Spotlight: Buffalo Sugar City Gallery Opening

Friday, January 9

Finally, the Sugar City kids have found a home of their own. After bouncing from one venue to another, this cabal of local artists and musicians and writers and filmmakers are settling in to 19 Wadsworth, just around the corner from Spirits of Allentown. Self-described as “an alternative community arts and cultural space to share and create art based on participatory culture and a do-it-together attitude,” Sugar City celebrates the new digs on Friday (Jan. 9) with a grand opening that includes art curated by Robin Carmen, performances by poet Russel Pascatore and artist Tom Van Deusen, music by the Failures’ Union and Nick Maynard, and the premiere of “Go No Go For Launch.” No alcohol is served at Sugar City, but a free after-party follows at Staples (253 Allen Street) with music by DJ Stonewall, Dan Carosa, and NY Sexy Beast.

7-10pm. Sugar City, 19 Wadsworth

(www.myspace.com/buffalosugarcity). Donations welcome.

Friday, January 9

Charlie Parr

Hailing from Duluth, Minnesota, and weaned on country and folk music as a child, Charlie Parr left high school after just one year to travel the country in the 1980s. This sort of life seemed to fit him well, as well as give him the inspiration for many of his songs. A purist in the same tradition of Doc Boggs and the Clash, Parr is sort of an enigma, playing a wild hybrid of both original and traditional folk and blues. Accompanying himself solely on National resonator guitar, acoustic, and fretless banjo, Charlie Parr personifies the darkness of that “Old Weird America” referred to in Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk. Parr’s music spans the traditional rural music of the 20th Century and, like few others, he sounds sincere and convinicing. He performs a special early show on Friday (Jan. 9,) starting at 7pm. Also performing are Sonny Baker and Mallory Mordaunt. Parr’s show will be over by 10pm, followed by Tearwave with Pollock and Empty Bottles.

—tracy morrow

7pm. Mohawk Place, 47 East Mohawk St (855-3931 / www.mohawkplace.com). $6

Friday, January 9

Casperous Vine

Paul Christopher Kozlowski began Casperous Vine in 2001, after the splitting of Parade of the Lifeless, an experimental jazz-grindcore outfit. Starting as a solo project, Casperous Vine has grown into an acoustic chamber quartet rounded out by David Adamczyk (violin), Natalie Bennett (violin), and Kathleen Ashwil (cello). Kozlowski, who will play bayan, accordian, and guitar for the show on Friday (Jan. 9), is a composer as well as a performer. Though not formally trained in the traditional sense, he’s found experience and inspiration for his music from his many travels, citing the time he spent in Eastern Europe as his biggest influence. Certainly, touches of gypsy and klezmer music can be heard, but also classical, Spanish, electronic, and more, lending a mysterious, dreamlike aspect to the compositions. Should be an intimate evening; unorthodox, genre-blending, and avant-garde.

8pm. Hallwalls, 341 Delaware Ave. (854-1694 / www.hallwalls.org). $8 general admission, $6 members/students/seniors

Saturday, January 10

City & Colour

The name Dallas Green, notable frontman for the popular post-hardcore Canadian band Alexisonfire, has a pretty catchy ring to it, even if you don’t think first of the famous Phillies’ pitcher he is named after. For whatever reason though, he didn’t want to release his solo work under his own name, so he simpified the moniker to a less specific version of his real one. (Get it? Dallas=City, Green=Colour.) The emo/pop band fame he achieved with Alexisonfire no doubt goes to the popularity of this side project (This show is sold out, after all), but City and Colour is arguably even better (i.e. more listenable) than the band from whence it came. Certainly, it’s better than many another frontman’s solo/side project. Accompanying Green on this tour—in addition to whichever varying guest musicians attend him—is Iowa-based acoustic blues musician William Elliot Whitmore, who straddles the alt-country hardcore-punk communities with true American style.

7pm. Town Ballroom, 681 Main St. 681 Main St. (852-3900 / www.townballroom.com). SOLD OUT

Saturday, January 10

Alasanne Sarr’s “The mix”

Alasanne Sarr, an Allentown fixture who has played with the Africo Quartet and the John Bertini Band, will perform at Nietzsche’s this Saturday (Jan. 10). Sarr spent the first 21 years of his life in Dakar, learning the music, dance, and history of his Senegalese culture. In 1991 he came to the United States after being invited to perform as part of the Silimbo Dance Company of Dakar. After visiting the U.S., Sarr decided to return, traveling the country teaching Senegalese culture. Sarr has assembled a large group of musicians to play beside him Saturday night (i.e. “The Mix.”) The exciting, drum driven brand of music will have the dance floor full, and the many musicians that will accompany Sarr will surely produce a big, exotic, and distinct sound.

—justin sondel

10pm. Nietzsche’s, 248 Allen St. (886-8539 / www.nietzsches.com). $5

Monday, January 12

Franz Nicolay

Aside from his infamous moustache, Franz Nicolay is currently best known for his piano playing in the Hold Steady. A multi-instrumentalist who has taken turns at various projects throughout his career, including the World/Inferno Friendship Society and the gyspy kelzmer troupe Guignol, Nicolay also founded Anti-Social Music, a music and writing collective based in New York City. As a solo artist, Nicolay decribes his music as “melodramatic popular song,” and it’s easy to see why. His songs range from fierce maelstroms reminscient of his current band to sparse odes to love and melancholy that you could envision Cole Porter writing. Rife with cultural references both old and new, Nicolay invokes a voice and feeling all his own, independent of his past or current endeavors. He’ll play on Monday (Jan. 12) with opening acts Here Come The Comets and Nick Gordon.

8pm. Mohawk Place, 47 East Mohawk St (855-3931 / www.mohawkplace.com).

Tuesday, December 13 - Thursday, December 15

The Exiles

The joy of discovering new work at a good film festival is tempered by the sad fact that many of these movies thereafter sink into oblivion because no distributor is willing to gamble on presenting them to the public. Even in the era of home video, when seemingly anything can be made available at low cost, too many worthy movies are left to rot in their cans. So the rediscovery and distribution of a film like The Exiles (by the splendid company Milestone Films, which specializes in such restorations) is cause for rejoicing. Shot from 1958 through 1961 by a crew of USC film students under the leadership of Kent Mackenzie, The Exiles tracks a long night in the lives of a group of Native Americans living in the run-down (and now vanished) Los Angeles neighborhood of Bunker Hill. Critics have universally praised it as a lost masterpiece of the American independent era; in the New York Times, Manhola Dargis calls it “a beautifully photographed slice of down-and-almost-out life, a near-heavenly vision of a near-hell.”

—m.faust

7pm. Palace Theater, 31 Buffalo Street, Hamburg (649–2295)