Friday Night at J.J. Byrne Park: The Piper Theatre's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

What revels are in hand? Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

After leaving Desert Island's comic book nirvana last evening, we made our way to the recently-unveiled chrome-and-glass Kellogg's Diner Redux and walked down to our wonderfully reliable weekend G train to get to J.J. Byrne Park for the Piper Theatre's amazing production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Thanks to the MTA's scheduling, we barely had time to glance at the sardonically-changed subway advertisements (our favorite so far was when some benign wit changed the tagline for the [very funny] film Forgetting Sarah Marshall's rather cruel tag line YOU DO LOOK FAT IN THOSE JEANS to YOU DO LOOK GREAT IN THOSE JEANS) or stand on the Smith St.-Ninth St. platform contemplating the lambent sky before we were approaching the park where we, more than thirty years ago, used to drive by with our friend's younger brother to purchase nickel bags and take them back to the brownstone on Ninth Street where our friends and rolling papers were waiting.

We were motivated to head for the park by Louise Crawford's this glowing report at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn (from which we also purloined one of Hugh Crawford's excellent photographs of the performance by Hugh Crawford):

A rollicking, frolicking Midsummer Night's Dream delighted a large opening night crowd on the green in JJ Byrne Park on Thursday night.

And what a night it was. The weather was glorious, the sky clear, the half moon luminous and bright.

Directed by John P. McEneny, who teaches drama at MS 51 and runs the Piper Theater, this version of MSND takes place in 1908 Coney Island, a natural setting for the play. "The parks at Coney Island symbolized a reachable escape, a place where almost anyone could go for a day and get lost in the crowd. It was a place where everyone was searching for fun and often found it in the exotic displays or seemingly death-defying rides," write Rosa Schneider, Piper's dramaturg.

Indeed, Shakespeare's popular play is all about magic, escape, identity, and the fantastical. What better way to bring it home to a Brooklyn audience then to set it in our very own urban dreamland.

There were many highpoints in last night's show, which will run this weekend and next in the park located at Fifth Avenue and Third Street in Park Slope, but the cast's high energy, high octane performance of the play surely gave it the kind of bigger than life impact that works wonders in an outdoor show.

Still, the fairy dances were gently rendered even as airplanes passed overhead. A strong cast really packed a wollop in a production that was alternately bawdy, poetic, magical, sexy, acrobatic and really fun in all the right ways.

Owen Campbell, a 14-year-old professional actor was notable in the role of Puck. But all the actors brought great energy and joie de vivre to Piper's memorable version of the play. The lovely set by Lila Trenkova, complete with life guard chairs and twinkling lights, transformed the park. Costumes by Deirdre Cavanaugh were also a treat, as was the sound design by Andy Christian.

Louise pretty much describes the joyous experience we had, though we'd add that we were really impressed by Owen Campbell, too, as well as Sean Phillips as one of the best Oberons we'd ever seen. And we didn't hear any airplanes (perhaps the major carriers all went bankrupt today?).

This wasn't the first time we'd seen A Midsummer Night's Dream in a park. Back on Thursday evening, July 23, 1970 [this is why you should keep a diary too] we saw the fondly-remembered BACA Repertory doing the play in Prospect Park at Wollman Rink, very intimate and informal, with teens and twentysomethings making magic, though without the kind of advanced production values the Piper Theatre's got going on now.

We took two young members of our household, 9yo Jonny and 6yo Jeanette, to that show,

and the kids were as enchanted and quiet as nearly all the many kids sitting on the lawn at J.J. Byrne Park last night. (And the next week, at Riis Park's Bay 1, we got to put our beach blanket next to the blanket of the boy playing Oberon!)

Back when Robert Wagner was mayor and Abe Stark borough president, we Brooklyn kids were introduced to Shakespeare early.

Our fantastic eighth-grade English teacher at Meyer Levin Junior High, Mr. Neil Berger, had us read Twelfth Night in preparation for viewing a production at Grady Technical High School in Sheepshead Bay that we still remember. (In the summer of 1990 we went to a star-studded production of Twelfth Night at Central Park -- it featured Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, Gregory Hines, Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio, Stephen Collins, Fisher Stevens, John Ames, et al. -- and our 8SPE2 classmate, author/literary agent Linda Konner, with us that night along with her boyfriend, longtime Newark Star-Ledger theater critic Peter Felicia, agreed that the version we'd seen in a Brooklyn high school in 1964 was superior.)

In ninth grade, Mrs. Hazel Sanjour had us read Julius Caesar. We each memorized and delivered a soliloquy, put out a Roman newspaper, saw the 1950s film version at the Eighth Street Playhouse and learned a lot more about Mrs. Sanjour's favorite writer, "the inimitable Bard," as she called him.

