On Thursday, March 11, "Upstairs at the Square" presents novelist Blake Nelson and the band Care Bears on Fire, with Katherine Lanpher at Barnes & Noble, Union Square, 7pm, FREE. Join us!
I have been listening to Care Bears on Fire every day since we met, especially their cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." I also like "Barbie, Eat a Sandwich" and "Everybody Else."
In putting this show together, I liked the idea of turning the convention of who entertainment is made for on its head. At first glance, it might seem like this line-up is "for kids." But is it really? I thought it would be really cool to have a current teen band with an author who I discovered when I was a teen, reading Sassy magazine religiously like almost every other girl in America. If you've never heard of Sassy, there are two great books on it and related culture, How Sassy Changed My Life and the brand-new Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music. So this is our show for current teens and former teens, and everyone in-between.
Blake Nelson has had some breakout hits, Girl, Paranoid Park, Rock Star Superstar –– which the killer kid band Tiny Masters of Today, beloved by David Bowie, took its name from –– but my favorites of his are underdogs, Prom Anonymous (Sylvia Plath meets Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) and They Came From Below (Buddhist environmental sci-fi adventure in Cape Cod & the sea).
Here he is narrating an excerpt of an arty short film he did when he was not much more than a teenager, probably, with his friend Jem Cohen, who later made the Fugazi documentary, Instrument:
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