Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, Vanyaland‘s guide to help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Overdrive 5 at The Middle East
Electro dance parties come and go, but we always appreciate the ones that manage to stick around, especially through pandemics and other obstacles. This Saturday (November 12), synth-driven dance dynamo Overdrive — which we first featured in 2018 — celebrates its fifth anniversary in Cambridge, and resident DJs James 808 and John Volitans are ready to deliver the neon glitz, grit, and hits with a specialized throwback edition. “It’s a PARTY! And we are celebrating with a very special ‘Retro Synth’ themed dance party. Join us a we take a look back at some of the best trax from across the dark dance floors of the ’80s and ’90s. Expect remixes, rarities, and classics from across the new wave, Italo, freestyle, and post-punk dance scene all night!” Three cheers to five years, Overdrive.
OVERDRIVE :: Saturday, November 12 at The Middle East, 472 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, MA :: 11 p.m. 21-plus, $10 :: Event page
Comedy: Comics Come Home 26 at TD Garden
Boston’s biggest night of intentional comedy is back this Saturday (November 12), as Comics Come Home 26 brings an arena of laughs to TD Garden, raising funds for The Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care after a brief pandemic pause. “We are so pumped to be back after two years and all the comics and musicians can’t wait to rock TD Garden with gigantic laughs again,“ says co-founder Denis Leary, and he’s not joking: As we noted in this week’s Mic’d Up, this year’s lineup is a blitz of star power and talent, with Jimmy Fallon, Chris Distefano, Roy Wood Jr., Sam Jay, John Mulaney, Carolyn Plummer, Robert Kelly and Leary’s right hand man Lenny Clarke taking the stage. Check out our recent feature on Plummer, and make plans for North Station this weekend.
COMICS COME HOME :: Saturday, November 12 at TD Garden, 100 Legends Way in Boston, MA :: 8 p.m., all ages, $60.50 to $151 :: Event page :: Advance tickets
Film/TV: ‘Meet Me In The Bathroom’ at The Brattle
Never mind that ’90s nostalgia, it’s time to leap over Y2K and start celebrating the aughts and all its indie sleaze goodness, and tonight (November 11), The Brattle kicks off its special area premiere screenings of Meet Me In The Bathroom. Inspired by Lizzy Goodman’s bestselling book of the same name, the music documentary takes a look at the New York City music scene in the early 2000s, where a post-9/11 city was soundtracked on a global scale by a host of bands — The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, TV On The Radio — that changed the musical landscape. Whether you lived in NYC at the time or not, the impact of that scene was felt everywhere, and we can hardly argue the claim that it was the “last great romantic age of rock n’ roll,” as the doc proclaims: “The documentary immerses you in the pre-social media, pre-gentrification world of New York, as it examines the lives of key figures from each band, the transformation of the city, and the cultural forces that shaped it. Combining never before seen footage, intimate audio interviews and a visceral sense of time and place, Meet Me in The Bathroom is a raw and authentic evocation of a time…”
‘MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM’ :: Friday, November 12 to Tuesday, November 15 and Friday, November 18 to Sunday, November 20 at The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Screening and ticket info