And in our senior year at Midwood, we took a fall-semester Shakespeare course with the legendary teacher Mr. Joseph Grebanier. We sat up front and center and can still picture Mr. G in front of us reading the parts of everyone from Polonius to Prince Hal to Sir Toby Belch with enthusiasm. (He told us Polonius's famous advice to Laertes was fatuous: "Why should you never a borrower or a lender be? And plenty of people who are true to themselves who constantly lie to others!") Can we be wrong in thinking we read 24 Shakespeare plays in the fall of 1967?

We miss Mr. Grebanier, but we still have our Brooklyn College 1973 Ottilie Grebanier Drama Award, received for the best play by an undergrad, in honor of the mother of Mr. Grebanier and his less-nice BC English professor brother (their French-sounding family name came from Reinberg, only backwards).

Now we are lucky enough to get to teach Shakespeare to college students. And still go to see great crepuscular productions like Piper Theatre's Midsummer Night's Dream. Catch the magic at J.J. Byrne Park this weekend or next. Thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life end!

Friday Evening in Williamsburg: Gabrielle Bell's "Lucky" at Desert Island

On our way from Dumbo Books HQ to the G train early Friday evening, we made a stop at our favorite neighborhood comic-book store, Desert Island, for the launch party of the new issue of Lucky (Volume 2, Number 2), by the extremely talented Gabrielle Bell, whose work is both wry and knowing, bittersweet and resonant.

Amid the good-sized crowd (the party had just begun) -- of which Gabrielle's kindly uncle saved us from from being the oldest in the room (but he looks younger than us!) -- we waited patiently for Gabrielle to inscribe our book. She apologized needlessly for being slow as she drew a cartoon version of us that was pockmarked, potato-faced, tangle-haired and Dumbo-eared; in other words, it was a perfect likeness!


Publishers Weekly called Gabrielle Bell's book version of Lucky "completely engrossing...even addictive

—because Bell has such a flair for communicating a specific brand of postcollegiate ennui. Her day-to-day existence is a litany of dilapidated rental apartments, low-paying jobs, yoga classes and artistic frustration, but Bell's straightforward storytelling reveals a true poignancy amid the tedium. Far from being depressing, these snippets of daily life in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, N.Y., are comforting in their frankness and familiarity; by settling into the rhythm of the artist's daily life, the reader experiences the heft of small victories and simple pleasures. Never laugh-out-loud funny, brief tales of yoga roommate miscommunication, ignorant comics buyers, the anguish of nude modeling, and sex-obsessed, adolescent art students radiate good humor and are sure to resonate with a certain stripe of well-educated, underemployed 20-something comic reader. Lucky is yet another sophisticated, nuanced pleasure.

This week Racked called Desert Island "[a]n adorable, quirky comic book store." We hope you'll visit Desert Island to get a copy of Lucky or some of the other amazing stuff on sale there. Meanwhile, we had to skeedaddle out of there last night to get to J.J. Byrne Park for an 8 p.m. date with Shakespeare. But Lucky's new volume is terrific -- Gabrielle's brilliant take on her MySpace experience alone is worth the small price for it. Isn't life wonderful!

Sunday Evening at the McCarren Park Pool: Ronnie Spector

As we walked the few blocks up Lorimer Street from Dumbo Books HQ to the McCarren Park Pool at 5:30 p.m. last night, we were thinking about a boy we knew who graduated Meyer Levin Junior High School 285 in East Flatbush on the last Monday in June 1965.

Richie had just turned 14. Since the boys in the sixteen ninth-grade classes marched in and sat down, as did the girls on the other side of the auditorium, in size place, he was first out of the 250 of so boys. Next to him was the second-shortest boy, a Negro he'd never noticed before, and he didn't know what to talk about with him. In Richie's experience, you were probably best off talking baseball or music with Negro kids, since they were things everyone had in common, though he knew enough not to talk about the Beatles or Herman's Hermits.

There were fewer people than last week at the pool, and a few more people with gray hair. We don't have gray hair, but we might as well since everyone assumes we dye it. An older man, seeing our maroon Brooklyn College T-shirt with gold lettering, says, "I used to go there too." We talk to this elderly person and discover that when he was an undergrad, we were serving on the alumni association board of directors.

Getting some Fuze diet white tea at the booth near the dodgeball players, we notice the skinny sky-blue JellyNYC balloon figures are up again, swaying in the wind. They weren't here last week. Or were they and we just don't remember?

With nine members of the band already onstage, Ronnie Spector enters holding a mike. She's shapely in a zaftig way, in a black pantsuit. All the nine band members are wearing black too. "I dream about the boys," she sings. Her hair is a modified 21st century beehive. The song is "I Wonder." Crowds move forward, and we go closer too.

