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: LemmyFest V at Sonia
Valentine’s Day may be for the queen of hearts, but this weekend is for the ace of spades. Because even though it’s been nearly a decade since Lemmy Kilmister checked out of this miserable hellscape, his glass remains full. Saturday (February 10) at Sonia, our scene’s chosen Motörhead heathens — or Motörheathens, hat tip to PanzerBastard — come together for LemmyFest V, the fifth and loudest tribute to the iconic man, machine, and metal god. Here’s what’s on tap: Performances by Boston rock supergroup Iron Fisted tearing through Motörhead classics; Massachusetts’ own Maiden New England; fellow supergroup Queens of Noise with members of Destruct-a-Thon, Catching Hell, Malachite, Swank, Justine & the Unclean, and Stars Like Ours playing the music of The Runaways; and Slim Lizzy throwing it down Live and Dangerous with an assembled crew of notables from Ruin The Nite, Cocked N’ Loaded, Damone, and others. That’s the way we like it, baby.
LEMMYFEST V :: Saturday, February 10 at Sonia, 10 Brookline St. in Cambridge, MA :: 7:30 p.m., all ages, $20 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Comedy: Boston Comedy Blowout at the Norwood Theatre
Usually when we’re recklessly racing down Route 1 to get to the fine town of Norwood, we’re visiting the David Bieber Archives at the Norwood Space Center. But on this Super Bowl weekend we’re getting off America’s Greatest Motorway a few lights early to crash the Norwood Theatre Friday night (February 9) for the Boston Comedy Blowout. As usual, Mic’d Up has the word: “Getting the chance to see just one of Boston’s best comedic minds on stage is a treat, but to have four in the same room on the same night is just insane. With Jimmy Cash, Kelly MacFarland, Corey Rodrigues, and the legendary Tony V on the bill, it’s a four-headed dragon of comedy gold that, barring an act of god, will deliver from start to finish without stopping.”
BOSTON COMEDY BLOWOUT :: Friday, February 9 at Norwood Theatre, 109 Central St. in Norwood, MA :: 7:30 p.m., $30 to $43 :: Advance tickets
Film/TV: ‘The Driver’ at The Brattle
It’s no secret that we are obsessed with modern masterpiece Drive (our original logo font and color scheme paid tribute), and hell, we even liked Baby Driver. But The Brattle has once again captured our attention and kept it with its showings this weekend — tonight and Saturday (February 9 and 10) — of 1978 crime thrilled The Driver, part of the Cambridge cinema’s Tribute To Ryan O’Neal, the American actor who passed away in December. Here’s the word: “A major influence on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (among others), Walter Hill’s The Driver is a remarkably contained and tautly acted thriller. In a surprisingly successful bit of casting against type, Ryan O’Neal is The Driver, a revered wheelman in Los Angeles. Bruce Dern is The Detective, a cop obsessed with taking him down.”
‘THE DRIVER’ :: Friday, February 9 and Saturday, February 10 at The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Friday at 9 p.m., and Saturday at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., $14.50 :: Event info and tickets