Thursday Night at Hudson River Park: RiverRocks presents Titus Andronicus at Pier 84

(Video courtesy Adventures in Music)

(Video courtesy skizz0rz)

Thursday Night in Coney Island: Seaside Summer Concert Series present The Go-Gos in the rain at West 21st Street & Surf Avenue

From the New York Music Daily review by delarue:

Was it worth standing in the rain for three hours Thursday night at Coney Island to see the Go-Go’s? Hell yeah! That the most refreshingly original band of 1981 would still be together, and touring nationally, and arguably sounding better than they did thirty-two years ago might be more improbable than their success as one of the best-loved new wave bands. In the time that’s passed, they’ve regrouped and toured sporadically; this time out found them trading the guitar jangle for a raw roar. Watching them play a brief, barely 45-minute set to a patient and adoring crowd of probably fewer than five hundred diehards seemed akin to seeing them in a small club at the moment before their classic debut album, Beauty & the Beat, defied all odds and went platinum.

(Video courtesy aldovernal) (Video courtesy jamieMoroni)

(Video courtesy AUGIE CHICAS)

They were just as fresh and unselfconscious and unscriptedly fun here as they were then (plenty of live footage from that era has surfaced at youtube and elsewhere). Frontwoman Belinda Carlisle was just as snarkily funny as always and hits the notes closer to head-on than she used to. Guitarist Jane Wiedlin has traded her Fenders for Gibson SG’s, on this tour at least, for extra firepower, and the band is now wisely relying on her beautiful high soprano voice more than ever. Drummer Gina Schock served as emcee and is more down-to-earth and funny than you would imagine after having seen her photo on the first album’s sleeve. Bassist Kathy Valentine’s absence left enormous shoes to fill, but the band had the good sense to get the obvious choice to replace her, Abby Travis, whose wicked chops and spot-on vocals blended in lusciously. Along with their hits, the band played that one Carlisle hit that still gets airplay on easy-listening radio; it would have been nice if they’d done one of Travis’ brilliant, harmony-rich, artsy songs as well. But with the rain, there wasn’t time.

(Video courtesy jamieMoroni)

(Video courtesy aldovernal)

They opened with Vacation, which at this point in time might be their biggest hit. In concert, they used to do the trebly but irresistible pop hit as a lush, crescendoing art-rock anthem; this time out, it was fast, burning punk-pop. Travis propelled their cover of Cool Jerk with a slinky pulse as the audience clapped and swayed, lost in the groove. The best song of the night was a rich, resounding version of How Much More, done as they might have if that track had been on their 1983 powerpop masterpiece, Talk Show, instead of the first album. A pummelling punk/powerpop cover of Paint It Black drew on the Avengers’ version, followed by an unexpected, rare treat, the sardonic Cool Places, lead guitarist Charlotte Caffey switching from Fender Jazzmaster to woozy, bassy synth. She murdered her electric piano with a stiletto staccato on a rapidfire Head Over Heels; the band closed with Our Lips Are Sealed, then We Got the Beat with Kiss’ I Wanna Rock N Roll All Night in the middle and then encored with I Wanna Be Sedated, a shout-out to “the band that made us want to do this,” as Wiedlin told the crowd.

(See the rest of New York Music Daily review here.)

Early Sunday Morning in Apache Junction: Rain in the Wash

It's been an uncharacteristically rainy weekend in the Sonoran Desert, and by 7:30 a.m. today, the wash outside our house looked like a lake.

Wednesday Night in Williamsburg: SummerScreen Rained Out at McCarren Park

Although we waited until the quick monsoon passed to leave our house and found a rainbow over McCarren Park, we were disappointed to find that tonight's SummerScreen was canceled due to the rainstorm, and we heard, some equipment damage.

People were still around, though.

Vitamin Water was being sold at highly discounted prices, and so was some food. The contents of freshly ordered pizza boxes were being eaten standing up.

SummerScreen's hard-working intrepid photographer would not be affected by a mere thunderstorm.

We think he should be paid a bonus for tonight.

The Iranian band, YEllow Dogs, whom we had been excited to get to see perform, have faced a lot worse in Tehran.

When a cop bicycles over to a band there, they usually don't have the good intentions of this member of New York's Finest as the band packed up.

Some people abandoned drenched blankets. We are so old and cheap that the thought crossed our mind that we could take some over to the Metro Community Laundromat dryers, but nah, we're not that old and cheap.

So we walked home with some Vitamin Water and our trusty umbrella. We were grateful to hear that Wayne's World has been rescheduled for August 17.

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.