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Daryl Hall and John Oates. Check out more photos from GoogaMooga

The Great GoogaMooga
Prospect Park
Sunday, May 20

Better than: Eating anything in my fridge.

Vineland. Field Day. All Points West. New York is littered with the acrid corpses of past festivals, a perpetual tease giving hope to the most jaded music fan that maybe this year, someone will get it right. Figuring out why New York hasn't had a long-running festival has been a parlor game in the music industry for years, but the Great GoogaMooga, the new food/music hybrid festival organized by the people behind Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, seemed like a front-runner to break the curse.

In theory, it's a great idea: Collect 75 food vendors from disparate parts of New York, book energetic groups like disco revivalists Escort and retro-soul group Fitz & the Tantrums, and turn Prospect Park into one giant tasting menu. The best laid plans...

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"Drums, please!"

20 summers ago, Jazzy Jeff's opening command in the hip-hop classic "Summertime" kickstarted countless barbecues, picnics and long nighttime drives. Little has changed since. In 1991, as producers K. Fingers and Hula were lifting Kool & the Gang's leisurely dulcet "Summer Madness" for "Summertime," Philadelphia native Will Smith was in Los Angeles, spending his first year away from home to shoot Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He missed his friends and family and nostalgia was kicking in. "I think 'Summertime' might have been the easiest song he's ever written," recalls Jazzy Jeff. "Because all he was doing was writing down his feelings and emotions of those Philly summers."

Two decades later, Jazzy Jeff continues to juggle his multifaceted career as a producer, DJ and mentor, most recently with Toronto soul singer Ayah and Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller. Despite a DJ schedule rivaling Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour, the 46-year-old still oversees his A Touch of Jazz production house and has released a series of mixtapes and albums, including last year's flawless Summertime: The Mixtape with Mick Boogie. He spoke to us about the enduring appeal of "Summertime," why he loves Justin Bieber and how a 900 number made him a very wealthy man.

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"But hopefully they'll end up waking up one day, open up that bottle of wine and go, 'Holy shit. He's right,' and give me a nod rather than drop to their knees."

With mindless celebrities attaching their name to any vanity project that comes their way--Cadmium-laced Miley Cyrus bracelets priced to sell!--the idea of Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan's moniker on a bottle of wine seems both off-putting and absurd. Yet every year since 2003, Keenan has spent four months planning, planting and harvesting the materials for wine in his home state of Arizona via Arizona Stronghold Vineyards (a co-ownership deal with mentor Eric Glomski) and his own Merkin Vineyards.

Blood Into Wine, a documentary detailing the musician's experience with the industry, is a fascinating look at Keenan's personal struggles--with lobbyists, state and federal regulators, bad soil, etc.--and achievements as one of the most inadvertently famous winemakers in the world. Even without the mercurial musical figure, a film about tending 150 acres in a region with less-than-ideal winemaking conditions makes for a compelling story. Factor in Keenan's notorious elusiveness and underappreciated sense of humor (Patton Oswalt and Tim & Eric all make appearances) and you have one of the strangest, most intriguing documentaries we've seen in a while (the film premieres tonight at City Winery). Before boarding a flight back to Arizona, the oenophile gave a rare interview to discuss the film, Tool fans, fighting city councils, and running into unexpected people at the airport.

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Ann Arbor, MI native Andrew Cohen had been earning his bona fides on the deejay scene for nearly a decade before stepping into his Los Angeles bedroom last year and recording A Strange Arrangement (Stones Throw) under the name Mayer Hawthorne. The album, which showcases the singer's Smokey Robinson-meets-Curtis Mayfield falsetto over drums that bang as hard as any Dilla track, is both refreshingly current and self-consciously reverential of the past. The effect is jarring at first, sounding almost like a "What if..." mash-up mixed by Daptone--but Cohen's debut, equal parts hip-hop and Motown, has an undeniable charm.

A 29-year-old bespectacled white guy may seem an unlikely choice to help usher soul music into its next incarnation, but Hawthorne, clad in perfectly fitted jacket and tie, displays an earnestness and respect for his forebears that dispels most notions of hipster posturing. In a van "somewhere between Denver and Omaha," the singer spoke to SOTC about cassette players, breaking the rules of soul music, and convincing his boss that his songs weren't covers.

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