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First Night 2000: A sampler From a talking mime to singing snakes to a flying comic - meet some of the stars of First Night If you haven't made it to First Night in years past, you've got three chances - and hundreds of reasons - to check it out this year. The advent of a new millennium has spurred the biggest citywide party yet: a three-day party, to be exact, starting New Year's Eve and lasting all weekend (four days if you count opening ceremonies at 5 p.m. today in City Hall Plaza). A $20 button gets you into two-dozen venues to see 1,200 artists present their work. With that kind of a roster, nobody will be disappointed. If you're looking to be a New Year's noisemaker, take a drumming workshop and join the new Percussion Procession on Saturday (it leaves the Hynes Convention Center at 5 p.m.). If you're after something more serene as the midnight hour approaches Friday, forget the parties and fireworks and stop by St. Paul's Cathedral for an interreligious service at 11:15 p.m., "Watch. Wait. Wonder." There are activities for kids at the Hynes and the new US Courthouse during the day; there is sophisticated entertainment for the grown-ups at night. We've chosen a handful of performers to profile, to give you a sampling of what you can see and do over the next few days.
They don't bite If you want the snap and sizzle of Mardi Gras a few weeks early to warm up the Boston winter, stop by the Parkman Bandstand on Friday or Saturday evening to welcome in the new year with the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble. The band, led by Ken Field, spices a brassy New Orleans sound with African and Latin rhythms. "We're a horn and percussion ensemble, and we play urban tribal music," says Field. "It's good, but it's also really a lot of fun street-festival music." The show offers not only music that will set your hips swaying, but also spectacular lighting and sets by Max Azenow. "If you look over at the Common and see bright colors and all sorts of reflections and changing lights, you'll know it's us," Field says. The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, made up of top-notch Boston musicians - regulars in bands such as the Either/Orchestra, Count Zero, and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - will get into the Mardi Gras groove by tossing beads and other prizes into the audience. They'll be playing party music on both evenings, and counting down to midnight on New Year's Eve. This will be the third year the band has played through midnight on the Common. The first year, musicians had no heat, and nearly froze their fingers off on their cold horns. Last year, the bandstand was equipped with heaters, and the band rocked. "It keeps on getting better," Field says, and the party to end the millennium ought to continue that trend. Fri. 7:30-10 p.m., 11:15 p.m-12:30 a.m.; Sat. 7-10 p.m. Common: Parkman Bandstand - Cate McQuaid
Bang the drum loudly Drumming is elemental, ritualistic, and fun, the perfect punctuation to end a millennium. First Night has a slew of drummers in concert as well as workshops for anyone who cares to beat out a rhythm. Odaiko New England, which combines movement and music with pounding on the traditional Japanese taiko drum, presents "Millenni-One: Rhythms for the World." "It's different from what most audiences think of as Asian fine arts," says member Elaine Fong. The sound can be thunderous. "We will unveil our big drum, which has a 36-inch head," Fong says. "It puts out a lot of sound." Before taiko went on the road as entertainment, it was used in rituals by those practicing the Buddhist and Shinto religions. "They used it to inspire samurai warriors to battle," says Fong. "Or to keep time as farmers planted rice, and scare insects away. In festivals in Japan, you always hear the sound of the taiko." Taiko drums come in different sizes and shapes, and are played in various rhythms. At First Night, the 12 members of Odaiko New England will play works written for the event. For its third appearance at First Night, Odaiko is gearing its program toward adults. But that doesn't mean the audience won't be invited to participate. "Part of the thrill of taiko is it draws audiences," says Fong. "People should bring something to make noise with. We're hoping to teach the audience a rhythm we can all play together." Sat. 10:30-11:15 p.m., 12-12:45 a.m. Hynes: Auditorium 7 - Cate McQuaid
