Saturday Afternoon in Tompkins Square Park: Alpha Women Attack the Lower East Side!

This afternoon we caught about 90 minutes of "Alpha Women Invade the Lower East Side!" - a four-hour concert and political rally uniting women and their comrades (we fall into the latter category) of different art backgrounds and music genres including: rock, punk, perverse poetry, alt-performances, and musical comedy.

It was co-emceed by the subversive yet comically musical Killer Killy and the fetching yet powerful Our Lady of Perpetual PMS of the Gorgeous Ladies of Bloodwrestling (GLOB)

and featured the following performers:

JENNIFER BLOWDRYER: (LES writer w/Tales from The Lower East Side)
RACHEL CLEARY: (political storyteller)
MICHELLE LEONA: (haunting and horny accordian songs)
ROSIE REBEL: (showcases her bra inventions...on roller skates!)
SARAH B.: (punk teen poet sensation)
NEOANGIN: (one man electronics-gone-mad-art band from Berlin w/paintings & masks
www.neoangin.info)
JESSICA DELFINO: (raunchy, insurgent rock & folk)
RACHEL TRACHTENBURG AND THE OH MY GOD GIRLS:
(debut of the Teen Girl Indie Pop-Rock Players!)
LONE VEIN: (Day of The Dead-inspired "gloom tunes" www.lonevein.com)
RUBBER ROOM RATS: (Female-fronted freaky post-punk www.myspace.com/rubberroomrats)
DETHRACE: (a theatrical art rock experience...10 ft. tall fiberglass super-robots,
playing 666 volts of metal! www.myspace.com/dethracemf)

plus some surprise guests. Here are some of our lousy cellphone pics:

There was a clothing swap. Actually, you could just take what you wanted to wear. Unfortunately nothing was in our size.

A table for Brooklyn-Queens NOW, the National Organization for Women, whose national political action committee - seriously - endorsed us twice when we ran for Congress in Florida, 1994 and then in 2004. NOW is still necessary.

A table for Fertility Awareness, which we didn't spend too much time at, being 58 and post-menopausal.

Michelle Leona performing one of her haunting and horny accordion songs. "Lady of Spain" was not among them :(

Punk teen poet sensation Sarah B hawked her chapbook like mad (she needs to finance her wine-and-baguettes-in-Paris habit) and filled in the time between musical acts with her poems. Like a limerick titled "My Encounter with the Man from Nantucket." Or her ode to "Beer," which detailed the various ways she imbibes that beverage ("with red meat/not on the street"). She read that ditty twice because Justin, to whom the poem was dedicated, showed up late. Sarah B, who's starting NYU next year and really really really deires a cute punk boyfriend, said she appreciated the fake applause from the crowd. Later there was a fake raffle "won" by Harry Krishna.

Rachel Cleary was both funny and interesting as she told some politically charged stories.



The versatile Rosie B. highlighted her many bra inventions in a frenetic routine. But first she needed to remove the scarfs from her bosom. It reminded us of a scene in "Alien."

We were recruited to hold some art paper (we do teach at the School of Visual Arts, after all) while Rosie Rebel poured red, yellow and blue paint on it. Then she started using one of her bra inventions. But we think Mary Cassatt patented something like this like a century ago.

Breast paintbrushes + apple = driving heterosexual men wild. OK, wilder. (As we were leaving the park later, some NYU frat boy-type was telling a long story with the final line, "So in the morning I bagged her." Where are alpha women when you need them?) We can't remember if this pic was taken when Rosie Rebel was on roller skates.

This was so hot. The "Bloomberg - Worst Mayor Ever" sign was a big turn-on, even though it saddens us that no one remembers William O'Dwyer anymore.

Rosie Rebel's invention for the harried homemaker who needs serve citrus juice to her family. While on roller skates. This got a bit sticky but was also hot. Also clever. Rosie and her numerous inventions are keeping the Patent Office up late at nights. Well, one worker there, anyway.

Here Rosie is showing off a set of terrific guns. And bubbles come out! Lawrence Welk would have killed for this.

And she can ride a non-mechanical bull too. What an alpha woman! Go, Rosie Rebel! A great performance loved by all, including Rosie's mom and dad. Who wouldn't be proud of a daughter so versatile?

