THE MUSIC OF LOUIS ANDRIESSEN WEDS., FRI., AND SAT., MAY 12, ...
SONIC EVOLUTIONS, Lincoln Center's festival of the music of Louis Andriessen, plays its second half this week with a program of Andriessen film scores performed live with screenings, a cabaret night at Kaplan Penthouse with the composer at the piano, and a grand finale of two big works Saturday night at Alice Tully Hall.
One of today's top names in European classical music, Andriessen's presence builds in New York where the U.S. premiere of Writing to Vermeer, his opera with filmmaker Peter Greenaway, headlined Lincoln Center's Summer Festival in 2000. Expansive, innovative, Andriessen's anarchistic politics made him disavow writing for symphony orchestras, while he's the scion of deep musical traditions. "He's the great Dutch composer, as his father was," says Michael Gordon, who helped found the Bang on a Can All Stars, participants in Sonic Evolutions' Alice Tully program last Saturday.
"Here in the U.S. everything is new," Gordon continues, "but Andriessen comes from a long line of composers-his father, his uncle, his brother. His music combines large-scale form and European modernism, along with American minimalism and a big influence of American energy and pop. His work can be loud and stark; it's also very well thought out, and beautiful."
Wednesday at John Jay Theater, five screenings will be accompanied by Orkest de Volharding, one of several Dutch ensembles dedicated to Andriessen's music. One film, M is for Man, Music, Mozart, is another collaboration with Greenaway. Their explicit opera Rosa, a Horse Drama had its U.S. film premiere during Sonic Evolutions, while another festival program included The New Math(s), done with Hal Hartley.
The composer accompanies vocal improviser Greetje Bijma on piano Friday night for Late Night Cabaret at the Kaplan Penthouse. Then the concluding big bang comes Saturday at Alice Tully (the festival's opening big bang on May 1 was Die Materie, Andriessen's masterwork of musical theater). The London Sinfonietta and conductor David Robertson play Pupazzetti and the recent La Passione, which Gordon described as "large scale and sonically huge. With solo soprano, solo violin and a very big ensemble, it's characteristically visceral and pounding, and at the same time it's emotional. Andriessen's never in the same spot; his music is always evolving. And it seems that with La Passione he's found this unusually emotional point."
May 12, John Jay Theater, 899 10th Ave. (betw. 58th & 59th Sts.), 212-721-6500, 8, $45
May 14, Kaplan Penthouse, the Rose Bldg., 165 W. 65th St., 10th fl. (betw. B'way & Amsterdam Ave.), 212-721-6500, 9, $30.
May 15, Alice Tully Hall, 1941 B'way (65th St.), 212-721-6500, 8, $35.
Andre De Shields' Graham is the intuitive horny gorilla who speaks in sign. Fortunately, De Shields, a black actor "d'un certain age" but still with a youthfully admirable physique, steals the show. More than mere scenery chewing, although there's plenty of that, Graham knows how to "hump hump," fish with a string and maybe prepare pasta. About the latter, it's one of a number of character elements in this sophomoric drama that lapses in the fray, a contest of will between his caretaker, a deaf anthropologist, Esther (Phyllis Frelich) and her former boss and lover, the two-time Nobel Prize nominee and ambitious AIDS researcher, Avrum (James Naughton).
Translating the signed dialogue, Allison (Heather Tom) delivers the play's exposition and serves as the parrot for playwright Mark Medoff, who asks, finally, if saving an elderly gorilla who is dying of emphysema is more important than curing AIDS. To protect himself, Graham nearly murders Avrum, who in turn nearly murders Graham, while Esther, with her hands reaching for her forehead and her heart, saves them each to face their own miserable fate. That's not to mention that Allison bites Avrum... Perhaps a mortal wound in this drama turned soap opera. Not only does the story run amuck, but the point of it all runs away, disabused by good intentions and the overriding sentimentality of it all.
