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Make American Gay Again, Theater As Light, and More Performance To Ease The Pain

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WEDNESDAY

(image via Ars Nova / Facebook)

(image via Ars Nova / Facebook)

Make America Gay Again
Wednesday, January 18 at Ars Nova, 8 pm: $15

By now, the phrase Make America Great Again pretty much seems like old hat. Which is also a pun I didn’t mean to make, but there it is. Tonight, performance artist Chris Tyler hopes to put his own ribald spin on MAGA with this spangled variety show, claiming while that America has never been particularly great or even particularly good, it has indeed been “more than a little bit gay.” Republicans are welcome to this affair, though it’s unclear what their fate shall be when they arrive. The lineup includes “drag queens, poets, and punk musicians” such as performance artist Emily Oliveira, drag queen Kelsey, local rockers Gandor Chorale, Pussy Grabs Back: The Band, writer Jess Goldschmidt, and more. Advance tickets are sold out, but a waitlist begins at the theater at 7:30. More →

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Four Shows: Neon Spandex and Hair Metal Redux, Thurston Moore & John Zorn’s Dream Team

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(Flyer via Union Pool/ Facebook)

(Flyer via Union Pool/ Facebook)

Ereptile Destruction, Growler, Shitkill
Tuesday November 22, 9 pm at Union Pool: $8

Once in a while, it helps to forget everything that’s happened to metal since nu metal hit, and take a trip back to our roots. Growler, a Brooklyn-based act that describes itself simply as “hard and loud” helps get us there, mainly by defying the trend toward increasingly humorless, doomed and/or blackened what-have-you. Lately, it feels like we’re so chin-deep in sludgy muck that it’s easy to forget where we started. Growler’s throwback sound plops us back in the early ’80s, with their high-pitched, falsetto, bordering on operatic vocals that recall Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

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Four Shows: Drown in Sound if Feeling Down, or Just Say Cheers to a Jolly End

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(Flyer via Alphaville)

(Flyer via Alphaville)

Video Daughters, Quin Galavis, 2;Frail, Drome
Wednesday November 16, 8 pm at Alphaville: $8

The good people at Alphaville haven’t been mincing words about their views on the election, that’s for sure. Actions, of course, scream louder than words, but music, also, is technically much louder than chatter. Thankfully, there’s the grinding, cathartic freakout music of Video Daughters to help bridge the gap. See them in person and it might just be the energy jolt that so many of us so badly need to pull ourselves out of this Trump Slump before we’re sucked down further than our current near-hopeless position of in-chin-deep.

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See Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and/or Kim Gordon in Williamsburg This Month

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Screen Shot 2016-11-02 at 11.13.20 AMNovember is a good time to be a Sonic Youth fan, since onetime Lower East Side fixtures Kim Gordon (now based in Los Angeles) and Thurston Moore (now based in London) are coming ’round Williamsburg to make some noise.

If you’ve been meaning to check out National Sawdust, Williamsburg’s ambitious new avant-garde venue, this is a fine time to do it: Hot on the heels of her first solo song, Gordon, the artist/writer/musician/icon, is playing there with Body/Head, her moody collaboration with fellow guitarist Bill Nace. Tickets ($20) for the Nov. 12 show are available here.

On Nov. 23, Thurston is also appearing as part of a duo, teaming up with fellow downtown legend John Zorn to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rough Trade.

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Near Future in Film: Lambchop’s Under There and Trumplandia

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Yeah, he still doesn't comb his hair (Film still from "Michael Moore Goes to Trumpland")

Yeah, he still doesn’t comb his hair (Film still from “Michael Moore in Trumpland”)

Michael Moore in Trumpland
Monday October 24 through Thursday October 27 at IFC Center: $14

Yeah, yeah we know, Michael Moore is… well, he’s Michael Moore. His particular way of showing outrage feels almost obsolete by now, a bit like a relic of the Bush ere, or worse– like an old white dude who insists on putting himself at the center of his films for some reason that seems to have disintegrated long ago. For his latest film, you might expect that Moore has aimed his camera squarely at “Trumpland” aka underemployed, undereducated white men in flyover America. But that’s not the case at all, actually.

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Week in Shows: Ween Face Flops into Town, Sounds of the Floppy Disk Era, and More

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(Flyer via PC Worship/ Rough Trade/ Facebook)

(Flyer via PC Worship/ Rough Trade/ Facebook)

Lazeyes, PC Worship, Gingerlys, RIPS
Wednesday October 5, 8 pm at Rough Trade: $10 in advance/ $15 at the door

According to our social media stalking of Justin Frye, PC Worship will be playing some “new songs” at their Rough Trade show tonight.

But wait, aren’t all of the band’s live performances improvisational? How could music that lingers somewhere around deconstructed punk/avant-garde/drone/free jazz made with freaky-deaky instrumental sculptures (ew, I’d never say that Frye “hacks” his instruments) be anything but new-to-you?

Maybe it’s the scenery (Williamsburg) that’s making Frye feel lightheaded. He’s also encouraging showgoers to take a walk along the waterfront and “contemplate the exact moment Williamsburg ‘changed.””

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At Rough Trade’s New Listening Room, Spin Vinyl Without Annoying the Neighbors

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The listening room. (Photo courtesy of Sonos)

The listening room. (Photo courtesy of Sonos)

In what’s pretty much a music nerd’s dream come true, AirBnB is offering the chance to stay overnight at Rough Trade. If you’re envisioning Night at the Museum with vinyl records instead of Teddy Roosevelt and Sacagawea, don’t worry, it’s not that sketchy (unless you want it to be, to each their own), and it’s safe to say Ben Stiller won’t be there.

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Yer Week in Gigs: The Teaches of Peaches and the Lure of Boone’s Farm

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Peaches (Image via Rough Trade)

Peaches (Image via Rough Trade)

Peaches
Monday September 12, 8 pm at Rough Trade ($30) and Tuesday September 13, 7 pm at Webster Hall ($25)

About a year ago, Peaches– aka Jessica Hopper, the Canadian electroclash artist best known for her transgressive, hyper-sexual, feminist dance music– broke her six-year silence with a new album, Rub, which Pitchfork declared had “arrived at a moment when the world needs Peaches most.” 

That might be an even more appropriate thing to say now, as feminism, women’s rights, and the possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman President of the United States have taken on a whole new feeling of urgency. Though we’ve come so far in the fight for women’s equality, we’re still knee-deep in a cesspool teeming with indignity, unequal pay, unpaid labor, obstacles to reproductive health, and widespread abuse– sexual, physical, and psychological. And we’re just talking the privileged Western world, baby.

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For 401 Days, J. Views ‘Opened Up a Window’ on His Creative Process

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As the cliché goes, a talented artist can make their work look easy. Most successful works of art, then– anything from albums to paintings and photographs–  belie the huge amount of effort and skill that went into their creation. This might stem from the idea that showing too much of the maker’s hand demystifies the process, and therefore risks ruining the magic of art. That distance is especially important when it comes to music– for most genres anyway, maintaining a separation between the audience and the performer, both physical and psychologically, is an essential part of the experience.

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Record Store Day Is Almost Here, Here’s How to Spend Your Money on Not-Alcohol For Once

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(Record Store Day)

(Record Store Day)

Everyone knows the quickest way to turn your lame tech-bro pad from drab to authentic cool is to fill it with a bunch of vinyl. Just, please, if you’re going to do that at least take the records outside of their plastic casing and rough them up a bit so it looks like you actually listen to them. Oh, and hot tip: make sure you actually have a record player, too — extra points for knowing how to turn it on.

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