Late Sunday Afternoon in Long Island City: Sunday Sessions presents Priests with Downtown Boys, Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride of Swearin, and Olga Bell of Dirty Projectors at MoMA PS1 VW Dome

(Video courtesy Sixdust | NYC Music)

Sunday Afternoon in the East Village: Iconicide - Puke Island 2013 presents "Witches Night Out" with Damn Broads, The Graveyard School, Cojoba, The Minor Cuts and Bum Rush Crew and No More Victims at Tompkins Square Park

Damn Broads

The Graveyard School

Cojoba

The Minor Cuts

Bum Rush Crew

Early Saturday Afternoon in Times Square: Zulu Wave and Upper West at CBGB Music Fesitval Free Concert

We generally try to avoid Times Square like dental plaque, especially on a summer Saturday afternoon when the area is swarming with tourists. Especially when the temperature is approaching 100 degrees.

But we got to Times Square at noon today (thanks, C train, for stopping at Delancey Street this weekend, making the trip from Williamsburg a lot easier) for the start of the free concert -- one of two today, the other at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park -- from the new CBGB Music Festival, which was in the news today for the stabbing at Webster Hall (making the violence at the McCarren Pool seem like kiddie's play).

We figured we'd stay for an hour or so, and though we knew we'd wilt before seeing The Hold Steady (whom we've seen in two free shows already), Superchunk, or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, we were happy to get there when the audience was relatively sparse, by Times Square standards amazingly so, given that we could just walk up to the first row of either of the stages at 46th Street and 51st Street.

And we were not disappointed, getting to see two really fine bands we were unaware of: Zulu Wave from Tampa (yay!) at the south stage

and then Upper West from the West 70s and 80s (also home! yay!) at the north stage.

We were very hot, however, and after an hour, needing fluid and air conditioning, took the subway one stop to our office. Hey, we are old enough to have come to where the south stage was with our high school fellow-dramafag best bud to see Gwen Verdon in Sweet Charity at the Palace in 1966.

Things have changed. Before global warming, summer in the city was hot, but not this hot.

Someone there said, "I can't imagine anything less punk than what's going on here,"

but of course CBGB back in the 1970s was not just about punk; they had a surprisingly wide variety of interesting-sounding bands and solo acts.

In the fall of 1978, Another Chicago Magazine came out with a story of ours and a contributor's note that mentioned our playing "lead guitar with A Small Band of Zionist Hoodlums, which recently played CBGB."

Anyway, the south stage had bleachers, although they were basically less than half-full at 12:30 p.m. and a bunch of people standing in front of and beside the stage who probably didn't come to see the music festival. We had to make our way through a gauntlet of pesky people imploring us to go on sightseeing bus or into "comedy shows" or chain restaurants or crappy supposed tourist attractions.

We preferred the old Times Square, when it was sleazy and you could meet one of your best lifelong friends there when he was 19 years old and you were his somewhat older, um, client. Well, some people like the Disney version. This CBGB Festival technical guy was smiling broadly. We guess they were paying him overtime.

However, this is not to take away anything from Zulu Wave, who played a really wonderful set, as they did on Thursday night in Rock the Park Tampa, at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park, to us a more pleasant and prettier venue than Times Square, right by the Hillsborough River and near the art museum. Sigh. We miss Florida.

If it's possible to be both serene and dynamic -- getting to Times Square with $665 (from a $500 goal) on Kickstarter, Zulu Fest accomplished that today, in what must have been a very surreal atmosphere. Michael Barrow's lyrics introduce subject matter that ranges from shape-shifting African monsters to opressive government regimes.

Tampa Bay Times wrote (last year, when the band had a somewhat different membership):

Zulu Wave is a cool name for a group from Tampa, but it fits in a way you might not expect — singer-guitarist Mike Barrow actually hails from Johannesburg, South Africa. The group — Barrow, bassist Stephanie Adamo, keyboardist Ariel Cortes and drummer Dan Sullivan — has a thoroughly modern and polished indie-rock sound that calls to mind anyone from Silversun Pickups to Arcade Fire to the Airborne Toxic Event. The group has a three-song EP at the moment, but is working on a full slate of material for a full-length, which could come in 2012.