Ronnie Spector, after the first applause dies down, says that when she woke up she was afraid of it being rainy: "But, no, not in Brooklyn. This is where I started.
The Brooklyn Fox with Murray the K shows. I'll never forget them."

And she starts singing again:

Why do they say that we're too young to go steady?
Don't they believe it, that I love you already?
Gee the moon is shining bright
Wish I could go out tonight
Why don't they let us fall in love?

Waiting on line in their black caps and gowns outside Whitman Auditorium at Brooklyn College that hot June morning, the two boys at the head of the junior high graduation procession started talking about the Murray the K special "It's What's Happening, Baby!"

It was going to be on channel 2 that night from 9:30 to 11:00 p.m. They'd taped some it at Fabian's Fox Theatre on Flatbush and Nevins, the one-time movie palace where Murray the K put on his famous rock 'n' roll shows: a segment with Richie's favorite, The Four Tops, singing his favorite song of theirs, "I Can't Help Myself."

The Negro boy said he heard the Ronettes would be on it too. Other girl groups sang about boys, but the Ronettes sang to boys: "Be My Baby," "Born to Be Together," "This Is What I Get for Loving You."

The Brooklyn Fox was demolished around January 1971, but it had been out of business for years. It was where the Con Ed building now is. The Ronettes also appeared as part of Clay Cole's Twist-A-Rama tour at the Town Hill Club on Eastern Parkway at Bedford Avenue, now a WaMu bank branch. Clay Cole was where Richie mostly saw the Ronettes, on his weekly afternoon TV show on channel 11; he also saw them on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" on Saturday mornings on channel 7. On both shows, the kids were integrated.

Ronnie Spector will be 65 next month, so she seems a little tired. She sits down after the first song, but gets up again after a few bars into the next song.

"I love applause," Ronnie Spector says, when the crowd claps. "Even after all these years in the business..." A few hipster kids sitting near me on the floor of the empty pool are talking. A girl and her gay-guy friend are tickling each other and giggling.

"Nineteen sixty-six!" Ronnie Spector shouts, with surprising exuberance. And she sings:

Do I want you for my baby
Do I want you by my side
Do I wanna run and kiss your lips
Say you're my loving guy - oh oh...

The Ronettes did appear on 1965's "It's What's Happening, Baby!" The show was done in conjunction with the Office of Economic Opportunity, the war-on-poverty agency headed by Sargent Shriver, who was not, Richie once exasperatedly explained to his best friend, an actual army sergeant. ("You think if someone were just a sergeant, they'd be so proud of it, they'd call themselves by it all the time?!") The show's serious aim was to tell drop-out teenagers and ones without jobs about all the government programs like Job Corps that could help them.

On the Murray the K TV special, the Ronettes were shown walking down Mott Street in Little Italy, wearing plain white blouses and blue jeans and baseball caps, carrying really long overstuffed hero sandwiches. Murray the K was playing stickball. The Ronettes sang the song Richie knew they'd sing, "Be My Baby," which had come out a year and a half before, around the time President Kennedy was assassinated. The world had changed since then -- the British invasion had come out of nowhere -- but you still couldn't beat "It's My Baby."

Ronnie Spector says she loves doowop, like Frankie Lyman, and she'd come home from school (she lived in Washington Heights with her grandmother and future fellow Ronettes, her sister and cousin) and listen to the radio till she got the voices in her head.

She sits down after each song and says at one point, "Woo, if you guys think it's hot down there, it's hot up here, oh my God." Actually, it feels cool on the floor of the pool where we're sitting, but we're in the shade. There's a nice little breeze.

She starts "He Did It" sitting down but then seems to get her second wind and gets up, more energetically, on this line:

People let me tell you

I don't understand his alibi
I don't understand his reasons why
I don't understand him right or wrong
But he, oh he did it and he's gone

Oh how he fooled me
When he used me
And then he, he accused me
Let me tell you oh

"I think you all know who I'm talking about," Ronnie says after the applause dies down.

We bet some don't. We'd like to poll a random sample of hipsters here, including the two boys standing in front of me, who were lip-syncing and finger-snapping along with the song. Phil Spector? Wall of sound? One blogger, we see, has already posted that something about her being with the Rhondelles.
Two days after "It's What's Happening, Baby!" appeared on CBS, Richie and his friends -- fellow members of the Sultans like Eugene, Arnie, Billy, Jerry and Steve -- were walking over the Ocean Avenue foot bridge across Sheepshead Bay to go to Manhattan Beach and hang out. Arnie's little red transistor radio had on WMCA, 560 AM, home of the Good Guys. Some of them preferred WABC and Cousin Brucie, but Richie liked Harry Harrison the most. The Sultans played a lot of ball and listened to a lot of music. Their secret password was Teragram-Nna, which was Ann-Margaret's name backwards.

