Edgefest 2014 featuring Weezer & Brand New

Sunday, August 10

When I was a teenager there were certain bands that inspired me to pick up a guitar. Bands like Weezer and Brand New made songs so simple and so relatable, that they made kids like me think, “I could do that.” Of course I couldn’t do that, though: I couldn’t craft a lyric as witty as anything Jesse Lacey wrote on Brand New’s Deja Entendu, or write a bass riff as cool as the one on Weezer’s “Hash Pipe,” or so precisely identify all of my shortcomings as Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has always been able to. But these bands always made me, and countless high school students, feel like we could pull off that trick. So we picked up guitars and tried our best to duplicate those deceptively simple songs like “Buddy Holly,” or “Pink Triangle” or anything from Your Favorite Weapon, and a million wannabes were born. Most of the wannabes found out pretty quickly that it wasn’t as easy as it seemed to write “Say It Ain’t So” but for a certain generation, these were the bands that opened the door to a world of music. They were our gateway drugs, if you will, and gave us the hope that even we—the heartbroken, the nerds—could be rock stars some day. That is why these bands, though not the most prolific, have remained influential, and this Sunday (Aug 10) Buffalo has a treat in store as Weezer and Brand new come to the Outer Harbor with The Sheila Divine, Pentimento, and Dirty Simle for Edgefest 2014, presented by 103.3 the Edge

- cory perla

3pm Outer Harbor Concert Site, 325 Fuhrmann Blvd (wedg.com) $40 advance, $50 day of show, $80 VIP ($2 service fee), all ages

Friday, August 8

Girl Talk

Gregg Michael Gillis, also known as Girl Talk, is a musical master of digital sampling. Gillis combines the elements of different songs and genres from the past five decades, seamlessly creating what is known as a mashup. His knack for mashups allows him to mix songs like “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire with pop tunes like “Glamorous” by Fergie (check out the song “In Step” from his album Feed The Animals). Wouldn’t it be nice to listen to your favorite music all day, and make something new and clever of it? And get paid? Pretty lucky guy, I think. Listening to Girl Talk is always entertaining; his taste in music is diverse and the sample on deck never disappoints. For a better understanding of Girl Talk and his expertise, check out his last full length album, All Day, and his new EP, Broken Ankles. Girl Talk brings his layered, mash up sound to Canalside on Friday (Aug 8) with support from Buffalo’s Get Money Squad.

- hannah epstein

6pm, Canalside, 44 Prime Street Buffalo, (canalsidebuffalo.com) $15 general admission, $55 VIP

Friday, August 8

Boris

On Friday (Aug 8), Buffalo welcomes Boris, the Japanese experimental metal band. Drone metal, sludge metal, noise rock, ambient, psychedelic, and pop are each incorporated into the distinctive sound of Boris. The trio, comprised of a vocalist-drummer Atsuo, bassist-guitarist-vocalist Takeshi, and guitarist-vocalist Wata is inspired by the sounds of Nick Drake, Venom, and other wide-ranging musical talents. Unfortunately, there was never much of a place for the metal band in the Japanese hardcore punk scene. However, their love for the genre keeps them creating and spreading their music around the world. Since 2011, Boris has released five albums: New Album, Heavy Rocks, Attention Please, Präparat, and Noise, three of which released in 2011 alone; a pretty good indicator that a wide array of music will be played during Boris’ show when the band pours out its all-out psychedelia on the Tralf Music Hall, Friday, with support from the Atlas Moth.

- hannah epstein

7pm The Tralf Music Hall, 622 Main St. (852-2860 / tralfmusichall.com) $15 advance, $17 day of show ($2 surcharge for under 21), 18+

Friday, August 8

Silo City Reading Series

It’s hard to pass up a chance to visit the grain elevators at Silo City. The final installment of Just Buffalo Learning Center’s Silo City Reading Series, the summer-long event that has brought today’s top contemporary poets to the Queen City, will give you a reason to go. The show will be headlined by Philly poet Zach Savich. He won the 2010 Colorado Prize for Poetry for his work, Annulments, and the 2010 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition for The Firestorm. Savich will be joined by Buffalo poet Rachel Katz, who is currently a teaching artist at the Just Buffalo Literary Center and was selected in 2013 for an Academy of American Poets Prize. Also on the roster: Buffalo folk band Folkfaces, who can usually be seen performing at Neitzsche’s and The Tudor Lounge, and local photographer Kevin Kline. The event is free and open to the public. Don’t miss it

