Upper WET Side
You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys
2/9: Your Weekend Forecast on the 7′s
February 9, 2012
The Glamour Girls canvases of Holly Suzanne Rader — exemplified here by a detail from DICK & CANDY — are on display during a reception for GLAMit, this Saturday evening at Glen Goldbaum’s two neighboring Bridge Avenue salons.
His parties, alive with art and music and anybody-who’s-anybody people, are precisely the sort of under-the-radar events that you’d spend all night seeking out if you were looking for that elusive “something completely different” — the kind of happenings that should by all rights be too-cool and impossibly exclusive, were it not for the fact that they’re fully free of charge and open to friends old and new.
Last we looked in on Glen Goldbaum, the superstar Manhattan stylist turned catalyst for a creative new vision on Red Bank’s west side was hosting an event branded as Bewitched, a “magical evening of fantasy, hair, art and more” that transformed his two neighboring Bridge Avenue hair/ eye/ makeups (Glen Goldbaum 72 and Lambs & Wolves Den of Beauty) into an environment populated by winged fantasy characters, live mannequins and guest conceptualizers from Asbury Park’s Cookman Avenue “Arts Bloc.”
This Saturday, Feb the 11, the “Left Bank” block opposite the NJ Transit station stop will be the scene for GLAMit, a solo art installation (keyed to New York Fashion Week 2012) that celebrates “old Hollywood glam with a modern feminine edge” through the paintings and three-dimensional work of Holly Suzanne Rader. The Tennessee-bred artist will be on hand for a reception that spotlights her unique miniature paper dresses (composed of paper mache, vintage book pages, clip art and assorted items) as well as her Glamour Girls paintings — a series of homages to “retro bombshells, lusty pin-ups and the timeless Hollywood divine” that are “candy coated” with the artist’s engagingly repurposed found objects.
“I feel that the dress is more than a garment…it tells a story,” says Rader of her magnificent minis. “This collection is inspired by nature, poetry, fairytales, historical heroines, daydreams and other romantic notions.”
The Saturday reception, too groovy to be contained within a single storefront space, runs from 7 to 10 pm — with Rader’s art remaining on display through February and March — and we get off on telling you where else to go this weekend, beginning with a Friday fricasee that lies right around the clickable corner.
1/12: Lighting Up January’s Lulldrums
January 12, 2012
Light of Day luminary Bob Benjamin — pictured with beaming Boss at a way-long ago benefit show at Starland Ballroom — is the subject of JUST AROUND THE CORNER, the doc feature that screens at Asbury’s Showroom this Thursday through Sunday (and goes on sale at select events in the extended LOD weekend).
“Michael J. Fox has no Elvis in him.”
That was punk folkie Mojo Nixon in his 1987 hit “Elvis is everywhere,” citing the clean-cut young star of TV’s Family Ties as “the evil opposite of Elvis, the Anti-Elvis” — even though Fox as Marty McFly had technically already invented rock and roll in the first Back to the Future movie.
Michael J. Fox had also by that time starred (with Joan Jett!) in the film Light of Day, a story about an un-Partridgelike musical family with a title song penned by Bruce Springsteen. That film has gone on to lend its name to an annual series of benefit concerts dedicated to Parkinson’s Disease research, while Fox — who of course since that time has become one of the most publicly profiled victims of the disease, in addition to the most dynamic advocate for its cure — joined Jakob Dylan, Southside Johnny, Lucinda Williams, Gary US Bonds, Goo Goo Doll John Rzeznik, Live-wire Ed Kowalczyk, Smithereen Pat DiNizio, basso Soprano Vincent Pastore and Th’ Boss in the parade of performers who’ve stepped on stage in support of the Light of Day Foundation.
Somewhere, Mojo Nixon is sorry; as sorry as he is for inferring that Debbie Gibson was pregnant with his two-headed love child.
If anybody paces Michael J. Fox in the drive toward a Parkinson’s cure, it’s NJ music promoter, artist manager (and fellow Parkinson’s patient) Bob Benjamin, who teamed with Tony Pallagrosi of Concerts East to assemble the first Light of Day event in 2000 — itself a more organized version of a loose jam session birthday party/ fundraiser for Benjamin at Red Bank’s Downtown Cafe in 1998.