Walking to the beach, Richie mentioned a Herald Tribune article he'd read that morning about Republican senators denouncing "It's What's Happening, Baby!" Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen said "It's What Happening, Baby!" was "immoral" and "lousy, double lousy" and called for a federal investigation although the Johnson administration said no government money paid for the show.

Senator Gordon Allott of Colorado said it was such a degrading and shameful show he called Dr. Stanton at CBS right away. "I told the president of the broadcasting company, 'I am about to throw up,'" Senator Allott said. "Every American who saw the show must be sick. The whole program was tuned to the lowest type of beatnik appeal."

Maybe we're wrong about the hipsters. People are asking her for requests. She sings several more songs, wipes her face a lot with a black hanky, sits down a lot. Ronnie says she's glad it didn't rain, "but I could deal with a little rain now." She's older than our grandmothers were when we bought Ronettes 45s on Church Avenue near Utica, on our way to our grandmothers' apartments after school. So we feel sorry for her. But then she says, "But since it's not raining..." and she gets up and belts out "Walking in the Rain."

We listened to this walking in drizzle one dreary summer afternoon on the boardwalk in Rockaway, one hand holding the transistor radio to our ear, the other holding an orange creamsicle we kept licking.

Ronnie Spector's voice gets thin at times and then gets strong. She's clearly tired, but she's a trouper, her hand at her hips as she shakes and sings some more. She says "Oh my god" about four times in a row and precedes one song by talking about its producer, Joey Ramone. It was the last music he produced before he died.

The highlight of the show, of course, is "Be My Baby," which the crowd loves. One boy standing in front of me with his arm around another boy's shoulder exaggeratedly lip-syncs "Be my baby" with her as he looks at his friend.

In the fall of 1966, Richie was fifteen. After spending tenth grade in two different schools, Madison and the private Franklin School on the Upper West Side, where he wore a school blazer and rep tie and carried an attache case on the three trains and a bus every day, Richie was in his junior year at Midwood, pretending to have moved in with a police lieutenant and his wife, friends of his parents, who lived across the street from the school.

Richie was messed up, confused, but at least he'd gotten his parents to let him see a psychiatrist. They'd just started, though, and he wasn't getting less messed up. He was reading Franny and Zooey and The Crying of Lot 49 on his own but in danger of failing Miss Shapin's English class because she hated Richie for some reason.

"Don't worry, she's just a bitch," the black girl in the next seat whispered to him when the teacher was concentrating on the other side of the room.

She goes off, saying, "Good night, I love you, good night, I love you," to applause that somehow doesn't seem appreciative enough for how hard it is to do this when you're old. Louder applause gets the band, and then Ronnie, water bottle in one hand, mic in the other, back for an encore of one song: the Ronettes' final single, "I Can Hear Music," released in late 1966. Soon after, Spector closed the Philles label and the group disbanded.

I can hear music
I can hear music
The sound of the city baby seems to disappear
I can hear music
Sweet sweet music
Whenever you touch me baby
Whenever you're near

"Goodnight everybody," Ronnie Spector says after the song and we mostly file out, but a lot of people are just still hanging out since it's only 6:45 p.m.

We were near enough to Ronnie Spector tonight to hear her music and so we are old but we're happy.

Isn't life wonderful.

Saturday Night at BAM: The Fourth Annual Afro-Punk Festival Launch Party at Afro-Punk Skate Park

On Saturday evening we spent a few fun hours at the launch party of the fourth annual Afro-Punk Festival, held at Afro-Punk Skate Park -- the temporary site at the BAM parking lot at the triangle of Flatbush Avenue, Lafayette Avenue and Ashland Place, a place for which great plans have been made and abandoned. At least for these few days, it's a lot more exciting than the parking lot where in the waning days of the Nixon administration we HQ'ed our gold '73 Mercury Comet when we worked as a delivery boy for the around-the-corner Midtown Florist -- whose banner ads still grace the lot's south side fence.

Since 2005, the Festival has celebrated the music, film and fiercely independent individuals that are the lifeblood of the AP community. We entered just before 6 p.m., when the band onstage was nearing their last song, a rendition of the still-fresh "Purple Rain" just as a few people pulled out their umbrellas (and, yes, one lady's was indeed lavender) to ward off what was slightly more than a drizzle but which soon gave way to dry skies for the remainder of the night.

