Scarry. (NYU FASP)

The Beats may be long gone, but protest music is alive and well in Greenwich Village—thanks in part to the institution that helped drive many of the artists out, New York University.

On Wednesday, a group of musicians, including Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth fame) and John Zorn will convene at 6:30 p.m. at Le Poisson Rouge to help raise money for NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan's legal fund. Last month, the faculty group that opposes the university's expansion south of Washington Square filed a lawsuit against the city and the University trying to stop it. All proceeds from the $20 show will go directly to the cause.

The current list of performers is as follows, though more disgruntled artists could show up at any time:

• John Zorn
• Thurston Moore
• Guitarist Jesse Harris
• TriBeCaSTan
• Performance artist John Kelly
• Guitarist Gary Lucas
• Red Baraat
• Composer David Amram
• MYCALE (vocal music of John Zorn)

Tickets are still available here. Love the purple Godzilla from the flyer.

Still, we can't help but wonder if a concert like this wouldn't have been more effective before NYU's expansion plan was approved by the City Council.

"I have to tell you," Yoko Ono said to her audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night, a few days before her 77th birthday, "you have a long life ahead of you, and it’s going to be beautiful." Her Brooklyn Academy of Music show--half concert, half tribute--was filled with all kinds of things: shimmying, screeching, thumping, family members, guitar gods, art films, drag, a tuba, a cello, and as Ms. Ono would say, a lot of cosmic splendor.

The first half was full of thick, loud, strange, twisting grooves, which probably wouldn't sound like promising news to those who know her only as a screechy-voiced Beatles destroyer. But this wasn't music for a pilates class in Westchester--it was interstellar and kaleidoscopic, with pelvic bass lines bouncing below gooey guitars and horns. She sashayed, shuffled, shook and swayed. Sometimes it took her across the stage, especially on the groovier songs from last year’s Between My Head and the Sky. The exclamation point in the title of "Ask the Elephant!" deserves to be there.

The first set ended unexpectedly gently. Over only trickles of piano from her son, Sean Lennon, and a late-night Tom Waits horn, Ms. Ono sang in Japanese and English about hell and earth: It was the kind of thing that could sound like bad Philip Glass, but it was smoky and sad.

But the tribute half of the concert ("Act II," as it’s called on the We Are Plastic Ono Band program) stole the show. First of all, in the spirit of Ms. Ono’s canyon-sized proclamations, I’ve got to say that the sound Paul Simon and his son, Harper, made on the two songs they played and sang together was one of the most exceedingly warm things I’ve ever heard live on a stage. They played "Hold On" from John Lennon’s first solo album, and "Silver Horse" from Season of Glass, her first after his death. One is sung to a wife, and the other is sung by a widow.

Eric Clapton, the guest that came on afterward, turns 65 next month. But his guitar, especially on The White Album's "Yer Blues," was hysterical, sludgy, and huge. "In sound check, he was teaching me to play how my Dad did it,” said the younger Mr. Lennon. "A touch sophisticated."

Justin Bond, who performs in boozy drag as a half of Kiki and Herb, played Ms. Ono's jilted-woman torch song "What a Bastard the World Is." Beforehand there was a joke about Ms. Ono's Twitter, which gives advice about sending diagrams of your footsteps and flammable paper moons to friends: "A lot of the time I don’t know what she’s talking about," said Mr. Bond, "but I do everything she says."

Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon played "Mulberry," which was not amused, not amusing, and what the Times politely referred to in its review of the show as "arrhythmic." With more rhythm, amusement and tuba, Bette Midler came on next to play "Yes, I’m Your Angel," a few minutes of caramelized bath house jazz.

After "Rising," one of the first set’s arty disco songs, full of Ms. Ono's points and crouches and marches, Mr. Lennon son whispered something to into her ear. "He's always saying, 'Oh it’s great, it’s great,' to make me feel good," she explained.

"I'm not lying, Mom," he said. The crowd sighed. A few days before the concert, Ms. Ono told this reporter about her maternal feelings: "You would never know, because you’re not old enough, I’m sorry to use those expressions, but when your son grows up, and he’s doing his own thing," she explained, "it’s nice to get a chance to be with him for a while."