And, if anyone can lay claim to representing the public face of the concerts, it would hands-down have to be Joe Grushecky, the original Iron City Houserocker (and honorary Shoreguy) whose friendship and intermittent professional partnership with Springsteen has been the real deal for a generation. The Pittsburgh-based client of Benjamin’s hasn’t missed a Light of Day benefit in Jersey since its inception — and as the 12th annual edition of LOD returns to Asbury Park beginning today, January 12, it’ll take the form of an ever-expanding, de facto festival that encompasses some 20 separate events over 95 hours, ten varied venues, one big sold-out flagship fundraiser, a country ramble, a Boardwalk Crawl trifecta, a morning-after brunch, a kiddie koncert, and, right TONIGHT, a way-out Rock ‘N Bowl-a-Thon that promises the participation of everyone from WCW champ Diamond Dallas Page to political scandal celeb Ashley Dupre.
12/29: Bouncing Bundles of Joy in AP
December 29, 2011
Bouncing Souls drummer/ punk rock father Mike McDermott is joined by rocker daddy-o (and child development specialist) Jon Caspi for a discussion on the doc feature THE OTHER F WORD, screening tonight at The Showroom.
When the stalwart skwadron that is The Bouncing Souls continues its annual Home for the Holidays stand in the numbing no-man’s-land between Christmas and New Year’s, pretty much all manner of punkrock pedigree will be amply represented on the stage and the Stoney floor.
Everybody who is anybody, in other words, with the exception of two distinct type of somebodies: freeloading freelance journalists who acted too late to score press comps — and those willing but woefully left-behind souls who couldn’t score a babysitter.
Like Restless Leg Syndrome and Static Cling, the notion of Punk Rock Parenthood didn’t used to be an issue. In fact, it was more like an oxymoron or a brain-scrambling paradox; a theoretical improbability suggesting that the adherents of a resolutely anti-authoritarian lifestyle would themselves morph inexorably into authority figures.
Charging into the arena of public discourse (and glomming onto the residual glow from this week’s HFTH excitement), the folks at Asbury Park’s artsbloc screenspace The ShowRoom are taking this pulse-pounding problem head-on, with several screenings of the buzzed-about doc feature The Other F Word — including a special event this afternoon that pairs an internationally respected authority on family dynamics (who also happens to be a punk-powered singer and songwriter) with a charter member of the Bouncing Souls (who also happens to be the father of a bouncing bundle o’ joy).
A Case of Indies Exposure in AP
September 23, 2011
Peter Kinoy, Paco De Onis and Pamela Yates — editor, producer and director of the game-changing doc feature RANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR — are the special guests during an in-person appearance at The Showroom on Saturday night, part of the AP IndieFest 2011.
Don’t look now (actually, do look, now), but maybe for the first time since the glorydays of the old cinema palaces, Asbury Park has become a movie town — and for that you can thank Asbury’s nifty neighborhood nickelodeon, The ShowRoom and its filmophilically forward-thinking founders, Nancy Sabino and Mike Sodano.
In the works as we speak is something of a minor explosion of proposed art auditoriums and screening spaces, both all-new constructions and adaptations of existing properties. Nancy and Mike are, as you’d expect, already on the case — with a relocation and expansion (detailed here in a previously published pixelated page of upperWETside) that will beat the rest of the pack to the Punch by months, maybe years.
And, when the sidewalks in and around the Cookman Avenue corridor eventually become choked with Oscar hopefuls, work-for-scale H’wood heavyweights, Weinstein brothers and other migrating songbirds usually spotted at Sundance and other firmly established filmfests? The Sabino/ Sodano tagteam will still have gotten there first, via a feisty startup called the AP IndieFest 2011.
A three-day slate of screenings and ancillary events offered under the subheading “Films That Change You For Good,” the second AP IndieFest combines the eclectic multi-platform programming of “just another weekend at The Showroom” with in-person filmmaker discussions, live performances, a rare revival of a neglected mainstream hit from the 1970s, and the return of the homegrown phenomenon known as The AP in 3 Film Challenge.
