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Tom Carter Benefit: Chelsea Light Moving, Steve Gunn, White Out
285 Kent
Wednesday, September 12

Better than: Wishing this week's Sonic Youth communiqué was a tour announcement.

It's been almost a year since Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore called it quits. The split, of course, has stalled Sonic Youth—the band hasn't played since November of last year and, despite the impending release of an archival live album, has no plans to tour—but it's also freed up the individual members to hit harder with their own projects, which is exciting. Moore's latest band, Chelsea Light Moving, rolled into Brooklyn on Wednesday to play a benefit for Charalambides guitarist Tom Carter, a show that doubled as its New York debut. Like Sonic Youth, the group is dark and loud and noisy and blunt. Unlike that dormant rock juggernaut, Chelsea Light Moving is here and now, hungry and alive.

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K. Leander Williams/tru2blupix​

Jenny Scheinman at the Village Vanguard on September 2, 2012.

Jenny Scheinman Quartet
Village Vanguard
Friday, August 31

Better than: Music that keeps you at a distance.

During her early set at the Village Vanguard on Friday, violinist Jenny Scheinman pulled out just one cover, Duke Ellington's "Awful Sad." It's not hard to see why she's fond of that particular piece; like Scheinman's music in general, "Sad" mixes melancholy with hope and playfulness, never painting things as bleak but hardly taking the position that life is one big ray of sunshine. And so it was this middle ground between dark and light that served as Scheinman's home base for the set. It was a truthful place to be.

To be fair, though, Scheinman is likely enamored with "Sad" for another reason, too: it has a memorable, straightforward melody. Unlike many on the jazz landscape today, Scheinman keeps it simple, writing earthy, folky lines that beckon and envelop. Even at its most technical, her music is never a spectacle to be witnessed; it's something to be shared, and passed around.

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@boldbravefree/Instagram

Janelle Monáe.

Afro-Punk Festival
Commodore Barry Park
Sunday, August 26

Better than: Sitting at home, waiting for Breaking Bad to start.

Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley were some of the original architects of rock and roll. Jimi Hendrix pushed it forward in the late '60s. Then came Prince. And Bad Brains. And Living Colour. And the Black Rock Coalition. Plus, what's more rock than "Rock Box"? Or "Maggot Brain"? Making the same claim is New York's annual Afro-Punk Festival, which wrapped its eighth staging on Sunday night. Over two consecutive nights in Fort Greene's Commodore Barry Park, the festival showcased an array of black artists who were punk in spirit if not always in musical aesthetic.

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The story of Tennessee music is a tale of two cities, really: Nashville and Memphis. But to count out Chattanooga is to ignore the origins of the Impressions, the long-running, socially conscious soul group that launched the careers of Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield. On the street corners of mid-twentieth-century Chattanooga, boyhood friends Fred Cash, Sam Gooden, Arthur Brooks, and Richard Brooks started a vocal group called the Roosters, which, in the late '50s, migrated north to Chicago. There, the band—sans Cash, whose mother wouldn't let him go—hooked up with Butler and Mayfield, and the Roosters became the Impressions. After the success of the Impressions' 1958 45 "For Your Precious Love," lead vocalist Butler left to go solo, but that's when things really started to heat up: Mayfield took over for Butler, Cash joined back up in Mayfield's place, and the Brooks brothers split altogether. So by the early '60s, the classic lineup of Mayfield, Gooden, and Cash—the trio that turned out eternal tunes like "People Get Ready," "It's All Right," "I'm So Proud," "We're a Winner," "Keep on Pushing," "This Is My Country," and "Check Out Your Mind"—was firmly in place.

But it wouldn't last. In 1970, Mayfield jumped ship to drop funk cornerstones like Curtis and Superfly, leaving the Impressions frontman-less again. With various third members, the Impressions never stopped pushing, always with Cash and Gooden at the core. On July 20, the current incarnation of the Impressions—Cash, Gooden, and lead singer Reggie Torian—will unite at Lincoln Center for "Here But I'm Gone," a tribute to Mayfield featuring artists like Bilal, Mavis Staples, William Bell, Dr. Lonnie Smith, the Roots, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Sharon Jones guitarist Binky Griptite, who will serve as musical director for the show. Mayfield, who would've turned seventy in June—he died in 1999—was also paid tribute to earlier this year when, with Griptite at the helm, the Impressions laid down an unrecorded composition of his at Daptone Records' Bushwick studio. Cash, who has long since moved back to Chattanooga, spoke to Sound of the City about working with Mayfield, encouraging B.B. King at the Apollo, taking Donny Hathaway on tour, and telling the truth.

