So we've spent the week revisiting old Greenwich Village Bob Dylan landmarks, thanks to the tireless work of SOTC writer/interviewer Rob Trucks and video guru Jeremy Krinsley; they've dropped by the Gaslight, Jones Street, Cafe Wha?, and the Washington Square Hotel, among various other Dylanologist shrines, interviewing the proprietors and sex-shop managers and other folks who now work and/or live nearby. We've now fused all four installments together into one master video for your viewing pleasure -- hopefully even Martin Scorsese can find something to chew on here, if it's only the shopkeeper whose favorite Dylan album is Free Willy. Enjoy:

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Rob Trucks

Dexter and Sara behind the Apollo Theater

If it is fitting that we meet Dexter Romweber and his sister Sara at the Apollo Theater (and it is), it is perhaps even more appropriate that we record their performance behind the historic venue, specifically a relatively dark and frozen sidewalk alongside 126th Street.

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Cross paths with Damien Jurado, say on a misty autumn afternoon more representative of his Pacific Northwest home than ours, and you will recognize a physical presence, a sturdiness not unlike a former high-school-lineman turned football coach. Which is not an endeavor usually known for sensitivity.

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That's Flansburgh on the right

John Flansburgh stands as the younger, more bespectacled half of They Might Be Giants, a Brooklyn-by-way-of-Boston band he has been playing in for more than half his life (Their latest album is Here Comes Science, their fourth children's album and 14th or so studio album overall.) Flansburgh turns 50 years old today; one week ago, when he was still 49, he shared some of the wisdom and waste he's picked up along the long, long way. Here are some of his thoughts.

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So as it turns out, he did not die in Memphis. But nonetheless, over the next few days, as devout fans grieve his death (at 59, of an apparent heart attack, in New Orleans), latecomers to Alex Chilton the musician (as opposed to Alex Chilton the song subject) will need recommendations on just where to begin their education. Beginning it is the only easy part.

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From the archives of "Possibly 4th Street," a video column in which we've invited musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, here's some excellent footage of Bowerbirds performing in a Williamsburg Surf Shop.

Rob Trucks

Outside Monster Island

After they re-released Hymns for a Dark Horse, but before they recorded, let alone released, their most recent Upper Air, the Bowerbirds (primary members and off-stage couple Phil Moore and Beth Tacular) met us just a block from the Williamsburg waterfront. Across the street, an electrical power station hummed. Down the street, jackhammers and condo construction dust, signs of the changing (pre-recession) Brooklyn shoreline. All obvious counterpoints to a moveable acoustic duo that's gotten a lot of press for their solar panel-powered, AirStream-sheltered homelife in the austere hills of North Carolina.

They play the Bowery Ballroom this Friday, December 4 and Union Pool on Saturday, December 5.

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Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run intermittently here at Sound of the City.

Trail of Dead headlines the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday, February 27 [tix] and Bowery Ballroom on Saturday, February 28 [tix] .

Rob Trucks

Trail of Dead in the Niagara basement

Possibly 4th Street
Number 27 (Part One)
. . . And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

by Rob Trucks

Just six days before the release of their sixth full-length, The Century of Self, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead hold a press day in New York City. Which is a lot easier now that founding members Conrad Keely and Jason Reece call Williamsburg, rather than Austin, home.

But February in the city often means snow one day followed by a balmy sixty degrees the next. And these things have to be, you know, planned in advance. Besides, Conrad's keyboard needs electricity. So on a warm Wednesday afternoon in the East Village, three AYWKUBTTOD members, enthusiastically primed with Blood Marys, perform two songs (or three Century of Self album tracks) within Niagara's starkly bright back room. Meanwhile, across the street in Tompkins Square, a makeshift religious service solicits sinners in unseasonable shirt sleeves.

Trail of Dead perform "Bells of Creation"

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The current tour of Los Campesinos! closes with two sold-out shows at the Bowery Ballroom on Saturday, February 14 and Sunday, February 15--two nights in which they'll "play every song that we know."

In 2008, the seven member Welsh collective Los Campesinos! released not one but two rather complete compact discs: the 12-song song Hold On Now, Youngster . . . (officially considered an album) followed by the only slightly briefer 10-song We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (designated, by the band at least, as an EP). But while both offerings are undeniably upbeat musically (check out Youngster's "You! Me! Dancing!"), singer/lyricist Gareth Campesino (yes, they're kind of like the Ramones when it comes to surnames) suggests that his lyrics have more recently veered towards the "more personal" and "honest." None more biting than the Doomed title track's dark couplet "We kid ourselves that there's future in the fucking/But there is no fucking future." Blame/credit Gareth's relatively recent obsession with the late (via suicide) B.S. Johnson--a British writer not particularly prone, either personally or professionally, to bullshit.

Two days after Barack Obama's inauguration, we spoke with Gareth Campesino as he awaited check-out from a Super 8 Motel (room 225) in Tallahassee. --Rob Trucks

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Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run intermittently here at Sound of the City.

The Explorers Club plays the Mercury Lounge, February 5 and the following night at Maxwell's in Hoboken.

photos by Rob Trucks

Possibly 4th Street
Number 26 (Part One)
The Explorers Club

by Rob Trucks

Call it refreshing when a band steps into the confessional willing, ready and able to acknowledge its sins of influence.

Not that the Explorers Club has a choice. For even school-of-rock dropouts will detect the Beach Boys' orchestral shadow--frequent falsetto within four-part harmony on such retro-titled tunes as "Don't Forget The Sun" and "Summer Air"-- throughout the band's aptly titled debut, Freedom Wind.

So what's behind a contemporary Charleston, SC-based collective conjuring California pop from forty years before?

Well, in addition to the commonality of "very sunny and very hot" beaches, Club composer Jason Brewer believes the sound of seasonal sweetness "has not been done justice since the 60's." And that includes not only the pioneering and paternal Boys, but groups like "the Association, Jan and Dean, the Yellow Balloon, the Zombies, the Left Banke and many others."

And just about thirty yards from the westernmost edge of Long Island (the Socrates Sculpture Park of Long Island City), the summer sun arrives on cue. But so does the similarly summery (and free) wind, which plays unambiguous and unharmonious havoc with our audio. Pardon our breathiness.

The Explorers Club Performs "Don't Forget the Sun"

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Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run intermittently here at Sound of the City.

Akron/Family headlines and curates the Knitting Factory's farewell party this Wednesday, December 31. Tickets are $35 and still available here.

photos by Rob Trucks

Possibly 4th Street
Number 25 (Part One)
Akron/Family

by Rob Trucks

By the time the three (or more) members of Akron/Family take the stage for their show-closing, year-closing, Knitting Factory-closing set on December 31, six months will have passed since we spent the better part of an afternoon in the backyard of the band's last remaining New York outpost. (Thankfully we can report that their MySpace page has been updated in the interim).

Seth Olinsky's moved back to Pennsylvania from New York, Dana Janssen down to Tobacco Country, and Ryan Vanderhoof has left the band completely. Only Miles Seaton remains in Brooklyn.

Following three songs by the collective's now three-man core, we sat down with Olinsky to discuss the differences between free folk and freak folk, Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman and how a band that once lived together now functions from three different states.

Akron/Family Performs "A Lake Song"

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