K-pop Alert! Just when you thought K-Pop couldn’t go more over the top, up comes Exo, a boy band with two units, one that sings in Korean (Exo-K), one in Mandarin (Exo-M). They do exactly the same songs, and their videos and similar but subtly different.
Both versions of “Mama” after the jump.
Tomorrow night, Friday, June 1, I will be DJing at the Lush & Lively cocktail hour at the Time Out New York Lounge at New World Stages 340 West 50th Street (between 8th & 9th Ave) from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The music emphasizes horns and strings, so there will be jazz (classic and “nu”), latin, international orchestral and big band pop (like this funky version of The White Stripes’s indie garage classic) and – of course – lots and lots of disco. The Cosmo special is only $3 from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM, and there are $5 drink specials until 9:00 PM.
Video after the jump
The John Pizzarelli Quartet truly scales the heights of cabaret’s jazzier side with astonishing musicianship and elan. Their current engagement at the Café Carlyle celebrates the release of their newest CD Double Exposure, featuring songs by first-class pop/rock songwriters, mashed up with elements of arrangements by the giants of jazz.
Scott Wittman is a busy man. In addition to writing lyrics every week for Smash‘s show-within-a-show Bombshell (and serving as an executive producer for the NBC hit), and working as Creative Consultant for the much-anticipated new cabaret space 54 Below, he has conceived and directed Jukebox Jackie, currently playing at LaMaMa ETC. Jukebox Jackie: Snatches of Jackie Curtis is a collage of scenes, poetry, music and dance culled from the works of Jackie Curtis, who performed as both a man and a woman throughout his career in the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, stating, “I’m not a boy, not a girl. I’m just me, Jackie.”
Based on his latest cabaret act, Mark Nadler’s new CD Crazy 1961 finds him playing and singing with his usual virtuosic abandon and passionate intelligence. The result is stunning: Nadler packs over 61 songs onto this CD, a celebration of the year of his birth. There are always many layers in anything that Nadler does, ranging from the obvious to unspoken subtext, which gives his work an “oomph” far, far beyond the typical. On the CD, as in the show, Mark paints a complex portrait of the exact place and time that he was born, in exciting and ultimately moving ways. Every single song on the CD is from 1961, and he finishes with a truly insane medley of fifty songs from the year. This is as giddily entertaining – and breathtakingly smart – as a cabaret CD gets.
To purchase, click here.
For more reviews and interviews by Jonathan Warman, see his blog Drama Queen.
Latest from queerplanet.net