Elizabeth Hand will be reading from Generation Loss: A Novel at Harvard Book Store on Wednesday, May 23, at 6:00 pm. Novelist Elizabeth Hand has woven together art, music, and mystery in the story of photographer Cass Neary. Neary wanders through a fictionalized version of the New York punk underground, complete with cameos by Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, and she takes photographs of strung-out kids. Eventually, her collection, "Dead Girls," propels her into the......

Poet and spoken-word artist Sekou Sundiata will be speaking as part of the ICA's "What New Is" series on Wednesday, April 18, at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available online on icaboston.org. When you read his biography and hear his work, you realize that Sekou Sundiata has done everything and writes about everything. He's a big player in multimedia art, which makes him a perfect fit to speak as part of the ICA's "What New Is"......

Music, comedy, poetry, and audience participation filled the room. At first blush, it looked like an episode of Prairie Home Companion, but it was really musician/poetess Patti Smith performing at the Institute of Contemporary Art on Wednesday night. Patti Smith is famous for channeling the fierce, demanding forces of creation. In her interviews and in articles about her, she comes off more like a medium who needs the perfect conditions in order to let the......

It could be the first line of a pretty lame joke: "Four queer anti-Zionist Jews walk into a bar..." But the bar in question is P.A.'s, and if the Shondes are a gimmick, they're rocking too hard to hear about it. While band's name is Yiddish for "disgrace," plural, they're a respectable blend of traditional eastern-European-ish music with traditional angry girl punk: imagine Patti Smith, Sleater-Kinney, and Spitboy singing a fierce polyphony in a briar......

Patti Smith will speak at the ICA February 21 at 6:30 pm. Via Joel Brown, tickets are on sale for Patti Smith's spoken-word performance at the ICA, which is part of their "What Is New" series. (Brown also has an awesome title for his post – check it out.) Smith is riding high right now since she was named to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. She's working on a covers album, and she......