The co-hosts Our Lady of Perpetual PMS and Killer Killy handled their emcee chores adeptly, introducing acts with aplomb. Also, at one point, with a plum. In addition, they debated the merits of armpit-shaving.

Jennifer Blowdryer read her work, sang a little, and observed that a year ago all the girls were wearing Faster! Faster! Pussycat! T-shirts and now it's all tuxedo hot pants and bondage boots. Either way, East Village girls are hot. She read a poem, "She's Hot." When a girl, like us, started taking pics of the crowd, Jennifer Blowdryer asked her, "Are you a little Diane Arbus Jr. or what?"

Another Jennifer Blowdryer classic was a poem in the voice of a male lawyer she met in a bar who went on and on about some court case. The audience ate it up. Fortunately, before she had finished.

Jennifer Blowdryer's performance spurred us to contribute to the tip box so the performer can maybe take their instruments home in a taxi or so Sarah B can buy some baguettes and wine in Paris. It was at this point we realized both co-hosts were wearing polka-dot outfits. Also, it gave us a chance to reflect on Rosie Rebel's boobie bubbles (her term, kids).

This alpha woman was a man, Jim, who was German and had actually flown in from Berlin. Well, maybe not just for this event, but he's here only for a limited time, so it was a rare treat for us North Americans to see him perform. As Neoangin, he's a electronics-gone-mad-art one-man band. He did the painting in the back too. It fell down a couple of times, but that's show biz.

Here Neoangin (Jim) is performing his song "The Happy Hobo" maybe, who lives a more pleasant life than "people who sit at computers."

Maybe this is him singing "I Didn't Want to Make All These Friends," about the perils of social networking, a song in which the title is repeated about 46 times with minor variations. Sort of like reading Facebook updates.

Neoangin had many haunting lyrics, like this from "I'd Like to Be Somebody Else": "I'd like to fuck someone/I've never fucked before." His autobiographical "A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World" was touching, and his song about Berlin surprisingly informed all of us that the German capital (sorry, Bonn) is not a 24/7 party town.

These people are stars! And the mom taking the pic is famous, too.

If you haven't heard Rachel Trachtenberg, singing and playing her ukelele, alone or with the OMG Girls, here she is with Syd Barrett's "Bike." Enjoy!

And here they are with Kate Nash doing "Brand New Key":

A table for The Shadow, "NYC's ONLY Underground Newspaper (since 1989)!"

Who can forget The Shadow's classic headline:

The crowd grew to several hundred, a very varied group. Some teen boys in yarmulkes and tsitsis were ogling the Oh My God Girls. Or maybe Tina Piña Trachtenburg.

Our Lady of Perpetual PMS laments the expenses engendered by needing an endless supply of fake blood. Did you know that premenstrual syndrome was actually a hindrance, not an edge, in the wrestling ring?

A serious moment about a serious subject: sexual assault among college students. Jerin Alam of the Young Feminist Task Force discusses the proposed CUNY sexual assault policy that students at the city university are trying to implement. One out of four women and one out of six men are sexually assaulted in colleges nationwide. For information and help, go to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network or call 800-621-HOPE.

At this point the sleeve of our Brooklyn College T-shirt was being tugged on by a companion with shpilkes, reminding us we were due elsewhere. But we wanted to stay to see Jessica Delfino. She went to art school so she can wear whatever she wants. Sometimes called "a dirty folk singer," Jessica told the audience that perhaps this would be a good time to take little kids to get ice cream. Most of the parents in the crowd stood their ground, an encouraging sign that they were contributing to their children's growth as human beings.

We love her "Lullaby" and were glad to see her perform it.:

Children should learn about disappointment and frutration and boredom every night, if you ask us. Jessica's friend made her guitar out of garbage. Here she sings a poem she wrote on a beautiful day in this very park, totally conducive to her sitting on a bench, relaxing and writing songs about how much she hates everybody. Maybe before Jessica goes on tour, she would enjoy our new book from Canarsie House publishers, I Hate All of You on This L Train.

We had to leave Tompkins Square Park and Alpha Women Attack the Lower East Side with regret - it was a wonderful event we're grateful for - and we also left with Jessica Delfino's "A Message to All Men" ringing in our ears, reminding us of the important things in life:

We're sorry we missed the rest of the show and are sure it was great, too.

Friday Night in Prospect Park: Blonde Redhead at Celebrate Brooklyn!

