMO PUCCINI

William Blake, “Mysterious Dream,” watercolor over traces of black chalk

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Closed Monday
Admission: $12 adults, $8 children under sixteen (free Fridays 7:00 – 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

While they’re not exactly the Rat Pack and didn’t exactly hang out together – although there is some overlap of when they existed here on earth – William Blake (1757-1827), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Charles Dickens (1812-70), and Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) make for quite a foursome at the Morgan Library this holiday season. A master engraver, painter, Romantic poet, and religious nut, Blake was a visionary artist who claimed that some of his work came from, well, otherworldly visions. “William Blake’s World: ‘A New Heaven Is Begun’” (through January 3) includes such awe-inspiring pieces as “Satan,” “Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims,” the gorgeous watercolor series he did illustrating the Book of Job (even throwing in Jesus for good measure), the wacky “First Book of Urizen,” a letter from Blake to one of his patrons, a pair of plates of his most famous poem, “The Tyger,” and his anti-New World screed, “America: A Prophecy.” Blake, who died poor and was buried in an unmarked grave, had remarkable skill and a mind that just did not quite fit in his time.

The Morgan takes a revealing look at one of England’s greatest novelists in “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy” (through March 14), comprising original manuscripts, letters, and illustrated editions as well as Blake’s portrait of Harriet Quentin, which Austen saw in London. Austen, who published anonymously because of her gender, penned such classic books as PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, MANSFIELD PARK, EMMA, and SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, all dealt with in this exhibition. Her writings are placed in context alongside satiric cartoons by James Gillray and diary entries and a documentary film in which other authors discuss Austen’s lasting influence. The letter from her sister Cassandra announcing Jane’s death is simply heartbreaking.

John Leech, detail, “Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball,” original watercolor illustration for Charles Dickens’s CHRISTMAS CAROL, first edition, 1843

Running through January 10 in the McKim Building, “Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL” features Dickens’s original marked-up manuscript of the holiday tale, written in six weeks in 1843 and bound in red leather shortly after its publication. The book is in the McKim Building, which will be open to the public for free on Tuesdays from 3:00 to 5:00, Fridays (except Christmas and New Year’s Day) from 7:00 to 9:00 (when the entire museum is free), and Sundays from 4:00 to 6:00. Finally, the Morgan is displaying more than three dozen items that look into the life and legacy of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini in “Celebrating Puccini” (through January 10), including letters, posters, and original manuscripts for LA BOHÈME and MADAMA BUTTERFLY.

CHRISTMAS DAY EVENTS

The Flaming Lips celebrate CHRISTMAS ON MARS with screening at IFC

Even though most arts institutions and music clubs are closed on Christmas Day, there are still plenty of cool things to do after the presents are given out, the table has been cleaned, and exhaustion is setting in. And for those who don’t celebrate Christmas, well, there’s a handful of events to choose from. Christmas is a big movie day, whether people go to the theater after celebrating the holiday with friends and family or instead pair it with Chinese food, at least partially in homage to A CHRISTMAS STORY. At 92YTribeca, screenings of Mel Brooks’s still hysterical BLAZING SADDLES (2:30) and occasionally funny but mostly silly SPACEBALLS (4:00) will be accompanied by an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet ($25-$30). Film Forum’s ongoing Madcap Manhattan series will be showing a special double feature of the original MIRACLE ON 34th STREET with Preston Sturges’s CHRISTMAS IN JULY, while the IFC Center will be presenting the rather bizarre CHRISTMAS ON MARS: A FANTASTICAL FILM FREAKOUT FEATURING THE FLAMING LIPS at midnight all weekend. Jewish singles might want to head uptown to the main branch of the 92^nd St. Y for the JDate Christmas Day Chinese Food and Comedy event, thirty-five and over only, please (3:00, $30). The Museum of Jewish Heritage will be holding its annual “Challah-lujah: The Tradition Continues,” a concert featuring Joshua Nelson and the Kosher Gospel Choir, with a family program at 11:00 am ($10-$20) and a show for general audiences at 1:00 ($35). At the Jewish Museum, the Family Celebration includes art workshops, a live performance by Metropolitan Klezmer, the “Strike a Surreal Pose” photo booth in conjunction with the Man Ray exhibition, guided tours, and free hot chocolate ($12 adults, children under twelve free). And at the Museum at Eldridge Street, Greg Wall and Klezmerfest will lead audiences on a musical journey in Klez for Kids ($8-$12, 11:00 am).

Later in the evening, (le) poisson rouge is hosting the Freedom Party, a night of classic hip-hop, dancehall reggae, neosoul, and more with DJ Cosi, DJ Marc Smooth, and DJ Herbert Holler ($15, 11:00 pm), while at SOB’s, T-Vice and Kreyola lead a pair of Manhattan Haitian Dance Parties at midnight and 2:00 am ($30).