She said the show’s guests had been his idea: "I'm doing a regular show of mine, and then they’re sort of added. Added bombs! Not bombs! Bombs is a bad word! What is it? Added sparkling stars."

mabelson@observer.com

The Eternal will be the first album by the band, newly signed to Matador Records, to be released on an indie label since its landmark 1988 LP, Daydream Nation. Guitarist Thurston Moore has said that fans can expect a more "rock-centric" album (not that Rather Ripped and 2004's Sonic Nurse, which actually harkened the glorious distortion of Daydream Nation, weren't totally rocking records). But have no fear, die-hards—Mr. Moore told Billboard last month, "We're still Sonic Youth. I still don't know how to play the guitar." Meanwhile, Urban Outfitters will start carrying bassist Kim Gordon's new clothing line next week. And Sonic Youth is slated to headline day two of the noisy No Fun Fest at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 16. 

"There's too many good records here," he said in his thick English accent (although the actual records, those measuring 12-inches across, were downstairs). He was perusing the "C" section, and picked up a disc by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. "I could do some real damage in this shop for sure."

At 36, Mr. Hogan is hardly archaic himself. In fact, the festival he created nearly a decade ago, All Tomorrow's Parties (commonly referred to as ATP), has become one of the most highly anticipated events of the indie music world.

Barry Hogan, the British music promoter, was at Bleecker Street Records last Thursday afternoon partaking in what seems like an archaic ritual: CD shopping.

"There's too many good records here," he said in his thick English accent (although the actual records, those measuring 12-inches across, were downstairs). He was perusing the "C" section, and picked up a disc by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. "I could do some real damage in this shop for sure."

At 36, Mr. Hogan is hardly archaic himself. In fact, the festival he created nearly a decade ago, All Tomorrow's Parties (commonly referred to as ATP), has become one of the most highly anticipated events of the indie music world. This weekend marks its first ever New York installment—although to the dismay of anyone who prefers not to venture above 14^th Street, it's taking place at a woodsy family vacation resort and country club in the Catskills of Monticello, N.Y.

Held on weekends in small, quirky venues, and often curated in part by a particular band or musician (this time, Kevin Shields has the honor), All Tomorrow's Parties—named after the Velvet Underground song—provides a more intimate, perhaps classier, alternative to the standard rock mega-fest that massive outdoor concerts like Coachella, Lollapalooza (the post-2004 version, of course) and New York's own Siren Festival have re-popularized in recent years. Since ATP's inception in 1999, it's hosted acts ranging from classic rock artists like Yoko Ono, Cheap Trick and Love, to contemporary indie stars like Sonic Youth, Modest Mouse, and Belle and Sebastian (who gave Mr. Hogan the idea for ATP in the first place).

This weekend people are flying in from countries as far away as Japan, Australia, England, Spain and Italy, to name a few, and Mr. Hogan said there's a "healthy" New York draw as well. (Not surprisingly, he noted, many of the city's ticket holders seem to be from Brooklyn.) The main attraction is Mr. Shields' My Bloody Valentine, the recently reunited early '90s fuzz-rock band from Ireland, which is making its first U.S. appearance in 16 years. As of Wednesday, all of the roughly 3,000 tickets had sold out.

"We try to make it intimate," said Mr. Hogan of his preference for venues that are a bit off the beaten path, like the tiny seaside resort in the south of England where he sometimes holds the festival, or the deck of The Queen Mary, a legendary ocean liner now permanently docked in Long Beach, Calif. "Nobody wants to be stuck in a field with 50,000 people," he said.

