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'70s proto-punks Rocket from the Tombs resurrected, Wim Wenders' photos at Harvard, and more
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The man without a movie camera Wings of Desire director Wim Wenders has featured Australians — well, okay, Nick Cave — in a few of his films, but the land Down Under serves a starring role in "Wim Wenders: Photos," an exhibit of his still photography from his first-ever Australian sojourn in the late 1980s that makes its way to Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in December. The photos were taken using a bulky Japanese camera with an aspect ratio that produces widescreen prints; the instrument’s heft was such that the Aboriginals with whom the German-born Wenders traveled came to refer to him with a nickname that translates roughly as "the madman with the camera." The fruits of the madman’s labor will be on view at the Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, December 4 through January 11; call (617) 495-3251. Tombs raiders Cleveland proto-punk legends Rocket from the Tombs were meaner, louder, and better than almost anyone else in the ’70s save the Stooges, but they remain a bit of a secret. They never released an album; nonetheless their songs (including "Ain’t It Fun," "30 Seconds over Tokyo," and "Sonic Reducer") ended up as part of rock’s misanthropic canon by way of the two better-known outfits the band’s members formed after Rocket’s 1975 dissolution: frontman David Thomas and guitarist/rock scribe Peter Laughner went on to Pere Ubu, Cheetah Chrome and Johnny Madansky formed the Dead Boys. Laughner’s death in 1977 at the age of 25 — not to mention the band’s near-complete lack of a recorded legacy — seemed to guarantee that a reunion would never take place, but last year the Glitterhouse label cobbled together demos and bootlegs for the first-ever Rocket album, The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs, and that prompted some of the surviving members of the group to team up for a brief reunion tour. The current line-up, which has Thomas, Chrome, and original bassist Craig Bell along with Television guitarist Richard Lloyd and Ubu drummer Steve Mehlman, will make its long-delayed Boston-area debut on December 4 at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square; call (617) 492-BEAR. A Scottish Christmas That’s what The Christmas Revels, our favorite annual winter-solstice ritual, has in store this year: an evening’s worth of "mumming" (we thought it would be "mummering," but no), music, and dance from the land of the Scots as performed by an 80-member cast including the Auld Reekie Singers, the Laird’s Consort, the Revels Bairns (their version of a children’s chorus) along with Highland dancers and fiddle champs all performing 18th-century court tunes, 19th-century ballads and reels, and a slapstick "Guisers" play. The festivities open at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, December 12 and run through December 30. Tickets, at $20 to $40, go on sale this Monday, October 20, at noon, and you can get them by calling the Sanders box office, at (617) 496-2222, or visiting www.revels.org. Shopping for Rembrandt The folks at the Museum of Fine Arts may have a bushel of Rembrandts up their sleeve for their upcoming retrospective, but they ain’t got ’em all — and at least one of the Rembrandts still in circulation (not to mention a Picasso and a Renoir) is available for gift wrapping at the fifth annual New England Print Fair, a high-end flea market that drops into the Hynes Convention Center October 31 through November 2 together with the longer-running Antiquarian Book Fair at the same location. Between the two, you’ve got several million dollars’ worth of rare books, manuscripts, autographs, photographs, maps, and more on hand, from a 1666 Third Folio of Shakespeare to a signed Harry Potter first edition. Tickets are $15 for opening night (good through the weekend), or $8 each for Saturday and Sunday; they’re also good at the Boston Book, Print, and Ephemera Show on November 1 at the Radisson Hotel. Call (617) 266-6540.
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