DRINK UP BUTTERCUP

: Drink Up Buttercup was one of the stand-outs at this year’s CMJ Marathon (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Glasslands Gallery
289 Kent Ave. between South First & Southe Second Sts.
Tuesday, December 22, $7, 8:00
www.myspace.com/theglasslands
www.myspace.com/drinkupbuttercupband

When we first saw the crazy Bucks County band Drink Up Buttercup at the Mercury Lounge on July 3 of this year, we were immediately taken by their DIY charm; after the dazzling set, played with an intoxicating, reckless abandon, lead guitarist and singer Jim Harvey was stalking around, desperately looking for a small piece of missing equipment, while the rest of the band packed up their gear in the back of his dad’s rug van. (At the time, Jim and his half-brother, Farzad Houshiarnejad, who contributes keyboards, bass, and smash percussion, were working for their father part-time, selling and delivering Oriental carpets.) But since then, the band has signed with Yep Roc, which led to their own van, a relatively plain white one that bass player and keyboardist Ben Money excitedly showed us before a CMJ gig at Cake Shop, proudly beaming that it came complete with Nintendo built in. But when Harvey broke a guitar string early on at the Ludlow St. show, he had to stop the set and ask if anyone in the audience or from one of the other bands had a guitar he could use so they could continue. While waiting, he led the foursome – which also includes the still-teenage Mike Cammarata on drums – into the center of the narrow, packed club, where they sang a cappella until a replacement guitar arrived, at which time they returned to their manic set, switching instruments, banging on a trash can and toolkit, bounding dangerously across the stage, and bumping against each other and the low ceiling.

: Drink Up Buttercup gets wild and crazy night after night (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A few days later, they toned things down only a bit for an acoustic set in the scenic Delancey rooftop garden, where they powered through another stellar performance that really showed off the strength of their vocal harmonies, musical chops, and songwriting abilities – as we’ve said before, their tunes just kick ass, in whatever format they’re played. And they’ve just expanded their repertoire – which features such raucous songs as “Mr. Pie Eyes,” “Sosey and Dosey,” and “Seasickness Pills” – with their first single on Yep Roc, the groovy new “Even Think” backed with the older “Heavy Hand,” available for free download from their Web site, along with a remix of “Even Think” by Andrew W.K. One of the busiest and best bands at this year’s CMJ Marathon, DUB will be at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn on December 22 playing on a bill with True Womanhood, the Art of Shooting, Schocholautte, and Total Slacker that gets going at 8:00. You just have to see these guys. Really. We’re not kidding.

JOHN LENNON: THE NEW YORK CITY YEARS

December 8 marks the 29th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon (photo by Bob Gruen)

December 8 marks the 29th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon in New York City (photo by Bob Gruen)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex
76 Mercer St.
Through January 3
Timed tickets: $26.50
www.rockannex.com

It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty-nine years since John Lennon was gunned down on December 8, 1980, by Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota, where Lennon had lived with wife Yoko Ono for much of the 1970s. Lennon and Ono had just released the album DOUBLE FANTASY to wide acclaim and appeared ready to spend more time in the public spotlight. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex looks back at this period of Lennon’s life in the exhibition “John Lennon: The New York City Years,” comprising letters, photographs, instruments, handwritten lyrics, clothing, works of art, and other memorabilia and paraphernalia collected by Ono and curator Jim Henke. While the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – a rather dubious institution to begin with – is located in Cleveland, the organization set up an annex in SoHo last December. If you haven’t heard of it or been there, you’re not the only one; it has just been announced that the annex will be closing its doors on January 3. While the Web site claims that it’s merely “concluding its stay in New York” in preparation for a tour, low interest and attendance certainly contributed mightily to the decision. Of course, the admission charge of $26.50 for advance timed tickets didn’t help. However, if you’re seeking a way to pay tribute to the Smart Beatle, checking out this exhibit isn’t the worst idea we can think of.

THIS IS SPINAL TAP SING-ALONG

Everyone gets to join in at Spinal Tap singalong in TriBeCa

THIS IS SPINAL TAP (Rob Reiner, 1984)
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Saturday, December 19, $13, 11:00 pm
212-415-5500
www.92YTribeca.org/film

Get ready to smell the glove, and beware the patron saint of quality footwear. The 92nd St. Y outpost in TriBeCa is hosting a late-night sing-along of the greatest mockumentary ever made, the towering classic THIS IS SPINAL TAP, Rob Reiner’s triumphant tale of three heavy metal heads – Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) – and a series of highly flammable drummers as the band attempts a comeback. The hysterical film, which does indeed go all the way up to eleven, includes cameos by Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Dana Carvey, Fran Drescher, Billy Crystal, Howard Hesseman, Paul Benedict, Paul Shaffer, Anjelica Huston, Fred Willard, and, yes, the one and only Patrick MacNee. Prizes will be given out – as well as one free beer per ticket holder – so come in costume, ready to belt out such unforgettable hits as “Hell Hole,” “Big Bottom,” “Sex Farm,” and, of course, “Stonehenge.”