highlights RICHIE HAVENS FRI., NOV. 19 SOMETIMES, IT'S NICE to have an elder ...

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RICHIE HAVENS

FRI., NOV. 19

SOMETIMES, IT'S NICE to have an elder statesman of folk on hand. Richie Havens' passion, idealism and above all, warmth—undiminished by 40-plus years in the music business—serve to remind us that the country has seen dark days before. As an environmental activist, though, Havens isn't looking at the world through the hazy lens of 60s nostalgia. He has a firm grip on what's going on right now, yet he insists on optimism. He feels that spiritual awareness has grown dramatically since 9/11 and that the boundless energy of children can be harnessed to solve the world's legion of major problems. (Havens focuses a great deal of his activism on providing ecological education for children.)

Raised in Bed-Stuy, Havens sang doo-wop on streetcorners in Brooklyn as a youngster. Attracted to the Village coffeehouse scene, he later emigrated across the East River and painted portraits. With an inherited ability to play by ear, Havens tried acoustic guitar, using an open tuning that allowed for simple fingerings. Within a week, he was writing and performing—and making much less money than he did as a painter. (He still lives more or less hand-to-mouth.)

Covers make up a great deal of Havens' repertoire. To remind us of where we stand these days, Havens' new album Grace of the Sun contains renditions of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" and the 60s classic "All Along the Watchtower." As usual, Havens makes somewhat solemn presentations through spare arrangements anchored by his flowing guitar strums and deep baritone that are by turns sandy, smooth, even gruff—but always reassuring. He still records thriftily and quickly, so Grace has an earthy, organic feel. The album features other musicians like longtime guitar sidemen Walter Parks and Bill Perry—and lately Havens has even delved into electronica collaborations—but he plays solo tonight. He likes to say he is in the "communications" field and strives for empathy and attentiveness with his audience; he decides only on a first and last tune before taking the stage. The rest is up to the vibe of the crowd. A concert, he says, centers around the audience, not the performer.

B.B. King Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-997-4144; 8, $30.

SABY REYES-KULKARNI

THE BLOW

FRI., NOV. 19

WHEN POOR AIM: LOVE SONGS first arrived in the mail, I danced around the house. Ill-advised on several counts: I was already dizzy from a sinus infection; mere walking guarantees bruise-inflicting encounters with furniture on a good day; I tend to dance like a tubby adolescent who's been cornered by rats.

One avalanche of books, a toppled kitchen chair and a sledgehammer headache later, it was worth it. Khaela Maricich, aka the Blow, makes deliciously good dance pop. And though she could be counted among the ranks of Le Tigre, Peaches, Tracy & the Plastics and—unfortunately for those other artists—trendy mouse crap like Gold Chains, Maricich's work won't be mistaken for anyone else's. The sound itself may not be new, but Maricich's take on it is inventive. Her shuffling, echo-filled "Hey Boy," led by claps and tambourines, draws on the all-girl mmm-bop of the 1950s and 60s, and "The Sky Opened Wide Like the Tide" has the pseudo-serious dramatic thrust of "Hungry Like the Wolf"-era Duran Duran. Here and there, Poor Aim knocks out gulps of Soft Cell, Madness and 80s tunes by one-hit wonders whose names hang back from the edge of the tongue. The sum total is fresh and unpretentious; Maricich is having a blast, and anyone within striking distance is bound to as well.

The Blow is often just Maricich, but of late, she's been enlisting the help of Jona Bechtolt, whose own solo project, Yacht, is currently on tour with the Blow and Dear Nora. When I ask what it's like to go solo versus collaborate, Maricich doesn't hesitate: "'Collaborate' is when you reach the point where you need help. It's recognizing that something would be better if someone else worked on it, too." For fellow K artist Phil Elvrum and his band the Microphones, Maricich, Mirah and others can be indispensable—he can't sing the girl parts. In the case of the Blow, Jona Bechtolt's production skills help Maricich achieve the beats she's aiming for.

Someone once described seeing the Blow as like attending an aerobics class, with Maricich, CD Walkman strapped tight, a solo dancing machine. With Bechtolt on board, the Blow might look more like a traditional band, but come prepared to work up a sweat.

