Richard's Blog

Late this afternoon we left Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg, taking the very reliable weekend G train to Clinton Hill for the opening reception of POSITIVITY, a collective photography exhibition curated by Jamel Shabazz at Danny Simmons' Corridor Gallery.

A few years ago, the gallery opened in the buff-colored Grand Avenue brick carriage house of owner Danny Simmons, the ubiquitous abstract-expressionist painter, Def Poetry Jam producer, art collector, author, and philanthropist.

(His little brothers are no slouches, either: world-famous hip-hop impressario Russell Simmons and rapper Joseph - "Rev Run" of Run DMC - Simmons.)
(Alessandro Simonetti, Five Boros)

The POSITIVITY exhibition, which is on view till July 26, is curated by documentary photographer Jamel Shabazz, a Brooklyn native who first picked up a camera at 15 and now is widely known for his pioneering documentation of New York's street culture. In the PR stuff for this, Jamel explains:

Art and photography are universal languages that transcends race, color, and creed. POSITIVITY is...created for the purpose of bringing young photographers together from diverse backgrounds and cultures. This project allows them to share their interpretation of POSITIVITY, something we so urgently need... Historically, art has been used to address social activism and bring about awareness.

There was a sizable crowd on the street in front of the gallery, and it was pretty much an overflow crowd all the time we were there. When Jamel cried out, "Show time!" and we all gathered into the main gallery space, it was kind of hot, but we were all glad to stick it out to give him, Danny and the photographers props for a really resonant collection of work.
(Atif Ateeq)

Jamel had the artists stand up in front of the crowd, introduce them, and also introduced Danny -- who seemed shy about coming up and who Jamel referred to as one of his mentors, inspiring him to become a mentor too. (Last year in Toronto, Jamel founded Project Positivity, a community based project designed to teach documentary photography to what we Brooklyn natives call ute.

Among those photographers in attendance were Sara Shamsavari, who came all the way from her home in London for the opening, and Che Kothari, who took the exhibition's fantastic signature photograph, Telling the Children the Truth - Ziggy Marley, top. Most of the artists are emerging or midlevel, with some exhibiting their works for the very first time.
(Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Trifecta)

For the past couple of years, we've been teaching photography students on Wednesday morning at the fabulous School of Visual Arts, so we feel well-qualified to review a photography exhibit. Um, actually, we teach Literature and Writing I and II, so we'd be on firmer ground evaluating the artists' critical essays on Candide and Beowulf...

So we'll just say we were really impressed with all of the works shown and we'll single out just a few of the great photographers with some selections of their work posted here (ones we could find online; other standouts include Nsenga Knight's "As the Veil Turns" series about black Islamic women, Natasha Daniels' photos of Indian Dalits, Kalalea's wedding photographs and Corren Conway's "We Are Sean Bell") to avoid a really long-ass blog post.

You've got to see POSITIVITY for yourself, and we plan to come back. It's an upbeat exhibit and of course it really did help us get through the rest of the day.
(Akintola Hanif)

Por ejemplo, we made it to the Classon Avenue subway station when the huge thuderstorm was just starting, before any rain had fallen, and thinking positively, we knew our reliable weekend G train would take almost an hour to come and take us the five stops back to Williamsburg so that by the time we emerged from underground, inshallah, the downpour would be over and the sun would be shining again.

Positivity works! Isn't life wonderful!

After an early lunch today, we walked over to the After The Jump Festival, which all day was featuring -- for free -- about ten zillion bands out on the closed-off North 6th Street between Wythe & The Edge, uh, we mean Kent Avenue. Two stages were set up in Galapagos (Williamsburg will miss it, we who've performed there will miss it, but the Dumbo space is incredible), one stage in the Music Hall of Williamsburg (some of the climactic scenes in the title story of our And To Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street, versions of which appear here and here, take place at a punk show at Northsix, the Music Hall's former incarnation), and one stage out in the street.

Although we know about as much about indie bands as we do about opera or any other genre of music (notwithstanding our old story from the 2000 collection The Silicon Valley Diet, "Boys Club," about the queercore scene), we went from one venue to another, seeing some incredibly good bands. Among them:

Outside, we first saw papercranes, a band from Gainesville whose vocalist, Rain Phoenix, was a little girl when we last saw her at some alt-music event during our years as a UF law student and staff attorney in Hogtown. The band plays some really sweet, subdued, sophisticated pop-rock. They're now in New York a lot and you should try to catch their nuanced, translucent sound.

Alex and the Horribles, a quintet of Rutherford, NJ, high schoolers whose influences range from The Pixies and Nirvana to Weezer and The Ramones, played early at the Music Hall to a sparse crowd. They deserved a bigger audience, as we were very impressed with "Eskimo Girl" and some of their other songs. Alex, the vocalist, is poised and earnest without being pretentious, and the others know what they're doing. At home, we listened to the CD they gave us and we didn't have second thoughts.

