With roots in the High Line Park, a festival springs up

Volume 1, Number 33 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | May 4 - 10, 2007

May 9 to 19
Various locations throughout the city
www.highlinefestival.com

By Lee Ann Westover

Set atop a ruined railroad that runs above the west side of Chelsea, the High Line Park will feature greenery and river views where there was once only rust and refuse. Even before the completion of phase one, restaurateurs are wrangling over where to put their sidewalk tables and landlords are watching with baited breath as the dollar signs spring up all around them. Add to the mix the brand-new High Line Festival, a multidisciplinary celebration of the arts, and the creative chaos surrounding the district reaches much farther than the physical boundaries of the neighborhood.

Last week, Chelsea Now spoke with producer David Binder about the inception of the High Line Festival. “We wanted to create a new arts festival for New York, and we had this really interesting idea: what if artists could make festivals? So we decided that every year a different artist would choose their favorite music… their favorite dance… their favorite film… whatever they like.” To pick the curator of the inaugural year, he said, “We made a list of all the artists in the world, and the very first person we wanted was David Bowie.” David Bowie they got.

Despite the obvious commercial opportunities in the burgeoning High Line corridor, a fair amount of wide-eyed optimism seems to remain. Binder himself is a resident, and is donating a portion of the proceeds from the festival to Friends of the Highline (highline.org) — the main organizing force behind the transformation of the railbed’s urban wilderness into a public space. In talking to Binder, it is clear that he is at once glad to be getting in on the ground floor of a neighborhood on the rise, and purely thrilled to be participating in this unique festival concept that he and co-producer Josh Woods took years to turn into a reality. His excitement is palpable when he says, “To start a festival in New York City or America where there is no support for the arts and no funding for the arts is an incredibly difficult endeavor. We’re so lucky because our sponsor [Fifth Ave. behemoth H&M] has given us carte blanche. They are like ‘We want to support you and we’re happy to support David’s vision.’ ”

The acts aren’t all local and the curator hails from across the pond, but still the festival seems so very New York. The mix of artists all share a tendency to walk the fine line between crazy and clever, just like the rest of us who choose to make this rapidly changing city our home. And that seems to be the point. Says Binder, “We hope that the festival will be as diverse as the curators are, and the curators will be as diverse as the city itself.”

From May 9 to 19, over a dozen of Bowie’s favorite artists (not including his favored Spanish filmmakers) will perform everywhere from the neighborhood’s new High Line Ballroom to Radio City Music Hall. Laurie Anderson and Arcade Fire are perhaps the most well known, while slightly more underground groups like The Secret Machines and Deerhoof are also breezing into town. The roster itself is a work of art, as those bright-light names are mixed with some wonderful curiosities. Following are a few of the festival’s highlights.

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Despite the hipness of bands like Air and Arcade Fire, the most intriguing acts in the High Line Festival are the oddities, and it’s hard to get more odd than The Legendary Stardust Cowboy. The Ledge, as he prefers to be called, is backed by a burning Rockabilly combo as he tears onstage with guns-a-blazing to shout, whoop and babble through his set of high-energy, deafening, incredibly entertaining songs. The Ledge’s biggest hit, “Paralyzed,” has actual lyrics, but you wouldn’t know it from the recording, where they come out as an unintelligible tirade punctuated by ebullient yodels and yeehaws. Bowie is such a fan that he recorded The Ledge’s “I took a trip on a Gemini Spaceship” on his album “Heathen” (2002, ISO Records).

With Daniel Johnston and Bang on a Can All-Stars, May 16th, The High Line Ballroom, 431 W. 16th St, 212-414-5994

Daniel Johnston
According to the 2005 documentary, “The Devil and Daniel Johnston,” Daniel Johnston’s first major national exposure came about strangely when Kurt Cobain wore a t-shirt of a Johnston album cover on the MTV music awards. Despite serious mental illness, or perhaps because of it, artists and fans have flocked around him and fed off of his raw, savant style. Although he can play piano rather well, he prefers simple guitar chords live, which somehow add to the magnetism of his eerie songs. Among his biggest fans you’ll find Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Yo La Tengo and, of course, David Bowie. According to Johnston’s website, life has evened out a bit thanks to advances in medicine, so that Johnston’s warbling voice can go on to fascinate and inspire a new generation of artists inspired by his intense creative spirit.

With the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Bang on a Can All-Stars, Wednesday May 16th, The High Line Ballroom

Ken Nordine
Since the 1950s, voice-over and recording artist Ken Nordine has been wooing audiences with an amalgam of poetry and music he calls “Word Jazz.” His last album, “Transparent Mask” was released in 2001 when Nordine was 81. In the recording, he recites and plays out his poems over jazz accompaniment in a sometimes perky, often meditative tone. The verses he writes are rhythmic, magical and lyrical, ranging in subject from a 2nd Century Philosopher to the color white.

