Friday, May 10, 2013
Weekender: This Weekend's Top Five Events
Fri, May 10, 2013 at 6:00 AM
It's the weekend! Go do things! What things, you say? These ones!
E@RLY: Rock N Roll “Flea Market”
For all the music nerds (like me) who frequent dark clubs, there's finally an event that'll boost those low vitamin D levels and provide a live music fix. Hosted by the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive as part of the popular L@TE night series, this daytime party, on Sunday, May 12, will gather music fans to swap vinyl and CDs and check out local bands. A record swap is exactly like it sounds: Choose a record and leave one behind. Tables will be set up to facilitate the swapping, plus the 'zine Maximum Rock'n'Roll, 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, and other organizations will be there with plenty of goodies. Brontez Purnell, former member of the now-defunct pop outfit Gravy Train!!!! and current ringleader of The Younger Lovers, has curated a lineup that includes Sixties jangle poppers Puce Moment; Straight Crimes, the latest punk project from former members of High Castle; metal band High Anxiety; and a DJ set from Ian Baldridge. Noon, $7 or free for BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff. BAMPFA.Berkeley.edu — Whitney Phaneuf
Room 237 and The Shining
Some movies are just meant to be watched together, and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic The Shining and the 2012 documentary Room 237 are perhaps as good of a double feature as you can bill. Kubrick left his film notoriously open to interpretation, and Room 237 received critical kudos for piecing together numerous theories about the 33-year-old horror flick — many from kooky film buffs connecting the film to real-life events like the Holocaust and the Apollo 11 moon mission. Watch the two films in tandem and decide for yourself on Friday, May 10, at The New Parkway. 7:30 p.m., $10. 510-658-7900 or TheNewParkway.com — Azeen Ghorayshi
Blind Boys of Mississippi
Unlike The Blind Boys of Alabama, who have garnered wide media attention and Grammy Awards since becoming favorites of the white roots-music crowd, the Blind Boys of Mississippi remain little-known outside the gospel music community. They've continued on much as they started in 1936 — traveling up and down the "gospel highway," serving up their "hard gospel" quartet-style harmonies to African-American church audiences. Awesome lead singers such as Archie Brownlee, Roscoe Robinson, Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax, and the late Oakland resident Tiny Powell have passed through group's ranks over the years. No original members remain, but sighted lead vocalist Sandy Foster has been carrying on the intense Mississippi Blind Boys' tradition now for more than forty years. They will make a rare Bay Area appearance at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church on Sunday, May 12. 4 p.m. $25, $30. ReidsRecords.com — Lee Hildebrand
- Roxie Prince
- The legendary Lil Bub
Oakland Internet Cat Video Festival
Of all the cultural artifacts that allow a glimpse into things hidden deep in the reaches of our human wiring, nothing quite compares to the distinctly 21st-century phenomenon of Internet cat videos. Join The Great Wall of Oakland on Saturday, May 11, as they screen #catvidfest, a 70-minute compilation of the best cat videos online made by Scott Stullen, project director for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In addition to the screening, there will be a stage featuring a full day of entertainment, including music from James & Evander's Adam Myatt (aka "The Cat Man of West Oakland") and a drag reenactment of a scene from CATS. Participating galleries, including Rock Paper Scissors Collective and Pro Arts, will be leading cat-related craft activities for kids, and the East Bay SPCA will be on hand with cats and kittens for adoption. As an added bonus, cat owners are encouraged to bring their feline friends. Cats, thanks to the Internet, have gone viral — and will probably stay that way. 3-10 p.m., $10 (all proceeds benefit the East Bay SPCA). OaklandCatVidFest.com — A.G.
"Supra Natural"
With Supra Natural, Kala Art Institute's Berkeley Central Arts Passage presents its most varied exhibition yet. Granted, it is only its second show. Nevertheless, it is not often that one finds a sort of exploded landscape painting, like the busy, collage-like acrylic pieces by Elizabeth Mooney, hanging alongside something like Sarah Fontaine's "My Failures to You, My Fellow Humans," which reads like a neurotic diary entry by a well-traveled and perhaps too-well read artist in the throes of ambivalence about her role as a "geophysical force," scrawled directly onto the gallery wall. In addition to these compellingly dissimilar pieces, one finds visually spare, mystic tableau-style prints depicting monumental candles and a man levitating into a ceiling cavity, by Bessma Khalaf, and exquisitely crafted cut paper pieces that present skeletal but complex scenes in their negative space, by Mayumi Hamanaka. It is not obvious how all of this unites beneath the theme of "Supra Natural," but that hardly matters. Supra Natural runs through May 10 at Berkeley Central Arts Passage 510-841-7000 or Kala.org — Alex Bigman
Plus...
Get your cheapskate on:
This is how much we love you guys: Here are our searchable listings of every single free event happening in the East Bay this weekend.
Feed Us: Got any East Bay news, events, video, or miscellany we should know about? Holler at us at Azeen.Ghorayshi@EastBayExpress.com.
