Thanks to our summer weekends guide, you already know that the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is taking over Tompkins Square Park on Sunday. Here’s what else is coming up this weekend and beyond. 
AFROPUNK FEST
For nearly a decade now, the two-day Afropunk Festival, held at Commodore Barry Park in Fort Greene, has symbolically marked the end of the summer festival circuit with bonkers lineups that are blessedly (at this point) bereft of white twenty-something indie rock bands.
After Hurricane Irene scuppered 2011′s festival, last year Afropunk returned bigger than ever, with a bill including Janella Monae, TV on the Radio, Erykah Badu, Toro Y Moi and Das Racist. This year’s lineup is pretty ridiculous, too: performances by the audacious, hilarious rapper Danny Brown, Public Enemy emcee Chuck D, and the underground NYC-via-Cape Town legend Jean Grae, plus a DJ set from ?uestlove.
Also performing are New Orleans bounce music evangelist Big Freedia (if you’ve never been to a Freedia show, prepare youself), Theophilus London, spoken-word poet Saul Williams, local rapper (and former Das Racist producer) Le1f, and even a few metal bands, including Sacramento subversives Trash Talk. We get why the New York Times called Afropunk “the most multicultural festival in the U.S.” Commodore Barry Park, Nassau St. & Park Ave., Fort Greene, Saturday and Sunday beginning at noon; free.
MAC DEMARCO
If you haven’t gotten your fill of live music in parks (and how could you?) after Afropunk and the Charlie Parker fest, you can head down to East River Park next week to see Mac DeMarco, a 23-year-old shambolic Canadian magpie who makes retro guitar pop that has been described as “messy-but-glorious,” “unsettlingly sleazy” and “off-kilter”; DeMarco himself calls his style “jizz jazz,” which, yeah. He blends uncool influences like yacht rock, glam, AM gold and Weezer with an off-the-cuff, anything-goes honesty reminiscent of Jonathan Richman, making his shows as unpredictable as they are fun. (Here’s him making out with an audience member at CMJ last year; here’s his band limping into a cover of Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” at Music Hall of Williamsburg in March). East River Park, Lower East Side, Wednesday at 7 p.m.; free
JOAN OF ARC
If you’re of a certain age and possess certain emotional sensibilities, chances are the bands that called Jade Tree records home in the ’90s mean a lot to you. Run by Darren Walters and Tim Owen in Wilmington, Delaware, Jade Tree was started to combat the decline of the hardcore and punk scene the two friends had grown up with in Washington, D.C. But it eventually became the petri dish in which a new scene developed, with bands that played melodic hardcore and math rock and wrote highly-emotional, expressive lyrics. It was called emo, and before that word was tainted by the likes of Dashboard Confessional, the scene gave rise to a number of great, now-mostly-forgotten bands like Jawbreaker, Texas Is the Reason, and Cap’n Jazz.
One of the most lasting of these bands is Joan of Arc, who formed following the breakup of Cap’n Jazz in the intermixed mid-90s Chicago emo scene and are still going today. Stitching their patch on your backpack probably would’ve gotten you an ass-kicking in 2002, but I guess the culture’s come around enough that Joan of Arc can play at DIY Brooklyn venues now. Revenge of the nerds. To wit: on Sunday, they’ll play at Shea Stadium, followed by a performance at Mercury Lounge on Monday. Go cry your heart out. Shea Stadium, 20 Meadow Street, Bushwick, Sunday at 9 p.m., $8/10. Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St., Lower East Side, Monday at 6:30 p.m.; $12.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
–Montreal art-rock trio Braids just released their second record, Flourish//Perish, this week. It’s a subtle, restrained work, which deliberately unveils itself across a soundscape of pared-down, glacial electronics that tinkers within the sonics of Intelligent Dance Music and minimal techno. They’re playing Glasslands next week with experimental ambient artist Headaches. Glasslands, 289 Kent Ave, Williamsburg, Monday, doors at 8:30 p.m., $12.
–We’ve recommended Connecticut indie-rockers Ovlov before, and we’re going to do it again, because their bombastic debut full-length, Am, is one of the best records of the year. They’re playing at Union Pool with fellow Exploding in Sound chums Two Inch Astronaut (pay attention to Exploding in Sound, by the way. They’re consistently kicking out the jams.) Union Pool, 484 Union Ave., Williamsburg, Friday at 8 p.m., $8.
     |