Wednesday, September 19, 2007

What to do Thursday: Donovan and Charalambides

If you’re in Murfreesboro, John Donovan is giving a talk at MTSU, 7 PM in the Todd Building. Donovan should be familiar to Nashville audiences—clay sculptures often using toy soldiers and tanks, covered in thick glazes that seem like dense metal, usually going for humorous menace.

If in Nashville, go to Springwater. Just go. Charalambides is playing. They (Tom and Christina Carter) make deceptively simple music, voices and guitars that seem to find magic harmonies. Every year, the reactions to Charalambides seem to get more rapturous. And rapture captures what their music is about. I’m missing this show, so everyone else in Nashville should go.

On Sunday, Chris Davis is bringing Plastic People of the University to Springwater. This is a classic psych band from Czechoslovakia. They formed after the Soviet crackdown in the Prague Spring of 1968 and played underground during a period of intense repression. It’s amazing that they are still around, and hard to believe they are playing Nashville. It’s as if Os Mutantes or the Velvet Underground were playing here.

BTW, Cortney Tidwell and the Cherry Blossoms are playing on the Charalambides show, Cherry Blossoms and Sapat from Louisville are playing Sunday.

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