Heather Tom as the pierced-all-over interpreter is more pawn than fully developed character; James Naughton has some strong moments, but no one ever really knows if his character falls short due to ethical considerations or prostate cancer. Nonetheless, both amount to faulty thinking. And Phyllis Frelich has the unenviable task of portraying Esther, a typical woman acting out of her emotional attachment...to all three characters.
Running one hour and 30 minutes without intermission, Prymate, for all its allusions to physical and emotional S&M, sadly offers only vanilla sex.
Longacre Theater, 220 W. 48th St. (betw. B'way & 8th Ave.), 800-Broadway, call for times, $25-$106.
"When I started becoming interested in photography," says Berinson, "I was surprised that it was possible to buy his original photos. Some of them were super-famous images-often the first prints he made to sell for their original newspaper publication-and were prints that are as original as they get, images he especially liked for his own purposes."
And images that have made an indelible impact on the consciousness of our time. Weegee set out as Usher Fellig, an immigrant boy from eastern Austria who came through Ellis Island to the Lower East Side, changed his name to Arthur and then got his moniker either from squeegee work in dark rooms at Acme Newspictures and the New York Times or, once he'd struck out on his own, from his uncanny, on-scene presence-as if by the Ouija board's telepathy-on police scenes around the city. Starting his workday at midnight, freelancing from the trunk of his Chevy coupe ("I kept everything in there," he wrote in Weegee by Weegee, "an extra camera, cases of flash bulbs?a typewriter, fireman's boots, boxes of cigars, salami, infra-red film?"), he got a permit to mount his Chevy with a police radio and, for the decade from 1935 until the 1945 publication of his book Naked City (and earlier MOMA exhibit), he shot New York history at street level.
"We're showing mostly pictures from '35 to '45," said Berinson, "Weegee's freelance photographs: crime scenes, accidents-'human interest' is the term he used, though the way Weegee meant it almost always has a tragic element."
"Street Lamp with Lone Pedestrian at Night," "Dead Gangster," "Harry Maxwell Shot in Car," a flashbulb round-up of crowd expressions in "Their First Murder"-Weegee images have an offhanded accuracy that belies their cumulative scope. Berinson recognized that "these pictures made an immediate impact-I knew some of them through books. But I was surprised that there was any photographer able to produce hundreds of unforgettable images."
He adds: "And there remains almost no photographer with a comparable output. Without Weegee there would be no Diane Arbus, no Robert Frank. There would be no Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick took photos for Look magazine until he was almost 21," his eye trained by reverence for Weegee's work. One of the late images in Weegee's Story is of the film director on the set of Dr. Strangelove, for which he'd hired his artistic mentor as consultant.
Ubu Gallery, 416 E. 59th St. (betw. 1st Ave. & Sutton Pl.), 212-753-4444, Tues.-Sat., 11-6, free.
Sound like a recipe for disaster? Or the caption of your day-to-day? Then come join psychogeographers at work and play this weekend, as the second annual Psy-Geo-Conflux convenes around the city. Presented by Glowlab and Participant, Inc., Conflux events range from Lower East Side techno-drifts to a Fugitive Love Hunt in Central Park, and include a chess game played on South Williamsburg streets using human pieces moved via cellphone.
Co-organizer David Mandl calls psychogeography a "utopian way of making our urban place more passionate and exciting." He cites the field's 50s originators, "the artists and hardcore lefties who would explore Paris using another city's map, or drift aimlessly to experience places they saw all the time in new ways."
This year's city overlayers navigate Manhattan with a map of Copenhagen provided by participants from that city (others hail from Rotterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, San Francisco). Julian Bleecker wanders for WiFi nodes (wireless Internet connections) while composing haikus from the nodes' SSID names.
