THURSDAY
What: Bonfire Concert
Where: FAU Student Union, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: Free for FAU students, $10 nonstudents
Contact: 800/745-3000, fauevents.com
Borrowing a bit from the masked mythology of Slipknot and the stage monikers of Insane Clown Posse, Los Angeles’ hard-rock stalwarts Hollywood Undead have created a mythos all their own, complete with pseudonyms (“Da Kurlzz,” “Johnny 3 Tears”) and hockey headgear even more menacing than Jason Vorhees’ psychotic goalie mask. They make an angry, aggressive, parent-alienating sort of music, merging hip-hop verses with crunchy rock choruses and a danceable backbeat. And the band’s rage is authentic: Early in the history of Hollywood Undead, one member famously pulled a gun on another. The band will support its fourth album, 2015’s “Day of the Dead,” at this raucous annual concert for FAU students and the general public, which begins with a 7 p.m. bonfire and an opening performance by ARTIKaL Sound System.
What: “Pairings”
Where: Broward Center, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
When: 7 to 10 p.m.
Cost: $35-$90.50
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
Fall’s first great foodie event is this eighth-annual shindig presented byBroward-Palm Beach New Times and structured, as its name suggests, on the pairings of signature dishes with curated local and international wines. More than 40 restaurants from Hallandale Beach to Delray Beach will participate, with Boca’s Rebel House, Delray’s Gelato Petrini, and Deerfield Beach’s Café Med and El Jefe Luchador among them. Eleven wines will be served alongside offerings from six craft breweries and vodka from Deep Eddy. Appearances by top local toques, cooking demonstrations and live entertainment round out the festivities. And if you sign up for a VIP ticket (for $90.50), you’ll have an extra hour, beginning at 6 p.m., along with access to a VIP lounge and an exclusive wine list. A portion of the proceeds benefits Voices for Children of Broward County.
What: Best Coast
Where: Grand Central, 697 N. Miami Ave., Miami
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $20-$25
Contact: 305/377-2277, grandcentralmiami.com
A few months from now, when music critics tally their Best Albums of 2015 lists, I expect that Best Coast’s “California Nights” will be on many of them. The duo, fronted by the self-effacingly compelling singer-songwriter Bethany Cosentino, has been making wonderful music since its 2010 debut “Crazy for You,” a ‘60s surf-pop throwback drenched in ‘80s post-punk reverb and written like a ‘90s stoner confessional. If that record crested a wave of girl-fronted noise-pop that included Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls, Best Coast’s later output has matured in the best way possible, culminating in the endlessly listenable masterpiece “California Nights.” This ambitious release sees Cosentino and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno experimenting with longer, dronier songs, higher production values, and accessible, earworm-inviting pop melodies unabashedly inspired by Sugar Ray and The Go-Gos. Cosentino’s lyrics are as personal as ever, taking cues from her insomnia, her anxieties, her traumatic relationships and the beloved California coastline that gives the band its name. Give the record a spin or two before this concert, and you’ll feel like you’ve been hearing these songs forever.
What: Don Ross
Where: Aventura Arts & Cultural Center, 3385 N.E. 188th St., Aventura
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $42.06
Contact: 954/462-0222, ticketmaster.com
Who needs guitar picks? Don Ross certainly doesn’t. The Canadian virtuoso is one of the world’s finest progenitors of the fingerstyle guitar, twice winning the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship. He has trained his precise style on pop hits like “Crazy” and “Hey Ya!,” discovering soulful new avenues in these Top 40 chestnuts. Mostly, though, he remains under the radar, crafting original New Age abstractions that are as wide-open as outer space, and just as easy to lose yourself in. And judging by the titles of some of his 17 albums—“Music for Vacuuming,” “Breakfast for Dogs”—he has a sense of humor, too. Ross has cited Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny and Bruce Cockburn as heavy influences, and for the latter, the feeling is mutual: Cockburn wrote in 2003 that “nobody does what Don Ross does with an acoustic guitar.” The guitar/bass ensemble known as the 23 Strings Quartet will open the show.
