Monthly Archives: May 2013

Music Still Dangerous In China: Swat Teams Raid Live Music Venues In Shanghai Looking For Western Musicians!

metal_postcard_anim.2Special Report by Metal Postcards Rec‘s Sean Hockings

Here’s the story from our Metal Postcard correspondent on the ground in Shanghai. Obviously we can’t and won’t name the correspondent but it appears that the Shanghai authorities have decided that “western musicians” might be spreading subversive ideas or just encouraging people to listen to and do something a little different and this is the result. Luckily the Hong Kong music scene is so apathetic that there’s no worries here that the police will deal with them .. bands would only feel threatened if someone took their beer away !

If you’d like to investigate further and communicate directly with our person on the ground please email to  metalpostcard@mail.com and we will forward you to our correspondent. Here’s his story. Continue reading →

Film Documentary: THE GIRLS IN THE BAND – the history of the all-girl bands and the talented female jazz and big band instrumentalists who continue to struggle for recognition in a man’s world.

632Text by Local 802/J4JA

THE GIRLS IN THE BAND is a new film that tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, groundbreaking journeys from the late 1930s to the present day. 

Directed by Judy Chaikin
Genre: Documentary
Time: 81 minutes
Language: English
Country: USA

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Event Recommendation: The 10th Anniversary of The HOWL! Festival in the East Village (NY) from today through Sunday

8827309.49The ghost of Allen Ginsberg rises again when the HOWL! Festival returns to haunt the East Village. It starts tonight at 7pm with a benefit at the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge (101 Avenue A) for Emergency Life Project, which provides financial assistance and social services to artists who live in the East Village and L.E.S. Lydia Lunch (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks) hosts the bash, featuring performances by Warhol Superstar Bibbe Hansen, playwright, actor, and master storyteller Edgar Oliver, and others. Highlights of the fest (all happening in Tompkins Square Park) include the annual reading of HOWL! (Friday at 4:30), a performance by Riki Colon’s Men in Skirts (Saturday 5:30), and a tribute to the great ladies of the Lower East Side titled Bowery Bombshells (Sunday at 5:30).

About the festival

For more than a century, the East Village has been home to poets, jazz musicians, Vaudeville and Yiddish theatre, artists represented by blue chip galleries and those painting in the subways, rock stars, and performance artists. Building on this tradition and inspired by long time East Village resident Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, the HOWL! Festival was founded in 2003. The mission of HOWL! Festival is to honor, develop, create and produce. With an estimated 100,000 visitors last year, the many performances celebrate local cultural icons and lionize, preserve, and advance the art, history, culture, and counterculture unique to the East Village and Lower East Side.

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Concert Review: B.A.L.L. – Mr. Kramer and his buddies were back in town!!!

BALL-show-poster1Venue: Bowery Electric (NY) May 25, 2013
Date: May 25, 2013

Concert review and photo by John Pietaro

Gloomy skies and chilly rain moved in on this late-May evening, and the East Village was covered by that certain grayness it was once known for. If you squinted just enough, you could almost avoid the bistros and hipster joints that now line the Bowery in place of the dive-bars, restaurant supply houses and dusty bodegas that once were. Remember when there was an artful edginess to this town, downtown? While most of the creative community has been priced out of the chromium rentals that have sprung up everywhere that cool resides, thankfully there are still pockets of inspiration hidden between the Bowery Mission and the million-dollar views. Just a block north of where CBGB once stood, post-Punk NYC commanded the stage: B.A.L.L. reunited for the first time in 25 years. And at the crossroads of Bowery and Joey Ramone Place, no less.

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Music listings – 5/27 through 6/2/2013

1. Laubrock/Schoenbeck/Regev + Sinton/Laubrock

Date: Monday, May 27, 2013
Time: 8pm
Venue:  JACK ( 505 ½ Waverly Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238 Between Fulton – Atlantic in Clinton Hill, C or G train to Clinton-Washington)
Ticket: $15
Genre: jazz/improv

JACK’s monthly series of experimental improv, curated by Kevin Reilly.

Originally from Germany,  Ingrid Laubrock has been living in the UK since 1989 and is now residing in Brooklyn. She performed and recorded with: Anthony Braxton, Dave Douglas, Kenny Wheeler, Tim Berne, Mark Helias, Michael Formanek, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Evan Parker, Steve Beresford, John Edwards, Veryan Weston, Luc Ex, Django Bates’ Human Chain, Evan Parker, The Continuum Ensemble and others.

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