Mandl and co-organizer Christina Ray (Glowlab's founder) present One Block Radius, a multimedia survey of the Bowery block where the New Museum will build its big new facility later this year. With copious photos, videos and scavenged objects, they've compiled "not only physical data," says Ray, "but also unusual and quirky data: how many bottle caps we saw or what the weather was like on a particular day. It's a guidebook, but we crammed as much information as you usually get on a whole city from a single block."
A 24-hour, five-borough roadtrip maps progress on a website, allowing participants to join up for, say, a fishing break. Most events take about two hours, out and back from the Conflux's HQ on Rivington St. Categories include "Navigate" for mobile activities and "Speak" for lectures. "Strike" covers street actions like Mobile Coffee Unit, distributing free coffee and engaging in random conversations, and Yankee Game Walk, which has Lee Walton responding to a headphone broadcast, "a wildly choreographed performance piece dictated by the Yankees game," according to Mandl. That the source of Walton's antics may be lost on passersby is no surprise for psychogeographers, as they both undermine and expand our common sense of place.
A friend commented recently, "Sometimes on stage, she's?kind of scary." No wonder he gets frightened. Hers is not the voice of an angel: It's that of an elegant poltergeist. Wright's vocals can slide forth, measured, almost mannered. But mostly this voice crashes out like breakers in a typhoon-battered ocean. I suspect it possesses her more than she, it. It's a roar, it's a bellow-it's beautiful.
"With Closed Eyes," the first track of her new release, Over the Sun, opens with a half-minute of creaking, wavering flute-organ sounds courtesy of a Mellotron. But no sooner are you exploring the wilted remnants of a world's fair, than Wright plunges you into her most aggressively dark effort yet. I've picked up the angular sound of 90s Dischord in the previous records, but never more so than now. Hard guitar, clean and relentless. Yet the sense of spooky carnival that has pervaded each of her three previous albums endures. Her songs blend elements of rock and hardcore, Eastern European folk songs, the lilting sounds of carousels and funeral dirges. The instrumentation, including Wurlitzer, which Wright prefers to piano, and a dirty bass guitar that would get Mark Sandman's approving nod, alternates between churning and spare. Wright's songs are consistently theatrical, though they steer clear of melodramatic.
Other writers have compared Wright to Chan Marshall. While that's fine company, it's a comparison with few grounds other than they're both indie female singer-songwriters. Whereas Cat Power tends to come off as tragic or world-weary, Wright's songs are more maelstrom than lament. And at Wright's live shows, there's no straining to hear spotty performances. Shannon Wright rules her stages. So it's far more accurate to place her in the ranks of Kristin Hersh and Regina Spektor. While the young Spektor's playful style has little in common with Wright's, they share exquisite, expansive vocals and an eccentric individuality. With each successive album, Wright gains new attention as a talent with clear influences but no comparison.
Equally enervating and twice as historic is Tony Conrad. In the pre-Velvets/pre-Can way-back, composer/violinist Tony Conrad created the hypnotic elongated drone whose amplification (to say nothing of its perfection of pitch and tone) helped give birth to those aforementioned bands as well as a detached but determined esthetic whose "Eternal" sawing sound gave laconicism a place in rock music. How, you ask? Talk to John Cale who, with Conrad, was part of both the Dream Syndicate and the Primitives, Lou Reed's pre-Velvet pop band. Ask Faust, the German noisemakers with whom Conrad helped create Krautrock. Ask Gastr del Sol, with whom Conrad-in one of his too few recordings-worked. Or the guys at Table of the Elements, who not only rereleased his Faust collaboration but a slew of Dream Syndicate CDs recorded before 1966. Minimalism never snored so loudly as it did under Conrad's watchful eye.
Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw. Delancey & Rivington Sts.), 212-358-7501, 8, $10.
THURSDAY MAY 13
50 FOOT WAVE
If you thought Courtney Love was alt-rock's only head-case heroine, you must have forgotten about the bride of the bi-polar, Kristin Hersh. Whether continuing on with the mythology of her first band's (Throwing Muses) careening folk-punk, volatile vitality or her own mad, mood-swinging solo career, Hersh seems to make her way, every year, through the crowded bar that's been girl-punk since her 1985 start.
