Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll find out about a band that is about to play in an unusual place. We’ll also get details on what federal prosecutors described as a plot to bomb the State Capitol in Albany.
William Villanova laughed — a big, warm laugh — when I said I thought disco was dead. This was because of an email that said a cover band was going to play disco, classic rock and vintage pop.
Where the band is going to play had gotten my attention.
It will appear in a funeral home. Not just any funeral home, but Frank E. Campbell, the storied one on the Upper East Side that Villanova has run since 2018.
Frank E. Campbell has handled the funerals of the famous, from former Gov. Mario Cuomo to Judy Garland and Ivana Trump. In some circles in New York, ending up anywhere else would be a fate even worse than death, as my colleague Alex Vadukul observed last year.
Oh, and the band’s set list for the appearance tomorrow includes Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.”
There won’t be a coffin. But the band will play in the very room where mourners cry into Kleenexes during funerals. That room is flexible, Villanova said: “We can make it anything we want.” It has been a lecture hall — Tripp Whetsell, the author of a biography of the legendary television producer Norman Lear, appeared there for a book talk, as did Temple Grandin, the animal behaviorist. For an annual winter event, “Santa comes,” Villanova said. “We’ve done snow cannons.”
That sounds as if Villanova is channeling Frank E. Campbell himself, who died in 1934. Campbell had a talent for stunts, like hiring an airplane to scatter someone’s ashes by the Statue of Liberty. Villanova — who was hired as a consultant for the HBO series “Succession” and ended up appearing on camera, as a funeral director — brought in a stand-up comedian and influencer as the M.C. for an event celebrating a $20 million renovation last year. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, then the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, was the keynote speaker.
Villanova said that his mission in staging events that do not involve corpses and caskets was “bringing the community together.”
“Funeral homes,” he said, “need to be much more than just a place to call when a death occurs.” He said that he was not presenting events because funerals are lagging these days. When I asked if business was down, he said, “No, not at all.”
The group appearing on Saturday, the Sweet Melissa Band, describes itself as “all your favorite bands rock n’ rolled into one.” Also on the set list are songs by Jimi Hendrix, Pat Benatar, the Jackson Five and the Doobie Brothers, among others.
The Melissa behind the band, Melissa Mejias — who in her day job is a literacy coach with the city Department of Education — said that the gig had come about after the band appeared at the Delancey, a nightclub on the Lower East Side. “A friend of a friend brought Bill,” she said, referring to Villanova. “I could hear him from stage, singing along with all the songs. You want everyone to be like that in the audience.”
He approached her after the show and asked her to stop by Frank E. Campbell to see the room where she and the band could perform. “I’m a new band — I’ve been around a year and a half,” she said. “Just to get a gig is a gift.” She had never heard of the famous funeral home, she said, and when she told her bandmates, “they were looking at me like I’m crazy.” (And “Only the Good Die Young” was already on the band’s set list, she said.)
Mejias knows that she is up against the calendar: “It’s the summer, when that neighborhood is in Nantucket or East Hampton, so it’s going to be hard to get butts in seats.”
Actually, there won’t be any seats on the main marble floor, installed during a $20 million renovation that was completed last year: The seats that mourners sit in were removed on Thursday morning. There is a balcony-like mezzanine upstairs where people attending the concert can go if they want to sit down.
Weather
Expect a partly sunny day, after a chance of showers in the morning, with a high near 79. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with a low around 69.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sept. 7 (Labor Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“One hundred days until Thanksgiving. I can’t wait!” — Fernando Moya Delgado, a guide at a dinner for internet influencers with turkey, cranberry sauce and candied yams. It was given by Macy’s in advance of the 100th Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The latest Metro news
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An interview with the governor: Gov. Kathy Hochul sat down with The New York Times to discuss President Trump, antisemitism and state politics. When the conversation got to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, she offered some frank yet cautious advice.
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ICE arrests boat captain: Manuel Hernandez, the captain of a boat that capsized in New York Harbor earlier this month, killing a mother and her 5-month-old daughter, was arrested by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement after an investigation found he was in the United States unlawfully.
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Ticks, ticks and more ticks: We are experiencing the worst summer yet in terms of the tick crisis, with Long Island at its epicenter. Here is the horror story behind the rise of the parasites and the diseases they transmit.
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“Hip-Hop Cop” dies: Derrick Parker, a New York police detective with deep connections to the city’s rap scene, died at 65. “My basic goal was to protect rap music from itself,” said Parker, who played a key role in investigating the murders of the rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
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What we’re watching: On “The New York Times Close Up,” Camille Bromley, a Times Opinion editor, joins Sarah Maslin Nir to discuss the debate over the long-term use of antidepressants, and the writer and educator Peter Schmidt offers a hopeful take on young people and reading. The program is broadcast on CUNY TV at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Woman arrested in plot to bomb the State Capitol
She posted messages on social media praising the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and she met with an F.B.I. informant to plans an attack on the New York State Capitol in Albany, according to a document filed in federal court in Albany.
She scouted the building — where Gov. Kathy Hochul has her office — at least five times in the last month, according to the document, a criminal complaint signed by an F.B.I. agent.
The woman, Jessica Bowie, 35, was arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court on Thursday detailed how law-enforcement agents used her social media posts to identify her as a potential threat. Then they ran a sting operation. An F.B.I. informant pretending to be a “facilitator” began talking with her about her plans to attack the Capitol, “ideally in a way I could get away with and hop on a plane after,” she said, according to the complaint.
“But Idk if it’s doable,” she wrote, using the abbreviation for “I don’t know.” She had told the informant that she lived near the Capitol and wanted help build a bomb, the complaint said.
She appeared in Federal District Court in Albany on Thursday and was ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge pending a hearing. She is being represented by the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of New York, Eric K. Schillinger, who said the office does not comment on active cases.
Hochul said in a statement that there was no immediate threat and that the state had taken steps to increase security around the Capitol and other government buildings “amid a rise in political violence and threats against public officials.”
Bowie met with two other informants on Aug. 5, and they explained what materials she would need to construct a bomb, according to the complaint. The document says that one of the informants gave her $200 and that she went to a Home Depot and bought a bin full of nails, among other things.
She told these informants that she wanted to try to “get a good enough explosive in there to kill the senators and ideally to destroy as much of the building as possible,” according to a transcript of a recorded conversation included in the complaint.
The informants met her on Wednesday to explain how to detonate the bomb she was planning to build. When she got out of the car in which they had been talking, F.B.I. agents arrested her.
METROPOLITAN diary
How it’s done
Dear Diary:
Some years ago, I was knitting while riding the Fifth Avenue bus from the mid 80s to the mid 50s when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned to see a woman. She asked how far I was riding and then said I should move over. She wanted to show me how to knit properly.
— Carol Waxman
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post At Famous Funeral Home, the Band Plays On appeared first on New York Times.