Kicking off this Friday, September 23 and continuing through September 25, the whole thing is presented in tandem with the Asbury Park Film Initiative and with the Arts Coalition of Asbury Park — a couple of locally based nonprofit entities that are equally passionate about the projected image and its presence here in the region’s flagship zip for all things artful. Also playing a high-profile role in the proceedings are Yoga Basin (who will be tying into their own Yoga Fest events going on this selfsame weekend), plus Dana Reeves and the word-powered whirligig that is Adult Relaxation. More on IndieFest and all who sail with it, in three…two…one…
Thirst-E Thespians, Black Box Beats
August 1, 2011 — 2 Comments
Anthony Younes, Samantha Ambler, Jason Propst, Rudy Palma and Tammy Owens stand ready to quench your desire for something a bit more refreshingly tart in summertime theater, as Thirst-E Productions stages Nicky Silver’s THE MAIDEN’S PRAYER at The ShowRoom in Asbury Park.
Seems as if we’ve been posting a lot of stories lately about The Theater here on the Upper WET Side, and while we don’t deny it — it is, after all, our longtime beat and supposed specialty over at what’s lately been rebranded NJ Press Media — we could tell you in our defense that there’s been some intriguing stuff going on, well beyond the usual Nunsense.
So if we’re guilty of outright neglecting an event like last weekend’s VTAF — a press pass would’ve fixed that in a little old souped-up jiffy — we’ve also been working overtime, burning the midnight oil up in our crumbly Victorian garret, to reinforce the fact that there’s more going on ‘neath the summer-stage sun and stars than Grease and The Music Man (not that there’s anything wrong with a top-shelf treatment of a well-turned warhorse; witness our latest post about what’s up down at the Surflight). In recent days we’ve hepped you as to ReVision Theatre‘s Carousel gambit with Spring Awakening; alerted you to the latest endeavors of Cabaret for Life, and kept you in-the-loop and loopy over the ongoing mission of NJ Rep.
With the dogday doldrums of August keeping many of the more “serious” regional stages dark as downtown LB, a couple of small and highly mobile Asbury-based entities have re-emerged to stake their slice of late-season, magic-hour light — one a relatively new enterprise made up of actors who are thirsting for something a bit different; the other an illuminating discovery within the wreckage of a proudly pedigreed guerrilla arts group.
Helen On Wheels, in a Summer of Music
July 27, 2011 — 1 Comment
Do Teens Change Music? For that matter, Why Do Fools Fall in Love? WHERE MUSIC LIVES author Helen Pike seeks the answers, and she’ll be invoking the spirit of juvie chart-topper (turned junkie rock-bottomer) Frankie Lymon to find out.
It is well nigh impossible to keep up with Helen-Chantal Pike.
We mean that in the sense that it’s always difficult to stay current with the collected works of the prolific local historian, author, raconteuse and rocky-ological digger of diverse sounds. We also mean that if you have a notion of, say, joining her in a drink and a bit of catch-up conversation, well, you have to keep up to catch up. Like, literally chase after her as she fireballs forward to your appointed destination, with or without you.
The editor of the recently published anthology of essays known as Asbury Park: Where Music Lives has had a busy bunch of months, even by Helenic standards — with much of that activity centered around the city’s hosting of the Smithsonian’s touring New Harmonies exhibit and its attendant year-long slate of interrelated music-themed events.
That aforementioned anthology — a whirlwind carousel ride past some little-known corners of Asbury musical history; written in many instances by the very people who gave those scenes their soundtracks — was the “guest of honor” at a July 10 “Book Jam” event on the stage of Asbury Blues; an evening that featured such pieces of the Asbury musical mosaic as Sonny Kenn, Xol Azul Band frontman “Gee” Guillen, folk singer/ folklorist George Wirth, saxman Dorian Parreott (performing a piece written in Asbury for Fats Waller), gospel singer Tyron McAllister, opera/ cabaret vocalist Brett Colby, and Patsy Siciliano (performing an original song about the city penned by doo wop specialist Ray Dahrouge).