Tommy's Tavern, 1041 Manhattan Ave. (Freeman St.), Greenpoint, 718-383-9699; 8, $5.

KATE CRANE

SPLIT LIP RAYFIELD

FRI., NOV. 19

"I PERSONALLY FIND alt-country to be boring beyond belief," said Eric Mardis, banjo player for Split Lip Rayfield, by phone last week. "Seems a lot of people stick to a formula that makes it alt-country, and that formula is inherently boring." Well said, but then what's a banjo-playing fellow like Mardis (whose favorite album at the moment is the new Megadeth) to do, if not back up an alt-country band?

The answer: play bluegrass, but just crank it up a few knots. The Kansas quartet Split Lip Rayfield are one of several post-alt-country bands (many of them out of Bloodshot Records) pushing the pace of bluegrass—or "blaze-grass"—to speeds hitherto unheard of for acoustic instruments. This bluegrass is less O Brother, Where Art Thou than a fast-paced, punk-influenced mutation thereof. Slap your knee to these guys and you'll be sore the next day.

"We try to play to audiences outside of that whole insurgent country crowd," Mardis continues, "and win them over to the cause. Sometimes you can see the audiences, who see the instruments and think, 'This is going to be like Hee Haw,' but then after two songs, they feel the energy and they're like, 'Awe right!'"

Unlike their alt-country counterparts, Split Lip Rayfield have drawn a loyal following by not taking themselves or their music too seriously. Bassist Jeff Eaton strums something he calls the "stitchgiver": a beat-up gas tank with a single string stripped from a weed whacker. SLR once played an onstage game of Chicken Drop Bingo, a "Midwestern hillbilly-type thing where you have big bingo board that's squared off and each square has a number, and you sell all the tickets, and when the chicken shits on your number you win a prize."

Split Lip Rayfield, which have shared stages with an eclectic mix of musical types, from Nashville Pussy to Reverend Horton Heat, open tonight for the Gourds. Don't expect any poultry or shoe-gazing onstage—just bluegrass played at blistering speeds.

Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3006; 8, $15.

LIONEL BEEHNER

SHARON JONES AND THE DAP KINGS

FRI., NOV. 19

THE FORMER PRISON security guard Sharon Jones gets most people on the good foot at her shows. A Georgia native, the imperial Jones uses funky JB-inspired late-60s and early-70s soul as a backdrop for her busty vocals. Though often compared to other James Brown proteges like Lyn Collins, Jones has the ability to turn any song into a funk-stomper.

On Rewind 4 (Ubiquity), a recent compilation of dusty grooves given a new rub by contemporary musicians, Jones makes Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" into a ghetto banger. Which is impressive, but even more so is her cover of Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done For Me Lately" on her first full-length, Dap Dippin with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (Daptone). There's not a drum machine in earshot. This is soul music. The soul music that makes you get up offa that thing. Moves you. Takes you back to those glory days of Motown, Stax and Atlantic Records.

This is what music is all about.

Southpaw, 125 5th Ave. (betw. St. John's & Sterling Pls.), Park Slope, 718-230-0236; 8, $10.

DAN MARTINO

HOCKEY NIGHT/DUFUS

THURS., NOV. 18

CHEERFULLY ABSURD WITHOUT being mindlessly stupid—that's where you'll find our friends in the queerly named Hockey Night and Dufus. The clearly defined, cross-cutting guitars of Minnesota native Paul Sprangers' speedy-rock melodies give Hockey Night a deceptively 80s PopRocks feel. But his breathlessly earnest voice goes back even further, to the Jonathan Richman 70s where sinister sentiments from songs like "Pablo Picasso" meet childish, lullaby lyricism and vocal approach. "I am the cloud in the smoke that you are breathing," sings Sprangers in his sing-songy manner on "Drip Drip (Sunset Eyes") from their upcoming CD, Keep Guessin'. It's a song with naive imagery figuring prominently into what I see as Spranger's Richman obsession with silliness and straight forward, pared-down arrangements. The latter ideal is new for Sprangers. Most folks are getting to know Hockey Night—all eight members' worth—as an electrock potpourri of LitePop melodicism from their Rad Zapping CD. But the directness of Keep Guessin' will have you doing just that, guessing as to what Sprangers will spring up with next.

