#summerstage

June 27th, 2024 video Tatyana S on youtube

I forgive it all as it comes back to me (oh) I'm still praying for that house in Nebraska By the highway, out on the edge of town Dancing with the windows open I can't let go when something's broken It's all I know and it's all I want now

Ethel Cain

On July 15, in the heart of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn at Herbert Von King Park, there's a FREE "MIKE'S Young World III" concert featuring the likes of Noname, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Jay Critch & much more! Yes, very black hipster, underground and artsy/creative. Very Bed-Stuy!

Animal Collective – SummerStage – August 30, 2022

Animal Collective appear to have strange powers. I’m not the first to say they’re a spiritual and sonic journey, that there is something meditative in the quartet’s signature sound. But on a Tuesday night in Central Park, the band held off a much-discussed torrential downpour until the set’s very last song. Coincidence? Probably. And yet, dancing in the rain to “The Purple Bottle” (Feels, 2005), I’m not not convinced it was their doing. 

Coming off the February release of Time Skiffs, the band’s first album since 2016, AnCo delivered a beautiful set that plumbed the band’s decades of adventurous experimental music, while heavily featuring the new record. “Dragon Slayer,” off Time Skiffs, floated gently into form mid-set, Dave Portner/Avey Tare’s vocals blossoming and Noah Lennox/Panda Bear’s drums effortlessly keeping pace. Animal Collective are masters at blending not only form but also feeling. In the great tradition of psychedelia, they have a knack for making your brain feel like it’s become a liquid light show. On “We Go Back,” also off Time Skiffs, the loop-like keys and lyrics make for a poppy, near-manic chorus that melts and distorts at song’s end: “I stood for a moment and the sun went down / I got sad for the sun ’cause I would get lonely.” And “Car Keys” is a new classic, total jam-inspired AnCo canon.

The band played some excellent deeper cuts, too. “Applesauce,” a wacky song that Portner once said was simply based on eating fruit, from 2012’s Centipede Hz, and “Chores,” off my favorite, 2007’s Strawberry Jam, were highlights. But who am I kidding: Nothing can really beat hearing “Bluish” (Merriweather Post Pavillion, 2009) live, a Beach Boys–on-mushrooms love song that sends my heart near-bursting. “I’m getting lost in your curls / I’m drawing pictures on your skin / So soft it twirls.”As the whole of the SummerStage crowd lost its collective mind at show’s end to “The Purple Bottle,” I got emotional. When pleasure and joy can seem increasingly distant these days, it’s a salve to know we have this and each other. Such is the power of Animal Collective, and I’m grateful. —Rachel Brody | @RachelCBrody

Photos I took of Throwing Muses, performing live at Central Park Summerstage in New York City on July 20, 1996.

While the schedule of concerts in Central Park that summer was pretty spectacular, this was the event I had to drive down from Boston for: Throwing Muses, Luna and Cornershop. And my friends Chin-a and Drew were both huge Throwing Muses fans, so we all went together.

I don’t remember a whole lot about either Cornershop or Luna’s sets, and sadly I even lack the photographic evidence! I feel like I must have taken some photos of those bands, especially Luna. But the prints in my photo envelope are only of Throwing Muses.

The band played a lot of material from the album they put out that year, Limbo. I was very familiar with all of those songs, as I was working at their record label (Rykodisc) at the time. I think I still have my advance CD somewhere.