June 17-24, 2004

music

soundadvice

festival

Clark Park Summer Solstice Festival

These days every young whippersnapper park is throwing a festival, which is excellent, but you gotta give it up for the original. This is the 34th year Clark Park Music and Arts Community has staged a summer festival on its green, hilly grounds. And it seems like local folk legend Kenn Kweder plays every time. Also on the bill this year: Stinking Lizaveta, The Prisoners, The Bugs, Myra Dale and EDO plus all kinds of dance performances and family-friendly diversions.
--Patrick Rapa
Sat., June 19, noon-8 p.m., Clark Park, 43rd St. and Chester Ave. (rain location: Mill Creek Inn, 4200 Chester Ave.), 215-730-0607.

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rock/pop

Franz Ferdinand

The stylish Glaswegians return to Philly, now for Making Time, that sweaty all-nighter favored by kids who never fail to take '80s retro to new levels. FF's own brand of retro should please them — songs of BBC appearances, darkened matinees and beautiful boys on beautiful dancefloors — all irresistible hip shakers. Stick around to ask the lads about their starring role in another sweaty all-nighter, the very naughty new Michael Winterbottom movie. Darts of pleasure, indeed.
--Lori Hill
Sat., June 19, 11 p.m., $12-$14, with Sons and Daughters, Making Time at Shampoo, Seventh and Willow sts., tickets at Spaceboy Music, 407 South St., 215-925-3032.

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rock/pop

Katie Melua

Russian-born teenager Katie Melua got the Brits all a-twitter recently when she bumped Dido, and then Norah Jones, off the top of the U.K. album charts with her debut CD, Call Off the Search. Still relatively unknown this side of the big pond, the 19-year-old London-based singer-songwriter comes complete with an amazing vocal range, model-pretty looks and some bluesy, soul-searching numbers.
--Nicole Pensiero
Mon., June 21, 8 p.m., $17-$19, with Bayene Butler, The TLA, 334 South St., 215-922-1011.

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jazz

Tomasz Stanko

In his native Poland, Tomasz Stanko has the stature of a great artist and spokesman. Here he's an old guy with a funny name. But to a growing constituency of fans, the trumpeter epitomizes a hauntingly nostalgic brand of small-group jazz, drawing equally from Chet Baker, Miles Davis and even the quiet, spooky side of the AACM. His quartet includes three other guys you don't know: Suffice it to say that they've been together for 10 years, they've developed a cohesiveness that most American groups can't match, and their surnames end either in "iewicz" or "ski." This is a CD release event for their new, beautiful record Suspended Night.
--Kyle Parker
Sat., June 19, 8 p.m., $15, Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St., 215-222-9050.

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rock/pop

Richard Thompson

In the more than 35 years since then-teenage Richard Thompson helped found seminal Brit-folk band Fairport Convention, the unassuming musician has landed on countless "best of" lists, been the subject of several tribute CDs, and most recently, made the Top 20 in Rolling Stone's World's 100 Greatest Guitarists list. Touring with longtime bandmates Pete Zorn, Danny Thompson and Dave Mattacks, Thompson never fails to deliver equal measures of dazzling musicianship and unbridled wit.
--Nicole Pensiero
Thu., June 17, 8 p.m., $29-$32, with Dayna Kurtz, Keswick Theatre, Keswick Ave. and Easton Rd., Glenside, 215-572-7650.

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rock/pop

Pedro the Lion

Blabby David Bazan, the toast of the Jade Tree label, has gone from the hard raining rock and blunt narrative forms of his debut (It's Hard to Find a Friend) to the broader soap-box conceptualism and softer country sound of his just-out Achilles Heel. That's six years to turn punk-pop tunes into slow-churning paeans (like "The Fleecing") of the sadly-everyday.
--A.D. Amorosi
Sat., June 19, 7:30 p.m., $12, all ages, with John Vanderslice, Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square, 800-594-TIXX.