Handy Guides

How To Make A Crowd Not Mind That They're In The Middle Of A Torrential Rainstorm, By The Deftones

By Maura Johnston Mon., Aug. 6 2012 at 8:30 AM
Categories: Deftones, Handy Guides, Last Night, Live, Maura Johnston

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@deftonesband/Instagram
Not to be one of those people who talks about the weather, but has this summer's concert-going season seemed sorta... washed out to you? Multi-day festivals from Lollapalooza to Catalpa to Pitchfork have been plagued by rain delays, and other outdoor concerts have been similarly doused. Shows at the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, which is right on the South Shore of Long Island and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, are rain or shine, though, so last night's Deftones/System of a Down show went on despite a pounding rainstorm that turned part of the venue's plaza into a pond and made plastic ponchos the merch booth's hottest commodity. The Deftones, who went on first, gave a master class in keeping a soaked crowd as happy as they would be on a starry 75-degree night. A few lessons from last night that any band thinking about playing an outdoor show should learn.

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Handy Guides

Seven Must-Dos For The Modern Young Weed Rapper

By Phillip Mlynar Thu., Aug. 2 2012 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Handy Guides, Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa

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Wiz Khalifa is in love with weed. The Pittsburgh-raised rapper has established himself as a hip-hop superstar by making songs that are largely hooked around getting high. While it's not all that a unique pastime—the likes of Snoop Dogg and Cypress Hill ushered in the first great rush of weed raps back in the early-'90s—a fresh bunch of young greenery fiends now defines the rap scene. Here's SOTC's handy seven-step guide to becoming a Modern Young Weed Rapper, should you want to follow the current crop's trail of smoke.

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Handy Guides

A SOTC Flowchart: Should You Get Married In Catalpa's Church Of Sham Marriages This Weekend?

By Maura Johnston Wed., Jul. 25 2012 at 12:00 PM
Categories: Catalpa NYC, Girl Talk, Handy Guides, Snoop Dogg, Upcoming Shows

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via Catalpa NYC
We'll leave it up to you to decide whether you want to get married in a sorta-bouncy castle.
"We have the Frisky's Church of Sham Marriages going in, which is a 60 foot inflatable church, and we have a pimp pastor marrying people. We actually have two couples getting legitimately married at the festival - the wedding dress, the whole family coming in. I'm trying to get Snoop Dogg to actually do the marriage. That'd be ridiculous, right? It's elements like that. Of course you had a great time seeing the Black Keys, but you're going to talk for a lot longer about the day you saw the Black Keys and got married to some random person."
—Catalpa founder Dave Moran on one of the attractions at this weekend's inaugural Catalpa NYC festival. Should you take the plunge and make The Most Important Day Of Your Life an outing at Randalls Island where you could conceivably get hitched by a fake pimp/Snoop Dogg/Snoop Lion/a member of Umphrey's McGee? With candy rings and everything? A flowchart to walk you through the decision-making process below.


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Handy Guides

Everything You Need To Know About The 4Knots Music Festival

By Eric Sundermann Fri., Jul. 13 2012 at 3:00 PM
Categories: 4Knots Music Festival, Eric Sundermann, Handy Guides

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Sandlin Gaither
Archers Of Loaf will headline Saturday's 4Knots Music Festival.
After many weeks of planning and announcements and waiting, the daylong music festival we here at The Village Voice host, 4Knots, is happening tomorrow at Piers 16 and 17 of the South Street Seaport! A guide to the day follows.

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Handy Guides

How To Enjoy An Outdoor Concert On A Potentially 100-Degree Day Without Dying Of Heatstroke Or Sunburn

By Maura Johnston Fri., Jul. 6 2012 at 8:00 AM
Categories: CBGB Festival, Handy Guides, Superchunk, Warm Up

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Willie Davis
Crowdsurfing: A great way to catch a breeze.
Tomorrow is a big day for outdoor live music in New York City! The CBGB Festival is throwing a free show in Times Square with Superchunk, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Hold Steady, and Seattle Weekly columnist Duff McKagan's Loaded; it's also sponsoring the SummerStage show at Central Park with Guided By Voices, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and Cloud Nothings. Over in Long Island City, P.S. 1's annual Warm Up series gets started with a daylong party starring legendary DJ Todd Terry and Los Angeles bass duo NGUZUNGUZU; the Bronx has Roger Waters' recreation of Pink Floyd's The Wall at Yankee Stadium; Brooklyn has the first performance in eight years by the multilingual political singer Souad Massi. And so on. This is all well and good except for one thing: Temperatures are expected to top out at 102 degrees, and the 20% chance of precipitation isn't much of a hedge. It's going to be hellaciously hot, and you're going to need to take some precautions so you actually see the artists you're planning on without collapsing of heatstroke.

