Letters To A Young Promoter

In the early, freeze-dried days of the new year, one thing I have been doing is mailing out review copies of the record Bel Argosy put out last summer, The Wreck of the Bel Argosy. The process is sometimes exhilerating (when the record is reviewed) and often frustrating (when the record is ignored). I'd like to say that it's led us to develop a more sophisticated strategy for promotion, but I don't think that's quite true. That is to say, can we expect a radically different response to the next thing we put out? Almost certainly not. Inevitably, though, we have learned a few things. The first records we sent out were like my first round of college applications: Requested information supplied, but nothing to supplement or distinguish it, and nothing to suggest a personality behind the envelope. We assumed people would be like, oh, let me listen to this strange and unsolicited record and judge it on its obvious merits. Because I am a record label / college radio station / blogger and that is just my job.

And it would be great if that worked, but that approach was largely unsuccessful for us -- even when we reminded our respective almas mater's radio stations of our membership in the class of oh-man-that-was-a-long-time-ago. (Hi, WESU Middletown!) Thus, our new tack is that we are willing to play ball and, you know, get personal. Open a vein. And that seems to work better: After all, a lot of blogs or magazines even suggest that you write a personal statement to accompany your record in order to help it stand out from all of the unsolicited free music they get in the mail every day, and many of them hint that your communication with them should contain entirely original content -- no form letters, please. So I've started writing little essays about what a fun band we are and how proud we are of the record and what an interesting time this is to be playing music in New York City -- all true, really. However, doing this anew for every blog we pitch is prohibitively time-intensive, and even when you do find the time to write something personal and evocative, it's no guarantee of coverage. I successfully reverse-engineered the kind of writing I thought one guy was looking for, and we got into a back-and-forth with him about editing it just-so for inclusion on his site, and then he abruptly shuttered his blog and moved to Paris. No lie, it pays to hedge a bit. But we've enjoyed a fair amount of success, too. In particular, blogs that specialize in reviewing vinyl records have been kind to us, as have a few local indie rock blogs. And publications that represent the intersection of the two, well, that's just gold.

Moving on. Truly, it's been bitterly cold out, but I didn't want to have spent it indoors like I did last year. Instead, I'm continuing the silly quest for for new experiences, as if I were 21 instead of 31 and a decidedly middle-class computer guy. I'd bought tickets to the Iceage show at 285 Kent last night, and, appropriately, it was well below freezing as I walked down Kent Ave. to South 1st. Kent in winter always reminds me of the very beginning of Moby Dick, where Ishmael is exploring a pitch dark New Bedford. There are a lot of boarded-up storefronts and a lot of barred windows on funny little single-story buildings that might be peoples' houses and might not be. 285 itself is right next to Glasslands and looks like maybe the freight entrance for that place; if there weren't a parka'd bouncer parked in front of the featureless door, you wouldn't know to go inside. Initially I thought it might be the place where Nina and I saw The Spunks-u several years ago, but 285 Kent is much bigger and, well, grander than that place. The room easily holds two hundred people, and the walls are covered in a network of aerosol and brush-painted black lines, part Keith Haring, part Mentaculus. It's cavernous and cold and a little intimidating, maybe like a much less cozy Death By Audio (which is right down the street).

The first band was Deformity, perhaps an ironic name since all the band members were good-looking dudes. They sounded alright, although I quickly deployed my earplugs. The lead singer, who vibed hardcore nerd rage in an IBM-style short-sleeve shirt, yelped his vocals in staccato, which made me think of Sarim al-Rawi from Liquor Store. "Fuck!" he shrieked, frantically diddling his guitar. The drummer took his shirt off. They played a short set, less than thirty minutes, I think. Maybe that's de rigeur for the genre -- which would make sense when there's not a whole lot in terms of hooks or lyrics for a listener to latch onto.

Raspberry Bulbs were next. I'd read their name here and there in the breathlessly-written metal coverage on BrooklynVegan, and I guess I'd managed to suppress or ignore my confusion over their name. Raspberry Bulbs: What gives? Is their name some kind of ironic meiosis? Or do raspberry bulbs look really, you know, brutal? I suspect it's the former, since the lead singer goes by the stage name He Who Crushes Teeth. "Turn the reverb, like, all the way up," he instructed the sound guy while adjusting his mic. That made me worried, but they were actually pretty good! Also, there are not one but two old bald dudes in the band, another several points in their favor. And their on-stage affect was pretty awesome, too, a careful balance between too-cool-for-school and rocking-too-hard-over-thirty; they were like blacksmiths working a forge. Unfortunately, the wiring on one of the guitars crapped out about four songs in, and they couldn't get it going again. He Who Crushes Teeth shrugged and signaled to turn the house music back on.