If you’ve reckoned that Pike’s peaked as regards the promotion of that book (her tenth in toto and her third on the city in particular), then reckon again: she’ll be on the scene for Sand Blast Weekend; signing copies of her Asbury-centric titles on Friday, July 22 between the hours of 4 to 7pm at the Asbury Galleria inside Convention Hall’s Grand Arcade. Then on Tuesday, July 26 she’ll be taking over the historic Stephen Crane House — yeah, the same hallowed haunt where the author of this blog makes his home these days — for the first of three “Music Memoir” events that culminate with an “Unplugged” words ‘n music birthday party on August 9.
Of course, absolutely none of this even begins to address the question “Do Teens Change Music?” — or precisely what any of it has to do with Frankie Lymon. That’s another story entirely, natch — about which more after the break.
ShowRoom 2: Bigger, Longer, Uncut
July 22, 2011 — 1 Comment
The ShowRoom proprietors Nancy Sabino and Mike Sodano are all smiles, with the announcement that their downtown Asbury screening space will be moving to even more spacious Arts Bloc digs in the next reel.
“Let’s meet 4:45 at DJ’s Deli on Mattison,” read the message from Mike Sodano, co-proprietor of downtown Asbury’s nifty neighborhood nickelodeon, The ShowRoom. “We have some evolutionary news for you!”
Well, say no more — that kind of tantalizing talk (plus the prospect of a sandwich) is more than enough to assure our showing up at the appointed time and place. The only question would appear to be the nature of this “evolutionary” announcement — an added matinee, perhaps? “Circus Man” Ice Cream now available at the concessions? An exclusive revival screening of the elusive Shore-shot masterpiece Thin Mints?
Even more exciting, as it turns out. After just a little more than two years at the present location on the Cookman Avenue “Arts Bloc” — an interlude in which Mike and partner Nancy Sabino hosted enough films, plays, lectures, panels, concerts, skits and signings to easily fill five years’ worth of calendar — The ShowRoom will be picking up and moving, right across the street, to a larger building all their own; a multi-screen facility that should demonstrate, once and for all, the harmonious co-existence of Evolution and Intelligent Design.
iPoet: It’s Losers Take All
June 6, 2011
Homer field advantage: National poetry slam finalist and LOSER SLAM co-curator NICOLE HOMER hosts a special workshop and performance poetry program during the final iPoet event of 2011 on June 11.
Every Thursday night, tucked away in a corner of the oldest, most venerated, crazy beautiful coffeehouse on the entire New Jersey Shore, a revolution comes equipped with rules of etiquette. In the city that gave the world Mailer, Parker and Poet Laureate Pinsky, the future sometimes speaks with a floorboard creak or an attic draft — and in this arena of competition, it’s the “Loser” that walks away victorious.
To put it another way, “we heart irony.”
A year-round institution that’s likely done more than anything to keep the Long Branch Lit-light lit in a fast-changing tech/ media/ communication landscape, the thing called LoserSlam has embedded itself into the quirky crannies of The Inkwell like a restless poltergeist — a poetrygeist, if you will. On the afternoon of Saturday, June 11, LoserSlam co-founder Nicole Homer invades the Long Branch Free Public Library with the full faith and fury of her performance poetry cooperative, as guest artist and host of the fourth and final iPoet event in 2011.
Rock Wilk Wants to Play With You
May 4, 2011 — 1 Comment
We knew him when: Performance poet, playwright, producer, musician and mad original Rock Wilk has BROKE WIDE OPEN on an international scale — and he’s coming to a major stage festival, legit theater, public library, street corner or living room near you.
Some of our Fa(r)cebook Frenz send us breathless dispatches concerning cups of coffee and sunrises viewed from the deck. Others link to some article we first saw on The Onion in 2003, and even we have not been immune to the cutely photoshopped cat pix. But when Rock WILK comes a-postin’, it goes something like this:
Rock WILK is… out of the box renegade, not part of the club, without invitation & so he is throw his own party intriguing, THINK it PLAN it DO it FEARLESS, he just wants to play with you, share with you. Watch him fly. High. He won’t stop. He’s all a that…
Who is this Rock Wilk anyway? We’d endeavor to peg him as a sought-after singer and vocal arranger (for Nile Rodgers and Patti Labelle among many others), a composer of soundtrack music, a “spoken word sensei,” a producer, a playwright, a performance poet…and we get the feeling we’d run out of push pins long before we got to “a puppet, a pirate, a pawn and a king.”
