This year's CMJ marathon came at the end of about six weeks of uninterrupted professional and familial obligations, and so I found that the process of creating a personal concert agenda on my only free weekend before the marathon wasn't just a way of optimizing my time, it was the only way I was going to see anything at all. The following is a log of my spreadsheet-planned adventures.
I started off the marathon on Tuesday with an ambitious schedule of five bands across three venues. My first stop was Fat Baby, where Birth Of Joy was playing a 7:00 set. They're a three-piece -- drums, guitar, and, uh, synth-organ -- from Holland, which they repeated in case we forgot. They play heavy 60's-style guitar rock with many of the hooks and solos played on the organ, which made me think of Iron Butterfly, although I'm sure that's a pretty obvious comparison. More interesting was that the lead singer had a voice quite a lot like one of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis. (Or maybe it was just all the reverb they were using.) He took his shirt off about half way through their set, revealing a classic dirtbag physique, hairless and not quite in shape. I liked their sound and was tempted to stick around as their singer suggested for "[our] friends from Budapest" (Instrumenti, I guess?) but I had to be off to the Cameo Gallery to see Ovlov and PUP. I'd never been there before, and I was taken unawares by the amazing ceiling art: They've got an elongated triangle of white fabric -- maybe like the "train" of a wedding dress -- from which are suspended hundreds of little white strands or fabric strips. A projector mounted up by the ceiling plays a loop of scrolling bands of color which "paints" the dangling strands, making them look like they're conducting little packets of colored light. It made me think of the undercarriage of an enormous invertebrate living at some inhospitable depth of the ocean and signaling its readiness to mate by bioluminescence. I could have watched it all night.
Ovlov took the stage at 9:00. They play a kind of sludgy, noisy indie punk; squealing guitars and distorted vocals -- distorted everything, really. Their lead singer and guitar player had a caveman intensity and played with a look of frustrated concentration. They weren't bad, actually. (I think Bel Argosy were supposed to play a show with them and, like, Majuscules, way back when at The Paper Box but had to cancel.) "If you want t-shirts or CDs, let one of us know," he said when they were done. "We left them all in the car because we didn't think anyone would want one." PUP was on next. They were one of the acts I knew I wanted to see during the marathon: I'd like the barely-keeping-it-together production on Reservoir, their Bandcamp "single," and was hoping they'd put on a live show like METZ, angry young men clobbering the stage. They ended up being a lot more like The Thermals, peppy and earnest and a hair too self-conscious. Not that that's so bad, though I was bit annoyed by some of the on-stage talk, which was all about how committed the band is and how much they love their craft. Maybe I should've seen that coming in the bio included in their EPK, which says, "They play loud. Like really fucking loud." (They weren't that loud.) Before launching into a song about Robert McClure, the lead singer said, "He was a real dick. He led his crew up to the Arctic and they almost froze to death. Sometimes I worry that I'm like that guy with this band." When they finished up, I pushed my way out of the Cameo Gallery and back to Bedford, then to Manhattan Ave. and Bar Matchless, where Shilpa Ray was playing the back room. There's always some shitty DJ bullshit happening at the bar there, and whenever I see a show at that place I feel like I'm in high school and fighting my way through a cheerleading practice to, like, glee club. Ms. Ray and her band were already playing when I got there, and she was giving such a withering look towards the door that I had to remind myself there was no way she could see through the lights. The latest iteration of her band sounds more sure of themselves now, though her new album seems to be a slower, quieter affair. Erotolepsy made a welcome appearance late in the set. "Follow the big star, bright star, rock star, porn star," she sang, alternating between a murmur and that terrifying howl. "You know how to find to me!" Best voice in harmonium punk, 2013.
