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VersoFest Storytellers: Alt-Rock Legend David J, in Verse, Conversation, and Song on March 28th.
Westport, CT - Musician, writer, playwright, poet, visual artist, and alt-rock legend David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) closes VersoFest Saturday with a special storytellers event.
David will read selections from his new poetry book, Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer, accompanied by original pre-recorded music. The reading will be followed by an interview featuring celebrated author Douglas Rushkoff and will conclude with a short set of acoustic songs.
Signed copies of David’s latest volume, Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer, will be available for sale on-site.
VersoFest is The Westport Library’s annual music and media conference and festival where knowledge is shared and inspiration is discovered. This year’s festival includes a kickoff storytellers with Susanna Hoffs (March 6), a conversation with folk-rock icon Ani DiFranco (March 26), a concert performance by Wyclef Jean (March 27), a VersoFest book talk with celebrated actress/performer Gina Gershon (March 28), and much, much more.
David J is one of the seminal figures of the alt-rock movement, and this is your opportunity to see him in an intimate venue, as one of just 450 attendees in the Library’s unique Trefz Forum space.
An artist of every measure, David spearheaded the post-punk alternative music scene of the early 1980s with Bauhaus, and he followed that up with the hugely successful Love and Rockets, whose hit single, “So Alive,” was a top three U.S. single, and 11 remarkable solo albums.
He has also written a memoir, Who Killed Mister Moonlight?, which was published to critical acclaim, as well as a spoken word with music album, The Mother Tree, which is accompanied by a book of poetry, Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer.
On Saturday at VersoFest, he’ll feature all his many talents in a can’t-miss evening.
David J is a founder member of the highly influential and revered Bauhaus, which put out a string of innovative albums and singles in the 1980s, including the gothic rock anthem “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” featuring the lyrics of David J.
In 1983, David regrouped with two of his former Bauhaus bandmates, Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins, to form Love and Rockets, whose immensely successful tenure includes a million-selling album and sold-out stadium tours.
In his varied career, David has collaborated with many other artists of note, including painter and poet Rene Halkett; novelists Alan Moore, Jeremy Reed, and Hubert Selby Jr.; and a vast array of musicians such as T Bone Burnett, Frank Black (Pixies), Robyn Hitchcock, Wayne Kramer (MC5), Amanda Palmer, Jane’s Addiction, The Dandy Warhols, and many more.
His new collaborative project is Night Crickets, with multi-instrumentalist Darwin Meiners and Victor DeLorenzo of the Violent Femmes.
Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and his 20 books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, as well as the recent Team Human, based on his podcast, and the best-sellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool.
Rushkoff’s book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Media Ecology Association honored him with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.
Details
- Date: March 28
- Time: 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
- Cost: $35