Cortes is the only member who hails from Tampa. The rest were all in bands around the East Coast (and the world, in Barrow's case). The lineup solidified about six months ago, right as all the members moved to the Tampa Bay area. . ."It just all clicked," Adamo says.

Zulu West clicked today. We made our way up Broadway past the previously mentioned buskers as well as tables selling stuff and -- more happily -- some excellent food trucks. Because it was so hot and humid, it felt like more than four or five blocks till we got to the north stage.

Upper West is new wave hip-hop by Dougie (Doug Gleicher) and JFink (Jesse Finkelstein), two guys who look about 20 and who grew up on the Upper West Side and met each other in lower school at Collegiate("lower school" was what it was called when we went to Franklin School on West 89th Street for tenth grade - "upper school" - in 1965-66), and we liked what we heard from their first mixtape, West Side Stories, released about a year and a half ago. But then we're kinda sorta from there, too, only in the 1980s, living around the corner from Dougie's parents. We hope Upper West gets a bigger audience.

And they were playing the CBGB Music Festival in fucking Times Square, and they also performed at South by Southwest (SXSW) earlier this year.

Their set today was energetic -- not easy in the swelter. Huffington Post reviewed West Side Stories this way (in part):

Upper West's new mixtape has earned a slew of positive reviews, and the group already has over 7,500 "likes" on their Facebook page. With the tracks on the new release, the duo pays homage to their roots: "Grew up on 72nd / moved up to 87th ... Grew up on fields of grassy gravel down on Riverside" are a few of the opening lyrics to "West Side Story," the first of the nine songs.

Listeners of the mixtape may feel a bit of déjà entendu: several of the tracks have hooks from familiar songs playing beneath the rap lyrics. "What We Do," for instance, is an adaptation of Beirut's "Elephant Gun," and "Slow Down" is a new take on Death Cab's "Marching Band of Manhattan." Most creative, perhaps, is the fifth track on the mixtape, "Seasons," which is an adaptation of the song "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent. And children of the 80s and 90s should be sure to catch the intro to the track "Pride" ("I see pride! I see power!"), which features a recording from the best movie about any Jamaican bobsled team ever created. (Yes, it is Cool Runnings).

Upper West's "Slow Down" [is] a sure-to-be hit off their new mixtape (go ahead and skip to 1:06 for our favorite part). They say they're not "just another frat rap / More dudes with tank tops and snapbacks" in "What We Do," but after watching the video from their earlier single "I Won't Grow Up" (second video below), we're ...not too sure about that. What is certain is the fact that these guys are talented and will be sure to win the hearts of female first-years across the country.

Anyway, though we left early rather than faint from the combination of heat exhaustion and old age, we are definitely grateful we got to see Zulu Wave and Upper West and caught at least a little of the CBGB Music Festival.

Saturday Evening in Downtown Chandler: Face to Face at Great American BBQ & Beer Festival in Dr. AJ Chandler Park

This evening we were lucky enough to catch the seminal '90s California pop punk band Face to Face at Dr. AJ Chandler Park in downtown Chandler. They were the headline act in a full-day Great American BBQ and Beer Festival, which also featured earlier performances by the punk and ska punk bands Goldfinger,

The Voodoo Glow Skulls

and Buck-O-Nine.

We're sorry we missed them, but we're grateful to zBOREDtube for the videos above.

And we're glad we got to see at least the last couple of hours of the festival. Face to Face was wonderful, and there was an enthusiastic crowd.

We don't eat meat or drink beer (we don't smoke, either, and forgot that not everywhere is like New York City parks where Mayor Bloomberg has banned smoking -- there were a lot of smokers around us as we got closer to the stage), but there was other stuff to consume.

