my week beats your year

Death Disco Sticks its Guitar in a New Amp

2006-06-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Fans of the weekly Death Disco rock and roll party: fear not! If you were wondering where the gig had gone, it's just moved a few blocks from its old home at The Delancey to The Annex. Why the move? As D.D. creator and curator B.P. Fallon explained, "The Delancey is a wonderful place. Sometimes, you just have to unplug your guitar and stick it in another amp."

The second show at its new digs last Wednesday found the weekly fete in fine form. Two NYC bands opened the show: The Vandelles boasted a noisy, reverb-drenched attack that sounded like the Raveonettes after a night of drinking Everclear. Live Girls followed: the lead singer made out with her bass player and shed clothing as the band chugged out trashy tunes. After the bands, DJs ranging from Casey Block and Jeff Conklin from East Village Radio to Carl Barat from The Libertines / Dirty Pretty Things (pictured w/ BP) entertained as the party moved from the main stage to the lower room. Termed "The Medicine Chest" by BP, the basement was the perfect place to keep the sleazy, let-the-good times roll vibe goin'.

Has D.D. had changed its approach, now that it's in its new home? "No," replied Headmaster Fallon, "except maybe it's more about getting people dancing." Is he having success getting famously stationary NYC indie-rockers to shake their tail-feathers? According to B.P., "I used to think New Yorkers didn't want to dance. Now I'm changing my opinion."

Next week, Semi-Precious Weapons - B.P.'s "favorite combo in NYC right now" - play with Kelly Buchanan. And July 2, there's an all-ages D.D.. "Music is a wonderful balm," B.P. says, "and why should you have to be 21 to experience it?" Right on, B.P.

No-Show

2006-05-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

I take relaxation very seriously, especially after a week as action-packed as this one. At work, it was a tense week of bureaucratic kung fu - changing budget lines, figuring out how to move capital appopriations, discussing conceptual architectural designs - generously punctuated with the sort of stories of old, NYC politics that make all the tense, bone-dry kung fu work worthwhile. To whit: out at lunch with a "government relations consultant" on Monday, I got to hear a story about how things used to work in the greasey netherworld of city politics. An acquaintance of this gentleman's was given a position by newly-elected Mayor Koch. It was a legitimate job, and he was excited about it. But - Reporting to work the first day, his supervisor - I can picture it now, the wrinkled suit, the Civil Service Commission paycheck, the graffiti-covered A train sitting at Chambers Street, I really do wish I could time travel to 1970s New York, especially if I could walk around Downtown with Franz Kafka... - asked him, "So, are you going to do this position, or are you a no-show?" The man was puzzled: "What's a no-show?" The supervisor said, "It's someone who doesn't show up to work. You fill out the timesheets and we send you a paycheck, and that's that."

As with most people the no-show thing isn't an option for me. Like I said, work was tense - I actually waited for a crucial email, scanning my blackberry for the response, and sent out the sigh-of-relief response at 10 PM Friday, before I went out and about.

Which brings me back to my other universe. Some highlights:

- Wed: Once again at Death Disco. Saw El Jezel play a typically enjoyable and dreamy set. Traded dirty jokes until way past my bedtime with a friend of the band's and Mojo. Splurged and took a cab home, and the next morning, couldn't find the Death Disco t-shirt I had bought. Where was it? Could it be that even after eight years in this town I still leave things in cabs? Only today (Sunday), in sorting through the piles of laundry in the bedroom, when I found the t-shirt, was my faith restored. No, I am not an utter dumbass.

- Thurs: Made it to the newly-ferned, freshly painted Bar 169 just in time to see my friends from Kentucky, The Apparitions. Andrew and I sat in the back of the front part of the room, with a direct line to the stage, and watched the show. It was a little show for a band that's getting bigger and bigger, but it was a good stop for them on their way to play a show at Williams College. Plus the owner, who had grimaced at their reasonable requests for more vocals or less drums in the monitors, later revealed himself as a fan of the band, and bought them all drinks. Caught up with the Apps after their set: a newly broken-hearted one dulling his pain by staying at the Chelsea pad of an attractive, good-hearted friend of his; the surly one contemplating the usual questions of purpose and meaning that come in being in an indie rock band; the concerned one wondering, where was the van parked again? ... if you haven't heard God Monkey Robot, you're in for a treat.

