Eight musicians of different stripes and a gaggle of assorted instruments form the Phenomenal Handclap Band, who took the stage recently during a recent sold-out show at Joe’s Pub. The brainchild of DJs Daniel Collas (producer, songwriter, organ, synthesizers, vox) and Sean Marquand (producer, songwriter, synthesizers), the collective from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn have seamlessly synthesized common threads of funk, psychedelic rock, disco, electro, and prog rock into authenticity-testing airs of nostalgia. The songs on their recently released self-titled debut are also undeniably dance floor-worthy—“15 to 20” was labeled by Rolling Stone "the first summer jam of 2009"—but Collas and Marquand are quick to distance themselves from ‘party band’ labels. “We want people to have a good time at our show of course, but I think that there’s a lot more to what it is than just being some pastiche of dance music,” says Marquand. We met Collas and Marquand—who'll be playing at Le Poisson Rouge Wednesday night—at their favorite East Village hangout, Lil’ Frankie’s Pizza before the last show, waxing on their debut, their drawing board, and their Swedish obsession.

The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation supports innovative research for spinal cord injury and works with individuals living with paralysis. A noble cause like this one needs the right direction, the right planning, and the right foundation. In comes Torsten Gross. An active member of the Foundation and wheelchair-bound himself, he is also the producer and organizer of fundraising events. Most recently, he underwrote and organized Reeve Rocks at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. BlackBook caught up with the busy philanthropist post-soiree.

On April 15, 1996, I and just about half the people involved in nightlife since, launched what many have called the last great club, Life. There were many clubs better before it, but in my opinion none have been as good since. The mix of different genres of A-listers has not been duplicated. I visited my old joint, which is now Le Poisson Rouge, for the first time since I quit over 10 years ago. I have nothing against the current management -- that's not why I hadn't gone over. It just felt weird. When I would drive by the 158 Bleecker Street club -- which was more often a theatre since -- I would look at the hideous Art Deco doors which so many celebrities and friends passed through back in the day. I had been hearing a real good buzz on the Poisson club, so I called Michael James to make an arrangement to get me a tour. Michael is my go-to guy when I need a hookup at a place I'm not familiar with. Michael knows everybody, and I've never met anybody who dislikes him.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in New York, you’ve walked into one of Johnny T’s East Village hangs. A staple in the NYC music and nightlife scenes, Johnny recently opened Cabin Down Below, an insta-speakeasy sensation. We sat down for an afternoon cocktail in the basement of his bar Niagara, source of many rock n' roll memories.

What bars do you claim as your own these days?
Black & White, Niagara, Bowery Electric, Cabin Down Below, and Pizza Shop.

Former Governor Spitzer's famed call girl seems to be taking a page from Kanye West's book -- that of aspiring towards Fashion Week ubiquity. First Ashley Dupre turned up at Yigal Azrouel on Friday; her unexpected appearance not only caught the eye of countless publications, it came as a shock to Azrouel (whose publicist Kelly Cutrone of Peoples Revolution had invited the former prostitute to a different Fashion Week presentation). In fact, the designer was so taken aback he subsequently fired Cutrone for "mismanagement." But it seems the show wasn't the only Fashion Week event on Dupre's social calendar this week.

The evening of the Academy Awards is one of those arbitrary, easy reasons to have people over, cook a few dishes, let your guests scuff up your floors, and be forced to clean up the mess by yourself at the end of the night -- sans a few dollars and with a dirtier apartment and the inevitable humorless letdown of watching a movie like Crash take Best Picture. Luckily, New Yorkers live in a city rife with far better places to be and far less irritating things to do. It helps that this year more than ever, it's easy to have a decent time on the cheap, and watch the show on a screen (or twelve) ten times the size of your boob-tube at home. We've dug up the best parties going down Sunday night; all we ask is that you don't forget your ballot, and your Nate Silver-endorsed cheat sheet with it.

Heloise and the Savoir Faire are gritty and glam and make me want to put on something with sequins and dance until the sun rears its head over the night’s detritus. Maybe that’s how they make Elijah Wood feel too, as he’s signed the electro-pop disco throwback outfit to his Simian Records label. Led by Heloise (pronounced “Eloise”) Williams, and with a backing band including classically trained dancer Joe Shephard, the band’s fearless and dynamic live show comes to Le Poisson Rouge this Friday, when they headline a Valium-times day party. We asked the art rockers to tell us where we could find them when they weren’t performing and, in addition to Brooklyn topless bar Pumps, here’s what they gave us.

Who would've thunk that demure electronic music superstar Moby was a self-proclaimed raging alcoholic? We spoke to him to talk about his Last Night Remixed album, but somehow talk degenerated into drunk Lower East Side tomfoolery, timing cocaine use just right, and why he's just not that into the debauchery at the Box.

Everyone loves red when it comes to a nightspot. It’s even more appealing when you roll over the visual imagery while pronouncing the perfect-sounding French word to describe it: “rouge.” The Moulin Rouge, of course, inspired the great underground graphic art by Toulouse Lautrec, where in the seedy dark underbelly of the cabaret smoke and dinge, the artist captured a whole universe of culture, or rather, sub-culture. Now the Moulin Rouge is just a tourist trap in the “red”-light district of Paris, while Le Poisson Rouge, a new music cabaret on Bleecker Street (see gallery), starts from the beginning and swims back to those late 19th-century Parisian nights.