Andrew Bird at the Knit and Loreley

So after a quick stop at an East Village happy hour in honor of Emily's birthday (Happy Birthday Emily!), I went down to the Knitting Factory with Lauren to meet Andrew and Zoe for the Andrew Bird concert on Friday, May 20th.

I saw Andrew Bird open up for the Magnetic Fields last year and thought he was pretty good for an opener. After his most recent album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, started getting some good reviews I decided to give him a more attentive chance. Liking the album, I figured I'd go see him again knowing a little bit more about what he does. Andrew Bird sings, whistles, plays violin, guitar, and the occasional xylophone with a drummer to accompany. One of the things that sort of rubbed me the wrong way when I saw him previously was the use of canned music. However, what he generally uses are effects pedals that loop, let's say a violin, melody after he plays the main bit of it. I think occasionally the music was completely prerecorded, but mostly it's just a playback of things performed live in front of you.

So really, the man is working for his living, I assure you. I have to say, he was much better this time, though I do realize that most performers are when they're given they're own show and not just there for support, and I have to say live is the way to really enjoy what he's doing. On the record I find some of his vocals kind of flat, but live they come through as more in the vein of a Jeff Buckley or Rufus Wainwright. He puts more emotion and variety into the phrasing, effectively making the recorded versions launch pads for more adventurous musical venturing in the live show. Additionally, he's a really talented musician who seriously knows what he's doing. Andrew, Lauren, and Zoe all went in pretty much completely unfamiliar with his music and came out fans, so if that's not an encouragement to give him a try, I don't know what more to say.

Afterwards we grabbed a drink at Loreley, a Bavarian-style bar and beer garden on the Lower East Side with a great selection of German beers. I just opted for a straight up Pilsner, but Andrew and Lauren tried the Berline Weisse, a syrup flavored wheat beer that I had fond memories of from the time I was in Germany. They use either a raspberry syrup, or the one with which I was more familiar, a green syrup that I don't know the exact flavor of...it was sort of both like melon and apple. If you know what flavor they're specifically going for, please post a comment about it. Otherwise, here's a picture of what one of them looks like:



Yummy, I think I may have to order one for myself next time!

The return of the Wedding Present!

Ok, so I've been meaning to post about this for weeks now, but I was waiting on my "staff photographer" Gabby to get me these pictures. Anyway, on the last Friday in April I went with Gabby and Lollion to see the Wedding Present, back from the dead after spending several years reincarnated as a pale imitation of their former self called Cinerama. Okay, so technically this tour line-up is pretty much Cinerama but rocking more and therefore calling themselves the Wedding Present (shared quantity is lead singer and main songwriter Mr. David Gedge of course), but let's not get lost in all this people, I do have a point here somewhere.

Getting to it...they rock!

I have a bit of a history with this band. I saw them for the first time way back in 1994 (making me precocious and not old, by the very) when they opened for Superchunk at Tramps. That's 11+ years of fandom, and have seen them somewhere around the four of five times marks since. Don't ask for specifics, I've been to many shows, and consumed many alcoholic beverages, in my day.

They've been touring North America recently, though they may have wrapped things up by now, but if you have a chance you should definitely check them out. I promise you it will be a rocking good time. Just don't expect an encore, they have never done, and will never do, encores. I actually like their latest album Take Fountain, but a number of the loyal fanbase have been disappointed. If you're looking to get into them for the first time, go with either Seamonsters or Watusi, they're the best! For more info on the Wedding Present

Oh, and because I couldn't resist, here's Gabby's attempt at becoming the "art department" for Phil on the Town. It's a picture of her David Gedge doctored up by IPhoto or something (their inevitable love affair may just start with a photograph and a gentle hand to the lower back, or so Gabby hopes anyway). I assure you that neither one of them are quite so gray in person.



Gabby, I'll call you, you don't call me, about that position in the art department, okay?

The End of an Era?

On a recent Friday evening, in celebration of the much discussed recent birthday of mine (well, at least around these parts), we decided to take the dancing part of the evening to Opaline in the East Village. Opaline's Friday night dance party, Area 10009, is known as a bit of a trashy gay affair. However, clinging to an idealized nostalgia that this city seems to consider "The Golden Age of Trash," the 1980s of course, party promoters will do just about anything they can to up the smut. Ahh...to go back to the day when gays were gays and girls were girls. But how do we do this? What about charging women more to get in the door? Eureka!

Well, this may just be the Area 10009's rationale, as they charged a $10 cover for men, and $20 for women. That's right, the days of reverse discrimination are upon us, and how do I feel about it? Well, from where I stand, there is one promising change that could come of this. Could we have reached the end of the Fag Hag era?

