[HOLIDAY MARKET] Project 308 Gallery in North Tonawanda will host their 6th annual Holiday Truck Show on Saturday, December 2. The show will feature 20 or so artists, crafts-people, and sellers of all kinds. Find interesting gift ideas such as Beer Belly Jellies—jams and jellies made from beer by proprietor Sarah Francis, as well as a variety of art and wares.
[COMEDY] Author and radio show host Garrison Keillor will come to Babeville’s Asbury Hall for a live show this Sunday, December 3. The 75-year-old comedian and storyteller is best known for his radio show A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. The variety show featured folk and country music, storytelling monologues, and fictional sponsors such as Bebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie. Frequent guests on A Prairie Home Companion, folk duo Robin and Linda Williams open the show.
[INDIE] Indie rock band Fast Romantics got a huge bump when NPR featured their song “Julia” on their Heavy Rotation playlist. “Julia” is the type of song that you find yourself singing along to by the end of the first chorus. It’s familiar, though it would be unfair to call it formulaic. It’s got all the makings of an indie rock hit along the lines of Feist or St.
[COMEDY] Getting dissed by Debbie Harry is a high impact experience, especially for a gay dude. Thirteen years ago, I experienced it over the phone, and it was rough. So, I can only imagine how comic actor Peter Michael Marino felt when the iconic bottle-blonde put the kibosh on future productions of his musical – a stage adaption of the film Desperately Seeking Susan that used Blondie songs instead of the original movie soundtrack featuring that other fake blonde.
[INDIE] Ithaca-based rock band Izzy True makes a visit to Buffalo for a show at Sugar City on Friday, December 1. The band, Angela Devivo, Izzy Reidy, and Kyra Skye, signed to the indie punk label Don Giovanni Records, on which they released their album, Nope, in 2016. The 11-track record moves through mostly low-key indie rock that alternates thematically between light and dark, uplifting to moody.
[INDIE] Buffalo-based indie rock band Deadwolf will release their latest album, Heavy Heart, at a show at Mohawk Place on Friday, December 1. The five-piece band, Tyler Mendola, Cody Morse, Mike Wallak, Ken Schockley, and Andy Pothier, recently released the album’s title track, a psychedelic rock track that draws inspiration from the Beatles, 13th Floor Elevators, and other psych-pop bands from the late 1960s. They’ll be joined by comrades in psychedelic rock, Handsome Jack and Witty Tarbox.
[JAM] Four-piece jam-funk band, Formula 5 returns to Buffalo for a show at Nietzsche’s on Friday, December 1. The band’s latest album, All Points North, is an jammy rock album with a cosmic side. Since releasing that album earlier in 2017, the Albany-based band has posted several recordings of their high energy live sets on their website. They’ll be joined by Buffalo-based soul-funk band Blue Rootz and blues rock band Vinyl Orange Ottoman.
[ROCK] Boston’s The Sheila Divine has sustained a choppy career thanks to a fan base that won’t let them fade into obscurity – and Buffalo is one city that thinks of them fondly. Emanating an authentic post-punk aesthetic in the late 1990’s earned them a local Boston audience, although the trio had originally met while all attending SUNY Oswego. The band’s debut EP was released on the revered CherryDisc label, known for working with Letters to Cleo, Tracy Bonham and Semisonic. In 1999, they won the WBCN Rock & Roll Rumble – a big deal in Beantown.
[ROCK] The Marshall Tucker Band takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’—you’ll pardon the corny cliché because it’s true. Formed in South Carolina in 1972, the band’s core consisted of guys that’d come home from Vietnam-era military stints. As the decade progressed, MTB, coined after a blind piano tuner whose name was carved into the key to their rehearsal space, helped define the so-called “southern rock” genre also attributed to the Allman Brothers.
[BLUES] Most blues players let the music speak for itself, but Victor Wainwright is an unusual showman. Whether touring solo or alongside his bands The Wildroots and The Train, Wainwright’s soulful piano – “piana” – playing and knack for storytelling have earned him a devoted audience, not to mention numerous awards, 2017 BMA Winner Piano Player of the Year, 2016 BMA Band of the Year and BB King Entertainer Of The Year among them. Though he hasn’t released any new recorded music since 2015’s Boom Town on Blind Pig, his touring schedule is relentless.
While we marvel at how much the “real” Stone Temple Pilots sound like themselves with recently announced new front man Jeff Gutt and his awesome debut single with the band, “Meadow,” local fans can get their STP fix with Tiny Music at the Tralf Music Hall on Friday, December 1. Expect a set of the most well known material for the Buffalo quintet’s Sights and Sounds of Stone Temple Pilots show.
[NEW WAVE] On this side of the Atlantic, Gary Numan is oft thought of as a one-hit-wonder with his Top 10 1979 hit “Cars,” (which reached #1 in Canada and in the U.K.). But elsewhere, folks know he’s much more than that—an influential synth pioneer and daring composer with post-punk roots. Overseas, Numan’s success began with his band, Tubeway Army, which released a pair of albums prior to his going solo with The Pleasure Principle, and continued into the mid-1980’s when he began experimenting with jazz textures.
[DUBSTEP] Over-the-top, garish, and bombastic, Israeli dubstep producer Borgore, as a musician, is like a college freshmen with an unlimited budget. His songs feature dubstep remixes of playground melodies, with videos that feature montages of twerking asses, spaceships, and alien boners. Other tracks, like his 2012 hit “Decisions” feature Miley Cyrus sung choruses about cake and threesomes. Apparently he knows a lot about what “bitches love.” His videos get millions of views online and his shows, which are larger-than-life EDM spectacles sell out across the world.
Getting dissed by Debbie Harry is a high impact experience, especially for a gay dude. Thirteen years ago, I experienced it over the phone, and it was rough. So, I can only imagine how comic actor Peter Michael Marino felt when the iconic bottle-blonde put the kibosh on future productions of his musical – a stage adaption of the film Desperately Seeking Susan that used Blondie songs instead of the original movie soundtrack featuring that other fake blonde.
[HOLIDAY MARKET] There’s an easy way and a hard way to shop for the holidays. We all know the hard way: waiting until the last minute and rushing around at the height of holiday traffic to 10 different stores to find the right gift for everyone, and hoping your money isn’t going to some soul sucking mega-corporation that pays their employees $4 a week to produce the thing you just bought that might last until next Christmas with any luck. Then there’s the easy way: making a stop at the Queen City Market and picking out gifts from their huge variety of local artists.
THE PUBLIC’s OWN DEEDEE CLOHESSY has designed some wrapping paper for you. Use it in good health.