Nomads were up next. I don't have a lot to say about them: Screaming and noise. But they only played for twenty-five minutes. While I waited for Iceage to set up, I sat on a dirty couch in the foyer next to Craig Finn, who was talking to a pretty girl. The concrete floor was wet and dirty. I was tempted to drink another beer but started worrying about the calories, like an old guy who is getting soft. A few years ago, Iceage was notorious for being young ("Some of the band isn't even old enough to drink! And yet they do it anyway!!") but now I think people wan to know whether they're racist ("I heard they're racist!!"). I think I would have been super into them in high school, mostly because of their practiced punk rock disaffection: They played songs off a new album called "You're Nothing" and from the moment they got on stage, you could tell that Elias, the lead singer, was spoiling for a fight. He had an air of threatening nonchalance, dispensing the lyrics instead of singing them, and before too long he'd hopped down into the crowd to take care of business. Their albums have a thrilling buzzsaw energy to them, but their live sound was a bit unfocused and muddled. I'd gotten stuck at the back of the house as the room filled up before their set, and as a tall dude it was fun to see hundreds of people react to the violence, performative or otherwise.

Then back out into the cold and wet. We left our boots in the hallway.

The Wonderful Underworld

What we did on New Year's Eve.

This year I was the one who insisted that we "wild out." Nina wanted to go to a few friend parties and call it a night, but I was thinking, Come on, City. Let me push my limits a bit. Specifically, I wanted to try to go to the Rubulad party in Bushwick, a three-venue affair that promised live music by some bands I'd sort of heard of, plus attractions that, you know, seemed pretty okay: a puppet show, acrobats, a "magical RV." Rubulad has occupied a position of awed prestige in my imaginings, on account of Nina characterizing herself as a frequent attendee around the time we started dating. She'd drop some casual mention, like, hey I saw Jonathan Ames smoking crack with Terry Richardson... you know, at Rubulad. Well, I have to do this, too, I thought, if only to make myself feel more like a guy who's seen a thing or two.

We spent the afternoon with Evan, whose birthday is New Year's Eve. I'd bought him a bottle of Jeppson's Malort for Christmas. I saw it sitting on the window sill as we entered his Grand St. apartment, the filmy gray afternoon sunlight revealing a few sips missing. Evan wanted us to watch a YouTube video demo of this piece of software called Artemis, which is one of those things that makes you feel a little sad because it nails an idea or a feeling you'd been grasping at unsuccessfully. I wanted be the one to make this thing exist, you think, maybe. Whatever, it's a Star Trek game. We took him out for lunch at Champs, which was very nice except that it looked a lot like somebody had spat a generous loogie onto the seat of the booth before we sat down. Why would someone do that? I thought, like an old person. I had a sandwich. We left Evan at Bushwick Country Club with Fili the bartender, after drinking a round of Old Crow specials and attempting to reverse engineer the countertop photo hunt game, and returned to Gowanus to make ourselves ready.

Our destination was Cypress Ave., but our first stop was on Garfield St., where we crashed Mark and Lisa's party, which Lisa explained they were conducting in the Russian mode -- which meant it was okay for us to show up unannounced, eat their food, and depart. Her parents confirmed this, pouring us paper cup after cup of easy-to-swallow vodka to show that they meant what they said. They had tubs and tubs of pickled mushrooms and eggplant hye from Elza Fancy Food, the actual name of which, Lisa explained, is printed on the menu in Russian as "At Your Mother-In-Law's." Mark was cooking, too; the kitchen was filled with the smell of brisket. We looked at some of their vacation photos, poses with animals and water. Mark pitched us, drunkenly, on joining the Food Co-op. I will never do that, I think, but I have been wrong before.

After that, we took the train to City Hall where we visited Nani at his soon-to-be-vacated apartment, in the building with a goddamn fireplace in its lobby. As he often does, he had a wide array of booze and mixers available, and he'd ordered a gargantuan thing of crudités. He made me a Singapore Sling, which pretty much knocked me on my ass. We all watched the ball drop in his living room, the college folk and his friends from Long Island and his lawyer friends, firing champagne poppers at the flat-screen TV. Nani's gonna be in Paris this year, and in an effort to lighten his suitcases, he was giving away a subset of his possessions, The Mad Men Guide To... etc. The taxidermied squirrel on his bookshelf was not on the auction block, although Emma attempted to claim it by dressing it up with a party hat and noisemaker.

