12-31-13 jive

Good evening! It’s Tuesday, Dec. 31st. The final Day of 2013, and the end of the WESU Winter Pledge Drive. 

Thanks for joining us and special thanks to everyone who has made a pledge of support to help keep our unique brand of community radio alive. Our goal is within site but we still need to from a few more of you to get there. If you have yet to done so, please consider making a year end donation to help WESU enter our 75th year of broadcasting (2014) with some wind in our sail. We promise we will make it worth your while! Donate online at www.wesufm.org/pledge

This is the Jive at Five – our daily community calendar and rundown of night time programming here on 88.1 FM WESU Middletown, your station for NPR, Pacifica, independent and local public affairs by day and the best in free-form community programming weeknights and weekends

Now for our rundown of some of what’s happening in our area this week.

Up in Hartford, Blackeyed Sally’s, celebrates New Year’s Eve w/ Mass Conn Fusion! Friday brings the Tom Sanders Band to the Sally’s stage, uniting veteran musicians from some of Southern New England's best blues, rock and r&b bands, including The Hornets, Smokehouse, Chris Tofield & The Bluesbenders and Whiskey River Band, to name just a few. Saturday at Sally’s, it’s the Mighty Soul Drivers, bringing the classic Soul sounds of Memphis, Muscle Shoals and points South to the hills of New England. www.blackeyedsallys.com

Down in New Haven, tonight brings Café Nine’s New Year's Eve Burlesque Extravaganza w/ Dot Mitzvah and the Bombshells of Burlesque. Thursday, Cellular Chaos, The Simple Pleasure, and Jerkagram take the Café Nine stage. Friday’s 5 o’clock happy hour performer is Victor Roland, followed at 9 by Benefit for CT Death Quads -Men's Roller Derby, with Polluter, Oughts, and Wolves At Bay.Saturday’s jazz jam at 4:30 features Mike Coppola and friends; then at 7:30, it’s Big Lazy and Happy Ending. Sunday’s Blues Boot Camp at 8 is with  Greg Sherrod.  www.cafenine.com

Also in New Haven, the Toad’s Place New Year’s Eve Extravaganza features Shakedown, playing music of the Grateful Dead and beyond plus Full Spectrum and Supertrance. Thursday brings a local rock showcase to Toad’s, with Agenda 21, Banana Bread, The Berkshires, Chasing Cooper, Civil Pilots, Cold Pizza, Common Ground, Haris Shah, House Silbor, Pangalactic, Royal Din and Walking Contradiction. Friday’s Hair of the New Year Dog keeps the local music coming with rock and metal, including these bands: 1.21 Gigawatts, Angry Reaction, Benders, Big Ed, Big Moon, Double The Dial, Feed The Pigs, Hollow, Idiot Excuse, Karmic Justice, Killin Cupid, SNAP, Velcro Buddha, and Zombii. Saturday’s Electro Glow Party is with Report to Bass 3. www.toadsplace.com.

 Also in New Haven, on Wednesday, Manic Productions brings BrotherTIger and Norrin to Bar. www.manicproductions.com.

Here are a few more new year’s eve events around the state tonight…

First Night Hartford 2014, a family-friendly, multicultural, alcohol-free New Year's Eve celebration, runs from 2 p.m. to midnight, tonight. More than 40 performances, activities, and exhibits will be at various venues in downtown Hartford, including two fireworks displays at 6 p.m. and midnight in Bushnell Park. Adults and children must purchase a Wristband/button to participate. children ages 2 and under are free. An information booth at the corner of Main and Asylum streets, open from 1:30 to 9 p.m., will provide program guides. Information: www.firstnighthartford.org

Mohegan Sun Arena hosts a night, of twists, tumbles and delights on Dec. 31 with a performance of Cirque Celebration. show starts at 7 p.m. www.Mohegansun.com

For more NYE fun, “Ordinary” in new Haven hosts a New Year's Eve Masquerade Ball at 8 p.m. ordinarynewhaven.com.

