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Spotlight: Rufus Gibson's Ultimate Summer Playlist

This weekend, Buffalo house music producer and DJ Rufus Gibson will head over to Detroit to perform at Sampled 16, an official after party of Movement Festival, one of the biggest house and techno music festivals in the world. He’ll share the bill with a whole bunch of house music’s biggest names, including Andres, Rick Wilhite, and Chuck Daniels, the latter of whom he brought to Buffalo just last weekend as part of his monthly Rufus Gibson Presents party series at the Gypsy Parlor. But that’s just the beginning of this artist’s summer festival plans.

AHA! The Annual Hallwalls Auction

[FUNDRAISER] Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center has been providing aha! moments to this writer for going on 35 years. (The first, as a teenager, being the discovery of transvestite comediennes and They Might Be Giants; the latest being, as I write this, that “AHA!” is an acronym for “Annual Hallwalls Auction.”) For others, longer than that. Hallwalls marks its 43rd year in the contemporary art constellation with its annual fundraising auction on Thursday, May 31 at Asbury Hall in Babeville.

Victor Wainwright

[ROCK] Returning to the Tralf Music Hall after a successful club-debut there last fall, Victor Wainwright brings an unusual degree of showmanship to your average blues gig. The 2016 BB King Entertainer Of The Year’s knack for storytelling and his animated “piana” playing have earned him a devoted audience, whether performing solo or alongside his bands The Wildroots and The Train.

Randy Bachman

[ROCK] One of classic rock’s less-sung heroes, guitarist Randy Bachman hails from up in Winnipeg, where he eventually formed The Guess Who with a guy named Chad Allen. Allen left, and celebrated vocalist Burton Cummings joined the fold. Bachman co-wrote “These Eyes” and the lion’s share of the band’s material up until “American Woman,” in 1970. Oft-misunderstood, the song was actually meant as a metaphor for the US’s meddling in foreign affairs—a particularly relevant concern during the Vietnam War.

Post Malone

[HIP HOP] This month, Post Malone joined a club that includes some of the most iconic artists of all time, including the Beatles. That club is made up of artists who have who have had three simultaneous Billboard Top 10 hits at once—Malone with “Psycho,” “Better Now” and “Rockstar” from his latest record Beerbongs & Bentleys He’s also broken a record held by The Beatles and J Cole for number of songs on the charts at once, with nine. What it all means is that Post Malone, the Syracuse, New York-born rapper is a force to be reckoned with after just two records.

Buffalo Pride Week Kick Off

[GAY PRIDE] Buffalo Pride Week kicks off on Tuesday, May 29 with the annual Flag Raising ceremony, hosted by Stonewall Democrats of Western New York and the Pride Center of Western New York. The ceremony will take place at noon at Niagara Square where Mayor Byron Brown and city officials will raise the pride flag.

Scarlet Begonias

[TRIBUTE] Buffalo has no shortage of Grateful Dead cover bands, but not all of them are as good as Scarlet Begonias, one of the newest band to join the fray. They’ll tackle the Dead’s extensive catalog, while adding in their own improvisational twists, this Friday, May 25 at Duke’s Bohemian Grove Bar.

Let's Get Lifted!

[DISCO] Of the very few things I’ve learned in my life, here’s something I’m certain of: nobody will care if you don’t show up to work on the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend. If your boss is even at work, he or she will be half in the bag anyways, or doing nothing but planning on how soon and by what means they’ll be half in the bag in the near future. So, maybe you’re not going to work on Friday. If that’s the case, then boy, do we have something fun for you to do on Thursday night.

The Decemberists

[ROCK] What better way to indicate that your band is changing direction than to bring in a synthesizer? The Decemberists went on hiatus in 2011 but returned in 2015 with a new record. That record, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, hinted at a change in direction for the band, but in the end delivered a pretty quintessentially Decemberists record, which is what fans kind of want in a record that marks the return from a hiatus.

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