Apocalypse then Many acts at First Night take the new millennium as their theme. Liber UnUsualis, a medieval and early Renaissance vocal trio, considers it in the context of the turn of the last millennium, and intones biblical warnings about the apocalypse. "We chose it all by the texts," says singer William Hudson of the program. "We wanted it all to have to do with apocalypse. We do have one text that goes 'In sweat the earth shall bathe at the sign of judgment.' There are various gnashings of teeth and threats of eternal flame." Much thought and research went into choosing the songs. "It's not just a wash of our favorite medieval tunes," Hudson points out. "Medieval music is sometimes difficult for the modern ear." The oldest work Liber UnUsualis will perform dates back a thousand years. It's from a 10th-century Spanish manuscript, and the group refers to it by the first words of its text, "Iudicii Signum." "It's a monophonic chant," Hudson says. "We'll take turns on the verses, and do the refrain together. There will be an octave switch." The group comprises Hudson and two women, Carolann Buff and Melanie Germond, who met at the Longy School of Music when they were all working on their master's degrees in early music. Hudson enjoys being part of Liber UnUsualis because of its academic slant, and because the work the group performs often hasn't been sung in centuries. "I enjoy digging around in libraries, finding someone to translate, and then performing a song that has never been heard by the audience before," Hudson says. Of course, there are a few new twists - like singing coed. "In the 10th or 11th century, women and men would never have sung together," Hudson observes. "I think we're beyond that in the 20th century." Fri. 9-9:45 p.m., 10:15-11 p.m. First Lutheran Church - Cate McQuaid
Wanted: two left feet On First Night two years ago, at Julie Kaufmann's country-and-Western line-dancing extravaganza, the dance leader cued up a nice, romantic slow dance, and looked out over the 200 people who had been stomping and scuffing and kicking on the floor of the Hynes Convention Center. "All right," Kaufmann told them. "It's New Year's Eve. It's time to get cozy with your partner." The dancers cleared the floor. "Only four couples danced!" she recalls. "I went right back to some upbeat Garth Brooks." Whether you're looking to rumba or swing, you'll find it at one of the Millennium Dance Parties at the Hynes Friday and Saturday night. Kaufmann specializes in a more down-home kind of dancing, which she says anyone and everyone can do. "We have seven or eight people who come together, or parents with their little kids. The ones too little to follow the dance just bounce to the music," says Kaufmann. The best thing about the dances she offers, she says, is that they're easy. "We teach the dance slowly, then at full speed," Kaufmann says. "You don't have to know anything before you come. And one fun thing is that the more mistakes you make, the more you laugh. If you turn one way and everyone else turns the other, we all laugh and you turn around and keep going." She keeps the rhythm upbeat and contemporary. "This is not your father's country music," Kaufmann warns. "It's not the twangy, 'My Wife Ran Off With My Cellmate' kind of song. We've got Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, the Dixie Chicks. We even have line dances done to non-country, like Enrique Iglesias or 'Mambo No. 5' by Lou Bega." Fri. 7:30-9:30 p.m., 9:30-11 p.m.; Sat. 7:30-9:30 p.m., 9:30-11 p.m. Hynes: Hall A - Cate McQuaid
See me, hear me Trent Arterberry is a talking mime. Is that an oxymoron? "I guess it's like a silent singer," admits Arterberry. It may not make sense, but that's half the fun. "I do mime, but also talking, storytelling, and sound effects. I'm clearly a mime, but I add the other elements." His show, "Mime Out Loud," is part of the Family Festival at the Hynes Convention Center on Friday. Arterberry's topics will appeal to adults as well as kids. "I'll do something about the destruction of the world because of Y2K," he ticks off. "I'll be telling stories of life and love. I'll ask kids in the audience for help when I tell 'Jack and the Beanstalk.'" "All my material is about my life," Arterberry explains. "Even 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' I'm communicating about my experience of the world." He likes calling on the audience for help. "There are qualities of respect for the audience, and humor and whimsy, and a sense of community that comes from seeing some of your number performing on stage," Arterberry says. Although he considers himself "not terribly extroverted," he loves performing. "I think it's cool. It's a stylized physical communication. I like the illusion, the storytelling, the body control. I like to make people laugh, and this is the way I can do it. Performing also has a cathartic and therapeutic quality." In the end, Arterberry says, his work is not simply funny. "My best material is poignant. It's funny but with moments of beauty," he says. "My formula is: Funny, funny, funny, and end with something beautiful." Sat. 1-1:45 p.m., 2-2:45 p.m. Hynes: Hall A - Cate McQuaid