- Fri: Walking to Sin-e, having just emerged from my favorite escalator in the MTA system (at the Delancey Street F train station), ran into Alan from A+P (who we play with *this* Friday) - surrounded by his friends in front of The Magician on Rivington Street, we caught up a little. It's rare to meet a really nice fellow, and Alan's one. Walked into the venue just as The Unsacred Hearts were wrapping up a terrific cover of "Love Comes in Spurts" by Richard Hell and The Voidoids. They sped through an energetic sense, with a good crowd hopping to their garage rock. I was glad to make it to the show in time to hear them play "Point of Pride." The Octagon took over after the Hearts. I always dig their Pavementish pop rock. Zach keeps getting better as a charming, sort of perpetually half-innebriated, indie ubermensch front man. Travis and I caught up about college and how Serious Business was going, and then it was time to go home.

Sat - Wishing I had gone to bed earlier, woke up and, with the rest of the band, schlepped our gear up to Harlem and into CCNY's foreboding Shephard Hall. Our friend James from CCNY's music program, was generously letting us record some new tunes. We tracked in the jazz lecture hall, which let the drums sound big and beefy, and we got through five songs (save vocals). We finally quit around midnight, having shaken off a surly companion of James', and with a minimum of Some Kind of Monster Moments. After this nice long day, and after talking our way out of a potential major hassle from the campus police (you can't just walk out of Shepard Hall with all this music equipment without the right paperwork, ya know...) we trekked back to the Gowanus, dropped off our gear, and I made it back to my apartment at 2:30. My girlfriend was waiting up, playing Civ on her laptop. Talk nerdy to me! Had a beer and went to sleep.

Which brings me to today. Sunday. I woke up at 12:30, and it's 10:30 now. And I really haven't done anything today. How's that for blogging material, huh? Take out, being a jackass about the house with my girlfriend? But you know, you have to be a no-show occassionally, and today, folks, I am a NO-SHOW. IT RULES!!!

Move my tired ass!!

2006-05-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

It takes a good hour to get from Windsor Terrace, home of puppy dogs and grandmas and a park designed by Olmsted, to Bushwick, home of abandoned warehouses and strange wrinkled men who give you the evil eye and tug on a cigarette with an ash longer than the remaining paper wrapper as they shuffle past you on a dark street replete with hidden art spaces, anyonymous apartment houses and big, silent cement silo-thingies. As I made the trip last night on the F and then the L trains, I passed the time by listening to XTC's "Black Sea" very loud on my obligatory ipod (I get a nice tax break because I own one, don't you?), and thanks to my standard three cups of coffee, the tunes got nice and twitchy. "Generals and Majors always seem so unhappy unless they got a war!"? Stomp, stomp, stomp! Twitch, twitch, twitch! Yar! The big extended family on the next bench sort of scootched down a little. No matter. I think looking crazy on the subway is helpful.

The L deposited me at the corner of Montrose and Bushwick in, er, Bushwick. (This used to be my stomping grounds. Yep, I traded it in for some more suburbanish digs just south of Park Slope, where I can wander home drunk very late, and the "sketchiness" alarm in my brain is silent. Plus not a hipster in site -- except myself, I guess -- but if I am in the mood for that sort of thing, it's a brief, one-seat ride to the Lower East Side.) Two blocks from the train, I'm in a crowded stairwell leading up to the Asterisk Art Space, for the Deli Magazine's party.

Full disclosure. The Deli has been very good to our band. They reviewed our album quite well, and they interviewed us, allowing us the chance to sound like jackasses, which I'm always jazzed about... And they let us play last Thursday's Deli show at Tonic. And they let us bring in a horn section to play with us, our pals in The Porn Horns (of Country Club and The Porn Horns). If you don't see the appeal in a horn section, well, I have no response to that.

The lineup was really good. A few weeks back, I was standing in the DJ booth next to DJ Mojo at The Delancey. I always enjoy hanging out with Mojo. Another pal of ours, and a NYC institution - with him, it's always yarns about the music scene: what it was like seeing Iggy Pop, who the local bands are these days that I should be listening to... The Beastie Boys have an old song about him, "Egg Raid on Mojo" -- one of their punk tunes -- never asked Mojo about it, maybe I will next time I see him... Well anyway, he was popping in CD after CD of local bands, and he played a few tunes by bands that were playing this Deli party. So, why not. What the hell else am I going to do? My girlfriend is in law school, and it's exam time, so she's, shall we say, preoccupied. That's cool, she should focus on that. So, what would I be doing if not trekking to Bushwick on this particular eve? Eating Captain Crunch and playing Playstation? No, that's for later, when I got home drunk. There has to be an intermediate step before that happens. One where I go out of my way to travel across town and blow some money on booze. That's the way it's done, right?