On Wednesday I spent the early evening rehearsing at 6/8 Studios with Bel Argosy. Chris brought a fifth of Heaven Hill in a plastic bottle and the non-tee-totalling members of the band tossed it back and forth until it was empty. By the end of our two hours I was quite drunk, but the band sounded tight and we'd worked out a set list that we knew we could play Ramones-style in twenty-five minutes. Chris and Beau went their separate ways, and Billy and I lurched over to one of the 2 Bros Pizza places on St. Mark's and grabbed dollar slices before heading down to Leftfield for a preview of the space we'd be playing (!) on Saturday, and to check out Quitty and the Don'ts, for whom I'd carved out a slot on my agenda on account of their cool, goofy sound -- a lot like Punks On Mars. A band called Time and Energy were playing the upstairs space when we stumbled in. They're a drummer and a guy who somehow plays a keyboard and bass guitar at the same time. The effect was frustrated and noisy. Worse, they had a merch table with way too much and too expensive merch on it: CDs for $10; vinyl record with meticulously detailed cover for $20; $30 gets you the record and a t-shirt! Next to take the tiny stage in front of the window were Literature, who had more dudes and sounded a lot more like a conventional indie rock band, a bit dissonant and moody maybe, but they played with care and precision. After they finished up, we realized the clock was ticking on our schedule, so Nina and I headed north up Ludlow St. to Pianos, where we found Mean Creek setting up in the upstairs performance space. I'd clicked on them on a whim -- I thought I should calibrate my sensors for good and band band names -- and was pleasantly surprised by how rock-and-roll and dance-y and, well, fun they sounded. And they were good live, too. The lead singer looks a bit like Joaquin Phoenix and he's got an appropriately serious vibe, sings with his eyes closed. The crowd loved them! Stompy feet, applause, hollering. Nina left at 11:00 to head to Glasslands to see Yuck (a goal which she did not entirely achieve that night). When 'Creek were finished, I found my way drunkenly to the F and home. I was still a bit tipsy when I woke up in the early, early morning to pee.
Thursday was rough going on account of my indulgence the previous night, and so I pared my schedule down to a single venue: The Flat, on South 9th and Hooper, where I wanted to see Left And Right and Lurve. True to its name, The Flat is made up to look like a rec room or furnished basement with a mahogany bar. There are dingy throw rugs and dilapidated sofas and even some ancient-looking bunting up near the ceiling. Left and Right started playing right when I got there. They're definitely a "young man" band, four dudes that seem pretty committed to a t-shirt-and-jeans personal aesthetic and who write serious, sometimes bitterly dissonant songs about lonely highways and girls. They took turns on the vocals. I liked them in spite of myself. But it was Lurve that I'd come to see. I'd liked the tight, focused songs I'd listened to on their Bandcamp, and coveted the design-y cover art from their EP. I was surprised to see that the band themselves are a shaggy buncch, each member sporting long, frizzy hair and sometimes scruffy beards. It's like if you cloned the hippy character from Workaholics several times. But they sounded great, with neat, quick energy, the guitar players turning their All-Stars sideways to brace themselves for playing. Nina'd joined me for Lurve's set. When they were done, we walked over to Kent Ave. She'd bought the last ticket to a Speedy Ortiz show (with Ex-Cult and Hunters) at 285. We sat for a while in a small, scrubby park down by the East River. An alarm from one of the security systems for a nearby warehouse was going off, but it was a peaceful moment nonetheless. I watched the texture of the river as it was buffeted by the wind. Oddly smooth patches would form for a few seconds here and there between the ripples. The marathon's exhausting, but it's also nice to fill your time with stuff like shows. You visit lots of places, never staying long enough to get comfortable and begin to resent your surroundings. You hear lots of music, and it stops you from thinking too much about yourself. It got towards 11:30, and we left the park and headed to the venue. "CMJ is MAXED OUT," said a hand-written sign in the "box office," meaning Nina and I would have to part ways. I snagged a cab back to Gowanus. It turned out to be one of the ones with an electric motor and glowing blue dash, and it ferried me home in near silence.