Potholes in the sky Tony V. has been playing Boston's comedy clubs since the early '80s, but he's never played the Wang Center before. He will on Saturday night, and he's going to dress for the occasion. "I'm thinking about wearing a suit," he boasts. "I usually wear whatever I wake up in." Tony and fellow stand-up Dwayne Perkins each play two shows. This will be Tony's fourth First Night; his first was when stand-up made its festival debut at Suffolk University's C. Walsh Theatre. Tony has worked up some new material on the Y2K threat especially for the occasion. "If the worst thing happened, and we all went back to being gorillas, we'd be better off," he says. Ever since he was a kid, he's had his own vision for the new millennium: "I think nothing will change, except you'll wake up on Jan. 1, and we'll all have flying cars. But you know, even that somebody would ruin. Someone would find a way to put potholes in the sky." He'll also take on the Big Dig. "The people that designed it have no intention to connect anything to anything else," he suggests. "People in 2070 are going to be walking around saying, 'Where does this go?'" Forty-five minutes onstage, and Tony says his act has got to be squeaky clean. Not that he traffics in the dirty comedy of the Andrew Dice Clay variety. Irony is more his stock in trade. `I'm not offensive unless I need to be," Tony swears. As for the ambitious venue - the Wang Center is about five times the size of the Walsh and seats many times more than the Hong Kong in Cambridge, where he just played his 15th annual Christmas Show - Tony couldn't be more excited. "I look forward to performing on a stage that once held 'Cats,'" he says dryly. "How do I top that?" Sat. 9:30-10:15 p.m., 10:45-11:30 p.m. Wang Theatre - Cate McQuaid
Songs of freedom When Janice Allen was a just a kid, she used to sit in the congregation at Boston's Blue Hill Protestant Center and listen, rapt, to the harmonies of Virgil Wood's Freedom Choir. "I was happy and proud to be who I was, listening to them," remembers Allen. "They sang songs about the freedom movement. I learned a lot about my history." Allen grew up with songs about the civil rights movement. For First Night, at the opening and closing ceremonies, Allen will conduct the Freedom Inspirational Singers in "2000 Voices," a program of songs celebrating freedom and spanning a range of eras and a variety of cultures. "This Little Light of Mine" is on the bill, as is "Eyes on the Prize" and South African songs such as "Thula Sizwe (I Shall Be Released)." The choristers also plan to sing a piece composed especially for First Night, "The Millennium Song," by Tim McHale. They'll sing it in concert with the public, led by McHale and Boston's irrepressible leader of public sing-ins, Nick Page. Allen wasn't inspired only by church music. In the late '60s, she was one of a handful of African-Americans in her South Boston junior high school - this was before US Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered Boston schools to desegregate. "I had a teacher named Clifford Weeks who discovered I had singing skills. He took me and three other African-American girls and we had a singing group called the Soulettes," she recalls. "At the time, I had all this attention paid to what I couldn't do, and he paid attention to what I could do. I decided I wanted to be an inspiration as he was to me." Today, Allen teaches at the Park School in Brookline and conducts a gospel choir at Concord Academy. "It's my ministry," she says. First Night is "another wonderful place to spread the good news through music," Allen adds. "We've got so many people from different walks in this group - doctors, lawyers, astrologers, children and adults. You name it. And we come together and we make joyous music together." Thurs. 5-5:30 p.m. and Sun. 5:30-6:30 p.m. City Hall Plaza - Cate McQuaid
Juggling act Dan Foley and Joel Harris started out as just a couple of kids yukking it up in high school in Spencerport, N.Y. "One night we started juggling snowballs together in a laundromat," Foley recalls. "I could juggle three, but Joel could throw one under his leg at the same time. I had to do that, too. I went home and learned it." That was the beginning of more than a decade of airborne challenges. The comedians don't actually fly. "We jump in the air a lot and act crazy," Foley admits. "But there are no trapezes or trampolines." On the other hand, everything they touch does fly. Like electric guitars and lawn chairs. "We've always had a friendly competition. He'd be juggling one thing, and I'd have to figure out how to do that, and the next thing you know we're juggling lawn chairs," Foley says. Harris and Foley started performing in 1985, and made it a full-time gig in 1990. Then life took over; Harris moved to New York, and now they perform together only when time permits - like at First Night. Next year, though, Harris will return to Massachusetts, and the Airborne Comedians may take off again. Fri. and Sat. 1-6 p.m. Hynes: Hall C - Cate McQuaid