Better than Love, less capable than PJ, Hersh rants and rips the bojangles out of life's tiniest moments throughout each context she chooses to confess within. It doesn't always work. By Muses' end, they had outgrown their welcome in the pissed-chick hall of fame, leaving Hersh to crackle, bitterly and brittlely, to the dabs of cello and piano that was the surprisingly corrosive Hips and Makers. While that haunted work remains her best (yes, the one with Michael Stipe and "Your Ghost"), other soft-sells like country twanging sleepy-bye of Murder, Misery and Goodnight and The Grotto don't work so well.
Maybe that's why she returned to that hard, fast trio sound with 50 Foot Wave and its eponymous debut CD. It races and screeches and the bass player sounds like Chris Squire and the whole thing is too tinny but Hersh sounds as if she's crazed, seething and teetering within the quick-steeping pissed-punk mess. As long as Hersh is having a vicious good time and taking her meds, I say brava. Bravo too to Volcano, I'm Still Excited, the acerbically biting alt-rock-popsters who could have Yes on their brain with those chord changes and time shifts of theirs. But no. They're sillier. And singer Mark Duplass never yodels. With Decibully.
Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-260-4700, 10, $12.
A.D. AMOROSI
STICKS AND STONES
CONTINUING WITH the spaced-out free jazz of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), that venerable organization formed by the godfathering likes of Art Ensembler Roscoe Mitchell (et al), Sticks and Stones play as if hermetically sealed within another set of initials-the windless ECM esthetic wherein each movement and melody is trapped within the tarp of a studio's walls.
Originally based on their improvisations as the house organ for Chicago's Velvet Lounge, the trio built a sturdier musical sound on record than even their live vibe would belie. Though Chad Taylor keeps the calm a bit on the buggy side (what from his rhythmic machine-gun spraying and blood-spattering drums for the Chicago Underground Duo), Matana Roberts goes for the horny-toad tonality only an alto saxophonist/clarinetist who's played reeds with Godspeed You Black Emperor! could. Somewhere in between them is Josh Abrams, a bass player whose pulse is as capable of blip hop and jazz jams as it is this divine mess. "Mess" only because on their most recent effort, Shed Grace, the trio manages to take on the fearfully ferocious funk of Afrobeat overlord Fela Kuti and make it sound small and humble. Huh.
The Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson St. (betw. Spring & Dominick Sts.), 212-242-1063, 9 & 10:30, $12.
We've never seen the tv show, but the movie is a seminal moment in anime, a subtle meditation on the nature of consciousness, the meaning of life and ass-kicking robot cops. New York-Tokyo's Monthly Director Series is offering four episodes of the show for free, so what have you got to lose? Only your mind, friend, only your mind. Tribeca Grand Hotel, 2 6th Ave. (betw. Walker & White Sts.), 212-519-6600, 7 & 9, res. req. to: film@newyork-toyko.com.
CHICKS WITH DIP
No trannies here, just songwriters and junk food. Each musician brings massive quantities of chips and dip to each gig. This isn't a tofu-and-brown-rice crew, so what results is a sprawling spread of semitoxic noshes for everyone in the house. The performers get bombed, dish the dirt and break guitar strings with surprising verve for a bunch of innocuous-looking, seemingly white collar Brooklyn chicks. Look what French onion did to your little girl, ma. With power-pop siren Paula Carino, alt-rockers Sinclair and Tom Warnick. Blu Lounge, 197 N. 8th St. (Driggs Ave.), Williamsburg, 718-782-8005, 7, free.
FRIDAY MAY 14
COLDER
BRADLEY, MY HIPSTER upstairs neighbor, was knocking, probably coming to collect his stolen New York Times. He walked into my apartment with his scarf and cloth handbag and snatched it from my coffee table. As he was leaving, he noticed my new Colder CD.