May 16, The Kitchen, 512 W. 19th St., 212-255-5793

Meow Meow
Fresh from success at the Sydney Opera House, Meow Meow’s High Line appearance will be directed by “Hedwig and the Angry Inch’s” star John Cameron Mitchell. Meow describes her show as being “kamikaze cabaret and exotica performance art” while Binder (who produced “Hedwig”) says, “She’s WILD. She sings beautifully and she’s funny and she’s gorgeous. Meow is from Australia, but her aesthetic is very much in the Downtown/NYC arts scene” Judging from what I have heard, it’s a little bit Marlene Deitrich, and a little bit Kiki and Herb. Expect to be titillated by her occasional spoken French and smoky, retro sensuality set to music.

May 18th, Hiro Ballroom, The Maritime Hotel, W. 16th Street and 9th Ave., 212-242-4300

Ricky Gervais
Best known for his stint as the most annoying boss in the world on BBC’s “The Office,” and the most annoying actor in the world on HBOs “Extras,” Ricky Gervais can also hold his weight in standup comedy. After major successes on the UK circuit, he is making his American debut on the closing day of the High Line Festival. He will surely have the crowd rolling around in the aisles with his tales of fame-gone-wrong and how he’d prefer charitable missions in disease-ridden foreign countries to a part in “Love, Actually.”

May 19, Madison Square Garden, 7th Avenue at 33rd Street, 212-307-7171

Claude Cahun
The late surrealist photographer Claude Cahun, a.k.a. Lucy Schwob, created outré self-portraits that inspired contemporary boundary-challenging artists like Cindy Sherman and Madonna. During the festival, from dusk until midnight, an exhibit of her work will take place on the grounds of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church at 175 Ninth Ave. “This is the first time the seminary has opened its doors to a public art project,” says Binder. “You can walk in, and there will be projections of Cahun’s work all over as you walk through the grounds. So many people live right there, pass the seminary every day, and probably don’t even know what it is! They just see that it’s a big empty block. We decided that the Claude Cahun thing would be very interesting to present there because it’s not the kind of place where you can expect to see artwork that would be about gender, sexuality and identity.”

May 17 – 19 at GTS, 175 Ninth Ave, 212-246-5150

A park, a festival, and now, a music venue

The club-hopping hoards of New York’s meatpacking district now have a new sound to contend with alongside the bass-driven oomph of surrounding dance floors. On Monday, the Highline Ballroom held its first concert in a neighborhood whose last live music venue, Rare, closed its doors about a year ago. The project is a bit of a departure for the Ballroom’s owner, Steven Bensusan, whose other ventures, uptown clubs like B.B. King’s and The Bluenote, cater to middle-aged tourists willing to shell out $40 to $100 for a Beatles-nostalgia brunch or a quiet supper accompanied by a second-string jazz trio. The Highline Ballroom, Bensusan says, will feature current, cutting edge sounds designed to appeal to a younger, hipper crowd, with prices scaled to match their younger, slimmer wallets. Tickets will typically go for around $20, though Monday’s opening, headlined by Lou Reed, carried an $85 price tag.

Bensusan believes that these “cutting edge” offerings — defined, judging by the venue’s calendar, as anything from mainstream R&B sirens like Jonatha Brook to fringe icons like Daniel Johnston — fit the downtown demographic well, though he adds that the Highline won’t operate with any particular mission to “bring the community in.”

“We’re on a pretty underdeveloped block, without much foot traffic,” says Bensusan. “Our goal is to bring in people who wouldn’t otherwise be coming to the area.“ Perhaps he hasn’t heard about the rash of high-end condos planned for the neighborhood.

— Sarah Feldman

Though taken aback by my apparent confusing of the issues, and unable to say what would become of the loading dock in question, David assured me that none of these developers—either in the already existing buildings or the ones to come—would be allowed to open any type of restaurant or retail store on the High Line. And while I’m fairly sure he believes this, I’m a bit more skeptical myself. The developers will be looking for ways to maximize their profits, and they’re no doubt working overtime to weasel concessions in this regard, just like the Caledonia did on the issue of access. (And whoever owns the building with the loading dock is not going to give it up without a fight.) Since it now looks like we’re stuck with the High Line Park, what it increasingly comes down to is whether you favor a sterile corporate mall or a bustling, boutique-and-café-lined avenue in the sky.