​Have you been outside yet today? It's so nice! Sunny, breezy, just brushing 70 degrees—sure, the factors leading to this pleasantness are probably not all that great, and apparently rain's going to come and wash away this pre-Daylight Savings Time reprieve pretty soon (note graphic at left), but for now, it's all sunshine and light jackets. However, if you're reading this post, you're probably stuck inside for at least a couple of hours—maybe even until after the sun sets. What can help? Music! Below, six songs that you can put on in an effort to turn the fluorescents flicking above your head into Vitamin-D-supplying sunshine. And feel free to contribute your own suggestions in the comments!

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photo by Allison Michael Orenstein; inset by Aliya Naumoff

"Tammy Rae Carland and Sleater-Kinney! Vivienne Dick and Insane Clown Posse!"

It's not the first place we'd expect to find Kathleen Hanna's name, but there it is, subtly tacked onto the credits for Neal Medlyn's Wicked Clown Love, a 2012 experimental work "built around the music and culture of hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse, their devoted fan base the Juggalos, and other forms of male bonding and ritual." Showing at the Kitchen next weekend, Wicked Clown Love's hammy event description on the venue Web site elaborates:

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Idol runner-up Lauren Alaina at Central Park this morning.

​Yesterday my wonderful colleague Jen Doll penned a list of 11 things to do in NYC before the summer ends, and I'd like to add one item to her list: Catch one of the outdoor concerts put on by the national morning shows. This morning I went to Good Morning America's showcase of the top 11 American Idol contestants from this year, and it was pretty fun and definitely worth waking up before dawn for, even if the warm-up guy ill-advisedly made a Simon Cowell joke at one point. (Psst, dude! You may want to brush up on your Steven Tylerisms for next year!)

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​The Polish electronic/avant-garde/new-classical bacchanal known as the Unsound Festival has been the pride of Kraków since 2003, luring sonic-minded thrill-seekers the world over with a veritable orgy of umlauts, consonants, and high-minded audio/visual splendor, mixing high-culture chamber-music grandeur with the lowest, deadliest bass dance music has to offer. Last year they brought the circus to New York City for the first time, and the locals were much intrigued; get ready, then, for Unsound Festival New York 2011. There's a hell of a lot going on here; almost too much to process, which is very likely the point.

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​The year in music, circa 2010, started at the Cake Shop, with a shred-down to the New Year courtesy of Siren Festival MVP-to-be Marissa Paternoster and her band Screaming Females. After a tour through the NYE fetes of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, that night ended amidst a marathon show at Bushwick's Shea Stadium, right around the time the Blastoids' drummer poured paint on his kit and started splattering away.

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No, dudebro, Bernd Naber will not give you a ride home from the Shank in his awesome old convertible.

"It sounds like a tin shed in there," grouses a well-dressed couple walking briskly away from the Shank at five am this past Sunday. "The speakers are bad. Every room is half empty!"

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You remember the Shank. The ignomious afterhours Williamsburg spot of unprecedented size, bravado, and debauchery that's golden age lasted for, approximately, one month of winter 2009. The concrete mud-bucket that cornered the market on baby laxative and earned itself a New York Press cover story. The place that's cultural death knell sounded when a guy slipped DJ Jonathan Toubin a $20 to play him Young Jeezy. Well, it's back. Again. No, again.

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The backing track for the Knifefight: No Rules trailer, posted below, is Murdertronics' "Get 'Em High." In this context, the Get 'em hiiiiiiiiiggggggggh/Get 'em drrrrrrrrrrruuuuuunnnnnk chorus--uttered more times than I can possibly justify counting, in a manner not unlike Yellow's belly-aching dinosaur-burp "Oh Yeah"--isn't an aspiration, but a manifesto. You see, Knifefight: No Rules is a short about a crazy-ass show that went on in a Greenpoint warehouse this past February. Put on by the eponymous Knifefight--the party-throwing moniker of Andy Smith, ex-Chief Magazine engine who also ran the dearly departed, DIY space Bodega--the two-night affair at 171 Lombardy starred the usual crust-crunk suspects: Ninjasonik, Japanther, Cerebral Ballsy, the Death Set, Boogie Boarder, Murdertronics. Project Fathom filmed the whole thing and whittled it down to 12 minutes.

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All photos by Rebecca Smeyne

Whatever you did this weekend probably wasn't as bezerk as the Bed-Stuy version of Hoodstock, an Oakland party exported to Willoughby Avenue on Saturday that brought New Orleans sissy bounce star Big Freedia to Brooklyn. Big Freedia and his airborne-booty dancers were the de facto headliners, but the usual Bikes in the Kitchen all-stars were also in the house (Ninjasonik, Japanther, Cerebral Ballzy). Ninjasonik used Sunday to ReTweet a flurry of misspelled praise ("long time since been 2 proper undrgrnd show, left soakin wet w/ legs bruised up like a crak whore frm da pit" wrote @SaintElasticat) and our photographer Rebecca Smeyne, who's basically seen the Japanther boys more times than their own parents, also couldn't stop e-raving about the party either. Even Matt and Kim testified: "If you were not at hoodstock tonight you missed out and I am sorry. It was an amazing show!" Sure looks like it. Full gallery here, selected photos below.

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​Given the big whoop surrounding this week's Exile on Main Street reissue, it's probably also time to revisit the other version: Quintessential NYC trash-rockers Pussy Galore's full-length, cassette-only 1986 cover version, whose genesis and legacy is lovingly recounted by friend-of-SOTC Randall Roberts for the L.A. Times, and which you can download here. Be forewarned that it is very very very scuzzy, a symphony of off-key warbles, blaring jump-cuts, and general wanton atonality: "Casino Boogie," for example, is hilarious in its utter failure to, well, boogie. "You will either hate Pussy Galore's chaotic attempt with a burning passion," Roberts advises, "or you will see that buried within this wobbled, sloppy, barely legible song cycle is the kernel of truth that Pussy Galore totally nailed it."