"Where'd you get that?" he asked.
"Someone sent it to me."
"It's a really good CD."
"I know."
"You?like it?"
"Yeah, " I said. "It's pretty hot."
Colder is a French graphic-designer-turned-musician named Marc Nguyen Tan. This is my neighborhood's wet dream: to go from designer to stylish electro punk artist. (It can happen. All you need is Vice, a mouth and a dream.) With DFA kicking out the occasional disco punk stomper 12-inch, a whole host of indie mopers and jokers have begun to experiment with electronic dance loops. The posture is still there, but a bit more rhythm has been injected into their Cure synth lines and jangly guitars.
Colder keeps the sound dark, with heavier and deeper bass dubs. He takes a shot at crossing goth with reggae on a few tracks, but is better suited for creating noir soundscapes. He names all kinds of influences in his bio, but the most glaring omission is fellow Frenchman and soundtrack maestro Serge Gainsbourg. The CD is perfect for sitting in a sullen, smoked-out, dank Parisian cellar. The kid's got some beats; let's see what he does in person.
Rothko, 116 Suffolk St. (Rivington S.), 866-468-7619, 9, $10.
DAN MARTINO
WONDER-FULL-ANNUAL TRIBUTE TO THE GENIUS STEVIE WONDER (PART VI)
WITH DJ SPINNA AND BOBBITO, AKA CUCUMBER SLICE
EVEN WHEN STEVIE gets a bit cheesy, the song still manages to turn into sunshine ear candy. That's why he's a genius. His tunes of love lost and struggle on classic 70s soul albums like Talking Book and Fulfillingness' First Finale have a silver lining of optimism and ear-soothing r&b hooks. Stevie has been impersonated by everyone in today's neo-soul genre, and while copycats like Musiq Soulchild or Donny are good at mimicking, they can't touch his timeless passion.
Nurtured as a young prodigy under Berry Gordy's Motown label, Wonder spent most of his time in the studio jamming alongside people like the Funk Brothers. If he wasn't writing hits for himself during the late 60s, his production and arranging credits were stamped on tons of other classic joints. Motown and Atlantic records during the 60s are responsible for America's most influential period of pop music. The Beatles and Stones, while imaginative to white audiences at the time, were stiffer renditions of Hitsville, U.S.A. artists.
There are a lot of dots to connect in doing a tribute to Stevie. But Bobbito Garcia is a digger. He just wrote a whole book on classic sneakers from 1960 to 1987, Where'd You Get Those. The book has an interesting narrative, looking at recent history through the evolution of the basketball shoe with personal stories and ad campaigns. Maybe Garcia deserves a new nickname: Hipster Consumer Slice. (Next week, I promise, I'll be funny. My dealer's on vacation.)
Then there's Spinna. He's the blender: the juicer who extracts all those great sounds out of old records and makes them sound new. At this party, expect a mix of hiphop and modern soul as Stevie's samples and old tunes are waxed for nostalgia and hip-shaking. Make sure to rock your obscure high-healed sneakers.
Club Shelter, 20 W. 39th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-591-2040, 10, $20, $15 adv.
DAN MARTINO
INDYMEDIA BENEFIT
Pacifica Radio's Siu hin Lee has been covering Iraq for more than six years, and was there after last year's invasion. He returned to the U.S. in February to compile a cd-rom of photos and audio/video interviews with Iraqis, U.S. military, human-rights workers and religious leaders. Tonight, Lee will discuss the invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as the latest insurgency and the torture of Iraqi prisoners. He'll also answer questions and share some of the audio and video material from the CD, which will be available. While all events at Judson Memorial Church are free, donations will benefit the newly launched Indymedia Center in Baghdad. 55 Washington Sq. S. (betw. Thompson & Sullivan Sts.), 212-684-8112, 8, free.