- jonny moran

8pm Marine A at Silo City, 100 Childs Street (silocityreadingseries.com) free

Saturday, August 9

The Hubbard Film Society presents City Lights

In the 1920s, the artisans and craftspeople who worked at Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft Campus in East Aurora would gather on summer nights to watch movies projected outdoors. Long in disrepair, the Campus has recently been restored. So the Hubbard Film Society, which has been sponsoring monthly screenings of arthouse and documentary films for a quarter century, will revisit that tradition this weekend with an outdoor screening of Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 classic City Lights. (It is also the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” character, known the world over.) Widely considered Chaplin’s finest comedy, City Lights finds the Tramp in love with a blind flower girl and trying to find a way to restore her sight. A memorable subplot features a rich man who makes the Tramp a drinking companion at night but throws him out of his house when he sobers up. City Lights will be shown in front of the Roycroft Power House at dusk. The audience is encouraged to bring chairs and blankets. Some refreshments will be available, but feel free to bring your own snacks.

- m. faust

8:30pm Roycroft Power House, 39 South Grove St., East Aurora (roycroftcampuscorporation.com) free

Monday, August 11

Kid Ink

On Monday (Aug 11), famed Los Angeles rapper, producer, and performer Kid Ink—with the support of 93.7 WBLK’s own DJ Heat, KISS 98.5’s DJ Rankan and Passport Future—will take the stage at the Town Ballroom. Kid Ink recently released smash hits including “Show Me” and “Main Chick” both featuring Chris Brown. Said hits have been invading radio stations worldwide for months now climbing the Billboard charts effortlessly and it doesn’t look like the rapper, who is completely tattooed from head to toe, is going to slow down anytime soon. The 28-year-old rapper recently released his full-length album debut, My Own Lane (Tha Alumni Music Group/88 Classic/RCA Records), which is chock full of instant hits. He began producing hip hop music at the age of 16 and has since produced collaborations with musicians like Sean “Diddy” Combs, Sean Kingston, and Nipsey Hussle. Getting started in production early easily paved the way for Kid Ink, real name Brian Collins, to control the industry as he is today. “My background producing contributes so much to my own music,” he says. If you’d like to cut loose a bit on a Monday night in Buffalo and happen to be a fan of hip-hop, this is where you want to be.

- sean heidinger

7pm Town Ballroom, 681 Main St. (852-3900 / townballroom.com) $25 advance, $100 VIP, 16+

Thursday, August 14

Moby

It’s hard to pin Moby down. Is this the Moby that is a pioneer of American elecronica music, or the vegan activist? The live musician or the DJ? The photographer or the essay writer? Well first and foremost, he’s really just a brilliant businessman. Before the age of digital downloads, he helped break electronica in the American mainstream with records like 1995’s Everything is Wrong and 1999’s Play. Play sold 6,000 copies in its first week. 6,000. That’s an epic failure. So why do we all know Play? It’s arguably Moby’s most well known record but how did it become so? It’s because he licensed every song on the record to commercial, television, and film studios after its release. By the following year the record had re-entered the charts and ultimately sold over 10 million copies and produced eight singles including “Porcelain.” Following the success of Play Moby created the Area:One (and Area2) Festival, a roving music festival that focused on dance music and featured everyone from the Roots, David Bowie, and Outkast to techno pioneers Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May over a two year period. The festival was a massive success for Moby and dance music in general, and has become the model for EDM festivals today. The 48-year-old artist has proven that he can cut through a cut-throat music industry and be successful over and over again, without losing touch (he has always supported the creation of bootleg remixes and samples of his music and announced the release of his latest album, Innocents via Youtube). Catch Moby when he comes to Canalside on Thursday (Aug 14) for what will be the epic conclusion of this year’s free Thursday concert series.

- cory perla

6pm, Canalside, 44 Prime Street Buffalo, (canalsidebuffalo.com) free