My art will go on...

Just as we promised, it's Friday again and here we are delivering our second installment of top picks for the 2015 Auckland Arts Festival. As we've said before we're very much liking the vintage flavour of many of the acts and we strongly recommend you have a look at the following.

Lake Street Dive (United States): March 12- 14

Lake Street Dive are an irreverent all-American line-up who belt out their own unique mash up of classic soul, jazz, and British invasion pop on trumpet, upright bass, electric guitar and drums. Their music draws from '30s jazz, '50s rockabilly and doo-wop, as well as '60s blues and soul. LSD lead vocalist, Rachael Price, has a sultry gospel tinged voice and the femme fatale looks to match (the two gents in the band are also very dapper), their ebullient live shows –a combination of nostalgic joy, gutsy humour and virtuosic instrumentals – are not to be missed.

Electric Swing Circus (Britain): March 20

Time to dust off your dancing shoes, don a dapper suit and swing back in time with live six-piece electro swing bank, The Electric Swing Circus! Think Vaudeville-meets-electronica! The quirky sextet present a daring fusion of saucy old-school sounds and stomping dance beats, and explode onto stage with dual-vocals, electric double-bass, vintage samples, gypsy-jazz guitar, keys, live drums and dirty synths. Electro swing is huge in the UK and with the huge resurgence of swing dancing and vintage we're experiencing locally, it's probably not long until it takes off here too.

And then for something completely different...

Billy Apple: The artist has to live like everybody else. March 14, Auckland Art Gallery

During the 1960s, artist Billy Apple was at the vanguard of the pop art explosion on both sides of the Atlantic. A pioneer not only in the pop art world, he also was one of the first to use neon in art before moving to a more conceptual and process –orientated practice in the 1970s. The Auckland Art Gallery is mounting a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Billy Apple, The artist has to live like everybody else featuring everything from early pop and conceptual works to his latest investigations into branding and biomedicine.. For more information visit: www.aaf.co.nz
You can also buy Issue 6 here and read our profile of Mr Apple before you see his show.

Book tickets at http://ticketmaster.co.nz/

Glory Days has a double pass to see Lake Side Dive to give away to a lucky blog reader. Simply comment on this post why you'd like to go and we will select a winner at random. Competition closes Friday 6th February at midday.