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: Ripplefest at The Middle East
Unleash the riffs. At a time when a lot of larger music events around town have gone pop, California label Ripple Music and local promoter Grayskull Booking have teamed up for the inaugural Ripplefest Boston, delivering a thick sludge of noise to The Middle East in Cambridge on Saturday (May 18). Ripple Music has already hosted showcases in Austin, San Francisco, London, Nantes, Stockholm, Cologne, and Berlin, and now the Boston area gets in on the noisy action. The lineup is stacked, with a mix of national bands slinging the riffs and homegrown acts showing how loud we get here in the padded-wall confines of New England. Taking part are King Buffalo, Blood Lightning, Mother Iron Horse, Kind, Cortez, and Curse The Son. “Small ‘festivals’ like this really help energize the scene and bring cohesion,” the label writes on Insta. Get ready to burn with some King Buffalo action below.
RIPPLEFEST BOSTON :: Saturday, May 18 at The Middle East, 472 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, MA :: 5:30 p.m., all ages, $25 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Comedy: Erin Maguire at Off Cabot
While we’re still cleaning up our puddle of laugh piss from the Clown People show earlier in the week, our watery eyes turn to the weekend ahead for another inspired selection of live comedy options. Mic’d Up showcased a few, including Erin Maguire’s twirl up in Beverly to sass up Off Cabot. Mic’d Up breaks it down: “Whether the topic is fun or heavy, Erin Maguire isn’t afraid to explore it, dissect it, and turn it into something funny and honest. Following the release of her most recent special, the Boston Comedy Festival alum returns with some new material that is sure to ruffle the right feathers and keep things upfront while delivering a crushing set.”
ERIN MAGUIRE :: Friday, May 17 at Off Cabot, 9 Wallis St. in Beverly, MA :: 6 p.m., $30 :: Advance tickets
Film/TV: ‘Babylon’ at The Brattle
The Brattle has rolled out a new showcase titled Fitzgerald & The Jazz Age, a collab with the American Repertory Theater that “examines F. Scott Fitzgerald as an author and screenwriter as well as exploring the real world that the characters in his works inhabited.” It’s in celebration of the new Gatsby musical arriving next week, but not before the Cambridge indie cinema spotlights a series of related films. Included in the lot is Damien Chazelle’s epic historical black comedy drama Babylon, which Vanyaland film editor Nick Johnson raved about in late 2022, declaring it “a fantastic and wild time at the movies, full of manic energy, massive orgies, and plenty of meaning.” Starring Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Flea, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Margot Robbie, Babylon screens on Saturday (May 18) as part of a double feature alongside Elia Kazan’s 1976 adaptation of The Last Tycoon, which also features a wild cast of Ingrid Boulting, Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau, Robert De Niro, Robert Mitchum, and Tony Curtis. Stars galore all across the weekend. So fitting.
‘BABYLON’ :: Saturday, May 18 at The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: 8 p.m., $14.50 :: Event info and tickets