Time to send July off in style and start August right with one of those crossover weekends. We’ve got festivals featuring both music and sausage, a podcast convention, and some extended hand-holding.
Friday (07/31)
British electronic producer Jamie xx and his chillrave workups top the bill tonight at the Granada for Gorilla vs. Bear Fest, the music showcase painstakingly assembled by the influential, North Texas-based website of the same name. We talked with Chris Cantalini, the brains behind the operation, for a story in the July issue of the magazine. It’s a great read if you’re interested in the “monumental shift” in how people find and listen to new music in the 21st century.
The touring production of Motown the Musical, which tells the story of the legendary Detroit music label and makes liberal use of the great music said label produced, is showing at the Winspear. Bring earplugs and aspirin if you’re planning to see Second Thought Theatre’s extremely loud and incredible close adaptation of Othello. The Uptown Players’ Catch Me If You Can is worth catching.
People will hold hands in Deep Ellum, creating a human link from Kettle Art to Ash Studios. This hand-holding will ostensibly highlight the hip and happening things in the neighborhood: musicians, artists, filmmakers, comedians, and — God help us all — “bloggers” are explicitly invited.
Saturday (08/01)
Hello, August. Plan out your month ahead of time: Here are the 25 things you must do.
Want to get in to classical music but feel turned off by the prospect of fusty old songs by white Europeans wearing wigs? The Applause Music Festival at the Modern in Fort Worth features performances of contemporary work written by innovative, living and breathing composers.
The Sausage Fest (put together by sports radio station 105.3 The Fan) at Main Street Garden will feature hot meat, cold beer, and probably a bunch of obnoxious jokes about sausage. Mechanical bull riding and a celebrity appearance from Twiggy the Water-Skiing Squirrel are also on the docket.
The Randy Rogers Band and Jason Isbell will bring some crowd-pleasing Texas country (Alabama country in Isbell’s case) to Gexa Energy Pavilion.
The Podcast Movement, a convention out at the Omni in Fort Worth, has podcasting panels, workshops, and an all-star lineup of well-known podcasters, including Marc Maron and Sarah Koenig, who will also appear in Dallas Monday for a talk at the Winspear. It doesn’t look like our own erstwhile podcasters were invited.
The quality should be solid, and just look at the quantity we’re dealing with here: The annual Chaos!!! exhibition at Ro2 Art downtown will feature small works from more than 100 artists.
Sunday (08/02)
Seeing Slayer live is the kind of thing everyone needs to experience regardless of their affinity for heavy metal music or Satan. King Diamond and a smattering of other worthwhile metal acts round out the lineup at this Sunday’s Mayhem Festival at Gexa.
It’s going to be another hot weekend, and some time in a movie theater would be well-spent. Vacation, an update to the 1983 Chevy Chase film about the Griswolds’ disastrous trip to Wally World, is a trip you should avoid taking. The Stanford Prison Experiment examines the infamous psychological project that gives the movie its name. The new Mission: Impossible flick has Tom Cruise dangling from the side of a cargo plane in order to prove something to us. It’s a fun action movie, and possibly the best in the franchise — 2011’s Ghost Protocol may hold the slight edge, with the original close behind. (3 was fine and 2 is best forgotten.)
For more to do this weekend, go here.
