Monday Evening in Williamsburg: Words by the Water presents Vocodors and Bass with Dave Tompkins ("How to Wreck a Nice Beach")

It was one of the most beautiful evenings of the summer, mild and clear and dry, and we had the pleasure of being at Words by the Water, presented by the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn and Greenpoint's wonderful WORD Bookstore, a series of readings with local authors and publishers in Williamsburg's East River State Park.

Tonight was Melville House Night, featuring Dave Tompkins, author of How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop; The Machine Speaks.

"Magic Hour: Vocoders and Bass" was a fascinating listening party hosted by a talented writer -- "the best hip-hop writer ever born," Jeff Chang (whose work is also pretty amazing) called him -- and a marvelous raconteur.

Riffing on each recording -- reminding us a lot of our days in South Florida in the 1980s, a lot of it was the Miami-style up-tempo robotic electro and mid-tempo drum machine-based rap music -- Dave Tompkins told these delightful stories about names we haven't heard in decades, all with tangential asides that conveyed the author's enthusiasms and obsessions in an effective and infectious way.

More coming . . .

Thursday Night at Williamsburg Park: OSA presents Lacoste Live Concert Series - Pretty Good Friends with Eugene Mirman + Special Guests Featuring Musical Guest OK GO

We had the best evening ever tonight at Williamsburg Park, the new venue for the Open Space Alliance summer concerts, this year sponsored as the Lacoste Live Concert Series. The great show was from Pretty Good Friends, with the very funny Eugene Mirman, that's usually at home at Park Slope's Union Hall, and the roster of comedians was truly incredible: Kristen Schaal, John Oliver, Kurt Braunohler, Mike Birbiglia, the legendary Bobcat Goldthwait, with Jon Hamm doing a cameo in a Big Apple costume, and a wonderfully transcendent musical show by OK Go, who were spectacular.

Even though Williamsburg Park isn't a real park -- no trees, not even a bush, and even though it's at 50 Kent on the waterfront, there's no view of anything except the tops of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. It may be a glorified giant parking lot, but the ground is painted baby blue, the kind used to keep prisoners docile, and there are terrific sightlines from all points, and although we have very fond memories of the pre-renovated McCarren Pool concerts and the ones down the street at East River State Park, this venue is much more capacious and comfortable, easily fitting in a huge, mellow crowd.
Other people in attendance who know about music and comedy will write sharp and intelligent criticism and more commentary, but we'll just say we had a good time from beginning to end, and we are rarely feeling so grateful after an evening out in Williamsburg. Everyone who put this show together did a good job. (Well, someone probably fucked up their job, but it didn't matter in the end because we didn't notice.) Thanks also to the teenagers sitting near us during the comedy who provided a nice contact high.

Thursday Night in Williamsburg: The Glass Bandits Theater Company presents "The Little Mermaid" at McCarren Park

Tonight in the darkness of the northeast corner of McCarren Park, we were treated to a haunting, hypnotic reimagining of The Little Mermaid by the Glass Bandits Theater Company. "That was awesome," one woman behind us on the grass said as the gorgeously conceived and executed performance ended around 10:15 p.m. "Totally awesome," her companion said. We agree.

This "work/shop production," written by James Ortiz and Frank Winters and directed by James Ortiz, was a darkly evocative version of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, employing an expressive puppet as the sea nymph of the title, and a cast of about a dozen young performers in a sweet, sad narrative told in contemporary dialogue, mythic choral language, choreography and song.

Perhaps this production struck us as remarkably fresh because we've managed to live sixty years in America without really knowing the Little Mermaid fairy tale (we were almost forty when the Disney film appeared and never have seen it). From what we can tell, it was quite faithful to Andersen's narrative.

We wondered how the company would light the performance since it began so late for an outdoor park production, but the occasional dimness felt very much like the sea and night settings of the story.

The clear plastic wrap used ingeniously to mimic the waves, among other things, was very effective, and the one or two bright lights plus two flashlights manned by members of the company kept everything very clear. (Lighting design was by Robert Lilly.)

Ortiz and Winters' language in the script was poetic without being pretentious or maudlin; its simplicity, as voiced by the cast members, matched the grace of the puppetry. In addition to the Little Mermaid, who was sometimes just a head, sometimes a whole mermaid, and then, after her transformation, a human woman with legs, there was a reptilian Sea Witch monster with a truly frightening mien. Kudos to Strangemen & Co. for these remarkable puppets and to the actors, including the director/writer, who manipulated them so skillfully.

The costumes of the human performers, stark charcoal gray dresses for the women mermaids and puppeteers, black outfits for the male puppeteers, as well as the upscale preppy-hipster clothes of the prince and his fiancee -- costume design was by Sarah Hinkley -- retained the simplicity and grace notes of the rest of the production.