But ATP's success boils down to a single element: nostalgia. Usually, the lineup is more or less a dream set list for people who got into cool music in the '80s and '90s. Between My Bloody Valentine and longtime indie staples like Low, Yo La Tengo and Dinosaur Jr., among various others, this weekend's festival is like a long-lost mix tape made in one's college dorm room. Most exciting, Mr. Hogan often convinces a band to do an entire set of one of its classic albums, a trend that has taken off in its own right since the idea first came to him one night in 2005 when he was sitting around drinking beer and listening to old records. That thought evolved into a concert series called "Don't Look Back" (like the classic Bob Dylan documentary), which has featured everyone from Ennio Morricone to the Stooges to GZA from Wu-Tang Clan, and is typically held in conjunction with ATP. Among the artists joining in the fun this weekend are Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, doing his 1995 solo album Psychic Hearts (at Mr. Hogan's behest, Sonic Youth did an entire tour last year of its 1988 masterpiece, Daydream Nation), and Built to Spill, doing 1997's Perfect From Now On.

"I'm totally intrigued by the idea," said Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch, who is perhaps more excited to see the Meat Puppets perform their 1984 classic, Meat Puppets II, one of his favorite records of all time, "but mostly I'm just flattered that people are actually interested."

So why are people so interested in rehashing the past? And what does it say about, well, new music?

"I think it says that on the one hand, indie rock has now become entrenched for a long enough amount of time for people to be nostalgic for it," said Amy Phillips, senior news editor at Pitchfork Media, which hosted a "Don't Look Back" series at its own festival last summer.

"Something can definitely be said for the fact that the way we consume music now isn't as much of an ‘album' experience as it was when a lot of these records came out. People certainly felt a strong connection to the notion of the album and they want to feel that way again," she added.

"I think people are starving for it," said Syd Butler, the bass player for New York's Les Savy Fav, which has played several of ATP's European incarnations and is also on this weekend's bill. "For me it's [Built to Spill's] Perfect From Now On—the time it came out, the culture of that time. It still has that feeling to me of buying a record and going to see a band live and growing with them. Now, it's like, I listen to people's MySpace pages."

Back in the Village, Mr. Hogan, who's been in town from England with his wife and business partner, Deborah, for the past month making preparations for the festival, was a bit more blunt.

"There are some good bands out there today, but a lot of the new stuff just doesn't inspire me," he said. "We're not trying to promote what's trendy and hip. This is all music we still listen to, things we want to hear. It's like making a mix tape. You're gonna put on what you love and things that are meaningful to you."

Works for us!

ATP New York, Sept. 19-21, Kutsher's Country Resort, Catskills, N.Y., atpfestival.com

"There's no question that those in their twenties and early thirties--I think, just from a quick look--seem to be a significant part of the turnout today, and last year too. So it shows that obviously something is happening."

I strolled around Borough Hall Park, pausing at vendors who had set up shop for the annual festival, which is in it's third year. Tables offered piles and piles of new and old tomes, everything from childhood to adult literature. A veritable congregation of Brooklyn's literary, artistic and community-oriented class surrounded me. There were lots of children, too.

Discussions throughout the day offered the likes of Joan Didion, Jonathan Lethem, Terry McMillan and Thurston Moore to name a few. I caught up with Thurston, who recently co-authored No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980, before he took the stage at St. Francis College with Ian Mackaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi) to discuss the intersection of punk and publishing. I asked him his thoughts on what exactly is going on in literary Brooklyn these days.

"I think that every scene in Brooklyn has taken off, not just the literary scene," he said. "I think it's kind of correlative with the music scene and the art scene. I think it's because most writers don't have much money so it's affordable to live here, as it was 35 years ago in Manhattan. Manhattan is like Los Angeles now.

"As far as the literary scene taking off," Thurston continued, "if you have an independent publishing company it makes more sense to be here because of the economics. There's more characters here, and they're characters who are living creative lifestyles as opposed to the kind of yuppie liberal white stuff."

Brooklyn is definitely a treasure trove of inspiration and full of new characters at every turn. Though maybe some of that yuppie liberal white stuff, too. Ahem, Park Slope.

"Even Kate [Christensen], her book The Great Man, I remember reading it when I was in my store one day," said Christine Onorati, owner of Greenpoint book store Word. "And this woman walked in and in my head I was like, 'Oh, I wonder if that's this character' and realized, ‘Oh, my god, that's a novel!' You almost forget. Brooklyn's so big and so different from one end to the next there's so much going on here, there's tons of fodder."