Despite a severe thunderstorm as hundreds of hipsters and regular people lined up to get into tonight's Blonde Redhead concert at Celebrate Brooklyn!, it stopped raining before the show began and it ended up being a really nice night listening to the dreamlike sounds of the band.

Blonde Redhead two summers ago at the McCarren Park Pool:

There was a severe thunderstom in effect as we left Dumbo Books HQ in Williamburg, and when the G train stopped at Myrtle-Willoughby, we saw this Hershey's ad and wondered if we'd be better off staying dry at home reading Chompsky.

Than, when we got out of the G train at Smith-9th Street to change for the F, the clouds looked ominous and it soon began raining.

By the time we got out at the Eighth Avenue exit of the Seventh Avenue stop, it was raining - heavily. At the park entrance, someone gave us a free sample of an energy drink so vile we tossed it after one sip and got on a long line.

We actually ended up deciding to go back to the subway entrance by Dizzy's and wait until the storm passed over. It didn't take that long. The seats were soaked, but we had the remains of the day's paper and sat on Michelle Pfeiffer's face (in a review of Cheri), which was more satisfying than the last summer park experience we had with her twenty years ago when she played Olivia in a Twelfth Night vastly inferior to the current production.

The women in front of us, though all wet, were having fun. When they began smoking heavily, they took down the umbrella. Some Celebrate Brooklyn! staff in their plastic rain ponchos were smoking like chimneys. (Blogger Ines Kuusik said there was weed in the air at last night's Femi Kuti show, but she's Estonian and we can't tell if she meant marijuana or some allergen.)

The opening act was Icelandic troubadour Ólöf Arnalds (her debut album is Við Og Við - and don't you wish English alphabet still had the eth too?). When she said she would try to be brief because they were trying to get in the whole concert between thunderstorms, the crowd laughed. "I'm not joking," she said.

She was pretty good and charmingly disarming in her self-consciousness. She kept telling us every time she messed up a lyric, though we doubt many in the audience had a good enough working knowledge of Icelandic to have caught the error.

The highlight of her opening act - she seemed aware of the absurdity of trying to win over fans anxiously waiting for Blonde Redhead - was a quirky, oddly affecting Michael Jackson tribute when she sang "Billie Jean" with that little guitar or whatever it is. It started raining again.

But not too much. During the intermission we filled out a survey for a chance to win free JetBlue tickets and had 3 free samples of Honest Tea, which is honestly good, and then had to make one trip to the most disgusting part of any Celebrate Brooklyn! performance, the men's room. To do the survey on the computer, we had to switch from our distance glasses to our mid-range glasses and then forgot to switch back so the crowd looked blurry.

It was dark when the Blonde Redhead show began. We watched it standing up, from the left side of the stage, near where all the rich people and Peter Cherches sit.

We don't need to say much about Blonde Redhead, since if you are reading this, you know all about them. As an old man, we heard about them maybe 4 or 5 years ago when we were living in Florida and saw the lineup for that year's Siren Festival and decided to sample all the bands in a continuing effort to deny we were born in the Truman administration.

We like Blonde Redhead a lot, but in addition to taking lousy pics with our Alltel cell phone, we don't know enough about music criticism to say anything intelligent, so we'll just wait until other, younger, brighter people get up today and decide to post something about Blonde Redhead or non-blurry pics and we'll link to them.

Here's their most popular YouTube vid, the title track of the album 23. If you don't find it haunting, you must have given up the ghost.

We're grateful to our Lord for abating the thunderstorms so we had a pleasant night in Prospect Park. Actually, the dampness of the after-rain fit the mood of Blonde Redhead perfectly.

UPDATE: For first-rate pics, go to the indispensible Brooklyn Vegan.

Thursday Night in Prospect Park: Femi Kuti and the Positive Force at Celebrate Brooklyn! with Melvin Gibbs' Elevated Entity

After leaving the LIU campus, we got the R at DeKalb Avenue and, thanks to a kindly bus driver who waited for us to cross 9th Street, got the B-75 (saved!) bus to the entrance nearest the Prospect Park Bandshell,

past Mayor Mike's paid campaign workers, in time for the return of Femi Kuti, heir to his famous father Fela's superfunky Afrobeat throne, to Celebrate Brooklyn!

