​New Year's Eve is next Friday, which means you probably already missed out on Patti Smith tickets. Wait much longer and there won't be much left to choose from. So, in the interests of being servicey, and in honor of the news that 2010's Most Important Singles Artist, Ariel Pink, will be in a 10,000 square foot Brooklyn warehouse when the clock rolls over to 2011, we thought we'd mention a few (read: a manageable amount of) SOTC-sanctioned shows. One of these is indeed Ariel Pink's; tickets for that--it's at 234 Starr Street--can be got here. $20 buys entry; other selling points apparently include a "$300,000 custom built, all-analogue sound system" and a bunch of Altered Zones-type dudes working it. Your flyer:

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​Yes, New Year's Eve, that magical evening of at least slightly overpriced parties that nonetheless hold out the possibility of an epochal, champagne-fueled, surprise-guest-besotted, properly year-christening blowout. There are hundreds to choose from; the Drive-By Truckers, we are beginning to suspect, might be hosting the best.

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Drive-By Truckers
Webster Hall
Thursday, April 1

I admire these dudes (who appear in these pages, virtual and literal, with alarming frequency) for distilling complicated societal ills into one compact, blunt, blaring, paradoxically rousing burst of Southern rock: What "The Man I Shot" did for the Iraq War and "Sink Hole" did for killing the banker with designs on your family home, "This Fucking Job" will do for, well, your fucking job. Much like Cam'ron's "My Job," it vacillates between aggression and self-pity -- "Nobody told me it'd be easy/Or for that matter it'd be so hard," co-frontman Patterson Hood drawls on the chorus -- but unlike "My Job," it's powered by grouchy, terse guitar riffs and a disconcerting era of triumphalism: No band around makes crushing depression sound like so much fun.

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Booker T. + the DBT's; presumably Neil Young's too busy with his electric-car rock opera to be photographed.

As the phrase "bitter cold" figures heavily in many NYC weather reports today, let us seek out perhaps the warmest-sounding man in all of music: Booker T. Pitchfork is streaming a track from the Stax giant/MGs cohort's imminent ANTI- solo album, Potato Hole -- "Warped Sister" features surly guitar from the Drive-By Truckers and Neil Young, though that's not terrifically evident, given that the focus is focus is squarely on Mr. T. Jones' (yes) very very warm and vividly melodic organ work, not to mention the equally excellent cowbell. Put this on repeat and don't leave your apartment under any circumstances.