East Village Radio Fest

September 7, 2008
East Village Radio Fest w/Boris, KRS-One, Aa, and others @ Fulton Street Seaport
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So Percussion @ Le Poisson Rouge


When I made my tardy arrival I was hoping the hip-hop act on stage was Devin the Dude who I had been looking forward to seeing. Alas, it was KRS-One. At first it was all right. He was doing some song with a chorus that involved shouting "Fuck Yeah!" and I could get into that. But soon it became way too conscious for me. His sidekick came on-stage and engaged in a very lengthy poetry slam-style tirade about presidential politics. My first reaction was, "Cool. They're talking about some issues to the kids. Using their pulpit to raise consciousness." But it just kept going and going. And it wasn't particularly clever or entertaining even. Just your typical blowhard stuff. I got tired of being condescended to and yelled at all at the same time, and realized that Aa, who I would have rather been seeing anyway, were playing on the side stage.


I'd been meaning to catch Aa for quite some time. The festival's second stage was in a cool gallery space. They were appealing but I wasn't really grabbed by what they were playing. Aa's sound is built on percussion, and so I wanted the music to be much more aggressive than it was. I'm not sure they've fully harnessed their powers as a band but all in due time.


Boris scorched the crowd with their sludge-filled psychedelic metal, as per usual. It was kind of interesting to see them in the context of a free outdoor show where the audience is much more diverse than their typical shows that are filled with hardcore fans who know what to expect. I wonder if Takeshi ever gets tired of jumping into the audience and crowd-surfing at every show.


After the East Village Radio fest I headed over to Le Poisson Rouge to see So Percussion who had seriously impressed me with their stunning set of meticulously complex rhythmic synchronicity at this year's Bang On A Can marathon. This show turned out to be a much different concept than the set they played at the marathon, which was more academic and classical in nature. At this show, they seemed to be working out a different identity as a rock band in the vein of Tortoise. But for a group that's already demonstrated their impressive grasp on playing incredibly demanding music, they weren't able to transfer that discipline into this new context, and it just sounded sloppy and ill-conceived. Maybe the sloppiness was an affectation to embody their vision of what rocking out sounds like, a concept on which their grasp seemed to be somewhat shaky. Afterwards, a laptop musician took the stage playing some very loud electronic beat-laden music. But I had to go home. My head had heard enough music for one weekend.

More photos of Boris from the East Village Radio Festival at Brooklyn Vegan.

The Big O

Monster Island Block Party w/Oneida, Ex-Models, Golden Triangle and others
September 6, 2008
Secret Project Robot
Brooklyn

The night started off earmarked for pathetic disaster. New York City had been put on notice to receive a hard rain from the runoff of Hurricane Hanna, which had been making its way up the eastern seaboard all week. The East Village Radio Festival, my original destination for the day, had been postponed due to the forecast, leaving me free to attend the Monster Island Block Party, which was prepared with an indoor location. This actually was auspicious because I had earlier been frustrated by the dilemma posed by 2 free outdoor music festivals on the same day – damn you NYC and your constant embarrassment of riches!! – and this relieved me from having to make an uncomfortable choice between the two.

Just as I was walking out the door to make my delayed departure towards the show around 8pm, my friend who was going to meet me there called to tell me that Oneida had already played at 5:30 (we had mistakenly assumed that they’d be the headliners and play last) and that he wouldn’t be coming after all. But, BUT, he told me that he heard that Oneida would be recording an album later in the evening and were inviting 15 people to join them in the studio for the recording. Only thing, all the tickets had been handed out at the beginning of the day. I almost turned right back around and headed home. I decided to press on, but at least 10 separate times on my walk to the subway I stopped in my tracks and stood frozen on the sidewalk, reassessing whether to make the journey. I’ve gone to my fair share of concerts alone, but this was billed as a party. What was I doing going by myself to a party where I’d know no one, that was supposed to be over right around the time I probably would arrive with vague intentions of crashing this album taping for which tickets had been handed out hours ago? But my momentum was unassailable. And it was so dramatic out, not quite raining, but windy and dark with an importunate drizzle and the air full of that portentous moodiness unique to having a tropical storm in proximity. I figured that at worse, I’d get to walk the desolate streets of Williamsburg that take you to the river and revel in my solitary thoughts like a little weather-battered shadowy moppet of the night. Or something like that. In any case, I soldiered on.

