Arthur Radio wants to say We Love You. A Lot. Joining us in this sentiment is special guest DJ Evie Elman, whose documentary Spiritual Lasagna about her grandmother, artist and lover of life Gemma Taccogna (featured on Arthur a few summers back), will cause even the most icy heart to thaw.
Evie’s solo show “Untied” opens tonight, February 14th at Brewers Mansion gallery in Brooklyn with a happening involving “Ancient craft, and sacred ritual via throw pillows, drums, dance, and audience participation” at 8.30 pm, and runs through Friday, February 18th with a closing performance at the same time.
Still from The Wicker Man, directed by Robin Hardy, 1973.
Anyone who ever perused the mountainous video selection at the old Mondo Kim’s store in the East Village, when it still existed, can guess that most of the folks who worked there acquired about a PhD’s worth of knowledge in cult obscurities and arcane movie trivia. Who in the city could be qualified, in that case, to try their hand as curators and start an ongoing series of film screenings dedicated to sleeper hits from the ’70s and long-lost psychedelic gems? Named after the store’s rental department, where the collective’s founding members probably absorbed thousands of hours of warped cassette tapes, The Third Floor is a group of ex-Kim’s employees with the simply stated mission of “presenting to you, the general public, movies we like.”
On Saturday, October 30, the organization will team with 92YTribeca to present “Night of the Wicker Man,” a celebration of Robin Hardy’s 1973 pagan horror classic set on the fictional Scottish island of Summerisle. Following a screening of the original cut, the British director will deliver a Q&A on the making of The Wicker Man and screen teaser footage from The Wicker Tree, a sequel starring Christopher Lee that he shot over the summer. As if this weren’t enough for even the biggest Wickermaniacs, bands Wooden Shjips, Effi Briest, and Silver Summit will be in attendance to perform interpretations of songs, poetry, and rituals from Paul Giovanni‘s original score. To cap off the evening, Spectators will take part in a costume party and a dance around a May Pole to the step of DJs spinning acid folk and psychedelic rock.
For those of you who need a refresher, here is the trailer for the original Wicker Man–not to be confused with the Hollywood remake starring Nicolas Cage:
Night of the Wicker Man
October 30, 2009 at 92YTribeca
200 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013
All ages. Bring your favorite animal mask or a flower crown or two.
Click here for tickets to the 7pm screening and following music event.
Click here for the Midnight screening and preceding music event.
2037 Frankford Avenue (enter around back on Sepviva Street)
Philadelphia, PA 19125
suggested donation $5 * bring your own whatsits
inappropriate weather moves show indoors to the music parlor
DOUG PAISLEY
This will be the Philadelphia debut of the Toronto-based country-folk songwriter best known as half of the Will Oldham-championed Dark Hand and Lamplight, a live performance collaboration with visual artist Shary Boyle which features Boyle creating live drawings and animating pre-drawn images on an overhead projector while Mr. Paisley sings and plays guitar.
Tonight, Doug will be playing songs from his gem of a debut album, released late last year on No Quarter Records, as well as new songs. Doug’s first LP, an enduring favorite at Arthur Philly HQ , garnered four stars from Andrew Male at Mojo magazine, who saluted its “lilting melodies, comforting Guy Clark drawl, and lazy Bearsville arrangements… [There’s] nagging details within these love songs of union and division—great fireballs, waves rising up, birds falling from the sky, unimaginable things buried in the ground, deeds that can’t be undone, cold, soundless rain and something on the horizon ‘we will surely see coming/in the wide open plain.’ This mood of prophesy and foreboding lends Paisley’s debut an eerie power and strength, meaning that as you return to his charming and enchanting country melodies—and you will —they’ll continue to throw up their weird details, glinting symbols of doom on the horizon of the American west.”
And here’s Mike Wolf in Time Out New York: “Comparisons between musicians usually do a disservice to all involved, but ignoring the minor detail of one sui generis decades-long career, Doug Paisley and Neil Young share many key traits. Both are Canadian and have a grasp of American roots-music traditions so deep you’d think it comes from their bones. More important, Paisley, like Young and few other singer-songwriters, has the power of immediate communication: When he opens his mouth, you believe him utterly—that he has crossed the rivers, climbed the mountains, come through the fires, lived every molecule of what he sings.
“Paisley’s self-titled album is last year’s most extravagantly unadorned piece of music: plain as dirt and direct as sunlight, and no less elemental. “Frost leaves a sign on your window/Now you know the summer’s been and gone/You wonder when you’ll see another one/Where did the sweet love go?” he sings on “A Day Is Very Long,” fan-dancing the profound behind the mundane. There are few highs and lows in Paisley’s economical songs; he’s whittled out his space in the middles, where all the forethought and aftermath that sandwich life’s big events go on, though gravity and shadow loom toward the edge of the sky.
“While his album is gorgeously spare—bass, drum and backing vocals on some songs, plus his guitar and keyboards—Paisley will be playing solo at these shows, which is only fitting for the purest voice to come down the pike in ages.”
GREG WEEKS
The Espers guitarist, producer and record label mogul makes a rare local solo performance. “Prolly acoustic guitar,” he sez. “Simple and straightforward.”
WILLIE LANE
“Epic martian love call transmitted by steel strings & flanger” is how this frequent MV & EE collaborator and Child of Microtones scene member, now based in Philadelphia, describes what he’ll be playing tonight. Willie’s just-out LP, Known Quantity (Cord Art), is a favorite in many houses. Arthur Magazine “Bull Tongue” columnists Byron Coley and Thurston Moore call it “a total blast. Willie’s mostly solo (save for some licks by Samara Lubelski) and his playing ranges from Wizz Jones power-pluck at its cleanest to Michael Chapman electro-smear at its phasingest. But Willie knows his stuff cold and this instrumental slide through the gates of Neverland is one of this year’s great rides.”
SONDRA SUN-ODEON
This New York City-based singer/writer/guitarist, best known for her work in Silver Summit, will open the evening with what she calls “a loosely fingerstyle guitar & vocal set conjuring rain…big sad drops of water with dark, hazy, haunting song clouds that speak of death, love, parting, and paradise. ”
Arthur Magazine 