1 AM, onwards to East Williamsburg. The first of the three venues was a nameless storefront on Cypress and Starr St., a low-slung building with a sparsely furnished interior. There was a plywood bar and a small stage with a number of folding chairs arrayed in front of it. A freckly woman with muscular arms sat on a stool and strummed a guitar. The party had obviously moved on, but the room was still half full, with several people gathered near a rickety, wrought-iron staircase descending into the floor. We nudged them out of the way and went down. It was weird down there, babies: The basement was laid out in Mission Revival style -- or at least, it looked a bit like the Mos Eisley Cantina. There was a long chamber with a very low ceiling and a small bar at one end, lit with candles and pink fairy lights. It opened onto a couple of attached rooms where a few people were sipping beers out of plastic cups. We stepped into one of these rooms and realized that the floor had been entirely papered over with tin foil. A girl sitting on a stool in the corner hissed, "It's ice. You're skating." We crossed the floor in our best pantomime of skating. At the far end, there was a low doorway into a dark kind of grotto. There was nothing there except for a damp smell and a dirty newspaper. Another reveler skated across the "ice," stuck his head in, and left. Should we try to find the next place? we wondered. Like the kids might do, we turned to Twitter for advice. A DJ had tweeted, perhaps intentionally, the location of the second party.

We struck out for 135 Thames, passing house parties and reggaeton raves. Upon arrival, though -- riding up on, say, 2 AM -- we discovered that the venue was closed. If it had ever been a venue. On the outside, it looked like a wholesaler's garage, with a painting contractor on the second floor. We nosed around the adjacent buildings for a while before admitting defeat and trudging back to Cypress in the cold. ...Where they told us at the basement bar that the second venue had been shut down by the police, but did give us the third location: The Bat Haus co-working space, on Starr St. near St. Nicholas Ave.

This was what I was expecting from Rubulad: They'd cleared the desks out, leaving a generous dance floor in the front that tapered into a sort of hallway towards the back, illuminated by red lights, along which there were booths where you could buy drinks or novelties -- Nina bought a shot of "genuine" absinthe. I got a PBR from a bartender dressed like a bunny, Bridget Jones-style. There was a small yard in the back where you could get a breath of fresh air. A basket of pastel chalk had been set out to allow revelers to write messages to the new year. Back indoors, there was a projector mounted on one side of the room projecting the movie Zardoz onto the opposite wall, which would have been beyond confusing for me, except that we'd screened it for Bad Movie Night. There were costumes: A willowy young man and woman wearing full-body leopard-striped onesies vamped on the staircase leading up to the locked office; a young man with a build like a satyr was gyrating next to us in a toga. We danced and drank, holding our winter coats and hats and scarves under our arms.

By 3 AM, Zardoz was winding down; Zed had found the metaphysical cipher in the library of Arthur Frayn, and we were getting pretty danced out. We left the warehouse and walked down Starr St. to St. Nicholas, scanning the chilly horizon for a taxi or car service car. By 3:30 we decided it was fruitless, and got back on the L at Jefferson Ave. I had to pee, and the further we got, the more sure I got that I wouldn't make it all the way to 14th St. much less all the way back down to Gowanus. I made the case to Nina for disembarking at Bedford Ave. and ducking into a bar. She acquiesced, but my timing was terribly wrong: It was now past "last call," and The Abbey, whose pot I'd hoped to piss in, was closed. And the bodega on Driggs wouldn't let me use their bathroom. Likewise Eden, a gross restaurant right outside the train station, the unctuous waiter telling me it was for customers only but did I know that they were still selling chicken tacos for $9? Never have I been so grateful to that gross pizza place between N 7th and 8th, where they could not care less who was doing what in their bathroom. The place was packed with party people -- orders of magnitude worse than on a Friday or Saturday night -- and the guy on line behind me came stumbling into the bathroom with his eyes closed. But I was free! I bought Nina, who was feeling justifiably put out, a conciliatory slice, and we ate amidst the drunks (who were so drunk they were slumping out of their seats and onto the floor) and the girls who were complaining that they hadn't done anything good yet.

We got home before the dreaded blue o'clock -- but not much before -- and we quick-changed from our party clothes into our jammies. When I opened the fridge to decant a pre-fizzed SodaStream bottle, the little light in the back popped its death-flash. The next morning, I clogged the toilet and had to plunge it for a solid forty minutes to get it working again.

Renewal.