"I'VE BEEN TALKING TO a lot of writers lately," said the author Ms. Christensen, whose et her tome in Greenpoint. "We all say, all of us, without any irony, that Brooklyn is the best place for a writer to live; and for a writer to say something un-ironically, that earnest, we must mean it."

The close quarters, an infinite variety of perspectives and a literary legacy give Brooklyn some of it's most unique characteristics, and young people are moving here in droves to enjoy it.

"I can't fully explain it, but there's a history there," said Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books and an organizer of the book festival. "And I think that people do feel like when they move to Brooklyn they're part of a historical artistic continuum."

"I was talking to Ian Mackaye on the phone a couple of weeks ago in advance of him coming up here because I arranged his program and he was bitching at me a little bit about how many people from D.C. have moved up to New York and he was being light hearted about it but he was basically saying that New York has sucked some of the musical life out of D.C."

Maybe it's because they've read so many great books about the place.

It's a question that's been burning in our minds for some time now, especially ever since we were forced to technologically progress beyond the point of being able to watch our own VHS copy—purchased in 1995 at our local Tower Records—of the classic punk documentary, which features the likes of Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Babes in Toyland and other indie rock luminaries of the early '90s. As Mr. Moore explained, there seems to be at least one little obstacle standing in the way of the DVD. Her name is Courtney Love:

Wow—90 minutes of extra footage?? Please, Courtney, step aside so we can relive our joyful teenage existence! In the meantime, thank heavens for YouTube. Above, you can watch the beginning of the film in all of its grunge-era glory.

Mr. MacKaye and Mr. Moore are scheduled for a conversation/Q&A starting at 3 p.m. to "discuss the parallel worlds of independent music and book publishing," according to the festival's Web site. How, you ask, did it come to be that these two super hip indie rockers will be rubbing elbows with some of the literary greats of our time? Well, one of the festival's organizers is Johnny Temple, who is also the chair of the Brooklyn Borough President's Literary Council and the head of the independent publishing house Akashic Books, and who also also happens to be the bass player of the seminal ‘90s indie rock band Girls Against Boys. Now it all makes sense!

So basically, back in high school our English teachers probably thought we were weird for being so into the all these strange bands with silly names instead of like, Dave Matthews, or whatever all the normal kids were listening to. But thanks to the Brooklyn Book Festival, we can proudly say that the joke's on them!

More coverage here and here.

Early on, Mr. Obama captured the fancy of the bicoastal artistic community, and he’s gone to unprecedented lengths to incorporate their creations into his campaign. Perhaps the most successful example of this collaboration between the graphic and the political is a series of posters created by the designer Shepard Fairey: agitprop-like images of the candidate’s face, superimposed over words like “hope” and “progress.” Copies of the posters, once available through Mr. Obama’s Web site, have long since sold out; they are now going on eBay for more than a thousand dollars apiece.

The success of Mr. Fairey’s work has given rise to a legion of imitators, both authorized and unauthorized. It has also created a bit of an uncomfortable situation for the Obama campaign, which is now seeking to distance itself from all things bohemian, adulatory and vaguely European.

That may explain why the Manifest Hope Gallery, a temporary art exhibition organized in conjunction with this week’s Democratic National Convention, is being held a safe distance from the Pepsi Center, in a converted warehouse near Coors Field. As one walks inside to a throbbing techno beat, the first work one confronts is a giant canvas by Mr. Fairey that depicts Mr. Obama staring off pensively into space, as what looks to be a giant orange sun explodes behind his head. Next to it hangs Ron English’s work Abraham Obama, which morphs Mr. Obama’s face into the familiar stovepipe-hatted countenance of Lincoln. Other works evoke a triumphant Muhammad Ali (Mr. Obama pumping a fist above a slogan that reads “Obama Bomaye!”); plaster Mr. Obama’s mug on a pair of vintage Air Jordans; and depict him in a Tom Wolfe-ish linen suit, dancing on the White House lawn.