I was pleased to find that the event was still well underway when I arrived. The space (I’m not sure whether it’s called Monster Island or Secret Project Robot or Las Estacas or all of the above) is a converted warehouse located in a fairly uninhabited stretch of Williamsburg, right near the river, and functions as an art gallery, performance space, and as I learned, in the basement, a practice space and recording studio for Oneida. The event had the feeling of a “happening,” with freaky shit going on in every corner. There was some animalistic installation in the front room with sculptures made of leather, furs, and other organic-looking materials bearing horns and pelts…the works. In the main space, the lighting was all wrong for the scene. The bright fluorescent lights dilated everyone’s pupils and paradoxically, made for a much more psychedelic effect than the dark dinginess of a typical event of this sort. It was like 60 minutes on acid, man. At one point a parade of lissome young people nominally covered in diaphanous loincloths and covered from head to toe in some sort of white powder made a slow march through the space. Exposed tits and dicks - this was a good party!

Despite plenty of visual stimulation, the band was taking forever to set up so I wandered around aimlessly for a while before I realized that there was a basement, where The Ex-Models (which feature Oneida’s Kid Millions on drums) were just getting ready to start their technical issue-laden set in the basement. I was psyched to see them and what they were able to play sounded pretty good although they couldn’t really get things going due to the fact that their equipment seemed to be on the verge of bursting into flames. At one point a thin plume of smoke was rising from one of the amplifiers. Thankfully they turned that off, but I was still concerned that an explosion of some sort was nigh. They played for about 20 minutes before they gave up. The basement cleared out and everyone headed upstairs where Golden Triangle was getting ready to play.

The Ex-Models

Oneida was breaking down their equipment and moving it all into a room off to the side. I figured it was my chance. I walked up to Hanoi Jane and asked if they were playing again that night. “Yeah, we’re recording an album.”

“Oh cool!” I said, expectantly, enthusiastically, nonchalantly.

A pregnant pause and Jane asked, “Do you have a ticket?”

Mournfully, innocently, trying to make the most of my feeble hand, I responded, “No,” bowing my head with shame.

“Do you want one?” he asked.

I instantly perked up, my eyes widening like those of a manga cartoon girl. “Yeah yeah!” I said, my head athletically bobbing up and down.

“OK, but if I give you this ticket you have to promise to actually come,” he said sternly as he proffered a rectangular cardboard strip of paper featuring an eyeball with a metallic gold pupil.

I found his ultimatum laughable and asked him “Are you kidding?” After realizing he was serious, I wiped the smirk off my face, and solemnly agreed, “Yes, of course I’ll come.” (This exchange suggested to me that Oneida may not fully be aware that they are in possession of really big fans.) While I waited for the recording to begin, I went upstairs to watch Golden Triangle who were playing a raucous set encircled by fans and without significant demarcation from where the band ended and the audience began. It was hard for me to concentrate, excited about the oncoming performance by Oneida and not wanting to miss it since it was happening in a closed off private room and it wasn’t quite sure how I’d learn when it was starting. People kept peeking into the room and getting shooed out.

Golden Triangle

Finally they said they were letting people in. I entered timidly and was instantly greeted by a girl asking, “Ticket?” I nodded my head yes and before I could actually produce it, she thrust a can in my hand and insisted, “Beer!” I hesitantly walked further inside not knowing where to stand in the tiny cramped space full of instruments and equipment with a glass window looking into a small control room in the back since basically anywhere I stood would be impinging on the space of the musicians. Sensing my timidity, band members encouraged, “Come all the way in! Stand wherever you want.” There were maybe 10 spectators—some huddled in the back, a few sitting in the middle encircled by the band, and me in the back at the top of the steps leading up to the control room, looking out on the whole scene. Oneida informed the assembled group that what they were about to record was to be their “party album” and the deal of us being there was that everyone had to be partying at all times. They asked to make sure everyone had a beer and insisted that if at any time during the proceedings anyone needed a beer that we were to raise our hand and one would be brought to us. (Miraculously, this system actually worked.)