For a while we stood next to a tree on the narrow cobblestoned divider between the bike ramp and the wider eastern sk8er paradise with lots of ramps to challenge the boys (of all ages and ethnicities, but we saw only boys) who stood on a four-foot platform, looking as if they were contemplating the perks of being a wallflower before they took off with their boards to speed through the course and often the air.

During the evening we witnessed several near-collisions, one pretty good crash between a twentysomething white dude and a 9yo black kid which led to no injuries, and at least one 'frohawked teen back wrapping an ace bandage around his bleeding knees. But 99% of the skaters were just having fun.

(Courtesy Myrtle Shuffle, where Alice B. has other great pics up)

Meanwhile, Bulldog Mack -- Bulldog Bikes CEO James ("Jimmy Mac") McNeil, the man who brought BMX out of the 'burbs and into Bushwick -- did the calls from the stage as his crew of bikers performed stunts so amazing and scary that a couple of tough-looking guys near me covered their eyes with their hands, screamed and turned away as daredevils like Jai Rodridguez and Koolie (sp?) defied gravity with what looked like 15-foot leaps into the air.

Before last night, we never knew it was possible to b-boy on a bike but we definitely saw the equivalent of breakdancing as the bikers made mid-air moves so deft that old Evil Kneivel couldn't have imagined it. (And yeah, some bikers flew high over other bikers.)


The Apes, a guitarless garage rock foursome from D.C., took the stage, with one of their number in an orange wool face mask with a red hunting cap looking and sounding like a cross between Darth Vader and Subcomandante Marcos, only nerdish. But when they began to play, it proved to be a long-haired white girl, keyboardist Amanda Kleinman with her distinctive garage organ.

With Erick Jackson's burning bass and Jeff Schmid's bombastic drumming and vocalist Breck Brunson (mostly known to us as an imaginative visual artist) with a glassy tremolo, the quartet performed some wild-sounding numbers, varying from proto-metal to sci-fi-tinged new wave. They got the building crowd on the west side of the skate park, us included, moving pretty good.

We had to move next to the Atlantic Terminal for a bathroom break and a quick snack, and when we returned onstage was -- well, the word legend is tossed around too lightly, but onstage was the guy in the hip-hop history books back in da beginning in da Bronx when even we were youngsters -- Afrika Bambaataa, who along with Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc, comprised up the holy trinity of hip-hop.

With some of his Zulu Nation onstage with him, Afrika Bambaataa proved that he still knows how to put on the most amazing show with DJ skills honed over three decades. (You can catch him this very afternoon at Central Park's Summerstage!) Oooo baby, he makes it look as easy as 1,2,3, A,B,C.

When Afrika called for ladies to come onstage and dance, it took a few "Where they at?" prods -- and one frustrated "This ain't Connecticut, is it? Brooklyn is a bunch of dope people!" -- before a couple of young women got up and made a few nice moves.

Anyway, the legendary (yes) DJ had us signed, sealed and delivered all through his set. Thank you, Afrika Bambaataa, for kindly being yourself again.

James Spooner, the director of the film documentary Afro-punk, came onstage to thank Matthew Morgan and others, and to announce the films in conjunction with the Festival being presented by BAMCinematik, including the New York premiere of his own White Lies, Black Sheep.


On the Flatbush Ave. side of Afro-Punk Skate Park, we watched the artists with their paintbrushes and spray cans do their creative work on the mural project of the Trust Your Struggle Collective, a group of Bay Area- and NYC-based visual artists, educators and friends dedicated to social justice and community action through art.

Brooklyn's the start of their summer cross-country 2008 mural tour ending at the Galeria de La Raza San Francisco in late August. They'll be in the coolest of cities, including the Central Phoenix congressional district where Republican Richard Hussein Grayson is running in the Sept. 2 primary to represent Arizona in the U.S. House.

There was much else to see: the pimped-out black Toyota (a sponsor of the Festival) at the north entrance; the kids running around with light sabers; the table with the "Brooklyn for Barack" sign at which everyone over 18 who wasn't registered to vote, did; and the cool styles and outfits of nearly everyone but us in our old blue Brooklyn College T-shirt.

The standout performer we didn't know about before proved to be Miss Janelle Monáe, who made a diva-worthy entrance amid white smoke and strobe lights and stunned the now-packed-in crowd with her stunning music. The fireworks we'd seen from a couple of miles away the previous night paled in comparison.

As one right-on reviewer noted, not only does she have that
undefinable "it" quality that stars are made of, she also serves up a fresh, genre-blurring style that people are craving right now. She's is like James Brown, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Andre 3000 rolled into one, and seeing that all play out live on stage is thrilling.