The cast, according to the program, included Devin Dunne Cannon, Christopher Devlin, Melissa Farmer, Glenna Grant, Joanna Hartshorne, Eunice Hong, Julia Lawler, Nick Lehane, James Ortiz, Micah Stock and Diana Stahl, did a terrific job, although in the beginning our 60yo ears had some trouble making out all of the individual lines in the chorus. That went away, and for most of the production we heard things clearly, despite the competition from buses, cars, trucks and motorcycles just a few feet away.

The audience was mostly -- as usual in Williamsburg -- a lot younger and a zillion times hipper than us, though we noticed a few older dogwalkers so struck by the production that they stopped to watch the rest of the play. You couldn't blame them, because the action was so mesmerizing.

This was not a production of The Little Mermaid for children, whose parents might have been tempted to take them to McCarren Park if the performance had begun in daylight.

Glass Bandits Theater Company's version of the fairy tale would probably be disturbing to kids, though not because of any language (the prince, true to his character as a semi-suicidal semi-alcoholic hipster-fighting-his-yuppie-self, says "fucking," "asshole," etc.) or violence but just because of its deeply mordant character. It's a romantic tragedy, as relentless as anything from ancient Greece.

When the prince's fiance, standing on a chair as if onstage in a club, sings "When I Fall in Love," it's clearly a moment for an audience of adults. The music by Sam Bennet, John Feliciano and Will Whatley, was an appropriate mixture of the simple and the sophisticated. The choreography, by Jill Echo, was for us one of the things we'll most remember about this performance.

According to the program, "Glass Bandits Theater Company is a Brooklyn based collaborative gang of lovable misfits interested in making thrilling, accessible, unmannered theatrical events that bridge the gap between audience and performers. Our goal? To get young and non-traditional patrons excited about going to the theater! Can’t seeing a play be as exciting as watching a band play at the neighborhood dive? Everyone’s a Bandit! See a show, get some free glasses and let’s definitely grab a drink after."

We're sure everyone else in the audience did, but those of us born in the Truman administration just walked home and had a glass of water with our nightly dose of Flomax and Inderal. We're really grateful to the Glass Bandits Theater Company, and to the indispensible Open Space Alliance, for making this production of The Little Mermaid available to the community. Check out their coming theatrical events.

Sunday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Delorean at the Last 2010 Pool Party at East River State Park

We were tired after a little too much beach this morning and early afternoon, but naps - which we only learned to take after we hit 57 - are good, and we thought we'd stroll over to the last Pool Party of 2010 (itself barely rescued from cancellation) just to catch one band's set.

Luckily, we got there around 4 p.m. when Delorean was just coming on. They're really superb, even on a blisteringly hot day like today. As Pitchfork wrote in reviewing the band's new album Subiza, released in the spring:

Delorean helped define the bright, beachside vibe of last summer's indie landscape, but they also deserve to be placed in a broader context. On their new album, Subiza, the Spanish four-piece deploys the build-and-burst tempos of 90s house and techno music, and they do so explicitly, never shying away from arms-in-the-air piano bridges or incandescent raves.

This music is proudly informed by the resiliency and vigor of classic club music, and its title (named after the Basque town in which the album was recorded) recalls the famously nightclub-centric Ibiza and the Balearic dance music that originated there.

What surprised us today was how easy it was to get into East River State Park. We remember the old days of the McCarren Pool, when we sometimes couldn't get in (like to MGMT) or had to wait in line for half an hour or more. Even at the waterfront, there were some long lines along Kent Avenue last year.

But we actually got berated for not going in faster before the few people ahead of us. "Sir! You have no bag! Go right in!" the security guard snapped.

Just before Delorean - guitarist Guillermo Astrain, drummer Igor Escudeo, keyboardist Unai Lazcano, and bassist/vocalist Ekhi Lopetegi - came on, when there were DJs on stage, we stood in pretty much the middle of the midway before the stage and there was nobody within about thirty or forty feet around us.

And we had put on fresh deodorant after our post-beach shower. We swear!

Delorean was really killing it, but the mood - and maybe it's easy for us, two generations older than most of the audience to misread this - seemed weirdly subdued.

Maybe it was just so sultry that even the dancing and volleyball seemed desultory.

We still think that given how excellent the band was, there would have been more people there and more excitement and energy at the old McCarren Pool circa 2006 or 2007.

It probably got a lot more vibrant once we left for our old folks' early bird special.

Anyway, it looks like next year's Williamsburg Waterfront Pool Parties will be different.

The Open Space Alliance has been talking in the press about "more varied programming" (read: for non-hipsters).

Change is inevitable - hey, our mom entered a nursing home last night, which is freaking us out even though she's had Alzheimer's for many years - and anyone who's lived two weeks in Brooklyn knows nothing stays the same.

We're grateful we saw Delorean.

And we look forward to next year's Pool Parties, whatever they may be like.