View From Inside The Ocropolis: Oneida channel The Feelies

Then they started playing, with each song getting more intense than the one before, culminating in a full on manic jam propelled by 2 drummers (inspired by the Feelies I later learned). Oneida play with an extremely joyous yet disciplined and serious intensity, and it was a powerful experience to watch and feel such energetic playing in such an intimate surrounding. It really made you feel like part of the experience. At one point the band popped open a bottle of champagne and started passing it around. Later someone said, “Bring out the dragon” and a pipe was passed around. It felt like a climax of my music-going career to be witness to such an experience. Anyone can go to a concert. Album-tapings are were the real professionals get their kicks. I learned afterwards they were recording what was to be the 3rd part of their triptych, "Thank Your Parents," for which they recently released the first part, "Preteen Weaponry." (The 2nd part will be released later next year.) Hey Oneida, can I come to all your recoding sessions from now on??


Fat Bobby steps away from his keyboard to mess with a bass for a bit.

Afterwards, I was completely elated. I felt this sense of being connected to all the people in the room who had shared in the experience. I think I was wrong and probably no one else cared to know who the hell I was, but I couldn’t shake it. I wanted to thank the musicians personally for allowing me to be a part of their album. They seemed confused by my effusiveness. I was shocked when one of the guys responded to my praise with diffidence, saying that he had been disappointed in his own playing and felt like it wasn’t as good as it should have been. I was able to obtain a copy of Oneida’s "Heads Aint Ready" 7” wherein they pay energetic homage to the frenzied, insistent instrumental lines of the Dead’s early arrangements of "Cold Rain and Snow" and "Cream Puff War" and listened to it a few times when I got home. (The next day I found several photographs and 2 live action videos that I had apparently taken with my digital camera during my trip home of my subway car on the G train, completely empty other than me, speeding through tunnels. WTF?)

I was still feeling the glow from last night’s experience with The Big O when I woke up. I visited the band’s website, Enemy Hogs, to spend some more time in their world and came across the phenomenally engaging tour diaries written by Kid Millions. I then went on to spend some of the most enjoyable hours in recent memory totally rapt by the extremely frank, funny, well-written journal of life on the road traveling across America and Europe in a rickety perpetually broken-down van, crashing on couches, and playing shitty, half-empty venues. They start off filled with enthusiasm and boundless energy and with each successive tour become increasingly more disillusioned and exhausted. For Oneida, the road is filled with loneliness, bad food, soul-crushing disappointment, ever-looming calamity, and accommodations so uncomfortable that the only way to deal with it is to get completely wasted. Anyway, if you have a day to spare, I highly recommend checking the Oneida tour diaries out. One of the best music reads I’ve enjoyed in a while.

I had told someone a story the night before about when I first fell in love with the Grateful Dead—how I rented the Grateful Dead Movie when I was 13 and sat in my parent’s bedroom home alone, watching in the dark, and had my expectations for what music could be totally turned on its head. That night years ago, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. As I watched the band play their hearts out, I was so moved I stood up on the bed and started sobbing. I remember thinking: all this time, all the music I’ve known from radio, MTV, records, I didn’t know that there were people out there who cared so much, who were willing to play so hard, to push the notes out of themselves and explore so boldly, venturing into such vast terrains of music—I was sad that I hadn’t known that’s what music could be up till that point and regretful of having lived so long with a false sense of the limits that existed on the possibilities of music. Well Oneida care. They play with that same intensity, and I don’t think it ever gets any less exciting when you find a band willing to play like that.