Amen. Janelle sang a surprisingly old-school rendition of "Smile" ("Smile though your heart is breaking") that had us in tears and would have had our grandmothers in tears too, if we could have brought them back to Brooklyn last night. Diddy knows what he's doing with Janelle Monáe, and if we'd had one of those "Imagination Inspires Nation" posters some in the crowd waved, we'd have been waving them too.

But after Janelle's fabulous encore, it was after 9 p.m. and deep fatigue was setting in our arms and the rest of us, as we'd gotten home far too late on Friday night -- well, Saturday morning -- from the delightful July 4th fireworks party at the Cadman Plaza highrise apartment of our good friend, the author/psychologist Susan O'Doherty (Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity; advice columnist at the blog Buzz, Balls and Hype). So we reluctantly gave into our need for sleep and left the launch party early, not even daring to think about attending the afterparty right near Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg. We were taking the G to our bed instead.

But the Fourth Annual Afro-Punk Festival is going on until July 13, and if you were unlucky enough to miss last night's party, you can check out their schedule and catch some films, music, etc., which is bound to be worth seeing. We'll be back for more, too. Isn't life wonderful!

Sunday at the McCarren Park Pool: The Hold Steady

The boys are getting younger
And the bands are getting louder
And the new girls are coming up

We've just gotten back from the first McCarren Park Pool JellyNYC Sunday pool party of the season -- or at least from the last part of it. We'd attempted to get to the 2 p.m. opening, and the pool's just a few blocks up Lorimer Street from Dumbo Books HQ here in Williamsburg, but we got there on the dot and the pool hadn't opened and there was a long-ass line stretching up Lorimer to Driggs and halfway to Manhattan Avenue.

Dumbo Books don't wait on lines that long, especially when the sky's darkening fast and Zeus is starting to make himself known audibly, so we got on a B43 bus going down Graham Avenue to Metropolitan and got our aerobic workout for the week just dodging the afternoon deluge.

We headed back after yet another thunderstorm started to clear up around 5:45 p.m. and were approaching Richardson Street when we heard the announcement: "The Hold Steady!"

Since we'd enjoyed the group at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park last August (our brief take on that show was posted on our MySpace blog last year,) we were grateful we go there for their whole show although sorry we missed the earlier bands.

This is going to be the last year of the McCarren pool concerts, as the city is turning it back into a real-live pool. However, as we walked in, it was still drizzling and we noticed the southwest corner of the pool had a decent start since it was filled with about 2 inches of wet from the afternoon's substantial rains.

The pool was filled with the usual crowds -- since probably a tenth of the hipsters in attendance will either post about it on their blogs (see, e.g., Eric R. Danton's review) or throw up pics on Flickr (see, e.g., Jason Bergman), we'll confine our 57yo's perspective to stuff we know about, which ain't much.

Last year we wrote, "Craig Finn has more energy and idiosyncratic moves than just about any musician I've seen lately." He still does. From his pogo-stick jumping to his hand gestures, which always suggest that he's just remembered ten things he's gotta do immediately but can't figure out which to start with, Finn is a musical dynamo, and he's got great backup from his accomplished mates Tad Kubler, Franz Nicolay, Galen Polivka and Bobby Drake.

At the gate was a notice that the event was being taped for a documentary film so we smiled a lot. We probably would have anyway.

We walked around the pool and inside it, getting as close as we could without having to become a Beltone customer tomorrow. It was the same great scene as it's been for the last two years with the same kind of crowd. (As we crossed Bayard Street on our way over, we couldn't avoid noting that across Lorimer Street on the corner of Karl Fischer Row, some non-pool-party people had set up a speaker blasting music with Spanish lyrics. Not all of Williamsburg is represented at the pool.)

Some observations, take them for what they're worth (about ten Zimbabwean dollars): More cops this year, maybe. Less body art, maybe, but more of it is faux-amateurish, like stick figures and scrawled text. More food choices for us vegetarians and vegans, thanks to Two Boots, the same folks who cater Celebrate Brooklyn; if we're not mistaken, there was another outfit supplying fast food for carnivores the last few years. We never before saw heterosexual young couples making out by stepping on each other's feet repeatedly. And was Fuze so much in evidence before today?

Also, some middle-aged easy-to-spot tourists with their foreign kids were taking pictures and talking an indecipherable non-Indo-European language. Did the McCarren pool parties get mentioned in some trendy Old World guidebook? Were they Finns thinking the Hold Steady's lead singer was a countryman?

But some pool stuff was the same in '08. The shirtless headband boys were playing dodgeball on the southside; members of the swimsuit set were taking a flying leap into the waterslide on the northside by the VIP section just south of the stage. The cerulean Bud Light drinkie plastic bracelets looked familiar, as did some audience members' ironic T-shirts (heavy on industrial companies this time out).

