Dec 1 & 2 | 11:00 AM to 5:00PM This weekend, the annual Indie & Small Press Fair will return to General Society Landmark Building at 20 West 44th Street. Different panels will address a variety of interests, including tips for those seeking a literary career (finding the right literary agent, understanding self-publishing), readings from authors published by independent publishers (Indie Press Author Read-A-Thon: Notable Indie Authors Read Their Work), even a literary trivia smackdown between A Public Space and the New York Review of Books, and a discussion of independent culture itself. If last year was any indication, the space gets filled with an overwhelming number of tables making offerings at discounted prices, and for the panels that have caught your attention, you need to get there ahead of time, especially if it takes place later in the day.
When the Roman consul Lucus Anitius gave orders
For the legions to march into the Illyrian heartland
He had not only a chronicler on his war council
But also a double of King Gentius,
Dressed just like him, with painted eye-brows
Most certainly with a false sceptre,
And with a sentence learnt by heart:
“I am Gentius, King of the Illyrians!”
There’s an intoxicating brand of punk that originates from the depth of folk, and that has so far been of brilliance specific to Slavic boisterousness. New York’s immigrant phenomenon Gogol Bordello isn’t quite the prime model of this, but to the band’s biggest advantage is the history that runs through the blood of its core. With chaotic globalization in full swing, one culture’s aged tradition is now a crazed discovery in some other, and everyone can be sure that New York will get at least a sip of it all. My Eastern European friends are outraged that their punks should now be models for “hipsters”, but we might as well ready for the world that will quickly run out of secrets. To our horror, something fantastically new will have to develop rapidly to pacify our ever-increasing curiosity, but to our relief, with every generation there is a change of context, and the old finds a place amongst the new. In Gogol Bordello’s unintelligible punk, the gypsy has found something new, and vice versa.
The premiere of “The BQE” at BAM’s gorgeous Howard Gilman Opera House was unlike any other Sufjan show. The audience may have offered as many heads with gray hair as those with elaborate hairdos. Before starting the last number in the “Sufjan Stevens Plays the Hits” part of the program, the singer said they’d been treated like royals during the making of “The BQE”, and hoped we’d had our money’s worth. By then I had decided that at times, performance and music can be two different things, and though I could already barely remember the particulars of “The BQE”, it had delivered the warm and fuzzy feeling with which I had hoped to renew my concert-going habit.