Download: Cold Rain & Snow by Oneida from the Heads Aint Ready 7"

The Hoboken Sound

Benefit for Terry Karydes featuring: Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Glenn Mercer of The Feelies, Dave Schramm, Ron Metz, and Al Greller of The Shramms
September 5, 2008
Maxwell's
Hoboken, NJ




According to the 1985 documentary "The Hoboken Sound," one of the markers of the scene is that "Hoboken bands seem to smile on stage. You don't see that across the river in Manhattan." Maybe that explains why I always get so giddy when going to a show at Maxwell's. Something about the venue makes it seem like more of an authentic rock show experience free of any attitude or bullshit you encounter in the clubs in NYC. For one, it's probably the most intimate space to see top shelf acts and it really does feel like it's all about the music. The band tonight was definitely making true on the claim of a greater happiness present in Hoboken , as everyone seemed to be having a great time on stage, playing really loosely, and eating up the opportunity to play with one another. Attending this show felt like crashing a party of old friends. If there is a "Hoboken scene" I was definitely knee deep in it. Despite the number of heavy hitters on stage, the show seemed to be only attended by friends and family of the musicians and Terry Karydes, for whom the event had been organized to raise money for medical bills associated with her recent diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease.

The band played an assortment of Yo La Tengo (eg The Summer, Stockholm Syndrome), Feelies, and Schramms songs, plus a number of classic covers by bands like The Rolling Stones (eg Stupid Girl voiced by the hammy song stylings of Tammy Faye Starlight, who dedicated the song to Sara Palin and her daughter, Bristol) and The Velvet Underground, providing an audio tour of the commonalities in influence that unite the sounds of the musicians' respective bands. Dave Schramm (original bassist of Yo La Tengo) tore it up on guitar and once again the Chocco Salo adage, "bands with 2 drummers shall always rule," was proven true .

Musicians in attendance: James McNew, creating a somewhat awkward moment (for me, probably not for him) when they played Stockholm Syndrome, which he usually sings, with Dave Schramm on lead vocals. My thoughts during the number: C'mon guys, just invite him up on stage why doncha?!

You Don't Miss Your Water Till The Well Runs Dry

Sonic Youth
August 30, 2008
Last McCarren Pool Show Ever (?)
Brooklyn


The chance to see Sonic Youth always seems like a lucky opportunity, and yet the excitement of the show was marred by the sad notion that this was to be the last concert at the abandoned mammoth pool that concert goers like myself have come to love over the last three summers for its mellow atmosphere and appealingly adventurous programming. But is it really the last show? Right up until the end, promoters announced from the stage that everyone should sign petitions to keep the place open and presumably stave off the plan to restore it to a functioning pool. You know, for swimming. Whether the renovation plan is a done deal or not, I'm not among the many who are choked up over the closing of the venue. I've enjoyed the hell out of the place maybe as much as anyone else and will be sad to lose it as a staple in my summer concert-going regimen, but people, they're turning it into a pool! It's not like they're paving it over and building condos. Pools are cool. There's a nice big public one (although only a quarter of the size of McCarren) near me, in Red Hook, and I regard the opportunity to swim in it, or bob in its cooling waters as the case may be, on a steamy summer afternoon with my neighbors to be pretty special. I have faith that new oases for live music will rise in the absence of McCarren Pool and the cycle shall continue.

As for the show, there was much wondering among my crew as to what Sonic Youth would play considering they had just done a huge free outdoor show at Battery Park almost 2 months prior. The answer was given when they opened the show announcing they were going to play a few new songs--songs so new that they didn't yet have titles and had just been written a few days before. Thurston Moore said that, in the absence of lyrics, they would just sing whatever came to their mind. That made everyone feel pretty good I think, implying as it does the continuous onward march of music production, which is surely one of the charms of Sonic Youth. The show rocked and sounded incredibly fresh, moving effortlessly from spare punkish rock, feedback laden guitar freakouts, and morose pop loveliness. Kim Gordon did her groovy helicopter arms dance. The band was joined onstage by Mark Ibold, bassist from Pavement.