Don't step in the oven! It's not the Metropolitan Opera, but Opera UnMet has its own charms. For one, instead of putting a full-grown alto and soprano in the roles of Hansel and Gretel in Humperdinck's opera about the brother and sister who find themselves in the clutches of a wicked witch, Opera UnMet has enlisted 11- and 12-year-old brother and sister Anthony and Marta Robartes-Rymer to sing the parts. And the witch? "He's a guy," says Opera UnMet director Marshall Hughes. "A countertenor. And he's a stitch. He'll look the part of a witch, but I told him not to shave." Alan Rias will play that role in the opera, which has been pared down to 45 minutes. Despite its young stars (and its young set designers - 5-year-old Ruby Lou and 8-year-old Kerby Pendergast), this "Hansel and Gretel" is a professional-quality performance, intended for adults. Most of the cast is made up of adults, and a good many of them are pros. "There's so much talent in Boston, and the Lyric Opera doesn't always take advantage of it," says Hughes of the area's best-known opera company. "We have soloists do chorus work alongside nonprofessionals who love to sing." A piano will provide most of the accompaniment, with a recorder and other instruments occasionally pitching in. This is Opera UnMet's third year at First Night; in the past, it has put on "Porgy and Bess" and "The Magic Flute." Another distinction from the traditional opera: The shows are narrated in English. "Hansel and Gretel," in fact, will be sung in English. "We try to have user-friendly opera so novices won't be bored," says Hughes, "but neither will the intellectuals." Fri. 8-8:50 p.m., 9:30-10:20 p.m. St. Paul's Cathedral - Cate McQuaid
Apocalypse now Techno-artists William Tremblay and Rob Gonsalves hit their conceptual mother lode when First Night production director Gina Mullen urged them to come up with a proposal for the millennial shindig. After all, says Tremblay, "this was going to be the big one." Cogitating about what to propose, they cast a wary eye at our era's version of apocalypse: Y2K. "This time last year there was a spate of news stories about how the world would end. Elevators would plummet, things like that," says Tremblay. "We felt it was highly overrated, and a bald-faced marketing strategy to get everyone to buy a new PC." In fact, says Gonsalves, "The average Joe at home using Word and Excel won't run into any problems. Most applications don't care what the date is." Tremblay and Gonsalves decided to test the doomsayers' theory - while still making merry. They've collected 101 older computers, dating from 1987 to 1992, most of which are not Y2K compliant. Each has been programmed to sound like a particular musical instrument; together, all 100 will sound like an orchestra. Each will also project a visual element corresponding to the musical note it plays. Starting at 1 p.m. at the Hynes Convention Center and going until 1 a.m., Y2K Pops will play a loop of 15 songs under the guidance of a robot, called the "semi-conductor." At midnight, any number of the computers may come down with the millennial bug. Gonsalves and Tremblay plan to monitor all the hardware and software, and to see what hits the double-zero wall and what passes through it when 1999 gives way to 2000. Boom or bust, it ought to be a good show. Fri. and Sat. 1 p.m.-1 a.m. Hynes: Main Lobby - Cate McQuaid
Thoroughly modern Shostakovich When people hear local band Excelsior, they usually have no idea the music is decades old. The four-piece band - electrified violin, accordion, guitar, and drums - gives the music of 20th-century classical composers such as Shostakovich, Barber, and Stravinsky a distinctly modern rock/jazz edge. "People hear us and are usually surprised to learn the source of the music is a Russian composer who was writing in 1930," says accordion player Evan Harlan. The group's sound often "is closer to a rock band than classical music, but it's a rock band with Frank Zappa leanings." Harlan, a classically trained pianist, started Excelsior four years ago as a result of his fascination with Shostakovich. He thought the composer's piano compositions would work well in a modern setting, spread out among different instruments. "In the beginning of Excelsior, I would take a Shostakovich piece and just arrange the piano score for all three instruments," he says. "If they sounded good, then we would find a way to insert a section of improvisation based on the harmonies in the piece." Harlan has since branched out to incorporate other composers, even earlier ones like Chopin, into the band's playlist. He likens some of Chopin's melody lines to bebop jazz. "His songs can be very twisty and chromatic," Harlan says. "All the composers I've chosen to deal with have a harmonic language that I call dissonant tonality," he adds. "Shostakovich uses the same kind of tonal chords as composers 100 years before him, but he combines them in ways that are very modern and dissonant at the time they were written." Fri. 6:15-7 p.m., 7:30-8:15 p.m. Emmanuel Church - Christopher Muther