As we got into the very crowded event (another kindly person, one we kissed hello, had saved us a seat), Brooklyn native Melvin Gibbs, whom Time Out NY has called "the best bassist in the world," and his Elevated Entity project had started things off with his delicious, addictive "exploration of African-diaspora music with a fusion of Afro-Brazilian rhythms, funk and rap." (OK, we are cheating a bit here by quoting the publicity materials, but we're so musically ignorant - like Ike on art, we know what we like is all - we need some help.)

It was a great evening, the first real summer day we've experienced since our return from Phoenix over two weeks ago. The sky was cloudless all night, the temperatures were warm but not hot and humid, and a pretty right-crescent moon made itself known as the sky darkened and we - along with a humongous crowd of people having fun - enjoyed another great night of music in Prospect Park.

Since we're so inept at describing or criticizing music, we're always happy to defer to better, more knowledgeable correspondents. Luckily, a very good blogger with press credentials, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, was present and wrote on Infinitebody, whose delightful commentary (you've got to see it in full) began with mention of a seatmate more annoying than our friend:

She had a little camera with her, boasted of chatting up Angelique Kidjo, who I adore, and who was circulating in the crowd. She much prefers Youssou N'Dour, Salif Keita, Baba Maal and Femi Kuti, of course, saxophonist/vocalist son of Afrobeat's illustrious warrior, the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti. I love 'em all.

Mostly, though, she worships Femi Kuti's trio of dancers, whose ebullient shimmying is a truly a cause for wonder. "Can you guess which is my favorite?" she later asked me during a brief moment of rest at her seat. I guessed correctly, and she trotted back to one corner at the edge of the stage, leaving me to enjoy the show. At last!

Melvin Gibbs' Elevated Entity (which included Vernon Reid on guitar, Bernie Worrell on keyboards, and vocalist Amayo from Antibalas) opened the evening with some chugging Afro-Brazilian-funk-rap, which I liked well enough. Kuti's set, though, was a marvel of discipline, swing and energy--and not just because of all that powerful shimmying. Kuti follows his father's example in not merely playing for you but enlisting you in his army, and I happily signed up.

Kuti lyric quote of the night: "You better ask yourself why the richest countries have the poorest people." Yeah.

Yeah is right. Thanks to Eva Yaa Asantewaa. For mo' better pics and commentary on tonight's concert, check out the always-great Brit in Brooklyn, Devorah Klein at Big Apple Music Scene, and our talented Estonian friend Ines Kuusik at All the Things...New York Jazz and More.

You could tell Melvin Gibbs is a Brooklyn boy because he asked for shout-outs for various blocks - Beverly (or Beverley) Road [his stop on the B-41), Ocean Avenue (specifically 708 Ocean Avenue), Empire Boulevard, Brooklyn Avenue, Decatur Street, etc.

And he ended by thanking our ancestors (including that African woman who's all our great-great-great-etc.-granny) "who taught us to survive" before getting off at 8 p.m. In between, we heard some superb sounds.

This video clip is from the debut performance of Melvin Gibbs' Elevated Entity here in New York on January 10, 2009. It features John Medeski on keyboards, Amayo of Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra on lead vocals and Kid Lucky on rap and beatbox. The rest of the band is: Vernon Reid on guitar, JT Lewis on drums, Kunle Ade on percussion and of course bandleader Melvin Gibbs on bass and computer triggered by a MIDI Organ pedal.

As soon as Femi Kuti and his troupe came on, everyone stood up, so we had to stand up. We couldn't see much anyway, though we were better off than the very old, very little (maybe 4'10") white lady in front of us who did her best and then finally just started swaying to the beat with her cane.

Eventually, most people sat down for most of the time, so we could too.

We're really glad Femi Kuti came, as he said, all the way from Lagos to return to Prospect Park. It was a great concert, even if we left a little early (even then the line at the men's room was so long, we walked to Barnes & Noble on Seventh Avenue and from there all the way up Seventh to Flatbush and to the subway in Fort Greene. There were lots of people out enjoying themselves at sidewalk cafes, restaurants, bars, and other venues.

So it was a beautiful night even if our tendinitis tibialis posterior has started to kick in. Thanks again to everyone at Celebrate Brooklyn! We pay our measly three dollars at the gate to "make it great" and they provide us who are without income for three months a lot of pleasure.