Bklyn Sounds: 12/27/2022 - 1/2/2023
Shows: Bollywood Disco + Disco Tehran / Binky Griptite Orchestra / Dope Jams / Poetry Project Marathon / Tom Rainey Trio with Mary Halvorson + Ingrid Laubrock / Starvue Vibes / Chris Stein photos...+
I am too old and too washed for New Year’s Eve, even if I recognize that there are plenty of great musical activities - and friends DJing great events sure to be fun for those able to nurse hang-overs and bad decisions better than I. So, if you’re a dancer who’s got the loot that NYE requires, and the constitution to deal with the most amateur party night this side of Santa-con, both the Nowadays all-nighter (sold out but always tickets at the door), and the “Bring Dat Ass” party with Toribio and Detroit’s Andres DJing in one of Elsewhere’s “bad” rooms, will have dance highlights galore. I’ll see y’all in 2023 - or at one of these other jams in the waning moments of ‘22. Happy Holidays - and thanks for reading + sharing.
You can often find improvising string player Mat Maneri in the midst of interesting jazz and jazz-adjacent happenings. And this trio gig with bassist Brandon Lopez and cellist Dan Levin at Barbes promises to be more of that, as all three can go from baroque ECM vibes to more flowing, nonrestrictive musical confines. It’s an early-evening one. (Wed. 12/28, 6p @ Barbes 376 9th St. Park Slope - $15suggested)
Back-to-back Middle Eastern/Southeast Asian dance parties at the Sultan Room that turn the venue’s period-kitsch “exoticism”/colonialist trappings on itself: The “Bolliday” edition of Bollywood Disco (Thurs 12/29, 9p) is the the Brooklyn debut of a relatively new party launched by Basement Bhangra founder/South Asian dance-music doyenne DJ Rekha alongside Occupy The Disco’s DJ RuBot; a heady mix of classic Asian dance-records that gringo record-collectors covet and 4/4 hi-hats we all love, with a queer and Brown crowd that dances its collective ass off. The next night is the year-end edition of the great long-running Disco Teheran party (Fri. 12/30, 9p), whose global-mined Persian-heavy dance-floor vibes are inspired by the Iranian capital’s legendary clubs of the 1970s; that will also feature the brass’n’drums of Lucky Chops and the funked-up East African “retro-pop” of Alsarah & the Nubatones, alongside the more modern-leaning sounds of DJs Aida, Yara Bey and Mirza. (@ Sultan Room 234 Starr St., Bushwick - $30)
Drummer Tom Rainey’s Trio conversation (with guitarist Mary Halvorson and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock) has been going on since the late aughts, and at this point it feels like its own language. There’s a community history in this midtown gig being produced by the Independent Promoters Alliance: Rainey used to do a just-before-New-Year’s night at the old Cornelia Street Cafe before it closed at the end of 2018, often with the trio. Tonight’s two sets are a continuation. (Fri. 12/30, 7:30p @ DiMenna Center for the Performing Arts 450 West 37th St, Manhattan - $20cash)
Binky Griptite was the guitarist, master of ceremonies and musical director of the late Sharon Jones’ great Dap-Kings (as well as a bedrock of the legendary Dap-Tone Records house band which rose to fame by helping Amy Winehouse make her most famous music). For the past few years the Binky Griptite Orchestra, a big band that plays swinging covers of blues, soul, R&B and related material, have been among the steadiest populist music moments in Bklyn, heavy with vibes and musicianship, especially at intimate spots like Lunatico. One kind of perfect New Year's Eve. (Sat 12/31, 9p @ Bar Lunatico 486 Halsey St., Bed-Stuy - $20)
Another kind of perfect New Year’s Eve: Starvue was an all-too-short-lived private Bushwick dance space in the mid-’10s. It had a great sound-system, played on by smarty-pants DJs, to people who danced their asses off - very “in the spirit of The Loft”! It was run by Cecily Pinkerton, who now DJs out as Starvue Vibes, with disco, funk and boogie as the dominant categories - and honestly, exactly what’s called for on a night like this. (Sat. 12/31, 10p @ Jupiter Disco 1237 Flushing Ave., BUshwick - Free before 11p/$20)
The Poetry Project’s annual New Year’s Day reading marathon (the 49th!) is very much a musical event. Not even metaphorically. The wordsmiths at this 10-hour star-studded event are regularly reading alongside some of the great players this city has to offer. At a glance on the schedule: Anne Waldman will be accompanied by James Brandon Lewis, Eileen Myles by Ryan Sawyer, No Land by Luke Stewart, and there’s an incredible quartet of Jeannine Otis, Ernie Brooks, Steve Shelley and Peter Zummo on the bill. There’s also all the words that inform the energy. (The schedule on both site and IG lays out the hour when people are playing.) (Sun 1/1, 2p-1a @ Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery 131 E 10th St, Manhattan - $25per 5hr block)
More pre-gentrification New York vibes returning to bless the city. Dope Jams was once a great Clinton Hill record store that threw incredible illicit parties inside, before being driven to upstate New York (to throw less illicit parties in big open fields). On occasion, Paul Nickerson brings the Dope Jams community DJs to grace the public records soundsystem. And while they share my feelings for partying on New Year’s Eve, they are more than willing to make wash you in superior classic house music on New Year’s Day. (Sun 1/1, 4p @ public records 233 Butler St., Gowanus - FREE w/RSVP before 6p/$20)
ART:
Chris Stein, the co-founder/guitarist/songwriter of Blondie, is one of my favorite “old-school rocker emptying his life’s archives” Instagram accounts. Absolutely no surprise that his treasure trove of black and white snapshots of other famous rock stars got a “gallery” show. Even if the gallery is the lobby of a mid-swank Tribeca hotel. Definitely cool to walk-through if you're in the neighborhood for other art. (through Jan 16th @ Roxy Hotel, 2 6th Ave., Manhattan - FREE)