And it felt like midsummer and everyone seemed in a good mood except the few people we saw throwing up.














Here's a favorite moment, Face to Face singing "Bill of Goods," a video courtesy of zBOREDtube, which has the most amazing concert videos in the Valley:

It was a lot of fun, and we're grateful for everyone who made the festival possible.

Monday Night at BAM's Afro-Punk Skate Park: The Fifth Annual Afro-Punk Festival's Finale with Janelle Monae, Saul Williams and more

We've just come back from the spectacular finale of three wonderful days of the Afro-Punk Festival's annual stay at the BAM parking lot, aka Afro-Punk Skate Park. We had the high privilege of watching two dynamic, engergetic performances by faves Saul Williams and the goddess Janelle Monáe. There was an incredible spirit in the last few hours of the Afro-Punk Festival that's left us feeling exhilarated and energized even while our 58yo body not used to standing for so long is wiped out.

We came in sometinme after 6 p.m. via the Flatbush Avenue side and got a peek backstage, where the performers, staffers and VIPs were.

The Afro-Punk Festival is beloved by the weather gods, especially in this rainy summer. This was another day with a nearly cloudless sky, and not too hot.

We made our way to a spot where we could at least see a little of what was going on. This was the most crowded day. DJs were playing The Fugees and "One Love" when we arrived.

In the crowd, we spotted a man conversing with a human boombox.

The festival's chief sponsor, Mountain Dew, kept everyone hydrated and caffeinated.

Although the majority of the crowds at the Afro-Punk Festival were, clearly, properly, members of the African diaspora, during our three days in attendance we saw people of every conceivable race and hairstyle. We spotted hijabs, yarmulkes, dastaars and a patka along with do-rags, baseball caps, fedoras, several berets, a straw boater, a snood, and other head coverings. But then we spent a lot of time looking at the backs of folks' heads.

The fashion sense on display was incredible (said the alter kocker in the $13.99 Medgar Evers College T-shirt),

Also, the work of our fellow members of the legal profession was in evidence:

"How did you hear about Janelle?" the woman next to us asked. She said someone had sent her an email, that she'd never heard of Afro-punk before. Later, after her set, a young white guy with good gaydar asked us if Janelle had already gone on. He was sad to learn he'd missed her, but he stayed for Saul Williams. So clearly tonight was getting a crossover audience.

As we waited through what seemed like interminable sound checks, a skinny guy in a do-rag saying "one, two, one two, hey hey..." into the mike, you could feel the anticipation.

Finally "the most phenomenal performer of all time" was introduced, and the crowd roared as Janelle made a very slow and very dramatic (what else?) appearance onstage.

Since we were standing behind the tallest people in the audience, we got good glimpses of Janelle, but mostly through the spaces between other people's heads. We were pretty much hemmed in, but we saw her through most of her wonderful set, although sometimes we lost sight. At a couple of points, she moved so energetically that her signature hairstyle became undone. Magically, it reappeared as perfect, one time after she went offstage as the guitarist riffed maniacally. So we couldn't always see Janelle. But that counted was that we could always hear her! As of Monday morning, we could actually get a view of her crowd-surfing here, but it didn't beat being there!

Any pics we have of Janelle or Saul Williams are so bad and distant and small that they're likely to inadvertantly demean what were two amazingly intimate and dynamic performances, so we'll just post stock photos or steal from the people who were using actual digital cameras with zoom lenses. There's probably better print coverage on other blogs, but maybe not by anyone older!

We're ancient enough to have grown up with pre-rock "standards," and we heard "Smile" throughout our childhood in the '50s and '60s, but nobody but nobody does a version like Janelle Monáe. It brings tears to our eyes and goosebumps to our wrinkled skin. The audience at the Afro-Punk Festival, as it did last year, was absolutely transfixed by this song. She got up really high so everyone could see her.

At the end of "Smile," Janelle said, "Thanks, God. Dedicated...to...Michael...Jackson!"

Someone shouted out, "That's the best!"

