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Youth Group with Aquaduct and Phantom Buffalo
9pm, $8, 18+
Australia's Youth Group capitalizes on expressive vocals and nimble instrumentation that bring comparisons to Death Cab for Cutie and Badly Drawn Boy. They got a leg up when featured on the popular teen drama The O.C., earning them a number one hit in their native country. Aqueduct is quintessential bedroom rock. Stuck somewhere between lo & hi-fi, a love of beats, melody, and clever songwriting come together with keyboards, drum machines, buzzing guitars, and bass lines that put the bump in your booty.
First Friday: Cannonball Press presents Donkey Balls
5-8pm, free, All ages
These United States with Paleo
9pm, $7, 18+
The Charlie Hunter Trio
8pm, $15 advance / $17 day of, 18+
The Charlie Hunter Trio has two new members, drummer Simon Lott and pianist Eric Deutsch. With his signature 8-string guitar, Hunter combines elements of jazz, funk, rock and soul to fashion a signature sound that attracts diverse audiences. With unmistakable influences of everyone from Jimmy Smith to Monk to Muddy Waters to Mingus to Stevie Wonder to Art Blakey, Hunter's efforts acheive what he calls "an alternative to the suit-and-tie club that says you have to be well-to-do and super-intellectual to understand jazz music."
Spouse CD release w/ Cult Maze and Hiss & Chambers
9pm, $7, 18+
Spouse is an experimental rock band from Northampton, reminiscent of late 80s underground groups like The Replacements and The Pixies. With similarities to groups such as The Magnetic Fields and Broken Social Scene, Spouse operates more like a project than a fixed roster band. José Ayerve has been leading and directing the band since its inception, while including members of the Pernice Brothers, Pedro the Lion and the Silver Jews, creating a rich collage of tallents and perspectives. The new record Relocation Tactics launches on April 10. Cult Maze plays a mix of indie sounds that are loud and rhythmic with an intricacy informed by prog-rock. Hiss and Chambers is a Portland-based quartet combining anthemic rock and dark retro dance stylings.
The Lunchbox Series with Sandra Dutton: A Curious City and SPACE event
11:00am, $5/person, $10/family, Ages 4+
Are you a beastly child or a childish beast? Well, it's Miss Perfect to the rescue. She can tell a porcupine how to change dance partners and a hippo how to keep from crushing her smaller friends. She will be telling Lunchboxers how a wash of watercolor and a splash of ink can transform any beast.
Rwake w/ Minsk, Ocean and Conifer
9pm, $7, 18+
Rwake--pronounced most commonly as "wake"--are a quickly ascending modern doom crew from Little Rock. They may be warmly relaxing in chthonic, sludgy sounds but what wrestles in the plastic grooves of their fourth full-length, Voices of Omens, is nothing less than ingenious, forward-thinking metal. Minsk's brand of doom metal combines lyrics inspired by / drawn from Lebanese visionary Kahlil Gibran with ringing notes, heaving, propulsive rhythms and dirge psychedelics. Building upon a mutual appreciation for post-rock and metal, Conifer's primarily instrumental music takes an approach that's entirely meditative, with minimal, ethereal passages containing lengthened crescendos of distortion.
4.16.07 | Mon
(Note: Revised Date)
Creative Conversations
7:00pm, free, All ages
An Evening with Gary Shteyngart, presented with Longfellow Books
7pm, $5, All ages
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad, USSR, in 1972 and emigrated with his family to Queens, New York, at the age of seven. After spending time in Prague in the early 1990's, Shteyngart earned a degree in Politics at Oberlin College, where his senior thesis concerned the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan. He started his novel Absurdistan five or six days before 9/11, set close to the Middle East, in the former Soviet republics bordering with Iran and Caucuses region. Called by reviewer Michiko Kakutani "as attuned to the exhilarating possibilities of the language as Martin Amis, as deadpan and funny as the young Evelyn Waugh," Shteyngart is a promising young writer. "Absurdistan is a Monster Truck Rally of a satire, sort of Jonathan Swift does South Park with help from Rabelais, Gogol, Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Evelyn Waugh and Joseph Heller." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Documentary Film: Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?