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While working in organist Jack McDuff's band in 1979, guitarist Marc Ribot learned not to "hit the obvious note," a guideline he's followed ever since. As a sideman, he's strummed for the likes of Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, the Lounge Lizards, and John Zorn; on his own, he moves from solo guitar to film scores to Cuban music to punk-jazz, not to mention tributes to Albert Ayler and John Cage. Tuesday through Sunday, the six-stringer surprises yet again by bringing an adventurous trio into New York jazz temple the Village Vanguard, a venue better known for swing than skronk. Featuring drummer Chad Taylor and bassist Henry Grimes, the latter of whom last played at the Vanguard in 1966, the Marc Ribot Trio is partial to noise and aggression—or, as Ribot puts it, music that "punches you in the face."

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Adam Macchia

SummerStage Honors the Music of Jimi Hendrix
Central Park SummerStage
Tuesday, June 5

Better than: Exercising, which is apparently what you're supposed to be doing in Central Park.

Hendrix was really into covers—his live sets were littered with songs by Cream ("Sunshine of Your Love"), Dylan ("Like a Rolling Stone"), the Beatles ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"), and Howlin' Wolf ("Killing Floor")—so it always feels in the spirit of the Experienced One to kick out his jams. On the other hand, it's a bit redundant to do Jimi; the man's influence as a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and fashion icon is still so widespread that everyone's already sort of performing Jimi all the time anyway. In any event, any event devoted to the music of James Marshall Hendrix is sure to at least be fun, and SummerStage Honors the Music of Jimi Hendrix, a Michael Dorf-produced fundraising gala to keep SummerStage's other shows free, was no exception.

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Nick Gordon

In an industry that rewards greed and egocentrism, tenor saxophonist Neal Sugarman has made a career out of selflessness. On record and onstage, Sugarman plays only what is needed: a big, percussive horn blast here, a raw R&B riff there. And career-wise, he has done much the same: in 2001, when both he and singer Sharon Jones were at a loss for a label, he co-founded Daptone Records, now a leading light of contemporary soul. When Sharon and the Dap-Kings found themselves down a horn man shortly afterward, Sugarman shelved a promising career as a bandleader to become what he calls an "ultra-sideman." But last summer, after a decade spent backing up Jones and other assorted blues people, Sugarman started getting the itch to call the shots again, and he reconvened the Sugarman 3, an instrumental soul group that released three well-received albums between 1998 and 2002. What the World Needs Now, the 3's first album since 2002's Pure Cane Sugar, is out this month on Daptone. Its title, borrowed from the Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition of the same name, is a perfect reflection of Sugarman's ethos: the people of Earth didn't want more from the Sugarman 3—they needed it.

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Thurston Moore (left); John Zorn.

Thurston Moore/John Zorn Duo
St. Mark's Church
Friday, May 4

Better than: Bumming about MCA alone.

Free improvisation always has religious overtones—the major free-jazzers of the '60s acknowledged this with album titles like Ascension and Spiritual Unity—so there is hardly a better space to experience it in than a church. On Friday night at St. Mark's, Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore and saxophone-wielding downtown overlord John Zorn gathered congregants from rock and jazz circles to help them talk with the spirits. Outside in the East Village, NYU students and kids from New Jersey prowled the streets for a hookup; inside the more than two-century-old church, we testified.

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Ed Lefkowitz/BAM

Shuffle Culture
Howard Gilman Opera House
Friday, April 20

Better than: Celebrating "4/20."

Questlove's "Shuffle Culture" event—at which ten or so musical acts performed a handful of songs each, but never more than one at a time, as if the set list itself were on shuffle—was at once strange and familiar. On one level, the premise was anticipatory, predicting a future where concertgoers won't have the time or patience for a low-concept, single-band show. On the other, one could see the evening's roots: in the mixtape, the DJ set, the all-star benefit concert, the R&B revue. And it was this marriage of old and new—analog and digital—that permeated the night, a constant reminder that, as Q-Tip famously told his daddy, things go in cycles.

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Anthony Pugh

In a recent tweet responding to a follower's assertion that he was a celebrity, the drummer and head Root Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson demurred, claiming he was merely "a personality." The follower had a point, though; according to a website devoted to Quest's blogs about meeting famous people, for instance, the man has gone on dates with Natalie Portman, turned down a European tour with Justin Timberlake, and napped in Spike Lee's office. But what's not up for debate is how he got to wherever he is. A brief tangle with Michele Bachmann supporters notwithstanding, Questlove has risen to fame on the strength of his drumming, which can be heard on D'Angelo's Voodoo, Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun, Common's Like Water for Chocolate, Jay-Z's Unplugged, and Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, not to mention thirteen albums by the Roots. By staying impossibly funky and perilously behind the beat, he has boom-bapped his way into the ears and, with his high-profile stint as Paul Shaffer to Jimmy Fallon's David Letterman, eyes of the mainstream. "Shuffle Culture," running this Thursday and Friday at BAM, should only bolster his ascent.

As one might assume, Questlove is an especially fun interview. In the Voice this week, we talk about everything from Back to the Future to Lorne Michaels; here, we pinball from Sun Ra to Sesame Street. Drummers, it is often said, have the best seat in the house; in the case of Questlove, he's also got the best stories.

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