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![[This Week's Picks]](phoenix_06.26.03_files/thisweekspicks_hed.gif)
Edited by Carly Carioli
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THURSDAY
IMPROV The circus free-improv sextet
Beat Science finish their June residency at the Lizard Lounge
with a bang when they bring in the quintessential Lower
Manhattan eclectic guitarist. Marc Ribot, who's played with
the Lounge Lizards and his own Rootless Cosmopolitans as well
as Tom Waits (Rain Dogs) and Elvis Costello, can essay
fractured, Monk-like takes on American Songbook standards or
veer off into exuberant Cuban dance music à la his Cubanos
Postizos. The Lizard Lounge is at 1667 Massachusetts Avenue in
Cambridge; sets start at 8:30 and 11, and tickets are $10 in
advance or $12 at the door. Call (617) 547-0759.
TECHNO BATTLENothing suits the current electro-tek
revival better than a good ol' fashioned cross-town DJ battle,
which is what we've got on our hands this week. Tonight
(Thursday, June 26) at T.T. the Bear's Place, Electroclash
mastermind Larry Tee spins hits from his new double-disc mix
CD while his latest act, the slutty white-trash synth-pop trio
W.I.T., revive the Arthur Baker sound for mallrats. That's at
10 Brookline Street in Cambridge; call (617) 492-BEAR.
Meanwhile, in JP, the reigning queen of Montreal electro, DJ
Mini, takes the decks at the Milky Way, 405 Centre Street
(617-524-3740). And on Friday, Mini spins at Ecko Lounge, 41
Essex Street in Chinatown, as part of a CD-release for
Nettwerk's new Electro Kills: This Is Just a Fad
compilation; call (617) 338-8283.
ARTIt's an odd distinction, but to the best of our
knowledge, Chas Fagan is the first artist to have painted all
42 American presidents. The complete set, "American
Presidents: Life Portraits," which was commissioned by
C-SPAN a few years back, moves into the Boston Public Library
today, where it'll be in residence through August. The BPL is
at 700 Boylston Street in Copley Square; call (617) 536-5400.
In November 2002, MTV released its MTV Photobooth, a
compendium of the pictures that resulted from the parade of
celebrities, from Britney to Ozzy, who had paraded through the
Total Request Live studios and made the requisite stop
at TRL's in-house photobooth. Less remarked upon was a
book published just a month earlier: Photobooth
(Princeton Architectural Press), a collection of 700 anonymous
pictures taken in photobooths over the span of 75 years and
subsequently collected -- from junk shops where possible, from
trash cans where necessary -- by Babbette Hines, a
self-described archivist of "vernacular photography." The
photobooth, it turns out, was invented in 1925 by a Siberian
immigrant named Anatol Josepho; 20 years later, there were
30,000 of them in the US. They began to die out in the '60s
with the rise of Polaroid's instant cameras. But in between,
as shown by Hines's collection, which goes on view today at
the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, the
photobooth served as an intimate sanctuary, producing a steady
stream of "uninhibited, often goofy and occasionally touching"
images. (Postmodernists will also appreciate the concept of
photography without a photographer.) Hines's "Photobooth"
exhibit -- which, of course, includes a functioning
photobooth, and you're encouraged to use it -- is up through
September 12. The Griffin is at 67 Shore Road in Winchester;
call (781) 729-1158.
PERFORMANCEThe Boston Center for the Arts has a
7500-gallon tank on hand for this weekend's wet-and-wild visit
from Vietnam's Saigon Water Puppets, a fully staged
production (which travels with its own musical troupe) of a
traditional dramatic artform that dates back to at least the
12th century. They'll perform tonight through Sunday at 10:30
a.m. and 1:30 p.m., with 8 p.m. shows tonight through Saturday
and 4 p.m. shows Friday through Sunday, at the BCA's
Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street in the South End. Tickets are
$15, or $20 for the evening shows; call (617) 876-4275.
