Award presentation will take place in-person at SVA Theatre on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023 at 8 pm
By Harold Goldberg
The New York Game Awards is proud to present legendary New York guitarist and singer Mike Fornatale as one of our awesome musical guests. Fornatale is an icon of the downtown music scene. Here’s why.
Mike Fornatale has played with everyone of note on the Lower East Side and beyond: The Left Banke, The Monks, The Washington Squares, Tom Clark, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Murderer’s Row, Loser’s Lounge, Bubble. He’s a musicologist who’s written terrific album liner notes. And he produced the album Garage Rock Classics.
During the summer, I went to see Fornatale play at The Cutting Room on 32nd Street. It was a stuffy, airless large room with no air conditioner on an 80 degree night – but everyone was alive, energetic and on the edges of their seats, utterly floored by the show Mike had prepared. Supported by select musicians he had carefully curated, he sang and played over 60 songs from the year 1967. It went on for hours and hours — and very few left.
There was so much expert playing and singing presented for our satisfaction that no one wanted the show to end. It wasn’t just the hits of the era that Fornatale had chosen. As a musicologist, he dove deep into B-sides and songs that might have been hits had they received the proper attention. I can’t imagine the amount of rehearsing it took to pull of that memorable event.
At the New York Game Awards, Mike will play one of those songs from that mammoth set at the Cutting Room.
But he’ll also play a song for Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, our esteemed Andrew Yoon Legend Awards winner.
You’re going to love it!