The Hold Steady always (at least the two times I've seen them) put on a good show. As the Boston Herald wrote yesterday:

What makes Hold Steady leader Craig Finn so fascinating is that he’s both the Boss and the geek. Watching the 36-year-old careen violently around the stage at a packed Paradise on Thursday at a free show sponsored by Going.com and a beer company was like witnessing Screech turn in a pitch-perfect imitation of Joe Strummer.

It’s nuts to see. But for Hold Steady fans, it’s becoming less and less surprising.

For the past five years, the Hold Steady has been putting the finishing touches on its cocktail of bombastic, tight “Born to Run” rock and Johnny Thunder’s sloppy “Born Too Loose” punk.

We loved every minute until the band walked offstage at 6:53 p.m.

They came back for the encore four minutes later. Eager to avoid the caravan to the L train, after two songs we headed out under the archway, avoiding the puddles, thinking we're “gonna walk around and drink some more” (iced tea, in our case).

As we walked home down Lorimer Street (plug #3), we were just ahead of an all-in-black couple, the dissatisfied female of which went on a really loud rampage about the concert and we were subjected to a tirade of

What the fuck was that for three hours...The same three fucking chords...hasn't progressed since fucking Elvis...ooh, everyone saying, I'm sooo kewl...at least Morrisey's something to say, I may not agree with him, but he's got something to say...fuckit, this shit is the state of fucking rock and roll?

Us? We didn't look back.

Like the man (Mr. Finn) says, we gotta stay positive. Isn't life wonderful!

Saturday Night at the Prospect Park Bandshell: Celebrate Brooklyn Presents The Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion!

It was raining very hard at 6 p.m. last evening, and things didn't look good as we finished our Boca burger and batata coreano, intending to leave Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg for the next hour's starting time at the Prospect Park Bandshell for Celebrate Brooklyn's presentation of The Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion.

By 6:30 p.m., things had brightened up a bit and we made our way to the park to represent BK's old white people at what sounded like it was going to be a history-making night in the annals of Brooklyn hip-hop with the return of the classic super-group.

As Wikipedia notes,

They appeared in three separate incarnations since 1994. The first two incarnations recorded for the soundtracks for Spike Lee films, Crooklyn and Clockers, respectively. The theme connecting The Crooklyn Dodgers songs, aside from the Spike Lee films which they were made for, is the topic matter, which tends to comment on the state of affairs in and around urban New York, as well as other issues affecting everyday life; as Jeru spouses "Chips that power nuclear bombs power my Sega."

Probably due to the heavy rain, the crowd wasn't big at the start of the night, but it really grew. We managed to find a close seat, thanks to the tiny blonde 7-year-old girl who took it upon herself to sponge off the water from all the folding chairs in our area.

It was an incredible show, hosted by Buckhshot and Special Ed, who showed off some of their own freestyling skills. The evening was a collage-montage of Brooklyn hip-hop, with continual shout-outs to the neighborhoods: "Flatbush!" "Crown Heights!" "Canarsie!" (When the incredibly talented Chip Fu yelled out "East 56th Street between Church & Snyder!" we shouted back, since we spent our first 28 years on East 54th between Snyder & Tilden and East 56th between O & Fillmore.)

The classic original veteran Masta Ace came on with his group eMC featuring amazing talent - Wordsworth, Punchline & Stricklin - with their rollicking signature opening. It just got better from there. As the crowds grew, arms waved, fists pumped, everyone swayed, and to us, the event seemed both Dionysian and intimate, as when Wordsworth jumped off the stage and began rapping in the crowd.

It was like being at a greatest Brooklyn house party ever. O.C., after doing some amazing stuff, sat down at the edge of the stage and began to talk to the borough's young rappers just coming up about the perils of artistic compromise and hypocrisy. "The last of my kind," O.C. didn't name names, but said "some people ain't doin' what they supposed to." Around me, audience members did name the names of some stars he was referring to.

The whole evening was curated by Danny Castro and Anthony Marshall, creators of the pioneering they-said-it-couldn't-be-done open-mic night Lyricist Lounge, who deserve much credit for putting together this defining event.

And props to their majesties DJ Premier and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, whose historic work with A Tribe Called Quest brightened our days back in the day (and made early morning workouts bearable).

The night featured great freestyling and amazing rapping, some of it BK-centric. "Why do we gotta live in this environment?/Your grandpa done drank up his retirement" reminded us that we were really, really tired and maybe the second-oldest human we spotted in the by-now humongous (we're bad at estimates, everyone who took our 30,000 at the Met Opera seriously!) peaced-out crowd. Anyway, it would have taken a nation of millions to hold us vertical for very much longer.

