Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The New Yorker Festival - October 5,6,7 - some music-related sessions...

The annual New Yorker Festival returns the weekend of October 5, 6, 7 at venues throughout the city. "Schedule

Fiona Apple talks with Sasha Frere-Jones: A Conversation with Music
Girl with a torch.


Fiona Apple made her recording début in 1996, at the age of nineteen. The record, “Tidal,” went triple-platinum and included the song “Criminal,” for which she won a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She released her second album, “When the Pawn…,” in 1999. (The full title, a ninety-word poem, holds the world record for longest album title.) Her most recent album is “Extraordinary Machine.”

Sasha Frere-Jones became the pop-music critic for The New Yorker in 2004. He wrote about Fiona Apple for the magazine in 2005.
(Sat 10/6) 7:30 p.m. Brooklyn Lyceum ($35), 227 4th Avenue, Brooklyn

Rosanne Cash talks with Hendrik Hertzberg: A Conversation with Music
Another country.


Rosanne Cash was born in Memphis and began her music career as a backup singer for her father, Johnny Cash. She has produced fourteen albums and eleven chart-topping country singles, including “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me,” which won a Grammy Award in 1985. Her books include “Bodies of Water” and “Songs Without Rhyme: Prose by Celebrated Songwriters.” She is working on a memoir, which will be published next year.

Hendrik Hertzberg was a New Yorker Talk of the Town reporter from 1969 to 1977 before moving to Washington, where he served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter and then as editor of The New Republic. He returned to The New Yorker in 1992 as a senior editor and writer and is the principal contributor to the Comment section of the magazine. He is the author of “Politics: Observations & Arguments.”
(Sat 10/6) 7:30 p.m. Highline Ballroom ($35); 431 West 16th Street

Dick Dale, Billy Gibbons, Vernon Reid, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez talk with Nick Paumgarten: A Conversation with Music Guitar gods.

Dick Dale released “Surfer’s Choice,” the album that launched the California sound, in 1962; the album included “Misirlou,” which later became the title theme for the film “Pulp Fiction.” His next album was titled after his nickname, King of the Surf Guitar. He collaborated with the instrument developer Leo Fender to create Fender’s influential line of Showman amplifiers and is credited as the first guitarist to use reverberation. Four of his albums were recently rereleased on the Sundazed label.

Billy Gibbons is the guitarist for the rock trio ZZ Top, which he formed in 1969 with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard. His guitar, which he named Miss Pearly Gates, is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul. The group’s fourteen albums include “Afterburner,” “Recycler,” and the multi-platinum-selling “Eliminator,” which contains the hit songs “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” In 2004, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Vernon Reid was born in England and grew up in Brooklyn; he started playing the guitar when he was fifteen. In the mid-eighties, he founded the trio Living Colour, which won two Grammy Awards and has sold more than four million records. He released a solo album, “Mistaken Identity,” in 1996. His many collaborators have included DJ Logic, B. B. King, Mick Jagger, the Ramones, and Tracy Chapman.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez grew up in Puerto Rico and Texas, where he became a member of the post-hardcore band At the Drive-In. After the group split up, in 2001, he formed the Mars Volta, whose albums include “De-Loused in the Comatorium,” “Frances the Mute,” and “Amputechture.” He later moved to Amsterdam and toured with the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quintet. He released his second solo album, “Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo,” in May.

Nick Paumgarten has been writing for The New Yorker since 2000. He wrote about Billy Gibbons for the magazine in 2005. His most recent article, “The Tycoon,” a Profile of Mort Zuckerman, appeared in the July 23rd issue.
(Sat 10/6) 10 p.m. Highline Ballroom ($35)

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