JOE BENDIK
THE COMEDIAN ISSUE EXTRAVAGANZA
STAND-UP COMEDIANS, perhaps to fend off nerves, can't get any more comfortable on stage short of sprawling out on a sofa bed. They've taken to slouching, leaning, groping the mic, hovering over the audience like motivational speakers in sneakers-anything to make them look confident and cool and distract the audience from the sad fact that their routines suck.
What a relief then to see a comic who just stands still and tells jokes for a change. Listen to Todd Barry and his monotone deadpan for a half-hour and your insides will hurt. Follow the circuitous logic of Demetri Martin's humor and you'll be blown away. Feast your eyes on Jack Black's better half, Laura Kightlinger, and guess who in the duo is funnier-and more fun to look at.
On Saturday, Stop Smiling, "the magazine for high-minded lowlifes" out of the birthplace of serious comedy, Chicago, comes to town with its "Comedian Issue Extravaganza." In addition to Barry, Martin and Kightlinger, comedians Patrice O'Neal, Eugene Mirman, Neil Hamburger, special guest Rian Murphy and "surprise guests" take the stage for a full evening of behind-the-mic comedy. Not all of the above names are must-sees, but Stop Smiling should be commended and supported for pulling off a smart and unpretentious magazine (Meg White cover notwithstanding), replete with tightly written features, Onion-esque interviews and an arty but accessible design.
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111, 9, $15.
LIONEL BEEHNER
EDGAR ALLAN POE & HIS GHOSTLY FRIENDS
This walking tour through the East Village avoids the hipster present and tenement past of the neighborhood and focuses instead on its otherworldly qualities. We're talking ghosts. Find the ectoplasmic hotspots of downtown and hear the legends of Poe and Peter Stuyvesant. If you see haunting pale figures on the street, consult the tour guide before assuming it's a ghost-some of the locals haven't seen the sun in years. Meet at 2nd Ave. Deli, 156 2nd Ave. (10th St.), 888-377-4455, 1:30, 3:30 & 6:30, $15.
EX-GIRL
This Japanese trio of brainy sexpots does it all, from bizarre a capella madrigals to crunch-rock psychedelia to misty indie rock, and they've got the chops to back it up. And with their technicolor, plastic-looking hair and color-coordinated outfits, they're just as strange a visual spectacle. Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3006, 7:30, $12.
SUNDAY MAY 16
NORWEGIAN CONSTITUTION DAY PARADE
After spending a few hundred years wearing horned hats and thumping their chests, and before establishing one of the world's most idyllic social democracies, the Norwegians were actually subjugated. As the Viking settlements in Greenland died out, first the Swedes and then the Danes assumed control of Norway. On May 17, 1814, the Norwegians regained autonomy, and they've been partying, Lutheran-style, ever since. This year there's even more reason to celebrate: It's been 150 years since they made the trek across the Atlantic (again) to establish Bay Ridge. The Norwegian Constitution Day Parade features music by the ladies of Jentejanitsjar Bjølsen, a speech by former Norwegian foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg and the coronation of Miss Norway. 5th Ave. (betw. 90th & 67th Sts.), Brooklyn, 212-531-4877, 1:30, free.
ACCORDION FEST
If you love the dulcet tones of a well-handled accordion as much as we do, then you'll surely want to catch this year's Accordion Fest. Whether it's at a raucous beer hall, a quiet Italian restaurant, a They Might Be Giants show or a crowded subway car, no single musical instrument sets the mood and captures the full range of human emotion quite like the accordion. Featuring musicians from across the board and across the globe-Mexico, Eastern Europe, Germany, Italy and the States-this year's fest promises to be the wildest yet. Eldridge Street Project, 12 Eldridge St. (betw. Canal & Division Sts.), res. req., 212-219-0888 x302, 7:30, $12, $10 st./s.c.
