IMPROVISE! WEDS., APRIL 28 & THURS. APRIL 29 The Third Stream busts ...
The Third Stream busts its channel this week at Improvise! when American Composers Orchestra's festival takes up venues from Carnegie Hall to the Cornelia St Cafe with Joe's Pub hosting three big events. Tonight, harpist Anne LeBaron plays with Earl Howard and Leroy Jenkins, the great jazz violinist who co-founded the Revolutionary Ensemble, after a Tuesday program had the Flux Quartet playing a world premiere of Jenkins' Revival! with John Zorn's The Dead Man, Tessalation Row by Elliott Sharp and sax soloist Oliver Lake's Input.
Also tonight at Carnegie Hall, the Improvise! main stage event features new music by Anthony Davis and Alvin Singleton, the festival's dual artistic advisor/curators. Davis accompanies the orchestra on piano for his Wayang V, while George Lewis' Virtual Concerto has a computer-controlled Yamaha Disklavier soloing with ACO music director Steven Sloane and the orchestra. Singleton's When Given a Chance rounds out the program, along with a piece in graphic notation by Earle Brown and Ellington's MLK eulogy Les Trois Rois Noirs with Chico Freeman as saxophone soloist.
Improvise! focuses on "composers who structure improvisation into their pieces," says co-organizer Singleton, fashioning music with space for performer input and collaboration. Raised in jazzy Brooklyn and classically trained, Singleton came to see a musical score as a blueprint or map designed by a composer to be developed by the musicians during a performance. Joe's Pub hosts the festival closer, a Saturday marathon with the choice teaming of pianists Davis (known for his Malcolm X opera and Angels in America score) and Uri Caine. That event includes Fish That Love, with percussionist Lukas Ligeti and Ethel's violinist Todd Reynolds juxtaposing free jazz, blues and musique concrete, and soNu, a California ensemble blending serialism and world music to electronica and hiphop as music of the Third Millenium, according to Anthony Braxton, who's made enough future-oriented music to know.
Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium, 57th St. (7th Ave.), 212-242-7800, $15-$42, 8. Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Great Jones & 4th St.), 212-539-8778, 9, $20;
In 1988 Regan was voted the funniest person in New York by K-Rock and Miller Lite, and he's since become a regular on the late-night talk- show circuit. As a marquee name in the stand-up industry, he sells out clubs almost everywhere he tours, and often asks his brother Dennis-an older, paunchier version of Brian-to open the show. You won't find a funnier family than the Regans.
Caroline's on Broadway, 1626 B'way (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100, 8, $32-$35.
In his new solo show, "Mad Collectors," Anderson flaunts the endless collection of street materials that he has been gathering for the past 12 years from around the world and turns them into a large-scale collage. As he explains, "I take things [from the street] that are the most advertistic and saturated and obvious, and focus all these things together to get a collision of energy from the juxtaposition. When people come to my show?there's a pinprick of realization that 'I've seen this before, it's familiar to me.' But never in this way. I take it away from that advertistic idea and move it into a more complicated situation. Advertising is very basic; they're trying to sell one thing, one idea."
Anderson utilizes these one-directional fragments of our everyday visage and creates a puzzle map of guns, girls, cash, drugs-in one larger-than-life jolt. "I make art about the world we live in, and our society. My art is a document that shows what it's like to be alive today."
Also on exhibit are the books that Anderson titled his "Abject Xerox Collection," which includes graffiti stickers, lost-children postings, apartment-for-rent ads, flyers etc. Each has its own story, the highly personal fingerprints of some soul putting another voice out into the world. These street images, collected and filtered through Anderson, create an urban time capsule appropriate for our times.
Paul Rodgers, 9W Gallery, 529 W. 20th St., 9th fl. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-414-9810, Tues.-Sat. 11-6, free.
THE CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR of 1893 presented crowds of awestruck Americans with sights they'd never before seen or fathomed. The curators proudly debuted commercial symbols of our nation's progress, including proto-car alarms, the electric chair, the hamburger and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Juxtaposed to these were "exotic" Others-Eskimos, Iroquois and Apaches to name a few-whose cultures were used to showcase just how far Americans had come.