But there was a lot more. We first saw Janelle at last year's Afro-Punk Festival and were blown away.

Her staging, her moves, all are impeccable. But it's not just her vogueing, mugging and vamping, because she has a voice of tremendous power, sweet and commanding. And, yes, the dry-ice-created smoke helps the air of drama, as does the way Janelle can move her fingers, but it's all done sincerely, and that's what the audience relates to. Speaking of "sincerely," here's "Sincerely Jane":

During that song, a couple of people yelled out, "Get out of the way!" - meaning the videographer who was getting in front of Janelle. You can't blame them. At some points we mostly had to watch her by looking up at the screens of other people's cameras, held high above their heads.

She was still amazing. We'd love to see her in a Broadway show, if there's one that can contain her.

These two somehow climbed the fence or whatever and were dancing to Janelle's songs from Flatbush Avenue.

After Janelle got off to terrific applause, we got treated to the high-flying spectacular tricks of Brooklyn-based Jimmy Mac's Bulldog Bikes riders. We got a nosebleed just watching. Also that sick sinking feeling in the pit of our stomach.

The skill and practice to do that kind of stuff, not to mention the leg and upper-body muscles, are really impressive. Some of the younger, littler kids were pretty cool, but the older veteran riders made some astonishing moves. They were just killing it.

That's our lame-ass cell phone effort. Now check out the pics from a really good still photographer in a whole different universe from we pathetic amateurs, New Joisey's pcimprezzive, on YouTube:

The crowd got fired up too: "When I say 'Afro,' you say 'punk'!"
"Get your Brooklyn on! . . . Get your Obama on!"
"This is a movement. . . Peace and love!"

We were getting a little claustrophobic and afraid if we didn't move our feet, we'd be planted in the BAM parking lot for eternity, so we gingerly made our way through a crowd of - we don't know, thousands? - for a little more space in the area between the skate park and the bike track.

That gave us a pretty unobstructed, if distant, view of Saul Williams' vigorous, fast-paced yet thoughtful performance. He's an incredible showman. And like Janelle, whom he gave his love to, at one point, he dove into the crowd, mosh-pit style.

Saul came on in a Revolutionary War-style red military jacket with a long proclamation of names, including: Hughes, Baldwin, Ginsberg, Coltrane, Siddharta, Medusa, Robinson, Shakespeare, Rachmaninoff, Dickinson, Tesla, Fellini, Nostradamus, four little girls, Hiroshima, Marley, Shakur and more... ending with Michael Jackson.

Saul Williams' "Black Stacey" always takes our breath away. The crowd tonight went wild. It's both a powerful statement and first-rate entertainment.

During Saul Williams' performance, as night fell, some nimble kids climbed onto the skateboarding platform to get a better view.

We found his cover of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" amazing from our distant perch, but you can see it here close up:

" . . . Now is the essence of my domain/ but it contains all that was and will be/ and i am as i was and will be/ because i am and always will be/ that nigga/ i am that nigga . . . "
"the future is you . . . "

Saul said it was good to be back in Brooklyn, "so many familiar faces, hello" and he introduced his son and gave a shout-out to his beautiful 80yo aunt on Euclid Avenue.

He thanked his band, whom we think were Davin Givahn, Kwame Brandt Pierce, Tchak Diallo. . . Our ears are 58 yo and we've been going to hear live music for over 40 years.

There was a call and response: Be somebody! Be somebody!

The energy in the crowd just grew stronger and stronger as Saul sang, did spoken-word, riffed. Before his finale, a really good rapper came on, someone we should know, whose name shamefully we couldn't catch. We were sort of blissing out anyway, even as festival-goers trying to get an early start filed out past us.

Blessings to everyone who made the fifth annual Afro-Punk Festival such a joy and such a community.

Hey, wife of Lot, don't look back. Tomorrow it turns back into a parking lot.

As Saul Williams said tonight, "Even death is a part of life . . even death is a part of life . . thank you, Michael."