MONDAY MAY 17
OKAYPLAYER TOUR 2004
THE ROOTS HAVE become the godfathers, not only of intellectual Philadelphian hiphop and Afro-funk traditionalism, but of black America's devastating divestiture from what's been viewed as the norm of that same funk into brutal boisterous rock and beyond. Theirs is a thinking man's hiphop without straining your brain to find the method, melody or result within the text-messaged madness, meaning that emcee Black Thought, drummer/organizer Ahmir Thompson and company do not bore the bejesus out of you like maybe KRS-1 can. Each record seems cut from a mold they lost as soon as they finished recording-a smart bomb that smacks, spatters, leaves you in a jam-funk purple haze, then runs away.
Preparing for their seventh LP, The Tipping Point, the band not only spends time smartly peeking into both the future of their funk and the old school of their soul-strewn esthetic. Instead, Thompson puts on his collaborate hat by taking on new soulrap sensations like Jean Grae and Devin the Dude as well as elders of the word and the wonk (Blackalicious, Dilated Peoples) and friends like RJD2 and Philly's Baby Blak for their new Okayplayer label's first CD, True Notes Vol. 1 and a tour.
Anyone who doesn't know what Okayplayer.com has meant to conscious hiphop throughout its decade-long tenure: Set your eyes on the prize of that historic website and hit "archives." You'll find diaries from band members, manifestos from political thinkers, cartoons, squiggles, funny photographs, dirty minds and more. With Jean Grae and Skillz.
S.O.B.'s, 204 Varick St. (Houston St.), 212-243-4940, 9, $20.
A.D. AMOROSI
SHOW & TELL
An open mic that's maybe a little bit too open, Show & Tell is a happy little chance for anyone and everyone to express themselves. The O'Debra twins host, and on occasion nearly pull off the so 180 degrees from funny that it's funny vibe they're going for. There's no telling what sort of performance nonsense will be unearthed on any given Monday. But the clubby, chummy atmosphere is more than cozy. Most everybody who goes, goes to perform; by the end of the night you're all almost like friends. Or sick of each other. Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (betw. Bleecker & Houston Sts.), 212-614-0505, 10, $3.
TUESDAY MAY 18
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY FURNITURE FAIR
That's right. We said furniture. The stuff you sit on, eat stuff on and snort lines off of. Tables, desks, chairs. There's gonna be miles of it. All the designs are new; some comfortable, some not. And some of it will be truly bizarre, like what Ikea would look like for alien lands populated with bodies almost completely unlike ours. Jacob Javits Convention Center, 655 W. 34th St. (betw. 11th Ave. & West Side Hwy.), 800-272-7469, 10-4, $30.
MOOGFEST
Need we tell you? Robert Moog is the godfather of music synthesizers, and his inventions are responsible for all the electronic squiggles, synth-pop, and nearly every other electronic sound in music. Tonight is a very rare celebration of the last 50 years of his work. (He's also the man who reintroduced the theremin, that strange box you play by waving your arms its antenna.) Come see crazy synth wizards like Keith Emerson (of ELP), Rick Wakeman (from Yes) and the slippery Bernie Worrell (from Funkadelic) along with hot theremin genius Pamelia Kurstin and many others as they pay tribute to a true innovator. B.B. King Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-997-4144, 8, $45.
KRS-ONE & CHUCK D
Despite their mutual admiration, the two titans of 80s agit-hiphop are likely to bum- rush each other to the three-point line tonight, and hard. When he was still the frontman of Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One took the art of the freestyle to a level that, almost 20 years later, few can ever hope to reach. As the de facto leader of Public Enemy, Chuck D is to rap lyricism what Bach was to the organ or Hendrix was to the guitar. No matter how jiggy, how gangsta, how pop hiphop has become, no legitimate rapper can say they haven't felt his influence at some point. S.O.B.'s, 204 Varick St. (Houston St.), 212-243-4940, 8, $28, $25 adv.