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FRIDAY
FINALEPlowing headlong into the 21st century, Iggy
Pop not only reunited the surviving members of the Stooges for
a couple of songs on his forthcoming (as yet untitled) album,
he also teamed up with Green Day and Sum-41. Proving -- as if
anyone needed proof -- that at the sprite young age of 55,
he's still wired enough to run with the kids. On Friday, Mr.
Osterberg provides the fun, and we hope a run-through of "No
Fun," at the Boston Phoenix/FNX Best Music Poll Party,
with help from the electro/synth-pop spectacle Fischerspooner,
jerky new-wave kids Hot Hot Heat, and NYC neo-garage stars the
Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That's at 6 p.m. at FleetBoston Pavilion, on
Northern Avenue, and tickets are $25 and $35; call (617)
931-2000.
FILMWomen take charge in this week's releases, most
notably in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle;
Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu return as the
high-kicking crime fighters, this time teamed with Bernie Mac
and Demi Moore. More challenging even than the return of Demi
is the plague of killer zombies that's unleashed in
Trainspotting director Danny Boyle's 28 Days
Later; Naomie Harris heads up a pocket of survivors.
Women had it no easier back in the 16th century when the title
Thai queen of The Legend of Suriyothai battled
to save her country. Current Thai prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol
directs the epic. Less spectacular, perhaps, but equally
stressful are the problems besetting the heroine in Abbas
Kiarostami's Ten, a Tehran woman who tries to
resolve her problems with society and her family while
ferrying passengers around in her car; it's at the Museum of
Fine Arts. Things don't get any easier for our heroines when
men meddle in their lives -- witness Danièle Thompson's
Décalage horaire/Jet Lag, in which Jean Reno and
Juliette Binoche play a pair of mismatched lovers who meet by
chance at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and Thaddeus O'Sullivan's
The Heart of Me, an adaptation of Rosamond
Lehmann's 1953 novel The Echoing Grove about a love
triangle among uptight Londoners set in the '30s and '40s.
When the women are away, all the guys seem to want to do is
put together a heist, as is the case in Jean-Pierre Melville's
Le cercle rouge (1970), a film noir with Alain
Delon and Yves Montand that plays all week at the Brattle, and
The Hard Word, an Australian caper movie
starring Guy Pearce and directed by Scott Roberts. It's either
heists or watch movies, as is the case with the poor obsessed
geeks in Angela Christlieb & Stephen Kijak's
Cinemania, a documentary about compulsive movie
fans that's playing at the Coolidge Corner.
THEATEREver wonder what a Carousel or
Urinetown looks like in embryo? This weekend's your
chance to find out -- and check out composer Ricky Ian Gordon,
whose musical My Life with Albertine, written with
Richard Nelson and based on Proust's À la recherche du
temps perdu (proving you can turn about anything into a
musical), recently premiered Off Broadway. Gordon will be
guest artist at the fifth annual Birth of a Musical
Festival, which got started two weekends ago at North
Shore Music Theatre and now moves into town. Tonight at 7,
Greg Smucker directs a reading of act three of Tim Banker
& David Reiffel's The Lady from Maxim's, which is
based on one of Feydeau's classically naughty French farces.
On Saturday there's a Q&A with Gordon at noon; at 2 p.m.,
Janet Morrison directs an excerpt from Rachel Peters's
Public Domain, which is "culled from real people and
events on the Red Line"; and at 7 p.m., the festival presents
An Evening with Ricky Ian Gordon, a program of music by
the composer. That's followed at 9:15 p.m. by a gala reception
with festival librettists, lyricists, composers, and casts.
Things wind down Sunday afternoon at 2 when Paul Daigneault,
hot off Bat Boy: The Musical, directs part of Tajlei
Levis & John Mercurio's A Time To Be Born, which is
based on one of the martini-steeped novels of Dawn Powell and
set in NYC in the 1940s. All events are at Suffolk's C. Walsh
and Studio theaters, 55 Temple Street. Call (617) 573-8680.
