Rebecca Smeyne

These Are Powers' Pat getting his temperature taken in China

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In the week leading up to All Points Wet (har har), vandals insulted the word "gay" in describing Coldplay, we came up with suggestions for a Beastie Boys tribute on Friday at All Points West, and there were plenty of free All Points West alternatives.

Yes In My Backyard correspondent Christopher R. Weingarten gave us "Ecstatic Rite" from black-metal hot-shits Liturgy, whose favorite show in New York took place when they performed in a synthetic forest made out of discarded Christmas trees. Needless to say, it was a fire hazard. Our other YIMBY gift of the week? An EXCLUSIVE video from Greenpoint math-fuzz duo Renminbi, who seem to have Mad Menned themselves in their press shot.

Also, we interviewed These Are Powers on their trip to China. We interviewed Raekwon about Only Built for Cuban Linx II, Auto-Tune, J Dilla, and the future of rap. We interviewed The Onion's Nathan Rabin, who informed us he does not want to be Family Guy. Speaking of the Onion, Marilyn Manson threatened to make that Best Music Writing-feted 2001 piece from the paper--"Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People"--into a reality.

We also defended those (kind of terrible) new Weezer songs. We remembered the good old days at CBGB with Pig Destroyer. We got mad at that Quietus piece about the Dirty Projectors being the "zenith of shallow hipster chic."

There was a new Mountain Goats song. There was "Rock Critic Karaoke." There may be a Das Racist think piece on the horizon. (There most certainly is a video of Das Racist pretending to rap for Time Out New York.) There is a Fabolous Twitter campaign. There will be a Sasha Frere-Jones book about Michael Jackson.

Live: Katy Perry kissed a girl for the last fucking time at Hammerstein. Black Moth Super Rainbow were at South Street Seaport. The 25th anniversary of the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime took place at the Bowery Poetry Club. Mazor Lazer, The Virgins, Amazing Baby, Conor Oberst, Public Enemy were at Japan's Fuji Rock Festival. The same lightning that's about to ruin tonight's installment of All Points West (hi Zach!) shut down last Sunday's Pool Party with Trail of Dead. Trail of Dead were apparently antsy and disappointed, since they offered themselves up via press release for "whatever" all day Tuesday. Kanye and Clipse showed up to that Diesel party. Then again, forget the Diesel Party: the show you missed was Grace Jones.

What else went on? Beach Fossils' Dustin Payseur blasted a NY Mag story on him as "totally weird" and denied working at Urban Outfitters. The Wall Street Journal got a kick out of Jimmy Fallon getting a kick out of ?uestlove's WSJ portrait. Governor Paterson spent a night in the company of Funkmaster Flex. Obits did Minnesota Public Radio. Blank Dogs called live shows quits. The best-selling record at Rock and Soul in Midtown was Rock Ross's Deeper than Rap.

And the award for SOTC's most insensitive, yet irresistible headline of the week goes to: "It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Dies at the Gathering of the Vibes Fest."

Lastly, we need clubs/DJ/dance/nightlife writers! Holler at us.

Like everyone else on the planet (except yours truly), New York's very own White Rabbits will also be at All Points West this weekend. They're scheduled to regale ambitiously eager folks on the Blue Comet main stage tomorrow at 1:10 pm. It'd be worth your while to get there tomorrow early--forecast calls for sun, and live, the six-piece are furious balls of sweat. "Percussion Gun," the single from their most recent It's Frightening, is killer, a rapidfire drum-line tool that, on endless repeat, propels hyper-productive spells. (Personal iTunes playcount: 213.) That said, the best way to interact with these guys may very well be from the safe distance of the stage--you certainly don't want be seated near them in a movie theater. As they told us back when John MacDonald interviewed half of them back in May, a group movie fieldtrip can turn into a ruckus.

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In 2009, the traditional practice of exchanging physical copies of records for money is a trade that might best be called quixotic. But New Yorkers are stubborn people, and the record store is not dead. Below, the top ten records that sold in the last week at a store near you.

Rock and Soul started as a vinyl-only shop in 1975 but has since evolved into a one-stop for DJ equipment, CDs, '12 inches, speakers, accessories, and t-shirts. "A lot of people think DJing is hip now, but it's always been popular," says employee Efrat Yogev. The store's rich history includes former patrons like Grandmaster Flash, and current ones like DJ AM, Funkmaster Flex, and Talib Kweli. The spacious midtown store, located next to Penn Station, has a mezzanine for events like DJ tutorials and its famous annual open-to-the-public Christmas party. Inventory includes classic R&B, old-school hip-hop, dance, and reggae. "Right now it's the biggest record store that is still active in New York City," Yogev says. "Because everyone else closed down."

