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: Eddie Japan at The Burren
Leave it to Eddie Japan to come back into our lives with a single titled “Walk Away.” But the Boston band is certainly no stranger to musical juxtapositions, existing with a certain elegance and class deep within our usually grimy garage rock city. This evening (November 18), the soulful pop-rock collective hit The Burren stage in Somerville for a dinnertime dose of now-and-later, showing off their effervescent new single and teasing their forthcoming new album, Pop Fiction, out early next year via Rum Bar Records. The former Rock And Roll Rumble winners often display a heightened magnetic draw in their sound, and this evening they pull us back into Davis Square with melodic ease.
EDDIE JAPAN + THE GYPSY MOTHS :: Friday, November 18 at The Burren, 247 Elm St. in Somerville, MA :: 6 p.m., all ages, $15 in advance and $20 at doors :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Comedy: Natasha Leggero at City Winery
Whether it’s hockey, a movie, or stand-up comedy, we love a good matinée. And that’s what Natasha Leggero has in store for us this weekend as the roast queen hits Boston for a Saturday (November 18) afternoon romp at City Winery. Leggero wines n’ dines with her new book, The World Deserves My Children, which she discussed at length this week with Comedy Editor Jason Greenough. It’s filled with humorous essays and anecdotes about her fertility journey and the joys and frustrations of raising a child, and those things will be hot topics over a glass or two of vino. “I’m going to be doing some stand-up, as well as a Q&A with the crowd, and I’m going to read some excerpts from the book with maybe some special guests, and something that’s cool is that every ticket comes with a copy of the book and I’m going be signing it, so it’s just going to be a fun time,” Leggero tells us. “I also did hear that City Winery has wine bottles with your face on them, so I definitely want to get one of those.”
NATASHA LEGGERO: THE WORLD DESERVES MY CHILDREN BOOK TOUR :: Saturday, November 19 at City Winery, 80 Beverly St. in Boston, MA :: Noon, $45 to $65 :: Event page and advance tickets
Film/TV: Wicked Queer: Docs at MFA and The Brattle
The annual Wicked Queer: Boston’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival is fast approaching its 40th anniversary, arriving in 2024. But this weekend the Queer Film Institute hosts its first-ever Wicked Queer: Docs mini fest, screening seven films between tonight and Monday (November 18 to 21) at The Brattle in Cambridge and Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Documentaries range from trans-indigenous artists traveling the Amazon (Uýra: The Rising Forest) to the story of the International Male mail-order clothing brand (All Man), and our pick is Casa Susanna, the story of an Upstate New York refuge that hosted and respected cross-dressing men and transgender women in the ’50s and ’60s (it screens Sunday at the MFA). “Wicked Queer is dedicated to authentic cinematic representation of queer lives, and maintaining histories of the vibrant and diverse LGBTQ+ community,” the group says. Hit the links for the full lineup.
WICKED QUEER: DOCS :: Friday, November 18 to Monday, November 21 at The Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave. in Boston, MA, and The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Event page and showtimes