BRASSThe jam-band scenesters at Harpers Ferry get a
lesson in fundamentals when New Orleans's Rebirth Brass
Band stops by for a two-day stint. This outfit has
sustained its mix of free-form collective improv and element
second-line rhythms for 20 years. That's at Harpers Ferry, 158
Brighton Avenue in Allston. Cal (617) 254-9743.
JAZZVisionary jazzman William Parker returns
to the ICA as part of its current exhibit, "Pulse: Art,
Healing, and Transformation." Bassist Parker will premiere a
new multimedia work incorporating dance, video, poetry, and
music; he'll be joined by dancer Patricia Nicholson-Parker,
saxophonist Rob Brown, and tabla player Samir Chatterjee.
That's at 955 Commonwealth Avenue at 8 p.m., and tickets are
$16, or $12 for students; call (617) 354-6898.
DANCEThe acclaimed Ecuadorian contemporary-dance
troupe Frente de Danza Independiente arrives for a
weekend of performances at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts
Center, with a guest appearance by photographer Sylvia
Stagg-Giuliano and a work-in-progress from the local troupe
Prometheus Dance. That's tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. and
Sunday at 6 p.m. at CMAC, 41 Second Street. Tickets are $20;
call (617) 577-1400.
MUSEUMSThe Children's Museum unveils its latest
exhibit, an interactive bonanza developed in collaboration
with the Boston Symphony Orchestra titled "Making America's
Music: Rhythm Roots and Rhyme." Through next May, your
pint-sized prodigy can conduct a virtual-reality version of
the Pops, karaoke to jazz, practice digital sampling in a loop
studio, board a country-music tour bus, or boogie down at an
American Bandstand-style high-school dance party. The
Children's Museum is at 300 Congress Street; call (617)
426-8855.
BLUESBluesman Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown is
always worth seeing: he's equally adept on guitar and fiddle,
and his own brand of Texas swing includes blues, Cajun, jazz,
country, R&B, and whatever else he can think of. Somehow
he makes it all work, and he's never less than vastly
entertaining. Tonight Gatemouth and his band are at the
Regattabar in the Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett Street in Harvard
Square; call (617) 876-7777.
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SATURDAY
MUSIC MARATHON Billy Beard is a drummer by
trade (for Patty Griffin and Kim Richey, among others), so it
makes sense that the Porter Square watering hole Toad, which
he signed on to book for "three or four months" a decade ago,
marches to a different beat. There might not be a smaller room
in town that books bands seven nights a week (without a cover,
at that), and its musical fare outweighs its closet-sized
stage. Toad is a living link between the rootsy power pop of
the old Del Fuegos scene and, well, the rootsy power pop of
modern-day bands like Maybe Baby and the Twinemen, though it
also happens to be where Tracy Bonham was playing when she
signed to Island. The club celebrates its 10th anniversary
this week, and tonight it'll play host to a 12-hour-plus
marathon including sets by Meaghan Toohey's the So and So's,
Rick Berlin, the Heygoods, the Family Jewels, and Todd
Thibaud. Toad is at 1912 Massachusetts Avenue in Porter
Square; the hoot starts at 1 p.m. and runs past midnight. Call
(617) 497-4950.
BAIT AND SWITCHIt's a match that could be made only
in JP: two of Boston's most original nightlife institutions
are trading spaces today in a stunt for the ages. Punk Rock
Aerobics queens Maura Jasper and Hilken Mancini, just back
from taking PRA to British audiences at the skate-punk Game On
festival, get their cross-dress on as guest hosts of tonight's
one-year-anniversary edition of Glitter Switch Drag Karaoke
-- a sing-along night aimed at drag kings and gender
benders of all stripes. Meanwhile, Glitter Switch host Heywood
Wakefield -- the fortysomething-suburban-dad persona that
Switch founder Aliza Shapiro adopts when she's a man,
baby -- takes over the reins (and the tunes) for PRA's
afternoon workout. Lord help us. The Aerobics class goes down
at 2 p.m. at the Middle East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in
Central Square. Admission is $7; call (617) 864-EAST. Glitter
Switch gets going at 7:30 p.m. at Hollywood, 41 Essex Street
in Chinatown; call (617) 417-0186.