Then there's Dufus. This group of East Coast primitives is what you'd get if you stuffed the corpse of Mothers-era Frank Zappa full of holiday noise-makers (like how the bibliophile in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover met his tragic end, sorta) and seeing what came through. Each of Zappa's Mothers of Invention records—the quickly tumbling drums of Absolutely Free, the curled guitars of Weasels Ate My Flesh, the squeezed, squealed vocals of Freak Out! figure prominently into Dufus' Ball of Design and its hippie-ish babble. Replace Zappa's love of squealing clarinets and squeaky saxophones with turntablist streaks and heavy-handed acoustic guitar strumming and songs like "Wut kolrz" and "Pakistan Enellellope" come alive. Like Zappa's Moms at their quietest, Dufus too have moments of tender calm and epiphanistic lyrics. But mostly, they're digging the dopiness of being a band called Dufus without ever approaching dumbness. Have fun.

Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3006; 7, $8.

A.D. AMOROSI

GREG DAVIS/ARIEL PINK/SIGNER

SAT., NOV. 20

HANDMADE LAPTOP NOISE that borrows as much from the Herzogian gurglings of Eno's "Ambient" series as it does the wall of woe that is My Bloody Valentine; that sums up neatly what this trio of home recorders do for a living. But it doesn't figure in each musician's dedication to truth and beauty. Rarely does podtronica sound as earnest and emotional and small as it does for these three. For compu-folkie Greg Davis, the puckishly finger-plucked sound of ambience and twitching acoustic guitars is what's made his CDs quietly somnambulist musics whose electronic beats pop like stones rippling across black-water ponds.

Bevan Smith (aka Signer) sets his stringed-thing's whammy bar to "stun" in order to reach the nirvana state he seeks—a constant, nearly irksome "whirr" that screeches throughout his icy organic electron-soundscapes. I say nearly. Instead, they wind up (as does his weedy, worried vocals) punctuating the unmerry melodies and their unarrangements of slippery, streaked guitar tunings and tippling, blip-ish rhythms.

Ariel Pink is the Chet Baker of this bunch—a barely moving, Californian-noir esthete whose sensuously contagious poptones sound like a sickly now-take on "Blame It on My Youth" on his Paw Tracks debut The Doldrums. Lo-jazz pop made by cold, winded keyboards and trickling guitars never sounded so raw and emotional as they do here. Gorgeous. By the time Big Lazy come on at midnight, you won't care. You'll be sleeping the sleep of the satisfied.

Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw. Delancey & Rivington Sts.), 212-358-7501; 8, $10.

A.D. AMOROSI

BLUEBOTTLE KISS

SUN., NOV. 21

HOW CAN WE be expected to know much about Australian music when we consider the examples? INXS? The lead singer allegedly killed himself while jerking off in a noose. Midnight Oil? They had a scary bald guy hollering songs about Aussie eco-political issues. The Church? Didn't they break up because they got bored with themselves? As for Kylie Minogue—I'll fuck her if I don't have to listen to her.

Still, you must not give up hope. Bluebottle Kiss is right around the corner. Actually, they've been under your nose for a decade—three of their five albums have been the Aussie charts' spookiest entries without anything being available in these United States. But their two most recent CDs, Revenge Is Slow and October's Come Across are out to turn your sleepy head with their soaring, sour mix of tyrannical lyrical decay and heady atmospheres that find correlation in both Coldplay's "Clocks" and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' numbing catalogue of sea shanties and scabby hemlock drinking tunes. Though he has a way with big scrunchy guitars and tragically broadly brushed soundscapes, Jamie Hutchings' small voice and intimate imagery works best on troubled ballads like "Can I Keep You?" Without making them trite, his songs take the sort of dusky literate lyrics Cave's made famous and make them lighter.

Luna Lounge, 171 Ludlow St. (betw. Houston & Stanton Sts.), 212-260-2323; 10:30, free.