The allure that gay dance clubs have had for (often straight) women, has consistently been that they provide decent, if cheesy, music, a safe space, and well...hot men. I'd have to chart the rise and popularity of the fag/fag hag relationship back to the middle to late 90s. With Will & Grace, and various other pop culture "landmarks" every girl had to have their very own fabulous gay friend. Where was the best place to see and be seen with your fabulously fruity friends? You got it, the dance club.

Now, I've always been opposed to male only or female only gay bars or clubs. It reduces everything to the sluttiest common denominator, and well, doesn't really make for a good night out with friends. However, what happens when large groups of women, as apparently was the case with Opaline, get wind of gogo boys and decent music, and start taking their bachelorette parties to get wild with the gay boys?

Well, if women are going to take advantage of the good music, the safe space, and, yes, the hot men - especially when gogo boys are involved, as it is a well known trend that most of them are heterosexual, boding well for the ladies in the crowd, provided they don't mind an STD or two - maybe they need to make a little sacrifice. It's that or continue to live vicariously through your gay friends and be a "convenient and friendly" way for the boys to get together.

Considering the years of self-hatred, coming out, and psychologial warfare involved with being a gay man going to these clubs, $10 more doesn't seem like that much of burden.

For a sample of just what you're "missing" by not paying the additional $10 to get in. Here's a sample pic of the dance floor and sex show that was going down on the night I was there. Thanks to Zander, official photographer of the moments that would probably have been better left undocumented, for the picture.



Okay,come to think of it, I wouldn't pay $20 for that either.

Carry on.

2046 at the Tribeca Film Festival

If you were in New York during the last week of April, it seemed like everyone was sort of, but not really, talking about the Tribeca Film Festival. Apparently they drew enormous crowds, and it was quite the success. The one night I went it was certainly crowded, but it was for one of the North American screenings of Wong Kar Wai's latest 2046, so how could it be anything but completely sold out? I went with friends Jessie, Olga, and Andrew, all Wong Kar Wai fans to the max, down to a Thursday night screening at Stuyvesant High School (where Olga went to HS incidentally!).

A high profile film premiere in a high school auditorium? Well, back in the mid 1990s Stuyvesant HS, a specialized science and math high school, got a brand new, state of the art facility in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan. At the time I was going to one of the other specialized high schools in New York, the one up in the Bronx. That facility was not state of the art, and looked like it was vomited out by some mid-60s functionalist architect who thought that the the uglier the building the smarter the students, or something. But I digress...

So 2046, you may remember, I saw back in January on its opening weekend in London. The film is gorgeous and devastating and really needs to be seen in the cinema. If you're like me and have an all regions DVD copy that someone bought for you when they were in Asia (no, I'm not kidding), you can honestly say that it's not the same on a television screen. If you're looking for an In the Mood for Love redux, just go back and watch it again. 2046 takes off where ITMFL ended, but it is very much its own film. I can say from experience that it definitely helps, but is not necessary, to have seen ITMFL before seeing 2046. However, you're a damn fool if you deny yourself the pleasure of spending two hours with Tony and Maggie as they slowly build up an insatiable longing for each other.

As far as the experience of seeing it again as part of the Tribeca Film Festival goes...well, I think that the TFF is really poorly run when it comes to customer service. I vastly preferred the intimacy of a Sunday evening screening at the Barbican in London to a loud, bustling film festival crowd in lower Manhattan. But these are just minor complaints. I still got to see 2046, and Tony Leung was there to introduce it! That's worth a few minor inconveniences.

If you're on American soil and wondering when 2046 is finally going to make it to theaters, August 5th, my friends. Mark your calendars.

What I'll be doing on October 7th!

Okay, so I haven't been exactly stellar about keeping all of you Phil on the Town addicts up to snuff about my whereabouts of late. I am still all promises on the "will be better" front, but in the meantime I figured I share with you my excitement for something coming in the not so distant future. The first full length Wallace and Gromit movie!

So apparently they're previewing scenes from the film over at the Cannes Film Festival this week, and this little picture off of the Yahoo news boards has just officially made my day!



Wallace & Gromit, the Curse of the Were-Rabbit will apparently be hitting theaters on October 7th.

Oh, and if you're wondering why the hell I bother with this sort of thing, well:

a) This is MY blog and I'll post whatever I please, and
b) I'm working on a post about going to smutty gay dance clubs, so I figured this more innocent post would balance things out.

More to come...but rest assured, I'll save you a seat while you go get the popcorn! I'm so there!

Laughing into the Void.

So on a cloudy Friday evening in April, I met Gabby down in Soho for an evening of avant-garde theater, a play called "All Wear Bowlers"

Ok, let's get right into it...here's the description from the Here Arts Center website, where "All Wear Bowlers" is currently playing:

"Two silent film clowns take a wrong turn and find themselves trapped in a haunted theatre, where hard-boiled eggs play tricks on them and gravity refuses to behave. The bleak poetic landscape of Beckett, the elegant absurdity of Magritte and the dysfunctional virtuosity of Laurel & Hardy collide to create a world of venomous ventriloquists and belligerent bowlers."