HIGH SEASNext week they'll tow her out into the
harbor again, but today the USS Constitution gets her
buccaneer on thanks to a new exhibit, "The Barbary War:
Piracy, Politics, and Power," commemorating the time back
in the late 1790s when the Navy opened a can of whup-ass on
the Algerian corsairs who were dogging American merchants.
Pirates are so punk rock. The exhibit will be up for
about five years, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to
enjoy it. The USS Constitution Museum is located in the
Charlestown Navy Yard, right across from Old Ironsides
herself; call (617) 426-1812.
She's not quite so grand as the Constitution, but a
bunch of punks have rented a booze-cruise banana boat for the
evening and christened it, for the evening at least, the
USS Dancelantic. The on-board protocol calls for
beach gear and pirate costumes (see?), with music provided by
a pair of DJs spinning the post-punk and art funk that are so
popular with today's hipsters, as well as a live set by laptop
indie-pop heroes Certainly, Sir. The boat leaves at 10:30 p.m.
from 60 Rowes Wharf, and tickets are $25; for more
information, visit www.honeypump.net.
ROCKWanna hear Bruce Willis sing the blues?
Neither do we, but he's gonna do it anyway, tonight at 6 at
Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street. Tickets are $25.25; call (617)
423-NEXT.
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SUNDAY
ELECTRO TECH-HOP![]() Back in 1970,
Phil Ochs proclaimed that the only hope for revolution in
America was for Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara -- and
then Phil hopped on stage in a Nudie jumpsuit to sing his
protest-folk ballads mixed with the King's Vegas-era
standards. Thirty-odd years later, the laptop-rocking
glitch-hop MC known as Gold Chains mixes Marxist critiques of
capitalist schemes with celebrations of such booty-jam staples
as champagne, cocaine, sluts, and designer floss. Or as he
puts it on one of his "emo-tek-rap-punk" party jams, "I'll
blind you with my tits and ass/but I don't need a lot of
cash." Hate the game, not the player, yo. If that doesn't get
your moneymaker shaking, you should know that GC also does a
mindwarping electro-goth cover of Samhain's "Human Pony Girl."
He's at T.T. the Bear's Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central
Square; call (617) 492-BEAR.
PUNKYou guys remember G.G. Allin, right? Big fat
suicidal misanthropic hardcore idiot, sang about rape,
torture, and sodomy, liked to eat his own feces, baaaad
junkie, at one time might've been the most hated clown in all
of punk rock? No? Well, don't worry about it -- he's been dead
for 10 years. But G.G.'s brother Merle is commemorating the
occasion by re-forming G.G.'s last band, the Murder
Junkies, to rehash bad times. Taking the role of G.G. is
Jeff Clayton of North Carolina gutter punks Antiseen; he first
played the part on the tour the Junkies did to promote their
final album after G.G. OD'd in '93. Also on board are G.G.'s
first band, the Jabbers -- who may yet remind us that back in
the early '80s, before he invented his "scumfuc" shtick, G.G.
wrote a couple of great new-wave songs (see "Don't Talk to
Me"). Both bands are playing the Middle East, 480
Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, this afternoon at 1
and then making a mad dash for the Met Café, 130 Union Street
in Providence, where they'll play again at 9. Call (617)
864-EAST, or (401) 861-2142.
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MONDAY
THEATERIn her pug-nosed Disney heyday, Hayley Mills
got stuck with Pollyanna types long after she should have been
allowed to graduate. But this summer, she headlines a
production of the 1966 Frederick Knott thriller Wait
Until Dark, playing the gutsy blind woman who's
terrorized in her Greenwich Village apartment by a trio of
crazed thugs looking for a doll full of drugs. Lee Remick and
Robert Duvall starred in the original Broadway staging; Audrey
Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar for the 1967 movie. Mills
approximates scrambling sightlessness at the Cape Playhouse in
Dennis, where Wait Until Dark opens tonight and
continues through July 12. Tickets are $25 to $45; call (508)
385-3911, and see our "Theater" column, on page 8.