A.D. AMOROSI

DAVE GORMAN'S GOOGLEWHACK! ADVENTURE

THROUGH SAT., DEC. 4

GOOGLEWHACKING—THE SPORT of typing two words into the Google search engine to find exactly one web page (example: "pomegranate" and "filibusters")—reached its apex in 2002. Funny, though, none of my friends or colleagues knew about the practice. And contrary to several gushing stories in the press, no one I knew, upon hearing of the phenomenon, rushed to a computer for the remainder of the day to whack away at Google. Could it be that Googlewhacking was something blown up by a trend-depraved media?

That didn't deter Dave Gorman, a more than slightly monomaniacal British comedian and would-be novelist. Suffering a bout of writer's block, his first two months of 2003 were wasted away Googlewhacking and entertaining a bet by friends that he couldn't find and meet 10 people whose websites are Googlewhacks before his thirty-second birthday. His bet takes him all over the globe, reaching points from California to China, logging more than 100,000 miles.

The tale of his travels is an interesting one, told in a compelling, almost bedside manner. Gorman—a quirky but likable protagonist (the same Dave Gorman who two years ago tried to meet "every Dave Gorman in the world") with a reddish Van Gogh-style beard—proves the rule that anything said in the Queen's English, no matter how unfunny, sounds awfully funny—even a show about a two-year-old, media-manufactured trend.

Village Theatre, 158 Bleecker St (Thompson St.), 212-307-4100; 8, $30-$35.

LIONEL BEEHNER

RISK EVERYTHING

THROUGH SUN., NOV. 21

AS A GAMBLING addict in debt to and on the lam from a gangster, Aleksandra Konieczna stars in the TR Warszawa company's production of Risk Everything, by lauded Canadian playwright George F. Walker (Nothing Sacred, Love and Anger). Plus she's gotta take care of her daughter and husband…sound predictable?

In its Polish incarnation, TR-W director Grzegorz Jarzyna stripped Risk of stage trappings—music, fanciful costumes—and sunk the play into his ambitious year-long Area Warsaw festival, declaring that "theater can happen anywhere," a premise TR-W demonstrated in settings from Warsaw's Central Railway Station to a slaughterhouse in the city of Poznan.

For TR-W's first U.S. production, Jarzyna's honed that perambulating ethos down to Walker's Risk to give his St. Anne's audiences a taste of how he envisions upping theater's "real" quotient. Having studied philosophy and theology in Krakow, Jarzyna took over the renowned TR-W at age 30—Poland's youngest-ever artistic director. His opening production, Tropical Madness, mixed the great absurdist Witkacy's Mister Price and New Liberation. "The protagonist... is the growing collective insanity," wrote journalist Jaroslaw Kisielinski of Jarzyna's debut salvo, "which at first is somewhat less than serious, as if drawn from a variety show or operetta, but ultimately…achieves the magnitude of real insanity."

Jarzyna (using pseudonyms for each production) moved on to Poland's other great theatrical voice, Witold Gombrowicz, staging Ivona, Princess of Burgundy (which Ingmar Bergman had tapped for his retirement from film), and then his Historia, an unfinished 1962 version of what became that playwright's lavish theatrical swan song, Operetta. Intent on work by what a critic termed "authors not intent on creating a form, but on purging themselves of what causes them pain," Jarzyna reworked a pair of classic novels, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. Then he took on one of Dogme director Thomas Vinterberg's films, and British playwright Sarah Kane's final, fittingly formless 4:48 Psychosis, itself recently at St. Anne's in James MacDonald's Royal Court Theatre production.

St. Anne's Warehouse, 38 Water St. (betw. Main & Dock Sts.), Dumbo, 718-254-8779; Weds.-Sat., 8, Sun., 3, $25.

ALAN LOCKWOOD

SLIGHTLY KNOWN PEOPLE

SUN., NOV. 21

A SPRITE GROUP of five, Slightly Known People approach sketch comedy the way a high school pep squad might a big game. The cast members come equipped with indestructible smiles; their sheer energy and love-fest onstage win over the audience within minutes. The hour show is a grab bag of song and sketch, much of it laced in raunchiness and sexual innuendo—think SCTV if it were on HBO. SKP's skits, well-written and performed with precision, run the gamut from multiple orgasms to incest to a segment entitled the "menstruation minute," whereby one of the hosts hilariously shouts at the audience: "Does anybody have a mother-fucking tampon?!"

