Free Live Music: Girl-Group Singers Live in NYC; Newport Folk Online

Ronnie Spector, Lesley Gore, and other classic 1960s female singer take center stage at a free show Saturday.

Looking for some live music to listen to today? If you like the classic '60s girl singers and groups as much as I do (the Ronettes, Shirelles, Crystals, etc.), you're in luck because Lincoln Center Out of Doors (LCOOD) is presenting a free show tonight featuring Ronnie Spector, Lesley Gore, and many others.

Called "The Ponderosa Stomp: She's Got the Power," the show includes Spector, Gore, Lala Brooks (formerly of The Crystals), and singers from The Chantels, The Exciters ("Tell Him"), Peggy Santiglia Davison and Jiggs Sirico (of The Angels®), and more.

(See a Wall Street Journal article featuring comments from Lesley Gore and singer-songwriter Toni Wine.)

The show is free and runs from 5 to 10 p.m. tonight at the Damrosch Park Bandshell in Lincoln Center. Here's the schedule:

* GIRL GROUPS REVUE - 5:00 p.m.
* LALA BROOKS and LESLEY GORE - 7:00
* TRIBUTE TO ELLIE GREENWICH (composer of “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Be My Baby,” and many more hits) - 8:40

If you don't feel like venturing out of the house, check out NPR Music's live webcasts from the Newport Folk Festival. Live sets will be available online from 12 Noon to 7:30 p.m. Eastern today and tomorrow, July 30th and 31st. Video will be shown for some sets; others are audio only. The schedule for the live Newport Folk Festival webcasts:

remainder of Saturday, July 30th:
4:30 p.m.: Delta Spirit
4:45: Gillian Welch
5:50: Pokey LaFarge
6:00: The Decemberists

Sunday, July 31st:
12:00 p.m.: David Wax Museum
12:30: Tegan And Sara
12:45: Carolina Chocolate Drops
1:45: Mavis Stapes
2:00: Wanda Jackson
3:00: The Secret Sisters
3:25: Amos Lee
4:30: Mountain Man
4:45: Elvis Costello
5:50: Chris Thile and Michael Daves
6:00: Emmylou Harris

Newport Folk Festival - Live Webcasts

The Newport Folk Festival is this weekend, and NPR Music is again webcasting a number of shows this weekend. You can find NPR's Newport Folk Festival home page here, along with a schedule of webcasts.

Many of these webcasts will probably be archived for streaming later on, and some will likely be available for downloading as podcasts.

They are webcasting roughly from 12 Noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (actually starting at 11:40 a.m. tomorrow and 11:30 Sunday). Here's the schedule (all times Eastern):

Saturday, July 31
11:40 a.m. - Sarah Jarosz
12:35 p.m. - The Low Anthem
1:30 p.m. - Nneka
2:20 p.m. - Blitzen Trapper
3:25 p.m. - Yim Yames (Jim James of My Morning Jacket)
4:30 p.m. - Andrew Bird
5:45 p.m. - O'Death
6:05 p.m. - John Prine

Sunday, August 1
11:30 a.m. - Tao Rodriguez-Seeger
12:20 p.m. - Horse Feathers
12:35 p.m. - Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings
1:35 p.m. - A.A. Bondy
2:05 p.m. - Preservation Hall Jazz Band
3:10 p.m. - Punch Brothers, featuring Chris Thile
3:45 p.m. - The Avett Brothers
4:25 p.m. - The Swell Season
5:30 p.m. - TBD

New Podcast Episodes: Frank Black, Newport Folk Concerts, The Clash Covers

The FrankBlack.net Podcast is out with an episode on Grand Duchy.

Some good new episodes are out this week in a number of long-running podcasts. Here are a few highlights.

The FrankBlack.net Podcast has been coming out sporadically this year, but they've got a new episode out devoted to Grand Duchy, the band featuring Black and his wife Violet. The band is currently on its first tour, and I caught of few songs during its set at Coney Island's Siren Festival.

If you didn't manage to hear any of NPR's live Webcasts from the Newport Folk Festival, you can still catch them... and keep them, in many cases. NPR Music has started to put up free podcast downloads of Newport Folk concerts, including Joan Baez, Gillian Welch, Fleet Foxes, Neko Case, Mavis Staples, and more.

If you'd prefer a sampling of the Newport Folk concerts, NPR also has a free podcast download up that covers day 1 of the festival, and there will probably be more to come.

And over at Coverville, the all-cover-songs podcast, you'll find a diverse range of covered artists, as usual. Episode 600 is devoted to covers of KISS, while number 599 tackles Cat Stevens and 598 features cover versions of The Clash's iconic album, "London Calling." And all three of those Coverville podcasts have come just since July 30th!

Enjoy...

Festival Updates: from Newport Folk and All Points West

The 50-year-old Newport Folk Festival and the sophomore edition of the All Points West Festival in NJ are heading into their final day. APW experienced rain off and on during Friday, but the show went on. Saturday was sunny and rain free, but as the New York Times and other attendees reported, the fields were quite muddy.

Tomorrow's All Points West schedule features headliners Coldplay, along with MGMT, Echo and the Bunnymen, Mogwai, Elbow, and L.A.'s Silversun Pickups, among others.

The Newport Folk Festival seems to have been rain free, and I was able to listen to portions of some of the sets through NPR's live streaming, including the Avett Brothers and Fleet Foxes. They will be doing live audio tomorrow as well, and they say that all of the concerts will be archived online for later listening.

Here is the Newport Folk Festival live streaming schedule for Sunday:

11:30 a.m. Josh Ritter
12:30 p.m. Campbell Brothers
1:35 p.m. Neko Case
2:55 p.m. Arlo Guthrie
4:15 p.m. Joan Baez
6 p.m. Pete & Tao Seeger & friends with special guest Judy Collins