I don’t know about you, but galas are not an everyday thing around these parts– the closest this reporter’s been to a real black-tie-and-gown affair was high school prom, which didn’t even really happen because my date got arrested. So needless to say, when I was somehow allowed to crash the Anthology Film Archives gala –a fancy fundraising party and art auction held last week to raise cash for the theater’s expansion– I was just slightly out of my realm. It was made all the more surreal by a performance from Patti Smith, and seeing people like John Waters, Zosia Mamet, and Zac Posen’s eyebrows all in one room.
Ethan Hawke and Patti Smith seemed like kind of a weird pairing for a Tribeca Talk, and yesterday’s tete a tete at the Tribeca Film Festival started a little awkwardly when they couldn’t decide who was supposed to be the moderator. “How about this?” Smith suggested. “Neither one of us be the moderator and we’ll both be ourselves.”
The Barnes & Noble at Union Square was packed to the gills last night, with a line already forming on 17th Street long before Patti Smith was due to appear.
Riding the escalator up, we saw kids crowding every floor, sitting amongst the stacks in the hopes of hearing Smith read, even if they couldn’t buy a copy of her new book to get a wristband and get into the seating area and be guaranteed a signature in Smith’s new book, M Train.
Nitehawk’s “Booze & Books” series is partnering with Abrams Books for a signing of Tom Shone’s Woody Allen: A Retrospective and screening of the director’s 1980 film Stardust Memories (starring Allen, Charlotte Rampling and Jessica Harper). Fittingly, the movie is about a filmmaker recalling his various inspirations while attending a retrospective of his work. Before the show Shone will be signing the illustrated biography, the first complete film-by-film overview of Allen’s career; it includes original interviews as well as 250 behind-the-scenes stills, photographs, posters, and ephemera. Don’t forget to ask about the special cocktail for sale, inspired by the film – it is “Booze & Books,” after all. Tuesday, October 6 at 7:30 p.m. Nitehawk Cinema, 36 Metropolitan Avenue (Williamsburg).$15 (ticket only) or $45 (ticket plus book).
Last time we saw Patti Smith do “People Have the Power,” she was on stage with Miley Cyrus, Laurie Anderson, Debbie Harry and pretty much every other New York City music legend — and before that she was belting it out with Michael Stipe and James Franco. But she and Lenny Kaye kept it lean and mean at last night’s benefit at Theatre 80 for the victims of the East Village explosion. Check out the above footage posted to YouTube by Sandy Bachon.
Today it was announced that Smith will release a sequel to her memoir, Just Kids, on October 6. Here’s the publisher Knopf’s description, via the Amazon page.
Outrage over the weekend shutdown of Rockaway’s city beaches made the cover of the Daily News (excuse to put a bikinied hardbody on the front page, much?), but fans of Patti Smith and James Franco found more welcoming sands over at Fort Tilden during the kickoff of the “Rockaway!” art festival. More →
In addition to her pad in the Village, the songstress keeps a place in Rockaway and has been known to serenade the locals every now and then. This free show — put on by MoMA PS1 and the Rockaway Artists Alliance, among others — closes out the opening day of the Rockaway! public art festival, and will take place at the Artist Alliance’s outdoor stage. Afterparty at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.
Hours after Bill de Blasio kicked off Internet Week, the technorati poured into Cipriani Wall Street last night to see Patton Oswalt host the 18th annual Webby Awards. The comic was quick to poke fun at websites whose founders were in the audience: “Even if I eat it tonight Reddit will find a way to blame it on the wrong person,” he quipped.
Here, now, are the ceremony’s most memorable (or shall we say, Tweetable) moments. More →
If you guessed that Waldman, a preeminent poet prone to fiery performances, read/chanted from Burroughs’s work while Moore (with his brother Gene also on guitar) did his best impression of a guitarist high on “black meat,” you’re correct. More →
As you may have read over at Rolling Stone, Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong — in what’s sure to be one of the highlights of the CBGB Festival — are screening some of their rare late-70s and early-80s concert footage at Bowery Electric tonight, between performances by Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys, Syl Sylvain of the New York Dolls, and Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols. We were lucky enough to have the authors of our weekly Nightclubbing column into the B+B Newsroom last Friday, along with Richard Boch, who’s working on a memoir of his time manning the door of the Mudd Club, and Pat Irwin, the guitarist for the Raybeats, 8 Eyed Spy and the B-52s, who spoke about his recently unearthed collaboration with Philip Glass.
If you missed Friday’s discussion, watch the replay above. Here’s what the gang had to say about Suicide (we spoke to Martin Rev of that band back in June) and the evolution of the Ramones. More →