FOLKOver the past 20 years, no one has done more to
chronicle the Boston singer-songwriter scene -- as well as its
larger national and international context -- than Boston
Globe contributor (and folk singer-songwriter himself)
Scott Alarik. Now Alarik has collected his writings,
from the Globe and elsewhere, in the handsome new
paperback Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk
Underground (Black Wolf Press). Celebrating the book at --
where else? -- Club Passim will be Alarik and fellow folkies
Ellis Paul, Vance Gilbert, Robbie O'Connell, Áine Minogue,
Aoife O'Donovan, and the requisite "surprise guests." That's
at 47 Palmer Street in Harvard Square; call (617) 492-7679.
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TUESDAY
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PERFORMANCE ART ROCKA band's first gig after winning
the Rumble is typically a charged affair -- fresh buzz,
boundless optimism, prize money. And this year the Dresden
Dolls don't even have to worry about the Rumble's infamous
downside, since during their appearance in the final they beat
the Curse over the head with a 'Til Tuesday album. Which means
that tonight's show will be a welcome victory lap by an outfit
that ranks as one of Boston's least conventional and most
exciting: a darkly theatrical piano duo, with band
accompaniment, who take as many cues from Brechtian cabaret as
from art punk. And just in case you thought they were the only
ones who had the idea, they've invited along New Jersey's
World/Inferno Friendship Society, a vaudevillean big band who
sound like a cross between the Misfits and Kurt Weill, and the
Bay Area prog-rock/performance-art group Sleepytime Gorilla
Museum. Go down and out with the Dolls tonight at the Middle
East, 480 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square. Tickets are
$10; call (617) 864-EAST.
ROCKBoston indie-poppers the Sheila Divine were one
of the few bands in town with serious headlining capability
(in their heyday they were able to pack venues as large as
Avalon without anything resembling a record deal), and their
songs seemed especially suited to modern-rock radio: they
shoulda been the band sandwiched between Jimmy Eat World and
Coldplay. Now frontman Aaron Perrino has struck out on his
own, and perhaps it's not surprising that his new material --
recorded with producer Jack "Drag" Dragonetti under the
moniker Dear Leader -- has taken a turn for the darker
and colder. (Hmmm . . . Colderplay?) Perrino
unveils the new band this month with a Tuesday-night residency
at the Lizard Lounge; tonight's kickoff also serves as the
release party for Dear Leader's debut seven-inch, "My Life As
a Wrestler." By the end of the residency he'll also have an
EP, War Chords (both Lunch). The Lizard is at 1667
Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, and admission is $5; call
(617) 547-1228.
PRE-FOURTHToday marks the official unveiling of the
annual Boston Harborfest leading up to Independence
Day, and the kickoff comes at noon on City Hall Plaza
featuring appearances by Mayor Menino and . . .
the Allstonians? We didn't know they were still active, but if
they're still playing their mid-'90s Harvard-Ave-and-beyond
ska-punk classic "B Train to Allston," we'll be there. It's
free; call (617) 227-1886. Also today, Keith Lockhart warms up
the Boston Pops with "An American Salute" at Symphony
Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, at 8 p.m.; tickets
are $18 to $67. The Pops' freebies at the Hatch Shell on the
Charles River Esplanade commence on Thursday at 8; call (617)
266-1200.
FILMIf the lines to The Hulk seem too daunting
or you just can't see paying nine bucks to watch a comic book
get made into a movie, you might be interested in this free
screening of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002) --
wow, already? -- at the Boston Public Library. Tobey Maguire
plays a nerdy high-schooler who develops extraordinary powers
after a genetically enhanced mutant spider bites him. Willem
Dafoe emotes as the deranged Green Goblin, and Kirsten Dunst
gets rescued a lot. The BPL is at 700 Boylston Street in
Copley Square, and the screening starts at 6 p.m.; call (617)
859-2217.
