​Beginning June 18 and running through July 2, the nonprofit organization Sing For Hope will once again install a bunch of pianos for public playing at various places around New York City in an installation that, this time around, they're calling Pop-Up Pianos. The 88 pianos—60 uprights and 28 grands—will be stationed (and bolted down) at places like the Staten Island Yankees' stadium, Grand Army Plaza, and Astor Place.

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The Decoded cover

​To celebrate the release of Decoded, the "narrative journey through the lyrics and life" of Jay-Z, which will be published by Spiegel & Grau on November 16, the rapper will sit down for an interview with PBS host Charlie Rose in front of a live New York City audience. The event will take place on Thursday, November 18, at the Brooklyn Museum's Cantor Auditorium at 7 p.m. Tickets will run run you $50 each (with a $5 discount for museum members) and will go on sale this Wednesday at noon, via www.museumtix.com, or at the Brooklyn Museum Visitor Center. Each ticket comes with a copy of the book! Rose previously sat down with Jay-Z three years ago to speak about the release of American Gangster. In case you're on the fence about this one, it went a little something like this:

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Matias Corral

In the precarious scope of volunteer video-casting calls, the one WFMU host/writer Tom Scharpling last night posted to Twitter sounds promising. For one, it's a Ted Leo video. For two, longtime friend Scharpling is personally directing it. For three, they're only asking for a commitment of four-to-six hours this Thursday night. Lastly, there's no treacherous caveat about skimpy costumes, just an amusingly phrased request that you "wear your finest theater-going or punk-rocking attire."

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Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang confirmed at SXSW that he'd been scoping out New York City for this year's 40th anniversary celebration, rather than somewhere upstate. The BBC takes this to the logical conclusion and suggests Central Park. But a few weeks ago, little yellow birdie told us something different: could Woodstock 2009 be coming to Prospect Park?

"Woodstock's Michael Lang Seeking Sponsors For 2009 Festival In New York City" [Billboard]

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photo by Noelle D'Arrigo

No Context

Speak Up!: A Benefit Concert for Peace in Iraq and Justice at Home
St. Ann’s Warehouse
Tuesday, March 18

Hats off to the famed American pop star Moby, whose Iraq War as Venus Flytrap, or “shark’s mouth,” was the most tortured of literally hundreds of tortured analogies tossed from press-conference folding tables and a St Ann’s stage during Speak Up!: A Benefit Concert for Peace in Iraq and Justice at Home. Prize to Antony Hegarty for overall incoherence—“4,000 brave American countrymen dead… I’m just an artist, not a politician…let’s make a pile of dead bodies so we feel better”—and to Damien Rice, for a nifty parable involving giving a small child millions of dollars to squander, a metaphor for waste and profligacy that I assumed would touch down somewhere near the Iraq War budget, and which instead landed a few hundred miles away: “We get a million sperm delivered to our testicles every day.”

Someday, Antony predicted last night, each and every one us will have to account for our actions. The putative Allies we once were will land on American soil with questions as to our whereabouts during the first five years of Iraq war, and “like the Germans in World War II,” we will have to look the rest of the world in the eye and answer. It will be at this moment that I offer up my seventy-five dollars in campaign contributions to Barack Obama and, after some fumbling through the ol’ wallet, my comped ticket stub to Speak Up!, featuring Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Antony, David Byrne, Norah Jones, Moby, Rice, and the Scissor Sisters, plus Bill T. Jones, Richard Belzer, and half of DUMBO’s more affluent supporters of great causes throughout the planet.

I expect zero mercy.

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Last night Voice staff writer and ex-Source staffer Chloé A. Hilliard hit the 4th Annual VH1 Hip Hop Honors at Hammerstein Ballroom. Tracy Morgan hosted; Chris Rock made introductions. Chloé didn't want to include too many spoilers since the event doesn't air until Monday, but confirms that the event was an open-bar emptying, rib-eating, ass-grabbing good time.

Didn't send a photographer, so you'll have to make do with this screenshot.

VH1's 4th Annual Hip Hop Honors

by Chloé A. Hilliard
Village Voice staff writer

About midway through last night's 4th Annual VH1 Hip Hop Honors, Chris Rock comes out to introduce WHODINI and the white guy behind me confesses, "I don't like hip hop. It makes me nervous. It scares me." Perhaps a show called Hip Hop Honors isn't the place to be? Not knowing who Chris Rock was, he then yells out "Nice shoes." I turn to see he's wearing a T-shirt that reads RAINBOWS ARE GAY with a picture of one. Go figure.

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