When Gary Wilson was similarly unearthed in 2002, the novelty surrounding him as an anthropological relic was hard to ignore and, in some cases, stomach. For voyeuristic hipsters and opportunistic journalists alike, the story of a struggling musician with artistic vision but dismal hopes suddenly given a second wind was just too juicy to resist. Not to mention the artifact exhumed with him: the crazy-sexy-creepy, deliciously sleazy and highly esoteric You Think You Really Know Me, an album he recorded and released in 1977 in the confines of his parents' basement in Endicott, NY. Though many critics took the music on You Think very seriously, it was never certain if anybody saw the musician himself as anything more than a good story. His allure as an It-Boy was dependent upon the pathos of his failure and his inevitable return to the land of forgotten cult heroes.
But like anthropologists who have humbly learned not to impose universal models for cultural progress, people who bought into Wilson precisely because he seemed faddishly expendable had better think again. Not only has the man not faded away, but he may have evolved past us. His onstage antics border on the psychotic (sprinkling himself with flour, fondling mannequins); his music, much of it recorded more than 20 years ago, remains fresh and innovative, and still manages to weird out the unsuspecting. And he's kept it going, recording new material that meshes seamlessly with the old.
One can't take for granted that Gary Wilson wants to be Mick Jagger, in the same way one couldn't assume in 1893 that those living off the land would have preferred city life. But once the pornography of display has taken place, a spectator had better beware. Because the shock of what you see may not be where you've been. It may be where you're going.
Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3006, 7:30, $12, $10 adv.
ON MORE THAN one occasion, this very writer has heard tell that Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher, makes progressive jazz. Without sounding like an old fogey, that pronouncement sounds as corny as the second Weather Report album. With his bell-tone bungling a beautiful, teetering textural mix of Mike Oldfield and one-time label boss, Aphex Twin, Jenkinson hardly seems as preternaturally pompous as prog anything-despite his being the best fast, phlegmy bassist since Chris Squire.
Squarepusher's takes on musique concrete, drum 'n' bass and quietly ambient jazz are bigger (and smaller) than the tag of progressive jazz could handle. Instead, there's a delicacy to his complex yet (occasionally) silly songs, whether cluttered with speedy jungle breaks, taut funk or calamitous samples (of his own playing, mind you) as found on Square-defining moments such as Hard Normal Daddy and Music Is Rotted One Note. For his newest CD, Ultravisitor, the soft machine sensuousness that evaded his albums post-1998 is back, smaller and more intimate than previously.
Here, the thrumming, touch-tone jazz-jangle of "I Fulcrum," "Every Day I Love," "Iambic 9 Poetry" and "Andrei" is more in league with the sensuous guitars of Johnny Smith and Pat Metheny-songs filled with pastoral, even pretty vistas clouded with dark, charcoal-colored clusters of subtle rhythm. A simple shortie like the Fender Rhodes-fused "Tommib Help Buss" barely moves its top lip, yet, its haunted lightness of being leaves as dense an impression as any lost, dear memory. These softsongs represent a high point that usually represents itself with funky-found sounds that'd turn Genesis P-Orridge to the Streets (the dub tremor of "50 Cycles"), clanging Chinese musky musiques ("Menelec") or whirring detuned techno ("Steinbolt") complete with muscled guitars and jarring metal pulses. Find Squarepusher's soft spot and stay there.
With Kenny Muhammad the Human Orchestra Cassetteboy and DJ Johnny J.
Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800, 8, $22, $19.50 adv.
SITTING IN ON a Los Acustilocos gig has the kicked-back, intimate feel of checking out a buddy's garage band while incense burns and a beer buzz is just kicking in. Except, of course, Los Acustilocos are actually good. They're also clearly happy to be there, channeling a trippy musical bliss that spectators can't help but tune into. In a recent performance at Merkin Concert Hall, the band moved through the set with minimal audience interaction, but it was as if you could hang with them after the show, anyhow.
The six-member ensemble hails from the U.S., Venezuela, France, Russia and the Czech Republic, and their multihued tunes well reflect this cross-cultural blend. Merging Caribbean, Latin American and American musical stylings, this harmonious collective jams on the guitar, acoustic bass, flute, Venezuelan cuatro and percussion, while globe-spanning lyrics are offered in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. Original songs-arranged in classic samba, Cuban son, Brazilian choro, tango, joropo, bossa nova, flamenco and Haitian compass-pepper their performances, blending seamlessly with time-honored sounds that span several generations and cultures.