Bridge Street Live in Collinsville hosts a New Year's Eve Party with Jeff Pitchell & Texas Flood and The Spampinato Brothers, 7 p.m. $71. http://41bridgestreet.com/

Now here's a rundown of cinema off the beaten track in Central Connecticut:

Tonight and tomorrow, Real Art Ways in Hartford finishes up its run of the animated children’s tale, "My Neighbor Totoro" a family-oriented feature has a powerful ecological theme. Continuing through  Thursday is the documentary on Noam Chomsky called “Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?”. Opening  Friday is the feature “Go for Sisters”, about a mother’s search for her son who went missing along the Mexican border. Also opening Friday is Bastards, a French thriller about a man’s determination to exact revenge for the violence done to his family. www.realartways.org   

Cinestudio, the Trinity College cinema in Hartford,  reopens on Thursday with Kill Your Darlings, in which Daniel Radcliffe, otherwise known to the world as Harry Potter, transforms himself into the skinny, intellectual, Jewish, and closeted gay college student -1940s-era Alan Ginsberg. Commuting from New Jersey to Columbia University, Ginsberg makes friends with a group of budding rebels who would usher in Beat poetry and bohemia to the conformist 1950s. Ginsberg, along with William Burroughs (Ben Foster), Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), and Jack Kerouac (Boardwalk Empire’s Jack Huston), challenge their professors during the day, and the rigid parameters of sexual behavior at night. The ensemble cast also includes Kyra Sedgwick, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Elizabeth Moss (lately of Mad Men and Top of the Lake). Opening Sunday at Cinestudio is the Norwegian documentary Liv and Ingmar. In all of the love affairs between directors and their muses, few were so passionate - or resulted in so many great movies - as the one between legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actress Liv Ullman. This new documentary traces both their stormy relationship and the art they collaborated on: twelve groundbreaking (now) classics including Persona, Cries and Whispers, and Autumn Sonata. Ullman is fearlessly honest in her conversations with director Dheeraj Akolkar, tracing their great love from passion and creativity, to Bergman’s increasing jealousy and possessiveness, and finally, to a friendship that lasted until his death. www.cinestudio.org.

And now let’s take a look at tonight’s programming on WESU, which includes a new addition and also some pinch-hitters because Wesleyan dj's are on their winter break.

Right after the jive at Five stay tuned for some acoustic roots and Americana music with Bill Revill

At 6 we take a break from the music for 30 minutes of news and commentary from The World Socialist News Service

after that at 6:30 Bill Revill is back in the air chair for 90 more minutes of roots and americana on Acoustic Blender.

From 8-9 J-Cherry presents Voice of the City for an hour of live and local arts and entertainment. Tonight's show features a live special New Year's Eve Cherry-Berry-Giggle Jam! 

From 9:00 to 10:30pm DJ Cheshire cat presents a live recording of New Year's Eve performance by the band Spirit, from 1971!

After that we will spend the last few hours of 2013 with our good friend Leith, host of the light fandango which you can hear regularly on Sunday nights.  Leith will provide a thoughtful freefirm mix of tunes sure to help bring in the New Year as we usher out the old.

The BBC kicks on at 4, followed by NPR's Morning Edition at 5.

And that’s all for today’s Jive at Five, if you didn’t get a chance to write down some of the information mentioned in our community calendar, the script is published online at www.wesufm.org/jive

And if you value WESU as a source for information and entertainment in your life, how about supporting the station with a donation? Today is the final days of our kinder, gentler winter pledge drive. Pledges have been hard to come by this year and it’s been a long haul.  If you haven’t made your pledge of support yet, now’s your chance to end the year right. Go to www.wesufm.org and click on Donate Now. Thanks for listening! Stay tuned for some great acoustic music with our pal, Bill Revill!
Happy New Year!