Via Northern Spy

Starring.

Starring, Dustin Wong & Dan Friel, White Out, PC Worship
285 Kent
Saturday, July 7

Better than: Next week's Crimson ProjeKct appearance, perhaps?

It may have ended with a dazzle, but this Northern Spy Records-curated night of intriguingly difficult music did not commence auspiciously, at least for this reviewer.

After missing PC Worship—whom a whiney friend-slash-editor on the scene characterized approvingly as "Buttholes-y globs of noise swirl"—there was what felt like an interminable wait for White Out to set up Tom Surgal's drums and Lin Culbertson's electronics. The reason for the delay soon became apparent with the nonappearance of the collaboratively inclined duo's advertised guest, the great free-jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle, whose lonely mike stand mocked our attention as the show went on, if tentatively. Surgal's incantatory tom-tom rolls and cymbal highlights generated the Higgs bosons necessary for Culbertson's loops, yodels, chimes, and flute flights to matter, creating a modest improvised universe in the process, although nothing as extreme as, say, 2009's Senso with Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore.

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Village Voice SXSW Showcase
Red Eyed Fly, Austin
Saturday, March 17

Better than: Drinking green beer on Sixth Street.

During South by Southwest, musicians, industry folks, and people who want to have a particularly music-filled spring break head to Austin in order to soak in the less-threatening March sun and sift through hundreds of sets played at any open space that can fit people and an amp. The Voice returned to the capital city for an 18-band showcase at Red Eyed Fly, just a couple blocks from Sixth Street. The bar, which has indoor and outdoor stages, was beginning to show its SXSW wear and tear; incense burned inside in an effort to cover up the week long build-up of stale liquids.

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Hospitality w/Dustin Wong, Glass Ghost
Glasslands
Friday, February 3

Better than: Listening to old K Records albums.

Thinking that Hospitality is a Scottish band, is an understandable mistake. The recent Merge signees are, in fact, from New York City, even if their smarty-pants pop has more in common with bands like Camera Obscura than many of their noisier hometown compatriots. The group crafts luscious songs that more often than not reference the members' friends, personal lives, work, and relationships. Amber Papini furthers the Anglo-Saxon suggestion with an idiosyncratic, lovely voice that contains just a hint of a British accent (she's from Kansas City, by the way). And the carefully put-together guitars, bass, drums, and sometimes horns and synths, practically beg to be listened to over a cup of PG Tips on a rainy day.

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Alias Pail, Zs: Black Crown Ceremony, CSC Funk Band, Dustin Wong
Shea Stadium
Wednesday, August 24

Better than: The Mets' season.

The residents of the Brooklyn DIY outpost known as Shea Stadium, located on a blessedly unreconstructed stretch in the East Williamsburg Industrial Park, are having a far better go at it these days than the residents of Citi Field. On this particular Wednesday night, one of the Lebanese furniture makers across the street sits with the door open to the shop, languidly smoking a hookah. Everything else is deserted as far as the eye can see, an increasingly rare sight anywhere near a stop on the L train.

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In Waste Of Paint, our writer/artist team of Jamie Peck and Debbie Allen will review goings-on about town in words and images.

As New York problems go, this is not a bad one to have: there was so much good stuff going on Friday night that we wished we could clone ourselves. The Babies and Times New Viking at the Knitting Factory! Dum Dum Girls and Crocodiles at Glasslands! Some weird stuff with loops at Monster Island Basement! The solution: Hop between all three venues.

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Whatever show this was, it didn't make the list, remarkably. Pic by Rebecca Smeyne.

Shea Stadium has been one of Brooklyn's finer DIY-type venues since opening in April 2009 -- after a quick move from Debevoise Avenue over to its current home at 20 Meadow Street (neighbor issues, alas), the spot has hosted hundreds of oft-chaotic rock shows that now live on as high-quality bootlegs in the fantastic Live at Shea Stadium archive overseen by venue owner/founder/soundman Adam Reich. "Recording (and eventually releasing the shows) was the original concept behind starting the space in the first place," he explains. "At first I was thinking about opening a more traditional studio, but I wanted to do something different with it. Something a little more exciting and interactive." And daunting, too -- it's tough to know where to start. So we asked Reich to pick his 10 favorites; after struggling with it a bit ("it's like picking your favorite child!), here's what he came up with.

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