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Big gigantic music festivals featuring people with names that even those living deep in the Amazon forests or on the wild, wild plains of New Zealand have heard of tend to suck up most of the cultural airspace when they come to town--All Points West being no exception here. But this is an exceptionally good summer weekend for music that's entirely free and outdoors, too, no ferry and/or New Jersey required. Including: tonight's Polvo/Obits show at the South Street Seaport, at which an absurd amount of classic '90s guitar playing will reunite--Polvo, gearing up for their first album since '97, apparently playing mostly beloved back catalogue stuff, although surely "Beggars Bowl," the band's startlingly good new song, will make a cameo; Obits, well, enough about Obits. Just go see Obits.

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"We actually had to record in our practice space, and pretend like it was a show. We're like, 'Hey, Chinese government! Here we are performing for you on video!'"

Rebecca Smeyne

Late night snacks in Wuhan: These Are Powers' Pat Noecker and Bill Salas

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Just back from a four-week tour of China, Brooklyn/Chicago trio These Are Powers are popping melatonin pills to get back into the circadian rhythms of the Western hemisphere. That 12-hour time difference should really hit just about 7pm tonight, when they'll play the Whitney as part of the museum's Dan Graham retrospective. Physically jarring, yes, but something fits about a band that doesn't want to be a "band" playing for an artist who doesn't want to be an artist.

These Are Powers' visit to China was set up by Michael Pettis of Beijing label Maybe Mars and the owner of club D-22, and Shou Wang of Beijing band Car Sick Cars. The pair have brought Battles and Sonic Youth to China in the past, and have enough connections in China's burgeoning "No Beijing" scene to have found steady partners for Noecker and bandmates Anna Barie and Bill Salas to play with during some Beijing improvisational sessions, as well as getting people to the shows. On Wednesday, we caught up with guitarist Pat Noecker to talk about the band's trip. Despite some challenges--mostly pollution, PAs, and food poisoning--Noecker says that These Are Powers want to make Beijing and Shanghai regular stops on their overseas tours. All bands should. "It's just something you'll never forget. If you can go play shows that far away from where you're from, you can play anywhere."

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Fresh off his Double Nickels on the Dime celebration last week, Mike Watt's new deal, Floored by Four (the other three are Nels Cline, Yuka Honda, and Dougie Bowne), hits Central Park SummerStage tomorrow opening for M. Ward. In a fit of promo pique, Mike apparently dropped by TONY's bizarrely furnished offices and jammed for awhile, making our own sensibly furnished offices seem drab and lifeless by comparison. We'll get him next time.

Jesus Christ. Feel free to stop mourning the fact that your pants weren't cool enough to get into the Diesel thing and start lamenting that you missed this.

​Vulture's got a pretty incredible interview with Ghostface (most of them are, I guess,), wherein he discusses imminent new record The Wizard of Poetry ("...Fall asleep where the chuckle patches was at, under a tree or something, and here go these skits, and they laughing and all this shit"), the likelihood that he'll still be rapping when he's 70 ("Muthafuckas always act like they retiring and don't go nowhere"), and declines to discuss that whole thing about not shooting anyone since the early '90s ("This nigga wanna talk about a shooting I said in the early nineties. What's wrong with this nigga? [Laughs]"). Oh, and if the whole "r&b album named The Wizard of Poetry" thing unnerves you, tough. I think he's earned the benefit of the doubt by now.

​We're in Totally Random mode around here today, preparing to embark tonight for the All Points West festivities, and I thus feel emboldened to revisit, apropos of absolutely nothing, the mighty Achewood's unforgettable Grateful Dead cartoon, i.e. the best piece of music criticism in the last decade. I just feel you should know it exists, if you do not.

And while we're at it, here's the definitive word on the Obama/Gates/racist cop beer-at-the-White-House thing.

We're gonna go ahead and suggest that yesterday was the first and last time Jay-Z and Swedish livewire Lykke Li will ever be confused for one another. The smart money for a good part of yesterday was that Jay-Z was maybe definitely due to step onstage last night with the Roots at that ridiculous Diesel party at Webster Hall (for which you actually had to have been wearing Diesel jeans inside a Diesel store at some point in the last few weeks just to get a ticket). Instead, it turned out to be--surprise, rap fans--Lykke Li, who apparently did a handful of songs with the band, including, somehow, "The Seed" (?!!?). Also, she and ?uestlove had some sort of a drum-off? Anyway, there was in fact one unscheduled bright shining star in the building--Kanye West, who came out to do "Kinda Like a Big Deal" with the Clipse. Video above. Passion Pit, the Noisettes, and a whole lot of other people played as well. In other news, Jay-Z is almost definitely playing a show somewhere in the vicinity of New York tonight, assuming we all don't get hit by lightning.