Swinging in his 70s Artie Barsamian may have never followed his heart if his heart had stayed healthy. The 71-year-old leader had always wanted to head up a big band, but until the late 1970s, Barsamian was entrenched in the world of Armenian music. "When I was in the hospital, I told my wife, 'When I get out of here I'm going to Berklee, get some musicians, and start a big band.' That was the start of it," Barsamian recalls of his 1978 open-heart surgery. "It's a labor of love." Barsamian began his music career on the road with big bands more than 50 years ago. At 19, the saxophonist/clarinetist played with local favorite Leon Marian's Big Band. He was about to take a job in the Stan Kenton Orchestra when his father died, leaving him with his mother and younger siblings to support. His musical career continued, but with Armenian bands that didn't tour. Barsamian picked the right time to return to his first love. "Ten years ago or so, the only people I'd see out dancing to the music were 50-, 60-, or 65-year-olds," he says. "Now you see people 25 or 30 out there gliding along the floor like they wrote the music. It's amazing." For its New Year's night performance, Barsamian's Big Band is going to play tribute to Frank Sinatra with a set of songs he made famous. "The featured vocalist with our band is a first-class Sinatra clone," Barsamian says of Steve Marvin. "If you walked into a room and heard him singing, you'd think we were playing a record." Sat. 7:30 p.m.-1 a.m. Hynes: Hall D - Christopher Muther
True-blue blues By the time he found his way in front of a band in 1959, Weepin' Willie Robinson had been a migrant farm worker, dishwasher, boxer, soldier, and MC. If anyone was qualified to sing the blues, or even weep, it was Willie. "I always loved singing," says the 73-year-old. "I couldn't sing that well, but I got to the point when I could sing a song or two." It was 1959 and Robinson was emceeing a B.B. King show at a club in Pennsylvania when he finally got his opportunity. He told King that he wanted to sing. "So he asked me what I sing, and I told him I sing his songs." King sent Robinson out onstage with his band, and Weepin' Willie became a singer. "At that time he had a 21-piece band," Robinson recalls. "They just cranked up and blew me away. I never experienced anything like that. It took me about five minutes to recover and to eventually start singing." Robinson moved to Boston shortly after his first brush with singing the blues, and continued emceeing shows for the likes of Jackie Wilson and Count Basie, gradually singing more and more. By the early '80s, Robinson decided he was ready to make a go of it as a full-time singer. Last year, he released his first album, "At Last, On Time," a collection of standards and new songs that combine the grit of the South with the sophistication of urban blues. Robinson is unruffled by the prospect of playing to a crowd 10 times his norm. "I wanted the challenge of playing to 2,000 people," he says. "I've played at some of the festivals to the bigger crowds. Now I'm ready for the big leagues." Fri. 6-6:45 p.m., 7:15-8 p.m. Berklee Performance Center - Christopher Muther
Time out This day - this New Year's, this passage from one millennium to the next, if you view it that way - will never come again. Or will it? "We see New Year's Eve as a point on a linear line," observes filmmaker and animator Karen Aqua, who collaborated with artist Jane Gillooly to make "Shrine to Ritualized Time." "A lot of other cultures think of time as a circle." The six-minute film, projected continuously after dark on the Dartmouth Street side of the Boston Public Library, is "a celebration of rites and symbols people have created to connote the passage of time," says Aqua. That includes symbols representing the seasons, months, and days, and the elements of fire, air, water, and earth in relation to time. It spans ancient readings of time, like the sundial, to the more contemporary, such as clocks. For the artists, "Shrine to Ritualized Time" marks a kind of cyclical time. They first showed it at First Night 10 years ago, but in a different form. "We've jazzed it up for the millennium," Aqua says. She's added a few live-action shots. Plus, the musical backdrop is celebratory, a piece composed by Ken Field and Ken Winokur. "There will be speakers on the street, and we're hoping people will use the space as a dance floor," Aqua says. "Copley Square as a big dance plaza." At 11:59 p.m. on Friday, the film will stop and the artists present an animated video projection countdown, made especially for the millennium celebration. Dusk Friday. Projected on the BPL's Dartmouth Street entrance - Cate McQuaid
