Wednesday Night in Williamsburg: SummerScreen presents Prince Rama and Telepathe and "Dirty Dancing"

We love Prince Rama, and we haven't seen them live in over a year, when they appeared at their DVD release party at the sadly-departed Monster Island Basement, so we were thrilled to get to see this incredible duo up close tonight at the McCarren Park ballfields as they opened The L Magazine's SummerScreen presentation of Dirty Dancing.

They were pretty incredible, as usual, and though we first saw them two years ago back when they were a trio at Brooklyn Bridge Park, and we've listened to their music, this was the best we'd ever seen or heard them. The sisters Taraka Larson and Nimai Larson absolutely were in top form early this evening. Later there was a very nice set from Telepathe, Brooklynites Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes

We'd seen Dirty Dancing decades ago, but we also lived it, as the child of parents who were part owners of a hotel in South Fallsburg (the DeVille, previously the Nemerson) and someone who, like Jennifer Grey's character Baby, spent the summer of 1963 in a Borscht Belt hotel (The Raleigh, owned by our parents' good friend George Gilbert, who was, though he'd be surprised to hear it, a role model for a kid who knew he was a little different).

But in the summer of tonight's film, 49 summers ago, we were 12, not 17, and not so interested in dancing or (definitely not) girls as we were in the jokes of our friends' mom, the great comedienne Totie Fields, who also lived at the hotel with her husband George. We, and her fans, have missed her a lot. That's another side of 1963 and the Borscht Belt. But we're very grateful to the amazing Todd P and SummerScreen for allowing us to see tonight's music and movie. It was perfect. Especially Prince Rama!