7:30pm, $6, All ages
Co-Sponsored by The Portland League of Young Voters.
Can Mr Smith Get To Washington Anymore? follows the 2004 Missouri Democratic primary campaign of Jeff Smith, a 29-year old part-time political science instructor at Washington University. Pitted against State Representative, Russ Carnaghan, a politician with a poor record but with strong family ties to the establishment and near-universal name-recognition in Missouri, Jeff's obstacles are overwhelming. In the face of constant resistance, Jeff mobilizes an army of nearly 500 volunteers, generating a youth-oriented grassroots insurgency that ultimately poses a serious challenge to Carnahan. The film offers an exciting and unvarnished look at one of 2004's surprising campaigns and asks if it is still possible in America for young unknowns outside of the establishment to get involved in the political process. Directed by Frank Popper (82 m).
MECA Visiting Artist: Laylah Ali
7pm, Free with MECA ID/ $5, All ages
Kool Keith
9pm, $12 advance / $15 day of, 18+
After single-handedly redefining "warped" as the mind and mouth behind the Bronx-based Ultramagnetic MC's, "Kool" Keith Thornton -- aka Rhythm X, aka Dr. Octagon, aka Dr. Dooom, aka Mr. Gerbik -- headed for the outer reaches of the stratosphere with a variety of solo projects. A onetime psychiatric patient at Bellevue, Keith's lyrical thematics remained as free-flowing here as they ever were with the N.Y. trio. With special guest Kenmor, a Portland based MC.
9pm, $10 advance / $12 day of, 18+
Kid Koala has always been a man "of the people". Sure, he's shared the stage with acts as big as Radiohead & The Flaming Lips but that doesn't stop him from inviting people on stage and making himself available to meet the fans afterwards. Lest we forgot the "Some Of My Best Friends Are DJ's" contest, which had the Kid visit the winners at their house to perform a private concert for them and their closest friends. Kid Koala is now on the road supporting his newest album on Ninja Tune, “Your Mom’s Favorite DJ”. On this record he shows that his chosen means of expression (the turntable) is used not as a way of showing that he can do faster crabs than anyone else, but as a way of telling stories.
Antelope and Rahim
9pm, $7, 18+
Antelope plays meditative, stripped-down punk music which uses the melody vs. repetition equation to produce tightly crafted gems. The band was formed in Washington, DC in 2001 by ex-members of the Vertebrates, Bee Elvy and Mike Andre, and El Guapo's Justin Moyer. In November 2006 the band recorded it's first full-length, "Reflector," at the Dischord House with Ian MacKaye. Rahim provides an assured and melodically deft collection of tunes that have the sort of removed melancholy particularly common to the DC brand of post-punk music.
Dr. Dog with The Teeth and Hoots and Hellmouth
http://www.drdogmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/drdog
9p, $10, 18+
Documentary Film: Air Guitar Nation & Portland Air Guitar Competition
8:00pm, $6 advance / $8 at door, All ages
Air Guitar competition to follow film.
http://www.airguitarnation.com
Cosponsored by:
Camden International Film Festival
Maine International Film Festival Shadow Distribution
Air Guitar Nation chronicles the birth of the US Air Guitar Championships and the personal journeys of those talented contestants who are vying to become the first World Air Guitar Champion from the United States. What starts as a friendly contest above a New York strip club becomes a battle of naked ambition played out on the national and, ultimately, the world stage. Full of triumph and disappointment, patriotic spirit and political tension – and of course invisible guitars – this tension filled competition quickly turns very real as the contest becomes even more fierce as the contestants work hard to win the title of World Air Guitar Champion. Directed by Alexandra Lipsitz (81 min.). Followed by Portland's own Air Guitar Competition. Contestants will battle it out for audience approval and air-tastic prize packages. Interested guitar gods should contact SPACE to register.