3-D history Harriet Casdin-Silver has her fingers in a couple of First Night pies. The internationally known holographic artist created this year's First Night button, which shows the word "Boston" busting like firecrackers out of the familiar cityscape. She also designed (with sound artist Kevin Brown) an ambitious holographic installation at the Hynes that combines large holograms with oral history. "A Celebration of Aging" features larger-than-life holographic portraits of nine Boston-area residents in their 80s and 90s. Before each portrait will hang one of Brown's "audiodomes." Stand beneath it, and you hear the voice of the person you're viewing, sharing the memories of his or her life. "I've been working with the issue of aging for a while. I think it's one of the most important issues in society and art," says Casdin-Silver, who will be "three-quarters of a century in February." The ambitious piece features nine holograms installed in an octagon 40 feet across. "This may be my masterpiece," she says. "There's one image of two African-American women together. Their heads are enlarged to 3 feet," she says. Visitors can walk among the holographic images, and view them from front and back. "It's close to my old dream that someday we'll have holographic stage sets," Casdin-Silver says. Casdin-Silver and Brown interviewed their subjects about what life has been like in the 20th century, and what they look forward to in the 21st. "At the end, it came out so well that I did myself," Casdin-Silver says. Her self-portrait is the youngest subject in "A Celebration of Aging." Fri. and Sat. 1 p.m.-1 a.m. Hynes: Room 210 - Cate McQuaid
Picture the future you Here's a chance for you and your kids to peer into the future. Part of the Family Festival on Friday at the Hynes, this group of artists and educators will transform an ordinary room into a place of magic and time travel. "Around the perimeter, on the walls, we'll have beautifully framed small mirrors and tables decorated with mylar and covered with art supplies to draw and do collages and photographic self-portraits," explains Linda Hirsch. "Children and families will do self-portraits to mark who they are now, and also who they will be in the new millennium," she says. Hirsch, her husband, Gary, Nikolay Chernyayev, Olga Shmuylovich, Mitch Kamen, and Melody Winnig make up Through the Looking Glass Artists. Once you've crafted your picture, take it to the middle of the room and post it on a huge pyramid, Looking Glass Tower. "The emphasis will be on fun and fantasy," Hirsch says. "How do people envision themselves in the future? Futuristic? Gloomy? Hopeful? ... Anyone can doodle off a quick sketch." Hirsch came up with the idea for the Looking Glass Tower years ago. "I'm a very big fan of Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking Glass,'" she says. "We've been humming along quietly, accumulating goodies in our garage for this project that you wouldn't believe." Hirsch, who is also a photographer, plans to document the project on film and interview participants. "When it's all over, we'll have a portable exhibit to tour with," she says. Fri. 1-6 p.m. Hynes: Room 103 - Cate McQuaid
Power of the people Mild-mannered Mitch Ryerson makes furniture. But he has a secret identity: Star Wheel Man. Ryerson has created "Star Wheel," a giant, rolling sculpture powered by two people walking inside it. It's 16 feet tall, and the two wheels are 8 feet in diameter. You'll see it in the Grand Procession on Friday evening. "The two wheels can turn independently, so it can do little tricks," Ryerson says. The sculpture sports constellations of stars on the sides. Above it, scrolls unfurl in the shape of a wave; a human figure, reaching for the stars, tops the whole thing off. Ryerson is matter-of-fact about his magical creation. "I like machines. I like moving things. It's just a huge toy," he says. "It could be something trundled out of the 15th century." The toy, and other public projects like carving chairs out of tree stumps in Cambridge, are opportunities for the furniture maker to cut loose. "It's a fun contrast to furniture, which is so private, so controlled and compulsive," he says. "It's nice to do a big, whacked-out blowout of energy." Still, there are similarities between furniture and mystical, magical sculpture. "The sculpture is interactive, like furniture. It's something that people operate," Ryerson says. The mechanics of the "Star Wheel" intrigued him. "With this kind of engineering, you can visually understand balance and gears and how they work. I like playing with those forces." "Star Wheel" will roll in the Grand Procession, which takes off on Boylston Street in front of the Hynes Friday at 5 p.m. It ends at the Boston Common Parade Grounds. - Cate McQuaid