“The whole schematic of this is to bring people together to manifest hope,” said Sowaila Zada, a spokeswoman for the show, which is sponsored in part by Obey Giant, Mr. Fairey’s design firm, and MoveOn.org. “It’s light, love, hope—whatever.”

Some of the dozens of works on display were chosen as part of a competition sponsored by
MoveOn.org and judged by a panel that included Mr. Fairey, several other artists, and the musicians Thurston Moore and Moby. Others were commissioned specifically for the project. Most of them are connected either literally or aesthetically to the street art movement.

On Monday afternoon, Sam Flores, a former graffiti artist who now has an art and clothing design business in San Francisco, stood in front of his contribution to the project, a work he called New America. In one corner, it depicted a burning city; the left side of the canvas was dominated by a fanciful likeness of Mr. Obama, who, in Mr. Flores’ depiction, was female and extremely pregnant. Mr. Flores pointed out that the houses were burning in a red-white-and-blue pattern. “It’s an American flag subliminally,” he said. “Then we’ve got the new America,” he went on, pointing to the androgynous Obama. “New hope, new growth, new world.”

Mr. Flores said he’d only had three days to spray-paint the canvas, but since he’d come from the streets, that was no challenge. “I just had an image of old America burning,” he said. “The rest was just improvised.”

arice@observer.com

Some background: No Wave was a short-lived, experimental music scene in late-'70s Manhattan that grew out of punk and was eventually considered a reaction against New Wave. Classic No Wave bands include Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (several of the original members are dead, so Mr. Moore will be filling in on bass tonight), James Chance and the Contortions, DNA and Mars. Mr. Moore’s and Mr. Coley’s new book documents this weird and gritty slice of Manhattan history. Ben Sisario of The New York Times writes:

The New York Press caught up with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks frontwoman and avant-garde icon Lydia Lunch recently at her home in Bareclona. (Nostalgic confession: In 1996, this reporter’s Sonic Youth-loving high-school self got Ms. Lunch’s autograph via a friend who went to see her perform at Coney Island High, the popular St. Mark’s punk dive that’s now been defunct for 10 years. It said: “Take the Power! Lydia Lunch.”) Here’s what she had to say about the reunion and the book:

She elaborated to The Times:

If you can stomach it, watch this clip of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks above.

It was kind of disappointing when Pulp sort of just fizzled out in the early '00s, leaving hordes of Fred Perry-clad Brit pop fans high and dry. Little did they know frontman Jarvis Cocker would make a big comeback in 2007 with a solo album that was, quite frankly, far more exciting than his occasional DJ cameos at Misshapes. Now Mr. Cocker is coming back to New York on July 21 and 22, with shows at the Music Hall of Williamsburg and Terminal 5, respectively. (Would a reprise of “Common People” be too much to ask? We can only take so much of William Shatner’s version.) [On Sale: Friday, April 25 at noon]

There aren't any tickets for this one, per se, but we couldn't help plugging the fact that Wire, the iconic and oft-imitated 1970's British post-punk band, is playing a free show at South Street Seaport on May 30. Like their U.K. mates My Bloody Valentine, Wire hasn't played the U.S. in quite some time. This summer's South Street Seaport lineup also includes recent Vice Records signees King Khan and the Shrines (June 27), Mary Weiss of the Shangri-La (July 18), and Deerhunter front man Bradford Cox performing solo under the moniker Atlas Sound (July 25).

You still have time to take advantage of the pre-sale for Devo’s June 26 performance at Williamsburg’s McCarren Park Pool with Tom Tom Club and Dan Deacon. (It ends at 10 p.m. tonight.) Not that shows at the pool tend to sell out, not matter how many hipsters are looking for something to do on a Monday night. The public sale starts Friday at 10 a.m. [On Sale Now]

But the new wave goodness doesn’t stop there! Eighties one-hit wonders Dead or Alive are playing the Blender Theater at Gramercy on July 26. [On Sale: Saturday, April 26 at 10 a.m.]

Last but not least, Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam comes to Giants Stadium on June 1, bringing you (you know the line) the best in hip-hop and R&B. [On Sale: Friday, April 25 at 10 a.m.]