Now initially the idea of an absurdist comedy that takes Waiting For Godot as a major reference point sounded problematic to me. I mean, what if the existentialism is just half-baked and poorly done? And the comedy? Well, what if it's just not funny? But after reading a number of positive reviews and talking with a couple of people who actually know the pefromers in the play, I figured I'd give it a shot.

And?...it's really, really good! If you're absolultely opposed to anything even marginally slapstick, it's not for you, but the actors are incredibly good at what they do. It's completely accessible, and not in a pandering avant-garde-lite sort of way either. There were a couple of kids in the audience who enjoyed it as much any of the adults (though I assume their parents have a pretty lenient cussing policy as far as entertainment is concerned, as the language goes occasionally potty-mouthed). There's some amazing film projection work that starts and ends the show, and despite getting "lost" in the existential void of it all, everything comes together in the end in a way that I found really rewarding.

I could probably go on for a while, so I'll just cut this short by saying, it's playing until May 28th at the Here Arts Center, and you can click on that link for more information.

The 7 Days of Phil

Hello loyal readers!

Just posting to say that the annual week-long celebration of my birth is finally coming to an end. Thank you to everyone out there who took part in some way. There were several free lunches, several free dinners, and almost more than my share of free drinks on Friday night in Williamsburg - See baby, I don't always say bad things about you! - and the East Village. For all those who forgot my birthday, you have 9 more hours until the end of birthday week, the extended grace period afforded to those too self-involved or busy (or busily self-involved? Oh, this word play IS exciting!) to take a few moments to show their appreciation for a lovely lad about town like myself. Otherwise, better luck next year! Just don't be surprised if I don't recognize the number on my caller ID. Snap! Oh no, he didn't!

But anyway, I'm fully recovered and ready to get back to the business of telling you all about what I've been up to! More to come, I promise!

Phil

How I amuse myself when not on the town...

If you haven't noticed, I'm on the town quite a bit. Occasionally, however, one finds themselves at home on a Monday night at midnight, or should I say 11:59, with a minute to go before their 26th birthday.

My twin brother was calling to tell me when he was getting in from NY after a few days in Florida, and here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Setting: Sounds like he's stuck in a turbine, turns out to be loud techno music pumping out of car stereo speakers, didn't I say he was in Florida?

Twin Bro: So I will text you my flight information when I get back to the house.
Me: Okay, sounds good. Oh, by the way, Happy Birthday, it's in a minute...
Twin Bro: Oh, thanks...Happy Birthday to you too.
Me: (in utter earnest) Oh, thank you for remembering... (followed by self-amused laughter)

Yes, this is why I keep myself busy...happy birthday to me!

Electroclash and Bad Art: Is this, how do you say, Williamsburg?

Okay, so I know that Williamsburg is this season's chosen whipping boy, and I hate to be just another voice in the crowd of hipster haters, but a recent trip to the land of Hip forces me to chime in.

The occasion was one of the "FS Salon/Excellent Workshop" series at Deitch Project's North 1st street space. Here's what they were going for, from the Deitch Projects website:

"This Salon project was created to encourage participation and experimentation in the creative process that surrounds Fischerspooner, and has been a breeding ground of ideas and references for their new bodies of work in music and art."

That's right, Fischerspooner, they're still around.

So the particular night that I went, in early April, was one of the CD release parties for their new album. How does Williamsburg celebrate one of its biggest success stories? Well, the way they celebrate pretty much everything: free beer and cheap alcohol, smoking indoors, and a vast crowd of people who have no idea as to why they're there. It is well known that whenever you offer free booze to the Brooklyn public, a whisper campaign inevitably starts and all of a sudden you have 200 people ready with their one line memorized for this well rehearsed play. "Is this the line for beer?"

It doesn't matter whether it's a gallery opening, a film festival, a loft party thrown by bankers trying to prove that they're more than just number crunchers...if you offer it free, they wil come.

And come they did, in such large numbers that the bathroom line grew so long that some of hipsters chose to buck the system by peeing into their cups of beer. Yes, in plain sight of pretty much anyone. They're anti-establishment, if you haven't heard.

So now, the thing about Fischerspponer...are they performance art or are they music? If they started as performance art, but then got taken seriously as music, but then challenged it all by continuing the performance, and are now holding formal record release parties which seems like a token music industry effort, but call them salons which implies that it's art...just what is going on here? The layers of irony here are simply baffling...I haven't been this confused since I saw Donnie Darko for the first time.

Oh Williamsburg, at times like this I wish I could say "It's not you, it's me." But Williamsburg, I can not tell a lie.