Head over to MTV Hive to see my photos from Saturday night’s performance by Jherek Bischoff and the Wordless Music Orchestra, which featured an all-star cast, including David Byrne, Craig Wedren (Shudder to Think), Mirah, Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), Zac Pennington (Parenthetical Girls), Sam Mickens (the Dead Science), Carla Bozulich (The Geraldine Fibbers, Evangelista), Charlie Looker (Extra Life) and Jen Goma (A Sunny Day in Glasgow). Seeing Jherek Bischoff grin from ear-to-ear was easily worth the ten bucks I chipped in on Kickstarter.
The New York Times apparently doesn’t allow their videos to be embedded (good luck with that, NYT), so you’ll have to click through if you want to watch a video of Sharon Van Etten showing the Times around my neighborhood and performing a gorgeous rendition of “We Are Fine” in the front room of my local bar. I promise it’s worth the click, though I’m probably a little biased, seeing how this piece is basically the perfect storm of things that I love (I eat way too many meals at that brunch place too!). Van Etten’s new record Tramp is stunning, by the way—a huge leap forward for her in terms of both songwriting and production (it’s worth noting that it was produced right here in Ditmas Park by the National’s Aaron Dessner). Tramp is out this Tuesday on Jagjaguwar—in the meantime, you can stream it in its entirety over at NPR.
This week, I wrote a piece for MTV Hive about “Wicked Clown Love,” a new performance art piece from Neal Medlyn that draws much of its inspiration from Insane Clown Posse fan culture (i.e. the “Juggalo” lifestyle). I hope that my admiration for Medlyn’s bravery comes across in the piece—instead of taking the easy route by poking fun at a culture that’s almost universally loathed, he’s taken the time to really understand ICP and its fans, in order to produce a performance that’s generous, nuanced and thought-provoking. Neal’s challenge, I think, is convincing an NYC audience to take a subject as deeply uncool as Juggalos seriously, though based on what I saw at the rehearsal, he’s more than up to the task. In addition to Neal, I also interviewed Riot Grrrl O.G. Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre), who designed the sets for “Wicked Clown Love” and had some really thoughtful, eloquent things to say about Neal’s work. This means that I can now claim to have talked to Kathleen Hanna about Juggalos—I’m guessing that there aren’t very many people who can say that.
Spotted this recruitment flyer “on the floor” at NYU ITP yesterday. It’s a call for mobile developers that appropriates the artwork from Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion for some reason? It’s clearly intentional, since the creator of the flyer acknowledges the original source of the artwork in the text along the side (also, note to whoever designed this: stating that you do not “claim copyright or ownership of the image” does not change the fact that you are almost certainly violating the original owner’s copyright). What does it all mean? Fingers-crossed that this is a teaser for the Geologist’s new mobile startup. Either way: 9.6, Best New Flyer.
Last night, I shot the MoMA-commissioned Antony and the Johnsons Swanlights performance at Radio City Music Hall for MTV Hive. While I was waiting outside of the venue, Björk walked up to one of the security guards and asked which entrance she should use, before shoving me out of the way and walking off. I managed to snap the above photo of her playing with her iPhone before she disappeared into the crowd—luckily, she didn’t notice, or else I might have gotten roughed up like that reporter in Bangkok. Anyway, if you’re so inclined, you can see my photos and read my review of the Antony performance over at MTV Hive.
It’s that time of year again: Pazz & Jop or as some call like to call it, “music critic Christmas”. Here’s my ballot for 2011; my extended top 20 albums list is after the break. I’m thrilled to see that Tune-Yards clinched the overall #1 album spot this year—that photo of Merill Garbus on the front page pretty much sums up the collective sense of surprise. It couldn’t be more well-deserved, though—Garbus is a truly idiosyncratic voice in pop, one of the few artists out there making records that are as original as they are accomplished. Also, it’s encouraging to see that female artists topped both the albums and singles lists this year—I wonder when the last time was when that happened, if ever (online results only go as far back as 2008)?
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The last time I saw Girls and Real Estate play, I walked away feeling disappointed by the former and pleasantly surprised by the latter. This time around, my reaction was the exact opposite, though the choice of venue might have had something to do with it. In the two years since I last saw Girls, they’ve learned how to scale up their live show to fill big rooms; during their headlining set at Terminal 5 on Saturday night, they looked like a band that has been playing to crowds of 3,000 from the start. Real Estate, meanwhile, looked and sounded a bit out of place in that warehouse-sized space—as it turns out, theirs is a sound best savored in small spaces. At any rate, click over to MTV Hive to see my photos and read my impressions of Saturday’s show and to see Christopher Owens win the Kurt Cobain lookalike contest.
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In the back room of a basement club in Chelsea, past the bouncer who mercifully let me in, through the front door and down the stairs, past the coat check and across the dancefloor and down a narrow hallway, I am staring at Lil Wayne through a very thin, almost transparent curtain. There are models and reporters and bottles of liquor and champagne all around me, and smoke in the air and Lil Wayne music playing over the club’s PA. Lil Wayne is the most popular rapper in America and also my personal hero, and right now he’s standing in the encurtained VIP area of this club because he’s here to promote a new line of skateboarding clothes that he either founded or is endorsing. Lil Wayne is wearing all-white Moon Boots that go up to his knees, which he cutely tucks his pants into, and I am watching him as he raps along to a Drake song and extends his arms and dances, like when someone on the new York Jets scores a touchdown and they run around the field impersonating a plane. I am nearly in heaven.
The best tumblr-er in the game interviews the best rapper in the game.
In the summer of 1999, at the age of 16, I got a job working at the vehicle emissions testing station in Racine, Wisconsin. Wisconsin, like many states, requires that all licensed vehicles be tested for emissions every few years and for a couple of months, I was paid minimum wage to stand behind cars and collect noxious petrochemical fumes with a rubber hose. I soon fell in with a co-worker named Charlie, a spindly, dark-haired kid who played drums in a local hardcore band and sported a Black Flag tattoo on his right arm. Charlie drove a beige, late ’80s Ford Taurus that always seemed on the verge of collapse—whenever he drove the car on the highway, it was the duty of whoever was riding shotgun to hold the dashboard in place so that it wouldn’t detach at high speeds. That summer, Charlie and I wiled away many an afternoon chatting about music while pretending to mop the breakroom and it was during one of these sessions that I asked him what the single sticker on his bumper—a rectangular, sky blue piece of vinyl with the words “at.the.drive.in” printed on it—meant. He explained that upon first purchasing the car, he had decided to honor only one band by affixing their sticker to his Taurus and since there was no such thing as a Fugazi sticker, At the Drive-In had been chosen for the prestigious spot.
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