So, back to the stairwell. It leads from the street to the art space. There are two girls and a brawny, tattooed dude at the landing at the top. One girl for the mailings list, and one girl for stamps, and the dude for ID check and money (!). I hadn't been at Asterisk for about 3 years. I played there when my band was just starting, with a proto-lineup and a horrible cold on my part. I've never played a show in the throes of the flu before, and I hope never to again. I recall that I cleverly wrote the set list for everyone in red ink on yellow legal pad paper, and the stage we played on was flooded in red light that night... Then I got mad at my drummer for not being able to see the songs! I'm great. Truly a boy scout. Well, the last time I was there it wasn't so organized. I was a little surprised. I guess they do this sort of thing a lot now.

I walked into the big middle space. The kitchen was cordoned off by a small bar where I procured a generous pour of Jim Beam in a plastic cup. Neato. There were two big rooms at either end of this middle space - in each of those two rooms, an invisible band was making a terrific cacophony. I immediately ran into my friend Eric, member of the smart rock trio Die Romantik. I went to college with him - a fellow philosophy guy up in Morningside Heights - and he filled in as bass player in my band for a short time about two years ago. Our bass position is sort of like the drummer in Spinal Tap - they spontaneously combust, they whatever, point is we're in need of one fairly often (as we are now). Eric and I started catching up. It was really really loud in that room, a true noise arms race; Eric remarked, "It's so much quieter in here [than where the bands were playing]! I can actually hear you!" Yeah, I guess. I can't complain, if a band isn't loud I get kind of pissed off.

Andrew, my buddy and keyboardist/saxophonist in my band, showed up, and soon we were meeting old acquaintances and random people. The most memorable was Aubrey, who, I suppose is a bit of a veteran of the music scene, said with a knowing smile when I asked her to introduce me to someone, "You know she's gay... Oh, for networking? Yeah, gotta do that."

It's true. She's right. It's like everyone's running for Borough President or State Assemblyman or something. Crikey. Yes, you have to network. It's hilarious sometimes, you're in this crowded loft space in a demilitarized zone of a 'hood, drinking cheap spirits from plastic cups, and on the one hand you do enjoy meeting people, but on the other - here's Aubrey with her grin again - you do have to "network." Network? Why would people want to meet me? What am I doing here?!? Does my breath smell of the guacamole I had with dinner??? ... Luckily, before I descended into a pit of feeling kind of gross and useless, Eric and I shoved our way into one of the rooms and saw a band called Earl Greyhound, and I was satisfied again. They were playing in a corner of the room, and I was in the opposite, on a second riser, right next to a little cave where the sound guy was, surrounded by a bunch of glowing equipment that made his habitat look like C-3PO's escape pod in the beggining of A New Hope. This band was laying down some mean MC5/Stooges/Led Zeppelin stuff. Yeah, that doesn't sound so exciting. But since I tend to think every note on every instrument has been played, I'm generally not looking for someone to claim the next zeitgeist with a mewing table saw and laptop or something like that, no, I'm out for some good energy and a new twist. These folks were a picture: you had two long-haired rawk dudes, one slamming on a drum set and the other tooting his Les Paul, and then you had this bassist that cut this great picture, this chick with a big 'fro and white heels and a skirt, enthusiastically plucking at what looked to be a Fender bass. It was Kings of Leon but with the missing testicles; it was great.

I went back to the main room and tussled my hair and grabbed the required PBR (another tax break is coming my way. You gotta look into these things.) I went out to the terrace. The wide windows of a big old factory a short distance away glowed with incandescent lights and curtains. Eric and I were now drunk, and he started talking about another band he was there to see, Apes and Androids: "It's really good. It's kind of depressing. You tend to wonder why you're playing music at all."

I knew the band that morphed into Apes and Androids, the predecessor outfit Call Florence Pow. Like CFP, these dudes had about five tiny synths, two of which had these neat pink flourescent lights on it. And that was sort of the vibe of the band. These tall guys up front with great haircuts and tank tops, all those synths, a slick dancey racket, a black Fender Strat with thick white stripes. People were - gasp - kinda dancing. I couldn't believe it.

Even though they were, like Eric promised, really, really good, I was in the stage of innebriation where I couldn't really sit still. So I wandered over to the other room. Proton Proton was playing. With a frontman who wore a guitar but didn't seem to ever play it, a bassist and a drummer, they made the most noise for two people I'd ever seen. The frontman had a sort of lanky, drunken exuberance and he seemed to taunt everyone, invading their space and sneering. More people dancing! What am I to make of this?

At this point Andrew and I decide it's time to roll out... I run into a friend of mine who's a cartoonist, drawing grotesque and clever confections for the New York Press, and say farewell to Aubrey, as well as a college acquaintance who don't remember my name (that's cool - but don't give me that blank stare and sneer, folks, our college just wasn't cool enough to justify that).

Well done, Deli - I have to say the cool thing is, they put together a night with bands that actually had energy, and stage presence, that actually made me move my tired ass a little. That's pretty good. Especially in this town.