new york city MUSIC

The Virgin Mobile Festival of 2009 is indeed happening but this time...it's free! Virgin Mobile USA announced yesterday that they will host their year's festival at Merriweather Post Pavillion in Columbia, Maryland on August 30th for FREE. Previous Virgin Mobile Festival ticket buyers will be given first dibs on the 35,000 free tickets and then the rest will be released to the public to snatch up. FreeFest is a generous move made by Virgin Mobile USA to give back during the touch economy and promote donations to homeless youth agencies from coast to coast as part as the RE*Generation charity by the company. Dan Schulman, CEO of Virgil Mobile USA stated, " Instead of focusing on layoffs or the state of the economy, we want to focus on concrete ways to provide assistance to those in need. People need outlets to both lend a helping hand and to escape and relax, for free, even if just for one day. We want to throw some good news in the mix" This year's acts include...

The official schedule for L Magazine's first annual Northside Festival has finally been posted! To make things even more awesome, the infamous Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, BK will be closed down for street traffic 12PM-9PM Saturday June 13th! For those of you who don't already know, Northside Festival is a four-day indie art and music festival kicking off on June 11th-14th in Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn. According to L Magazine "...it is, as we've grown accustomed to saying, a four-day celebration of the independent music and art scene that thrives here in New York City, with live music being held at nearly every venue in the area (including some that haven't even opened yet), and art events at some of the most relevant galleries in the neighborhood." Additionally, L Magazine has teamed up with the Williamsburg Gallery Association to open up the doors to some of the greatest exhibitions in the area. With rooftop BBQs, late night shows, and a SXSW...

Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls graduated from Lexington High School in 1994. Since then she has became a known artist in the punk-cabaret scene with her band the Dresden Dolls.www.dresdendolls.com/ Under Palmer's direction, her old high school will be performing an original play based on an indie rock staple(and a favorite of mine), Neutral Milk Hotel's 1998 album " In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". "It's thrifty, profound, high-quality theater that happens to have been created by high school students," says Palmer. The play is called "With The Needle That Sings in Her Heart" featuring and inspired by indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel's music. The play is about Anne Frank's reliance on her imagination to escape from the terrifying experiences in a concentration camp during World War II. According to Palmer, "The scenes underneath it are about creativity and how, as human beings, our creative impulse is one of the most subline ...