Adam Lange

Doomtree with F. Stokes
Gramercy Theater
Thursday, February 16, 2012

Better than: Getting flooded out at the Bowery Ballroom and canceling the show completely.

Gold Panda, somewhere in there

Gold Panda
Glasslands
Saturday, April 2

Better Than: 
Thinking about how you couldn't afford LCD tickets.

It's hard to act like a rock star when you're hunched over a pile of hardware that's sitting on a table. But if you want to milk the maximum effect out of these small motions, you have to do what Derwin Panda (a/k/a Gold Panda) did at Glasslands Gallery on Saturday night: add some extremes to your music.

Telephoned, mixing it up. Pics by Peter Steusloff.

Better Than: That "mash-up" DJ my friend who just discovered that DJs play songs he likes is trying to tell me about as I type this. Ugh.

It's been less than a week since our last visit, and we've already found a new reason to make the trek up to the lounge of the Ace Hotel. Last night's big event? Switchboard, a new Tuesday-night monthly helmed by dance duo Telephoned's Sammy Bananas and Maggie Horn. This is no dance party, though, and the saxophone sitting next to the turntables should have been our first clue.

It's OK if your eyes well up a little. Pics by Mike Benigno, more below.

Better Than: Another night of "Love More" on repeat

Around 7 o'clock Saturday night, shortly before I had to catch a D train and head to Bowery Ballroom, I admit that I didn't want to go. I'd been excited for this show before that, but right then, as I lay in bed, preparing myself with another spin through Brooklyn folkie Sharon Van Etten's second album, Epic, my mood began to align with the record's, and the idea of stepping outside my apartment -- or even out of my bed -- started to seem like a drag. I managed to do it, though, and I'm glad I did.

Fabolous/Nicki Minaj
Hammerstein Ballroom
November 25, 2010

Better Than: Awkward Post-Dinner Small Talk

Because the purpose of the Fabolous and Nicki Minaj's Thanksgiving double-billing was, according to the promotion, to give thanks to two of the most talented rappers in New York City (or perhaps for them to give thanks to us), it was in a way fitting that MTA difficulties prevented us from arriving on time. This made for a remarkable entrance, however, as we came through the doors of Hammerstein Ballroom just as Lloyd Banks arrived on stage to join Fabolous for "Beamer, Benz, or Bentley," a favorite in these pages and across the city. And then, as if this pairing wasn't enough, Harlem's Juelz Santana appeared to contribute his own verse. Thanks Fab!

Hi

The Corin Tucker Band
Tuesday, October 26
Bowery Ballroom

Better than: Quasi at SXSW 2010

Watching the Corin Tucker Band at the Bowery Ballroom is akin to seeing a favorite essayist discuss a novel (or vice versa): this may not be the body of work you want to hear this seminal figure address, but this is the only person who owns the voice that changed your life, so you make do. Gonna make an educated guess that the audience comprised of mostly women (many bespectacled), the sensitive men who love them, and Lee Ranaldo and his wife felt the same way, all here because Corin Tucker spent more than a decade as the front-lung of riot-lady rock monolith Sleater-Kinney. And while her former Ess-Kay partners, guitar goddess Carrie Brownstein and percussion monster Janet Weiss, have spent the last four years dabbling in art-comedy skits, receiving honorary writing laurels, or hammering snares for Stephen Malkmus and Quasi, this one of the went off to be a mom.

Jamie MacDonald

Ryuichi Sakamoto
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
Monday, October 18

Better Than: The soundtrack to An Inconvenient Truth.

Ever the educators, NYU prefaced Ryuichi Sakamoto's sold-out evening at the Skirball Center with a physics lesson of sorts--a necessary step, considering the Japanese composer would occupy two places at once, like Schrödinger's more virtuosic cat. The venue's projection screens, lowered behind a single piano marooned onstage, detailed the aural set-up of the evening: Sakamoto would be performing on Yamaha's computerized Disklavier system, which loops previously recorded MIDI signals to his hand and feet movements. What this meant compositionally? As the stark white script explained, "Ryuichi will perform 'virtual duets' with himself in this way."

pics by Stacey

Ratatat
Terminal 5
Saturday, October 9

Better than: Being in any other throng of 3,000 college students.

For a band of no words, Ratatat still swiftly establish their agenda--they would prefer the crowd riot. This is never uttered during their Saturday show - bassist/keyboardist Evan Mast only uses his mike to mutter "thank you" between bursts of their showy, frothing beats--but it is evident from guitarist Mike Stroud's hyperactive, face-down flailing onto the stage and his filthy pantomiming up to the press balcony. (Hi Mike!) Seconds into their opening bassline, the clinical floor space of Terminal 5 ruptures with screaming and dancing. The barricades separating the front photo pit from the crowd are sporadically knocked over and quickly rightened by furious security guards, like a game of electro-rock red rover.

It's probably dangerous, and it's definitely fun.

http://yfrog.com/1xeafoj

Roger Waters Performs The Wall
Madison Square Garden
Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Better Than: Homeroom

If you've never seen a man use a remote control to fly a massive inflatable black pig to the delight of 20,000 or so people--you really should. It's fascinating. Such a beast emerged next to me, from the shadows of a largely constructed white wall that had been erected over the last hour and a half. And ducking next to the end of an empty, obstructed view row was a bearded man, probably in his early 30s, controlling this flying pig with precision, as Waters and his band chugged through one of The Wall's most beloved tunes, "Run Like Hell." Never was there any doubt that this pig was going to crash into us--that's how smoothly it glided through the Garden.

Curren$y (left) and K.R.I.T., models of menace and/or nonchalance. Photos by Nick, more below.

Better Than: Stealing your roommate's weed and watching Stella on DVD all night. Again.

The weather in New York has stayed fairly dreary for the past week or so, and last night even the air inside Santos Party House was, in the words of Curren$y, "partly cloudy." The self-proclaimed hot spitta headlined a bill of seven rappers -- most notably Big K.R.I.T. and Smoke DZA -- as part of a tour sponsored in part by High Times. Hence the haze.