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Spotlight: Night Lights Music Festival

Three weeks out from Night Lights Music Festival and the Mayor of Fun is day dreaming of jam bands and LED lights. The Mayor of Fun, a name given to him by a friend, is also known as Brian Enright and he is the founder and one of the main organizers of the music festival, which is now in its sixth year. “If you have a question that needs an answer that nobody else can answer, I’m the guy you talk to,” says Enright. And I do have some questions for him, mostly about the history of this unique festival which takes place on the Heron Festival Grounds in Sherman, New York.

Live at Larkin: Viva Elvis

[ROCK] The theme of the next Live at Larkin free concert is Viva Elvis and two local bands will stick to that theme like blue suede on shoes. Party Squad and Band Named Sue will both pay tribute to the King of Rock with back to back sets of Elvis cuts spanning his entire career. The concert takes place Wednesday, August 16, and since it’s Larkinville, expect a bunch of food trucks too.

Goo Goo Dolls

[ROCK] The Goo Goo Dolls have been on their Long Way Home tour since the beginning of July and they’ll finally make it back home to Western New York for a show at Darien Lake on Saturday, August 12. It’s far from their last date of the tour—named for the hit single from their latest record, 2016’s Boxes—they still have another month on the tour, so hopefully Buffalo will give them a big welcome home, however brief it will be.

Guns and Roses

[ROCK] As far as hard rock spectacles go, I guess nothing hits the nail on the head like Guns and Roses playing live in a football stadium. Axl Rose, Slash, and Duff McKagan, the three original core members of the band reunited in 2016 and have since embarked on a world tour, which will bring them to Orchard Park’s New Era Field on Wednesday, August 16 to play hits like “Welcome to the Jungle,” and “Sweet Child O Mine,” along with some power ballads and of course, endless blistering guitar solos.

Lewiston Art Festival

[FESTIVAL] The 2017 Lewiston Art Festival happens this weekend, Saturday, August 12 and Sunday, August 13, on Center Street in Lewiston. A whole bunch of artists will display more than 20,000 original pieces of art—from paintings to jewelry—at the 51st Lewiston Art Festival. Expect plenty of food and music too.

All Night Kanye Party

[KANYE] For some, any amount of Kanye is too much. For others, no amount of Kanye is enough. If you belong to the latter group then this is for you: an All Night Kanye Party. From College Dropout to the Life of Pablo, and probably far beyond, it’ll be five hours of Kanye, from 9pm to 2am at the Waiting Room this Saturday, August 12 with DJ WeJoe2.0.

Pyramid: AL.G and Cesario

[HOUSE] Pyramid returns to the Gypsy Parlor with a couple of Toronto house music DJs for this month’s event. Al G and Cesario from the Toronto party team After Dark bring some techno-tinged house grooves to town on Saturday, August 10 along with support from Ted Hawkins and Mitchell Jonathan. Music starts at 11:30 and goes late.

Drezo

[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] In a recent profile on the artist, LA Weekly called Drezo “the antithesis of EDM.” Which basically means that, though the artist has a keen ability to read a crowd, he’s still going to do his own thing. “Sometimes you are playing for a more mainstream crowd, but being different is great. You can still do that and be different,” he says. Listen to his track “Heaven” and you’ll understand what’s going on.

Slyfest 12

[FESTIVAL] For the first time in 12 years, Slyfest—the annual world music and percussion festival held by the Sly Boots School of Music—will feature a DJ as a headliner. But not just any DJ, but DJ Logic. If you know anything about DJ Logic, you’ll realize that this is a brilliant choice for a percussion based music festival. The turntablist from the Bronx has the uncanny ability to roll together rhythms seamlessly, creating massive grooves for the audience to get lost in.

Ought

[INDIE] How does a band stand out in the indie art rock scene? Genuine expression of emotion and feelings is probably the way. Montreal’s Ought seem to be able to convey all of the feels—anxiety, depression, mania—pretty effortlessly. The seeming effortlessness of a track like “Men For Miles,” the opening song on their latest record, 2015’s Sun Coming Down, is both enticing and kind of disturbing—because you know that to be able to capture restless, pacing anxiety so accurately, someone in the band must be suffering with it.

Silent/Sound: Variations on Napoleon

[FILM & MUSIC] In the 2017 edition of this annual event, an ad hoc quartet comprising some of Buffalo finest string players—Jonathan Golove, Evan Courtin, Leanne Darling, and Don Metz—will perform Beethoven’s Sinfonia Eroica to a live remix of films about Napoleon Bonaparte (to whom Beethoven dedicated the symphony) produced by filmmaker Brian Milbrand.

Robert Randolph and the Family Band

[ROCK] A soulful veteran of Buffalo’s outdoor concert series returns this Thursday, August 10 to Canalside in Robert Randolph and the Family Band. Randolph is something of a traditionalist and an originator in one giant package of sound. Raised in a cloistered religious home in New Jersey, Randolph didn’t know that secular music even existed until he became a teenager.

Silo City Reading Series: Maggie Smith

[LIT] Can a poem “go viral”? Last year, Maggie Smith’s simple 17-line gesture towards the uncertainty of humanity’s immediate future sure did. The poem, “Good Bones,” which walks through depressing truths the author tries to shield from her children in her effort to “sell them the world” was picked up by media far and wide and translated into almost a dozen languages. A dance troupe in India interpreted the poem in a performance and Ohio State University estimated that one million people had read the poem only months after it was published.

Langston Gardner: Computer Cow Cow Television

[ART] If you are a patron of the extraordinary art programs run by Autism Services, Inc., you have likely seen the work of Langston Gardner. This Friday, August 11, ASI and CEPA Gallery present Gardner’s first ever solo exhibition at Big Orbit Gallery. The show focuses on one of Gardner’s particular themes: words and phrases, often repeated and layered on top of one another, sometimes to the point of illegibility. Gardner’s words are presented on backdrops painted by f

Declan McKenna

[INDIE] At the age of 16, Declan McKenna wrote his hit “Brazil.” After the song went viral with millions of listens online, the now 18-year-old McKenna signed with Colombia records and released his debut album What Do You Think About the Car just last month. The young indie-pop singer/songwriter from Hertfordshire in the UK has recently played a string of festival dates and has garnered praise from critics as a quickly rising talent.

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