Performing on the street stage, Lissy Trullie was truly outstanding. Lead vocalist Lissy Trullie, with her celebrated boyish and pixieish swagger, and stunning bassist Harley Viera-Newton ("Marry me, Harley!" and "I love you!" were cries from people standing near me) aren't just pretty faces. The band backs up any hype with jewels like "Self-Taught Learner," and the drummer, Josh, is one of the best we've seen lately. Next to us a toddler in diapers was dancing with his toy truck. We were really sorry when their set ended and hope to see them again.

At Galapagos' main room, we liked what we saw of The Bloodsugars, a sweet but not too sweet Brooklyn synth-pop/garage-rock band that plays stuff that's both intelligent and danceable, bouncy and soulful. We liked their "Breakfast on the BQE" an awful lot: Jason Rabinowitz's Costelloesque vocals are flawless, eerie and haunting. We came in somewhat late on their set and would have liked to hear it all.

Dinowalrus, another smart local Brooklyn band, performed at the Music Hall, and they showed off an incredible range in their instrumentation. A drum-and-drone trio that wickedly employs self-sustaining electronic devices like the optical theremin and G-d knows what else they have up there to expand their sound, Dinowalrus' improvisational-sounding riffs kept us curious waiting for what was coming next.

After the Jump is the joint effort of 20 New York City music bloggers whose sites attract over one million readers a week. Founded last year in support of underfunded city school music programs, After the Jump has planned and staged concerts in association with the massive South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin and the CMJ Music Marathon here in New York City as well as the all day and night festival last summer in Brooklyn. Today's events are a terrific reprise of that event.

Those of us born in the Truman administration got the benefit of a superb public-school music education (Miss Ferrara at P.S. 203, Mrs. Sanders at J.H.S. 285, and a Midwood High School teacher who told us about this kid Bob Dylan) that's been decimated in recent years. You can support music education in city schools by checking out After The Jump and going to this evening's benefit show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, starting at 7:30 p.m. and featuring Health, Titus Andronicus, Pattern is Movement, Mixel Pixel and lots more.

We had a great time this afternoon and are grateful for After The Jump. Isn't life wonderful!

We left Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg well after 7 p.m. last night and so were a little worried about getting to the Met's only summer concert in the park this year, with the magnificent Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. The Times had suggested the crowd might be over 100,000. But the G and F trains got us to Bartel Pritchard Square and the park entrance by 7:50 p.m. with a whole lot of other folks. Police were everywhere from the subway platform to every few feet in the park. As we got to the meadow, we could hear the bombastic voice of our friend Borough President Marty Markowitz, and we knew he'd speak long enough for us to find a place to put down our blanket before the music started.

Back in the 1970s, when we lived in our childhood home, we attended the summer Met performances at nearby Marine Park. Our friends the literary agent Linda Konner and the sculptor David Devrishian would arrive with a picnic basket filled with Zabar's goodies. It was in our old neighborhood that we learned about opera from Joe the barber on Avenue O and East 55th Street, where we got our Beatles haircuts and listened to Puccini, Verdi and Rossetti. We didn't find out opera was a gay thing till much later. Still, our knowledge of opera is pretty limited; we just know what we like.

Anyway, a friend estimated the crowd at 30,000, far from what was expected, though we don't know how he reckoned this. Still, lots of people there: kids running around, old people in wheelchairs, young couples and friends with munchies and wine, at least one guy selling marijuana, and a number of women who resembled Ruth Messinger. It was a beautiful night, and summer had just begun at 7:59 p.m. We could really see only on the two giant video screens but we could make out people onstage.

Conductor Ion Marin and the orchestra began the concert with the overture to Verdi's La Forza Del Destino, and then the married team of soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna came out and did their magic. We knew a couple of the pieces they sang, individually and together, but mostly they were unfamiliar to us barbarians. Yet they were all beautiful, especially for us Angela Gheorghiu's rendition of that desperate aria from Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Roberto Algana doing an aria from his brother David Alagna's Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné. The Met's Chorus sang that thing from Verdi's Il Trovatore that we know from the Marx Brothers movie. And in the encore we got "O Sole Mio" plus "It's Now Or Never"! And lots, lots more good music. The stars seemed to enjoy the evening, and each other, a great deal.

We and thousands of others left Prospect Park in a great mood. Isn't life wonderful!

Richard Grayson, Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Arizona's Fourth Congressional District, today asked all Americans to commemorate the achievements of the Bush administration by flushing their toilets at noon next January 20, when George W. Bush's second presidential term comes to an end.

"This is an appropriate way for our nation to salute the service of President Bush and the accomplishments of his administration," Grayson said in a press conference today in Central Phoenix. "It will help all Americans to release their pent-up feelings about everything our President has done in his eight years in office. I hope to be in Washington as a Republican Congressman to lead the nation in this tribute, but I ask everyone in Arizona to join us in our salute to a great American leader."

Mr. Grayson faces Don Karg in the September 2 AZ-04 GOP primary.