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Handy Guides

Sound Of The City's Top Seven Northside Festival Shows

By Maura Johnston Thu., Jun. 14 2012 at 12:00 PM
Categories: Black Dice, Camille, Caveman, Crystal Stilts, Dâm-Funk, Eric Sundermann, Fort Lean, Frankie Rose, Handy Guides, Kitty Pryde, Maura Johnston, Neon Marshmallow, Nick Murray, Northside Festival, Olivia Tremor Control, The Rub

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Kitty Pryde plays the Knitting Factory on Friday night.
This weekend marks the return of the Northside Festival, the Brooklyn-blanketing series of concerts, films, art shows, and discussions of "entrepreneurship" now in its fourth year. The music lineup is pretty jam-packed with bands both local and visiting, and in order to assist you the SOTC staff has put its collective heads together and come up with seven shows over the course of the next four days that you shouldn't miss. (Note that our guide has ticket prices for the shows, because even if you do have a badge, there's a chance that you'll have to pay to get in—badge admissions are limited, thanks to some of the venues being pretty small.)

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Handy Guides

A Seven-Song Primer On Michael Grace Jr., New York's New Wave Cult Hero

By Michael Tedder Wed., Jun. 6 2012 at 10:30 AM
Categories: Handy Guides, Michael Tedder, My Favorite, The Secret History

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Michael Grace Jr.'s current band, The Secret History.
As noted in this week's Voice, Michael Grace Jr. has the tendency to be at the right place at the wrong time. Along the way, he's amassed a formidable (secret) songbook of alienation, fading beauty and chiming guitar. In case you were never fortunate to be at the right place, here are seven of his songs that you need to know, from his humble, New Order-obsessed beginnings to the opening salvo from his forthcoming magnum opus of generational desperation.

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Handy Guides

Matzo Balls And Disco Balls: Pairing Great GoogaMooga's Food And Music Offerings

By Victoria Bekiempis and Maura Johnston Fri., May 18 2012 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Escort, Fort Lean, Great GoogaMooga, Handy Guides, Hesta Prynn, Holy Ghost, James Murphy, Maura Johnston, The Roots, Victoria Bekiempis

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Escort.
This weekend Prospect Park will host Great GoogaMooga, a festival that brings together some of New York's best restaurants and musicians from New York (disco technicians Escort; bouncy Brooklyn rockers Fort Lean) and outside the city (Saturday's headlined by the hip-hop polyglots The Roots, while Sunday will be closed out by Daryl Hall & John Oates). How should you plan your day so that your foodstuffs are well matched to the on-stage entertainment? Here's the Sound of the City/Fork in the Road guide to suggested pairings for this weekend.

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Handy Guides

A Brief Overview Of The Seven (!) Music Festivals Happening In The New York Area This Weekend

By Maura Johnston Thu., May 17 2012 at 1:00 PM
Categories: Bamboozle, Black N Blue Bowl, Electric Daisy Carnival, Ende Tymes Fest, Great GoogaMooga, Handy Guides, NYC Popfest, WKTU

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Daryl Hall and John Oates play Great GoogaMooga on Sunday.
Summer might not semi-officially start until next weekend, but our fair city is getting a head start on jamming the schedule with as much music as possible. This weekend there are at least seven multi-musician extravaganzas happening in New York and New Jersey. Which one is most right for you? Our handy guide below.

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Handy Guides

Frankie Rose's Five Rules For Growing Up Gracefully

By Chris Chafin Fri., May 4 2012 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Chris Chafin, Frankie Rose, Handy Guides

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I'm turning 30 this year, and I'm looking for positive role models wherever I can. Do I have to start talking about insurance and mutual funds and Roth IRAs, or is there a way to grow up while holding my cool? For some advice, I turned to the 33-year-old Frankie Rose, who just released the outstanding Interstellar (Slumberland).

Rose cut her teeth in New York's late-'00s DiY scene, founding the Vivian Girls (named after her mother), then playing with Crystal Stilts and Dum Dum Girls before putting out work under her own name. The work was largely of a piece: loud, guitar-heavy, light on dynamics, and uniformly uncontemplative. It was kids stuff, which I hope I can say without sounding like too much of a jerk.

"When I was done with [2010's Frankie Rose And The Outs], Rose told Sound of the City, "I was really done with it. I was like, 'I do not want to make another record like this. I would like to make something bigger and cleaner and more cinematic.'" She succeeded. Interstellar is lush and unhurried, with sounds that swoop down to collect the listener from the everyday in a cloud of layered vocals and spirit her away to somewhere where existential questions ring like cymbal strikes. It's, well, pretty grown up.

In addition to making great records, Frankie Rose has some advice about moving gracefully into your 30s. We've collected a few of them below.

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