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WEDNESDAY
FUNKBorn in the smoky basement confines of
Cambridge's Lizard Lounge, Club d'Elf tonight goes way uptown
-- all the way to the Museum of Fine Arts for the MFA's summer
Concerts in the Courtyard Series. Joining this "live
dub-world-trance" group along with d'Elf main man Mike "Micro
Vard" Rivard and drummer Erik Kerr will be guitarist Dave
Tronzo (seen a couple of week's back at the Lizard with Steven
Bernstein's Spanish Fly), percussionist Brahim Frigbane, and
special guest John Medeski. Rivard and the hyperkinetic
keyboardist from Medeski Martin & Wood are perfect
counterparts, with one foot in Sun Ra outtaspace jazz music
and the other in funk. So it should be quite a night. That's
in the MFA's Calderwood Courtyard, 465 Huntington Avenue, at
7:30 p.m. Tickets are $24, or $20 for students; call (617)
369-3770.
FILMAs the Independence Day weekend approaches,
filmland turns its attention to politics. Arnold
Schwarzenegger begins his unofficial California gubernatorial
campaign with the release of Terminator 3: Rise of the
Machines; in what may be a preview of extravagant
campaign promises, he's back as the lethal cyborg from the
future determined to save the savior of mankind from the
machine empire. Nick Stahl, Kristanna Loken, and Claire Danes
also star; Jonathan Mostow (U-571) directs. A more
liberal political position is taken in Legally Blonde 2:
Red, White & Blonde, where Reese Witherspoon's
perky-in-pink spitfire, now armed with a law degree, heads to
Washington to fight for animal rights. Bob Newhart and Luke
Wilson help out; Charles Herman-Wurmfeld (Kissing Jessica
Stein) directs. We don't know whether Brad Pitt and
Catherine Zeta-Jones have political aspirations, but they do
get to speak out in the DreamWorks animated adventure
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, where the
familiar tale of the Arabian Nights sailor gets juiced up with
some Greek mythology. And the politics are all
sexual in François Ozon's Swimming Pool as an
elegant mystery writer tangles with her publisher's horny
teenage daughter at a country retreat.
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THURSDAY
JAZZWhat possible common ground could Smokey Hormel,
the eclectic guitarist behind latter-day Beck and Tom Waits
discs, find with Miho Satori, the singer for the Japanese
cut-and-paste pop duo Cibo Matto? Would you
believe . . . Brazilian jazz from the '60s?
Well, it figures, sort of: bossa nova has been creeping into
Beck's work since Mutations, and the tropicália of Os
Mutantes is a natural touchstone for Cibo's deconstructions.
Brought together by a shared love of the Brazilian guitarist
and composer Baden Powell, Smokey & Miho took shape last
year as a sultry jazz duo, and they'll make their local debut
tonight at T.T. the Bear's Place, 10 Brookline Street in
Central Square; call (617) 492-BEAR.
ZYDECOCall CJ Chenier the official keeper of
the flame, since his daddy, Clifton Chenier, pretty much
invented zydeco -- that mix of Louisiana Creole accordion
dance music and contemporary R&B -- back in the '50s.
Tonight CJ makes one of his regular visits to Johnny D's, 17
Holland Street in Somerville's Davis Square; call (617)
776-2004.
FILMAmericans have a rosy concept of childhood, to
judge from the vapid movies made for and about them by
Hollywood. The French have a darker point of view, as can be
seen in today's Harvard Film Archive pairing of Gallic
masterpieces about innocence and war. In René Clément's 1952
Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games, six-year-old
Brigitte Fossey plays a young girl orphaned during the Nazi
invasion who devises her own private rituals to cope with the
death and destruction. It screens at 7 p.m. Somewhat older and
less innocent is Pierre Blaise as the teenage protagonist of
Louis Malle's 1973 Lacombe Lucien; rebuffed by
the Resistance, he starts collaborating with the Nazis. That
one's at 9 p.m. The HFA is in the Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy
Street in Harvard Square; call (617) 495-4700.
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