New York Music Blog

​Jay-Z has a priority list, which lists his priorities, according to the NYDN. One of those priorities is putting a baby inside Beyonce:

Her song "Single Ladies" is an Internet hit among dancing babies and now, Beyonce's working on a tot of her own.

That's according to--get this--Jay-Z, B's notoriously tight-lipped hubby, who spilled the baby beans himself.

While chatting up Gotham mag editor in chief Cristina Greeven Cuomo, the rapper let it slip that procreating is high on the duo's priority list right now.

That's big news from hip hop's sneakiest couple, who wed secretly on a Tribeca rooftop and rarely even wear their own wedding rings in public.

​Where to begin here. 7,500 words by (sometime SOTC contributor and friend) Sam McPheeters on an old bandmate who just happens to have become a major force in New York dining. Topics covered include the weird agony of seeing someone you knew in a past life successfully do something wildly different; the paradox of the vegetarian chef (and the loophole in that paradox that is dessert); the many different ways and different worlds in which a person can sell out; and, poignantly, what happens to punk habits in cold light of life's rearview mirror:

Erika Wennerstrom: "I want to sound like Nico and Lou Reed."

photo by Cambria Harkey

Dave Colvin, Erika Wennerstrom, Jesse Ebaugh

Heartless Bastards are having an incredible year: a spot on The Late Show with David Letterman, great reviews for their latest record The Mountain, and an appearance on the PBS program Austin City Limits, not to mention the non-stop supporting gigs for Jenny Lewis, the Decemberists, and the Avett Brothers. Somehow in between all of this, bassist Jesse Ebaugh, drummer Dave Colvin, and the bombastically voiced Erika Wennerstrom--who in person is a sunny mix between citified cowgirl and Janice from the Electric Mayhem--found the time to record two country standards with Alex Moss of the Black Angels, available online digitally and as a seven-inch, under the name Sweet Tea. I've known the band for years--in December 2001, I recorded the Heartless Bastards demo at Ultrasuede Studio in Cincinnati--and spoke with them by phone yesterday. Tonight, they share a bill with thenewno2 and Wolfmother at Music Hall of Williamsburg.

All in all, you've got to admire the restraint shown by Gothamist editor John Del Signore, who waited 10 years and--more impressively, though one supposes this wasn't exactly ever going to accord with Gothamist's VMA coverage plan-- nearly two months after the whole Kanye/Taylor Swift melodrama to reveal his OG status as a guy who attended an awards show, only to get onstage and disrupt it. His "Bite Me, Kanye! I Bum-Rushed the MTV Video Music Awards--Ten Years Ago This Week" is online in full at the Awl, where we heartily recommend reading it, if only for the random and stray details that so exactly evoke what it is to be a 24-year-old with a plan. Del Signore's lede: "On November 9th, 1999, my morning to-do list included such items as 'Make a list,' 'Pick up stuff from storage,' and 'Attend MTV awards, jump on stage, yell something nonsensical.' I never made it to my storage unit in Park Slope that day, but the NYPD, while studying the list later that night, would crack wise about my busy day. They were also very curious about that storage facility." [The Awl]

Photo of Carsick Cars at Glasslands by Rebecca Smeyne

​ PK-14, Xiao He, Carsick Cars
Glasslands
Friday, November 6

Nearly two years ago, while following Brooklyn's spasmodic noisemakers Ex-Models on a tour through the imperial city of Beijing and Shanghai for a magazine article, I got a taste of what the People's Republic of China had to offer musically (besides horrible lung infections, delicious soup dumplings, and pirated DVDs). While the country has opened up culturally for everyone from jazz pianist Matthew Shipp to E2-E4 guitar composer Manuel Gottsching to still more Brooklyn bands (such as These Are Powers), little of China's music has crept into the US. At least until this past week, as a handful of Chinese experimental rock bands hit stateside as part of the Beijing-based independent music label Maybe Mars' mini-tour showcase.

Girls/Real Estate
Bowery Ballroom
Friday, November 6

Cobain sweater. Check. Blonde, shoulder-length tangle. Check. "Let's all just have a good time," Girls' front man Christopher Owens said as he settled at the center of the stage at Bowery Ballroom. He said it flatly, no rocker pose or impishness. Like, you know, let's all just have a good time. It's the sort of phrase that might pop up in one of his songs--straightforward, hopeful, deceptively innocent. On Friday, Owens and bandmate J.R. White, along with touring drummer Garret Godard and guitarist Ryan Lynch, played nearly all of those songs. They did so before a crowded house, with the sort of calmness and restraint that belied the hysteria surrounding the band's first New York show since garnering a frenzy of acclaim for their debut, Album. Just another day in the sunshine for the San Francisco band.

Jerry Fuchs was that totally fucking amazing monster drummer you saw play in at least one show in the last 10 years--it could have been with Maserati, Turing Machine, !!!, or the Juan MacLean, as he completely decimated his hapless kit and mesmerized everyone no matter what band he was in. He died early Sunday morning after falling down an elevator shaft at a Williamsburg loft party. He was 34. Jerry was a friend, an inspiration, and one hell of a drummer. I say this with no exaggeration: New York will never sound the same.

Yeah alright, them boys in Wolfmother are pretty goofy -- a bit too Guitar Hero: The Band. But dig who's opening their gig tonight at the Music Hall of Williamsburg: None other than the Heartless Bastards, the serenely surly roots rockers fronted by Erika Wennerstrom, who's got one of the most beguiling voices going. Get there early, Wolfmother fans; leave early, Wolfmother detractors.

"Let It Rock" appears to have run its course; skip to 4:00, 5:00, and 5:30 to gauge the mood at Madison Square Garden. Though to be fair, the woeful Knicks contributed plenty to that rancour; Chris Rock sums up that aspect here.

This is why this man gets work with FOX News. Fucked Up photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

​In the week everybody dressed like some version of themselves from 15 years ago--or just said fuck it and went all in and pretended to be a giant bag of cocaine--we killed worthless punk nostalgia dead at that Vice party and then rolled right over even older corpses at the Rock Hall blowout. Yet still alive, despite it all: VIBE magazine, a publication we watched die with our own eyes, Halloween style, and Chuck Biscuits, whose unknown assailant-executed death hoax may or may not have had something to do with New Zealand.

Elsewhere in debunking: what's up with Girls frontman Christopher Owens' lurid backstory?

Elsewhere in ghosts: Studio B comes back to life in order to keep dance clubs out of DUMBO; the memory of Michael Jackson does big, big box office and music sales business; and Fucked Up's The Chemistry of Common Life rises once more at Brooklyn's Masonic Temple.

Basement Jaxx's Felix Buxton talked to us about those persistent rumors that his band is done, while Sleigh Bells explained just what exactly "A Machines" and "B Machines" are, and Ribbons told us about where that creepy vocal shudder comes from. Buraka Som Sistema bugged out at Le Poisson Rouge, the audience bugged out at Say Anything's show at the Highline Ballroom, and Fuck Buttons drove pretty much everyone damn near crazy at the Bowery Ballroom.

Plus, the endless ubiquity of Jay-Z and his dreaded, victorious Yankees, from Berlin all the way to a fucking float in today's victory parade, the video premiere of White Hills' "Dead", M.I.A.'s Halloween costume, the answer to the immortal question "Which Jawbreaker Song Would the Hold Steady Put on a Mixtape?", and much, much more, below. We're back on Monday.