Big plans for Friday night: I wanted to see Osekre and The Lucky Bastards and The Denzels at Muchmore's, but Nina had a tip that the Eagulls and Yuck show at Mercury Lounge wasn't actually sold out after all, you just had to show up in person to buy your tickets. So Kermen and I looped down to 2nd Ave. from the office to get our fifteen-dollar wrist stamps, and then took the F to the L to Bedford Ave. We stopped for pizza at Anna Maria along the way. A woman ahead of us on line was trying to order half of five different, elaborate pizzas that were sitting behind the counter. "I don't understand why this is different than ordering them ahead of time," she said when the guy hesitated. She had a point, but she did not tener razón. "This is my actual life," muttered Kermen in a Charlie Brown-ish kind of way as he waited for his plain slice to make it through this gridlock. There were still several bands ahead of the ones I wanted to see when we got to Muchmore's, so we got beers and planted ourselves at the back of the room. The next band to take the stage was called Gypsy Wig, and they had a big printed sign hanging behind the drums to let you know. They had six (!) people on stage, including a lady who played piercing lead lines on a saxophone. The band played with blissed-out looks on their faces, but their songs were no fun -- everybody was playing their own thing, and a coherent sound never really emerged. It was a bit like the jazz band from Wake Up, Wakefield. The next group brought fewer people on stage, but they weren't much better. They called themselves For Every Story Untold (!), and their lead singer was a woman with a very high and controlled voice who touched her face self-consciously as she sang. The guitarist did a thing where he really choke-wanked his guitar on every song, something that didn't bother me when Previn did it to his bass in The States but probably should have.
I started wishing that I'd checked my schedule a bit more closely. The next band who took the stage was a fronted by a lady and a dude sporting sleeve tattoos and way tight jeans -- Kermen suggested that they could be a husband-and-wife hipster bartending team. They played a few notes of their first song before the dude stopped it and said, "Hang on a second, I'm going to blow all of your minds." He darted down into the audience and flicked off the light switch on the wall next to us, then resumed his ready position on stage and introduced the band. "We're Bugs In The Dark. From Brooklyn." Osekre might well have been up next, but we didn't stick around to find out. Back to the L to the F to 2nd Ave. Willis Earl Beal was leaving the stage as we made it to the back room and located Nina by the sound booth. "I don't believe in nothing except atheism," he said, exiting into the crowd while his band continued to play. "And the only thing I know is that I don't know nothing." He disappeared into the corridor in the back on the right. Next up was Eagulls. Their lead singer was decked out in straight Steve Jobs attire: Black turtleneck tucked into dark jeans with a shiny silver buckle, plus a beige anorak to make it extra uncool. The band was tight and aggressive, and though their frontman may have looked like a dork, he was drunk and nasty, and bellowed the lines of the songs into the mic, alternately leaning on and swinging the mic stand. After their set, we realized we'd been standing next to Zain the whole time. Hugs all around. "Aren't they great?" he said, about Eagulls. "I met them two days ago! They're gonna let me hang out in the basement with them." And with that, he handed me what was left of his beer and snuck backstage. Yuck took the stage right on time at 11:00. Tony (?) their drummer looks more than a little like Bob Ross. They played a set full of songs with strong pop lead guitar lines, and a lot less noise than they're capable of, now that I've listened to a larger sample of their ouvre.
And then on Saturday was Bel Argosy's show! A word about that: We don't play much these days, which is sad. And I was nervous enough about playing in front of an audience that I took it real sleazy all day, so as not to do anything to my golden arms and hands. I ate peanut butter crackers for breakfast, eschewed my company's annual complimentary flu shot. I did make the mistake of gorging on a spicy vegetarian pork bánh mi from Hanco's, which gave me cramps well until my first warm-up Tecate in the basement of Leftfield. But Job The Dog kissed me on the face when I showed up to pick up the drum stuff, and Sarah taught me how to play Silent Night on the piano, which made me feel like Real Musician. This guy can still read sheet! Sort of. We took the subway down to Littlefield, where we shmoozed with Cenk and packed in several Tecates and whiskeys as we waited for the altogether-too-quiet band before us to get through their set. For our part, we did pretty good, I think. Leftfield has a smoke machine hooked up the podium that houses the soundboard, and we instructed the sound guy to deploy smoke as the mood might strike him. We got billows of the stuff at strange moments. I loved it! A first time for us, I think. I broke a stick, which almost never happens, and Billy forgot how to start one of the songs, which made it, you know, a more intimate set.
Afterwards, Nina's brother took us to dba and then to The Edge, greeting the bouncers and bartenders by name, and then finally to Fish Bar, where I ended the night with a Coke I could barely taste, sitting on the wooden bench by the window on a funny plastic cushion stuffed with shredded paper. End of the marathon. Decorative mason jar filled with phony eyeballs on the bar.