Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, Vanyaland‘s guide to help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys at The Sinclair
Three very long years ago, Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys gave us a reason to party with “Goth Beach,” the feel-goth hit of the summer that had us all shakin’ it up from sea to shining sea. Life these days feels more like survival than anything else, and the Boston band of musical steamcrunk misfits provide necessary refuge this Saturday as they post up for another mid-summer soirée at The Sinclair in Cambridge. They’ll be celebrating the release of March cassette Brick Through A Limousine, and here’s what Walt has to say about it: “Suddenly, the album came to me as a vision — a dystopian opera of radical hope in a despairing time. A kiss on top of a burning limousine. The world on fire, but love — brutal, unyielding, undeniable — refusing to die. The strength of people who will not be controlled. This album is a fight. A scream. A love letter. A funeral. A resurrection. A Brick Through A Limousine is what it feels like to exist in a world that keeps tightening its grip — where power is hoarded, voices are silenced, and cruelty is turned into a sport, with the marginalized as the target. The people pulling the strings want you to believe you’re alone. But you’re not. You never were.” Find your tribe this weekend.
WALTER SICKERT & THE ARMY OF BROKEN TOYS + EIGHT FOOT MANCHILD + LOVINA FALLS :: Saturday, July 12 at The Sinclair, 52 Church St. in Cambridge, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Music: Dropkick Murphys in Quincy
The Granite City is set to rock out this weekend as Dropkick Murphys are posting up in their hometown for a free, all-ages, and outdoors show to celebrate new album For The People. The record dropped on Independence Day, and now Ken Casey and the boys are inviting everyone down to the Hancock Adams Common in Quincy to celebrate, all part of the city’s 400th birthday festivities. “The Dropkick Murphys are not just a world-famous band — they’re part of our Quincy story,” says Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch, with Casey adding: “A free Dropkick Murphys show for the people — coincidentally the title of our album, which [came] out July 4 — on Hancock Street on the Hancock Adams Common in Quincy, one mile straight down the street from our first practice space at 654 Hancock Street, during Quincy’s 400th birthday, is really an honor.” Last month, we hyped the record’s first single “Who’ll Stand With Us?”, and now we all get to answer the call.
DROPKICK MURPHYS + DJ STENNY :: Saturday, July 12 at Hancock Adams Common in Quincy, MA :: 4 p.m., all ages, free :: Event info
Film: ‘Christiane F.’ at The Brattle
The Brattle’s programming has been remarkable lately, and this weekend the indie Cambridge cinema pulls another intriguing lost film out of the vaults to both horrify and entertain us. This time it’s Christiane F., a 1981 German film about drug addiction that Roger Ebert called “one of the most horrifying movies I have ever seen.” Yikes! Here’s the word via Janus Films: “Adapted from actress and musician Cristiane Felscherinow’s harrowing account of her teenage years, Christiane F. depicts the impact of West Berlin’s mid-to-late-’70s heroin epidemic on one of its youngest and luckiest survivors. On the cusp of 14, David Bowie-worshipping Cristiane (Brunckhorst) begins slipping out from under the watch of her divorced mother and spending time at hip discotheque Sound. There she falls in love with Detlev, whose recent experiments with heroin soon have her hooked. Working with first-time actors and shooting on location with real-life regulars of Zoo Station’s notorious drug cruising scene, director Uli Edel unflinchingly captures the degradation of each phase of junkie life, from underage prostitution to brutal withdrawals to the seemingly endless vows to ‘go straight.’ Bowie himself appears in a concert performance of ‘Station to Station’; the film’s soundtrack is a virtual compendium of the epochal musician’s celebrated Berlin period and a perfect sonic evocation of nightclubbing’s dark side.”
‘CHRISTIANE F.’ :: Friday, July 11 to Monday, July 14 at The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Showtimes vary :: Event info and advance tickets