Blaming our fatigue on not old age but severe jet lag (we were campaigning in Arizona all week), we left a bit after 9 p.m. for the return trip home (the F was running funny, taking over the G route to Queens, causing confusion but making this a one-train trip back to the Burg), so we missed most of the show after intermission: Chubb Rock, the incredible Jeru the Damaja, etc.

But we've got The F$%K it List's great coverage:

We had missed a few performances but none that I really cared about. O.C was performing when we got there and I remembered his one song and that was nice background music to set up the chairs and get the chicken and fruit out. Special Ed and Buck shot were the Masters of Ceremony.

* Next up DJ. Premiere, he did his thang on the one and twos and he made sure the music was bumping (gently reminding the folks that Hip-Hop was to be played loudly). His set went on for a few minutes and ended with a too long speech about loving ones self! A good speech just too long.

* Chubb Rock RIPPED the stage up! He played all the old reggae joints and did the song from my soundtrack "Just the Two of us" (by this time CJ was sleep in the stroller) and I danced like I was in my living room alone. Then he said something about wearing out his welcome and the crowd booed. So he asked "how could I have worn out my welcome and not have done hip-hop?" Now old school hip hop and of course the joint that made him famous "Treat me right". Chubb let it be known at the end of his set that he never said the B word once, and so in his eyes those words just seem unnecessary. PREACH CHUBB!

* Jeru the Damager was next, to which I promptly planted my butt in the chair. I only really remembered two of his songs and I was never that big of a fan. Besides the cursing he had a great show and Brooklyn responded. He also bought out Sadat X from Brand Nubians, who did his verse from "Punks jump" Would have preferred "Slow down" but I guess I can see that when I go see them next week.

* Special Ed decided that he wasn't going to let everyone else shine and did "I got it made" Mrs M. Ramirez jumped out of her seat so fast and started dancing. My little niece turned to me at one point during my break it down break it down dance and rhyme the she didn't know any of these songs but she was having fun. I told her well now she is a real hip-hop head and can brag to all her friends.

* Not to be outdone, Buckshot shorty came out and rocked the mic, before all of the Dodgers came back on the stage to sing that's right "Crooklyn Dodgers" from Crooklyn and "Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers" from Clockers.

This show was so worth my whitney houston frizzy head (That I promptly washed and blew out at 12am when I got home).I danced, and laughed with my sister, bond with my fellow brooklynites and true fans of hip-hop. But more importantly I was able to share with another generation of my family the goodness that hip-hop use to be and why I love it so!

And here's Kevin's report:

One highlight of this evening was going out with a post-party crew of stoners (Jon Good, Jesse, other Jesse, and Daniela) to dew-damp Prospect Park to catch the tail end of a fucking huge (and completely free) hip-hop concert, featuring the reunion of a moderately successful '90s rap group called the Crooklyn Dodgers. I usually go to small underground shows, so this enormous outdoor bandshell venue, with thousands of screaming fans, backup dancers, stage lighting, the whole shebang. And the artists, though icons of the hip-hop underground, were more professional than anyone else I've ever heard. That's the great thing about Brooklyn--a local concert, with local artists celebrating the history and culture of the neighborhood, is going to have world-class talent. Some of the lyrics were a little blingy and whut-whut for my tastes, but for the most part the rhymes were tight, the beats were solid, and the Scene was Real. And their lyrical talent was astounding. The distinction between rap and poetry is usually pretty controversial but there is no questioning that what I saw and heard tonight was poetry. These guys know their neighborhood, they know their culture, and they know life in Crown Heights, and they managed to tap that zeitgeist like a keg of ass.

Isn't life wonderful!

Richard Grayson's "WHO WILL KISS THE PIG?: Sex Stories for Teens" now available on Amazon

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Dumbo Books is happy to announce that Richard Grayson's Who Will Kiss the Pig?: Sex Stories for Teens is now available on Amazon.


It is 160 pages, 8.6 ounces, 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches and contains versions of some stories previously published by webzines, such as:

"This Person Is Already Your Friend" (3:AM Magazine);

"Sex Stories for Teens" (retitled from The Angler version);

"Life With Libby" (Blithe House Quarterly);

"Albertson's Pulls Out of New Orleans" (Spillway Review);

"Talking to a Stranger" (retitled from Fiction Warehouse version)

"Hey Jude" (Pindeldyboz);

"My Seventies Stories" (Storyglossia);

"Who Will Kiss the Pig?" (retitled from Six Little Things version);

"The Life of Katz" (High Contrast)

"Rampant Burping" (Juked);

and other swell teen sex stories published online at other webzines, in anthologies such as The Avery Anthology, and in literary magazines such as Bellingham Review, Brooklyn Literary Review, California Quarterly and Washington Review and Hanging Loose.