FRIDAY
What: Opening day of “Rosie Won the War”
Where: Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: $10–$12
Contact: 561/392-2500, bocamuseum.org
In 1943, telephone operator Mary Doyle Keefe collected $10 for two mornings of modeling work with Norman Rockwell. By May of that year, Keefe was rechristened on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post as the muscular Rosie the Riveter. Symbolizing all the women nationwide who performed men’s jobs while their husbands were fighting Nazis, Rosie become a feminist icon and one of the most enduring archetypes of the 20th century, inspiring spinoff models—Wendy the Welder, Josephine the Plumber—as well as her own national park in California. The provocative Berlin-based duo Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock are no strangers to this period of world history; they are known for their confrontational approaches to Holocaust-themed art. But in “Rosie Won the War,” they’ve trained their conceptual lenses on a more inspirational area of World War II history. The exhibition pays homage to the original Rosie with an imposing life-size portrait display of working women standing atop mid-20th century maps, tools in hand. Museum visitors can continue their journey into WWII history with the moving installation “The Neighbor Next Door,” a video exhibit in a darkened room that simulates what it was like to be driven into hiding during the Nazi regime. The exhibitions run through Jan. 10.
What: Opening night of “Meru”
Where: Regal Shadowood 16, 9889 Glades Road, Boca Raton
When: Show times pending
Cost: $8.47-$11.97
Contact: 844/462-7342
“I always wondered how I was going to die, and now I know.” If nothing else, the creators of the “Meru” trailer know better than to bury their lede. This 2015 Sundance Documentary Audience Award winner is, indeed, a movie about life and death—and “everything in between,” as Newsweek raved. In 2008, three of the world’s top alpine mountain climbers attempted to scale Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru, one of the holy grails of the high-stakes sport. Their valiant effort fell short just 100 meters of the summit, but in 2011 these brave adrenaline junkies—Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk—attempted to climb Meru again. Only this time, documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi was there to document the harrowing journey, along with her co-director Chin, and the result will make even the most extreme-sporty among us a little weak-kneed. Most documentaries, let’s face it, can be appreciated as much on a home television as the Silver Screen, but “Meru” promises all of the widescreen thrills of a Hollywood blockbuster—combined the meditative contemplation of an art-house film.
SATURDAY
What: PureHoney Four-Year Jam
Where: Respectable Street, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $5
Contact: 561/832-9999, purehoneymagazine.com
A nostalgic throwback to the age of music zines, Steve Rullman’s PureHoney magazine and website work tirelessly to spread the word about great music in South Florida, whether it’s a homegrown Miami band or a rare appearance from a legendary post-punk act (Full disclosure: I’m one of PureHoney’s contributors). Not only has the zine survived four years in a perpetually down market for print publications; it’s also thriving enough to support an anniversary celebration at local treasure Respectable Street. The show will be headlined by AJ Davila y Terror Amor, an acclaimed Puerto Rican garage-punk phenomenon that layers Spanish vocals over noise-pop squalls of sound. The lineup also includes the extraterrestrial instrumental abstractions of Cog Nomen, the Wilco-esque singer-songwriter confessionals of John Ralston, the indie dream-pop of Sweet Bronco, the No Wave-style pop dissonance of Pocket of Lollipops, and more.
What: Opening night of “Tsunami”
Where: South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, 10950 S.W. 211th St., Cutler Bay
When: 8:30 p.m.
Cost: $25-$30
Contact: 786/573-5316, smdcac.org
The celebrated Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2002 South Florida premiere “Anna in the Tropics,” might seem an unlikely writer to collect on-the-ground interviews from the survivors of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan and spin the narratives into a docu-play. But that’s just what Cruz did, along with his Japanese-American co-writer Michiko Kitayama Skinner, marking a departure from the fictional stories he is most accustomed to telling. A year after the tragedy, Cruz and Kitayama received a grant to visit the devastated Japanese town of Otsuchi, where they interviewed some 20 survivors representing a cross-section of Japanese culture, from a tour guide to a firefighter to a Buddhist monk. Back in the States, the co-writers wove the stories into a compelling, multi-tiered examination of the tsunami’s personal, spiritual and economic reverberations. Six multicultural actors—none of them Japanese, interestingly enough—will translate the universal stories of suffering, survival, hope and rebirth, under Cruz’s stylized direction. “Tsunami” runs through Oct. 3.