Go early to check out opening act Damian Quinones. This Nuyorican songster has been treating local audiences to his distinctive brand of musical fusion for years, blending soulful R&B rhythms with old-school hiphop beats, bluesy guitar tunes and rock-steady melodies. Though he often performs at venues across the city with backup group the Underground Sensations, tonight he kicks it solo with his acoustic guitar, performing an array of soulful, rootsy numbers from his debut album, New Movements in the Old School. Then, stay late to catch final act, Joubala, a Caribbean-influenced group using eccentric instruments including the accordion, steel pan and xylophone.
Galapagos, 70 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-782-5188, 10, $6.
Expect trainspotters and record nerds galore to swarm the annual WFMU Record Fair this weekend at the Metropolitan Pavilion. Considered to be the best of its kind in the country, dealers will be selling everything from rare hiphop 12-inches to coveted psych LPs to "junk shop glam" and Northern Soul 45s, as well as everything in between. Super-geeks and obsessive types can pay extra for an early shot at the goods, followed by free admission for the rest of the weekend. For more casual collectors, even showing up late Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you'll still see records you never knew existed and will most likely walk out having spent the month's rent. 125 W. 18th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 201-521-1416 x243, 7-10, $5. [Repeats Sat. & Sun. 10-7.]
THANK GOD FOR the anti-folk movement. In a self-obsessed city basking in its glittery glory as the center of world culture, anti-folksters like the Moldy Peaches and Jeffrey Lewis dedicate their time to forging a soundtrack for the rest of us. Call it lo-fi, loser rock, whatever, the fact of the matter is ballads like "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane" and "The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song" take a long time to leave your mind, and they all emanate from the twisted mind of one Jeffrey Lewis, who might just be the dweebiest guy on Earth. Through his flat, nasal intonation come pouring out heart-twisters about not being able to get laid, the beauty of the East River and bending over for Will Oldham. And that's just his music; his comics take it all to another level.
Born in the mid-70s to loving beatnik parents, Lewis grew up in the East Village consuming and drawing comics from a young age. It was in the late 90s that he picked up his dad's old guitar and, inspired by Donovan, began crafting his own minimalist compositions. It didn't take long before London's Rough Trade label came along and swept up all his cassette recordings, which he used to peddle at open mics around the city. Now he's a big star in Europe, but in classic anti-folk style, insists on remaining true to his roots when at home.
Sidewalk Cafe, 94 Ave. A (6th St.), 212-473-7373, 12, free w/2 drink min.
IT'S MAY AND everyone's gonna go gay tonight when da Hawnay Troof carries their super-retarded beats into town in their tighty whities. Fronted by hyperactive 18-year-old Vice Cooler, who's been making beats since he was 11, and backed by Baby Donut (aka Bratmobile's Allison Wolfe), these horny kids like to jump 'n' bump around in their matching undies while rapping about sucking dick 'til they're 99. Critics have derided them as the worst band around, so you know they have to be great, unless you've become so jaded that you don't remember how to move your ass cheeks around the thick shaft of some fagalicious beats. Imagine if Peaches were a guy and young and didn't suck so bad. In between songs, expect Cooler to drop some hardcore histrionics against those assholes who try to tell you how to live your life. It's all very DIY, in that regard, the latest and perhaps final incarnation of what used to be known as queercore.
Berlin's Electrocute happen to have one of the better tracks on the much-hyped Berlin Insane compilation put out recently by Pale Music. Don't let that fool you, though; it's actually a remix of them by Candy Hank. Expect lots of lipstick-stained electroclash with live guitar, and songs like "I Love My Daddy" and "I Need a Freak."
Boogaloo, 168 Marcy Ave. (betw. B'way & S. 5th St.), Williamsburg, 718-599-8900, call for time and price.
In one of those bizarre "What is a Wookie doing on Endor?" scenarios, Morrissey mopes at the Apollo tonight. The former Smith whiner will take the same stage rocked by soul legends from James Brown to Smokey Robinson. Does this make him tortured soul brother number one? The answer might be yes. 253 W. 125th St. (betw. Frederick Douglass & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvds.), 212-531-5305, 8, sold out.
Imagine King Crimson's metal leanings crossed with a Big Band, with lots of avant mathematics thrown in. That's these guys, who are worth seeing, especially for free (just call and have them mail the tickets to you.) Caspary Auditorium, 1230 York Ave. (E. 66th St.), 212-327-8971, 7:30, free.