Mambo punk explosion Their party-loving sound may best be described as a mix of the Sex Pistols and Tito Puente, but Babaloo trumpet player La'zik (a.k.a. Marc Chillemi) has a more elaborate theory. "I like to say that the sum of the music is greater than its parts," Chillemi says. The music played by each individual instrument may very straightforward, he says, but when put together, the sound is deceivingly complex. Babaloo members call the group a "punk-mambo hardcore juju band." Most of them had never played instruments before joining Babaloo. The group got its start in a Jamaica Plain basement, headed up by Unca B (his real name is Bruno, but he doesn't like to see his full name in print. "He's a real punk," says Chillemi). Unca B arrived in Boston 13 years ago and founded a handful of punk bands before falling in love with mambo and starting Babaloo. Now he writes the band's songs in seven languages and explores Latin and African rhythms. "We take a lot of chances," Chillemi said. "I love that we don't have a drum set and there are only two of us in the band who are schooled musicians. For all these other kids in the band, it's straight from the heart, there's no pretense at all. We're all true punks." Chillemi says Babaloo's songs are compositionally simple, but when the sounds come together, the effect is surprisingly sophisticated and deliriously happy. Sat. 10 p.m.-1 a.m. Hynes: Hall B - Christopher Muther
Midnight madness It's only a few days before New Year's Eve, and Angry Salad lead singer Bob Whelan is in a bit of a panic. "The band was talking today, and we realized that we should probably know that 'Auld Lang Syne' tune that everybody sings at midnight," Whelan says on the phone from a tour stop in Pennsylvania. "Everyone sings the first three or four words to it, but then no one ever knows the rest." The band's New Year's Eve show at the Hynes caps a year when the local quartet took its music national. Angry Salad's self-titled, major-label debut was met with critical praise and some commercial success, thanks in part to the radio-ready tune "The Milkshake Song" and the band's muscular brand of easy-to-take pop music. "I definitely thought I would be sick of 'The Milkshake Song' by now," Whelan says of the tune the band first introduced on its 1997 disc "Bizarre Gardening Accident." "But I think one of the things that's most gratifying about having a record out there is that people know the song. Going from writing a song at home in my boxer shorts to standing onstage and having people sing it back to me has yet to get old." After its genesis at Brown University in '93, Angry Salad moved to Boston in '95 and launched into a relentless string of live shows. This year the band has played more than 200 shows, Whelan estimates, and he expects the pace to continue in 2000. For the New Year's Eve show, Whelan says, the quartet will launch into Nena's apocalyptic classic "99 Red Balloons" just before the stroke of midnight. Also, expect a tribute to teen pop tart Britney Spears. A Spears video tape has been stuck in the VCR of the band's touring van, and the band has picked up some key teen heartthrob choreography. "I should qualify that by saying we're four white guys," he said. "Some stereotypes exist for a reason. We're not pretty when we dance." Fri. 10:15-11:15 p.m., 11:45 p.m.-12:45 a.m. Hynes: Hall D - Christopher Muther
Stories with strings This Family Festival offering at the Hynes isn't a storyteller weaving yarns with the mellow undertones of a cello in the background. It's an interchange of voice and instrument, story and music. "As a theater person, writing music revues, I've worked with an accompanist," says storyteller Leeny Del Seamonds of her collaboration with cellist Gideon Freudmann. "This is different. It's a tandem piece." "In one story, 'Suki,' the title character, is a magical crane who wants to give an old couple a gift," Del Seamonds explains. "She goes into the weaving room, and I say, 'When Suki went in to weave the cloth, "Clack, clack, clack" went the ancient loom.' And Gideon will make that sound. He'll match it to the pitch of my voice." In another story, a character starts to cry. Sharing the story with Freudmann in rehearsal, Del Seamonds made the crying sound and he echoed it on his cello. "It gave me such chills!" Del Seamonds recalls. "We looked at each other and said, 'This is special.'" Sat. 1-1:45 p.m., 2:15-3 p.m., 3:30-4:15 p.m. Hynes: Room 102 - Cate McQuaid © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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