Another recurring bit is a salesman trying to hawk a Cabbage Patch doll, whose features include a glory hole and compartment for "Nazi gold." The cleverness of this clownish cast is impressive ("It's as if the peanut butter and jelly were making love between two white sheets," articulates cast member Stuart Luth ("Stu") on making a PB&J sandwich), and the musical numbers are well-sung, despite the clatter of the bar's jukebox in the background. Best of all, SKP may be the only sketch show in the city that gives out free booze to the audience. The show closes in a song entitled "We Like to Drink," as the cast hands out free cups of tequila and beer. Not bad for five bucks.

RiFiFi, 332 E. 11th St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.), 212-677-5368; 8, $5.

LIONEL BEEHNER

DOGUGAESHI

TUES., NOV. 23

PUPPETEER BASIL TWIST sustains the life of a dying art form with his latest project, Dogugaeshi. Named for a tradition of Japanese stage wizardry, this commission from the Japan Society promises to reinvent an almost-lost style. Twist, whose long-running off-Broadway hit, Symphonie Fantastique, won an Obie in 1998, collaborates with the delicate score of musician Yumiko Tanaka. In this abstract homage, the stage itself is the star of the show as it is assembled and dissembled. Intricate as a Victorian children's dollhouse, its multiple layers of screens and proscenium arches within proscenium arches delight like a gift that unwraps itself. What looks simple at first surprises with depth. Magic is performed by four puppeteers madly controlling everything from underneath, above and inside the contraption with split-second timing. This intimate staging beguiles the eye like a pond full of koi roiling the surface of water by swirling among the roots of water lilies. The mind's urge to anthropomorphize the inanimate fills Twist's landscapes with fairytales, mysteries and dreams.

Japan Society, 333 E. 47th St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.), 212-752-3015; call for times, $35.

CHRIS DOHSE

JESPER JUST

THROUGH WEDS., DEC. 22

NEW VIDEO ART is often unremarkable. Much of the work currently displayed in galleries is boring, or badly made, or both. Enter Jesper Just, whose three new videos are a rare exception.

Just, a native of Denmark, studied film, and his work respects the medium's unique qualities. Only 30, he represents a generation raised on MTV's short attention span, tv commercials as entertainment and artists so captivated by movies that their paintings, sculptures and photographs mimic the look and emotional feel of film.

With the exploration of male emotions as his goal, Just has created work so impressive you won't mind stumbling into a crowded, dark, airless room to watch his videos Bliss and Heaven and Lonely Villa.

No Man Is an Island II is easier to see, as it's out front in the gallery's well-lit main room. The piece opens in a darkened bar. The camera pans the room noticing the kitsch paintings of naked women and male patrons silently nursing their drinks. Focusing in on one young man, we see a tear. Standing, he begins to sing "Crying" by Roy Orbison. The other men, all older, turn and stare. Slowly, one by one, they join him, creating a barbershop choir of sorts. At first the idea is cute, even silly, but thanks to the beautiful cinematography, operatic voices and honest acting, the piece becomes painfully real, inspiring reflections on personal and collective loss.

In Bliss and Heaven we watch a lanky young man rushing across a wheat field, the stalks sensually brushing his thighs. Again and again he anxiously glances up at electrical towers and follows their wires. Reaching a remote power station, he hunches down, scouting the place like a terrorist when a semi truck rolls into the vacant parking lot. The driver appears, seemingly aware of the young man's presence. He opens the back of the long truck and climbs in. The young man rises and follows him. I'll let you see the outcome for yourselves.

What sets Just apart from traditional video artists is his embrace of linear narrative as an art form. Though he portrays fantasy and conveys abstract ideas, his stories are easily followed. By blending the captivating nature of film with the conceptualism of art, Just has taken traditional video art to a form so altered it needs a new vocabulary to describe it, because video art doesn't measure up.

Perry Rubenstein Gallery, 527 W. 23rd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-627-8000; 10-6, free.

JULIA MORTON