I'll miss the pool. Presumably when it's ready for swimming in 2011, it shall be irrigated with the tears of a million morose hipsters.

The spooky noise artists, Wolf Eyes, played first and set the tone for an evening of arty musical exploration. This was my first time seeing them and it sounded interesting but it was hard to fully take in their keening industrial droning happening as it was in the middle of McCarren Pool social hour. The broad daylight felt wrong for the soundtrack. I'd definitely like to check Wolf Eyes again some time, preferably in a dark, dinghy basement club filled with reverentially silent listeners.

Setlist:
New Song (sung by Thurston)
New Song (sung by Kim)
Burning Spear
The Sprawl
Cross the Breeze
Hey Joni
Silver Rocket
The Wonder
Hyperstation
Mote
Jams Run Free
Pink Steam
Encore 1:
Making the Nature Scene
Brother James
Encore 2:
Expressway to Yr. Skull


NY Times article and accompanying photo slideshow on the closing of the pool.

Photos on Brooklyn Vegan.

Addendum: I bought a copy of the SYR7 vinyl-only release at the show, the latest in Sonic Youth's series of experimental, raw EPs, which features the songs J'Accuse Ted Hughes and
Agnes B Musique, and a photograph of Thurston Moore aggressively wielding his guitar over his head in combative stance. I put it on, forgetting that I had been previously listening to a 45rpm single and should change the speed of the turntable. I listened to both sides of the record with great satisfaction, only realizing that it had been at the wrong speed the whole time after I put on a new, more familiar record. My only cause for suspicion was why they had let a young child sing a song with so many uses of the word "fuck" in it. I figured maybe it was a Japanese woman with a high voice singing. I've since listened to it at the proper speed and I'd just like to say, the record is fantastic at any number of revolutions per minute.

Oneida

August 29, 2008
Fulton Seaport

Probably one of the most sparsely attended free shows I've been to this summer. No matter, Oneida killed as per usual. As they did for their show earlier this summer at The Yard, they played their wonderful new album, Preteen Weaponry, in its entirety, followed by an additional song, Double Lock Your Mind. It's always a joy to watch Kid Millions, who has been rocking the tie-dye lately (perhaps in honor of their recent Grateful Dead-covering 7", Heads Aint Ready), pound out the beat in a manically energetic attack of his drum kit.

Update: A recording of the show, along with a nice writeup, can be found at nyctaper. Awesome!

More photos at Prefix Mag and Brooklyn Vegan.

Another "poorly written review" from an "Oneida superfan"

Scream contest

August 28, 2008
Bowery Ballroom
NYC


Prurient, noise artist Dominick Fernow, opened the show with his aggressively noisy, shouty show. Keeping his back to the audience for the length of his set, he messed with knobs, wires, and assorted objects and deep-throated his microphone to create washes of loud, tinnitus-inducing cacophony. It was awesome.


Next up was Carla Bozulich's project, Evangelista. The beauty of Bozulich's deep, throaty voice was tempered by the dark crashes of music created by an able assemblage of strings (cello and violin), drums, guitars, and electronics that punctuated her sermonizing verses.


Xiu Xiu was the headliner. Although the room was twice as full for them as it had been for either of the previous 2 opening acts, I found them roundly intolerable due to the obnoxiously overemotive singing and uninteresting song stylings that seemed to be more referencing musical experimentation than actually engaging in it. But I recuse my opinion from carrying any stake because I ran from the room after about 5 minutes, screaming, "Nooo I can't take it." Sorry to end on a glum note. I do like how their name is pronounced "shoo shoo"--I think it's cute and provides a handy way to demonstrate that you're "in the know" since it's not immediately evident how to say it from the spelling. Also, Evangelista and Prurient were both awesome!

Musicians in attendance: Thurston Moore (who has collaborated with Bozulich in the past.)

NYC Taper has recordings of the performances from Xiu Xiu and Evangelista.