via Greater Ridgewood Historical Society

Bushwick delis, Chinese buffets, Mexican restaurants, Masonic temples, beaches, churches, and now an 18th-century Dutch colonial farm; New York DIY mastermind Todd Patrick has proven, yet again, that when booking an all-ages show, selecting a venue is part of the artistry. This evening at the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House on the Queens/Brooklyn border, legendary independent musicians Daniel Higgs of Lungfish and Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav will perform at an outdoor show that has the makings of history lesson.

"The first gifts I received in New York were two books. One was Gotham, which traces New York from pre-history to the 1900s, and the other was a survey of all the historical sites in the city," Patrick says. "I came to find that there were all these old historical farmhouses hidden throughout the city."

The Vander Ende-Onderdonk House, the oldest Dutch colonial stone home in New York City, is located near the industrial zoo surrounding the Jefferson Street stop on the L train. It was originally built in the mid-1600s; another home was built on its foundation in 1709, and that structure still exists today. Over the past three centuries, the land has been used in many different ways, including as a base for a scrap glass business and as the border between the two boroughs now known as Brooklyn and Queens.

But why throw a show here?

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Dirty Dancing w/Vaz, Prince Rama, Telepathe
McCarren Park basketball court
Wednesday, July 25

Better than: Watching at home.

Somebody finally figured out how to get people to show up and sit through opening bands: just make the headlining act a free outdoor screening of a beloved movie. "I see a couple of new faces in the crowd," Vaz guitarist Paul Erickson remarked early in their set, the McCarren Park basketball court already filled with a not-insigificant amount of people staking down blankets and chairs for the sundown showing of Dirty Dancing. The trio leaned into their instruments—two guitars and a drum set—delivering Sonic Youthy, ecstatic-sludgey, brainy, thrashy rockisms that were probably pretty awesome. But it was also rather hard to tell. As is tradition, the opening acts were also mixed at a far lower volume than the headliner.

At a precarious time when any L-train passenger might spontaneously combust into a @NYTOnIt-lambasted trend piece, the decision to have local promoter Todd P. book music for Summerscreen's weekly series in Williamsburg is a profoundly sane one. After all, he's already been in many a trend piece for his ambitious DIY repurposing of spaces into concert venues. By that standard, his Summerscreen bookings in a major public park might be his most legit venture ever, but possibly also his most bare bones. A performance on the blacktop of a basketball court in the blasting sun of a July evening, through a tiny PA at a vastly reduced volume and without a stage, is probably not the best place and method for a band to get themselves across to even a captive audience. Plus—at least during Vaz's set—the PA kept crapping out.

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via Yelp

That is some parking lot.

About two weeks after playing a sold-out show at Terminal 5, one of the city's biggest venues that doesn't also double as a sports arena, the rollicking indiepop bands Real Estate has a show lined up in the back room of a Chinese buffet in Queens. Who else could be behind this but Todd P.?

The event, happening tomorrow at Ridgewood's K&K Super Buffet, also has Black Dice, The Babies, Dogleather—and DJ sets from Oneohtrix Point Never and Ducktails—on the bill. It also serves as a sort of rebirth/rebranding for longtime D.I.Y. impresario Todd "Todd P." Patrick. He spent a good chunk of the last decade building an off-the-grid concert empire in New York, only to see much of his work undone in the past year or two as the city began to rein in semi-illegal spaces. Venues in which he had varying degrees of emotional, legal, and financial stakes—Monster Island Basement, Market Hotel, and Silent Barn—have either shut their doors or been forced to relocate. This didn't leave Patrick with a lot of options. "For things to keep growing," he told SOTC earlier this week, "doing things outside of the concert industry, it has to... go legit."

"But 'legit' doesn't mean working within the monopoly control of the concert industry," he was quick to add. "It just means being more creative and utilitizing the dozens, hundreds, thousands of spaces in the city that work as venues but go unutilized."

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If Todd gets his way you may not miss the old place much

Totally did not expect to see über-promoter Todd Patrick beaming from the virtual pages of both Grub Street, but there he is and the Voice's own Fork in the Road, eagerly discussing the new restaurant/club he's looking to open at Avenue A and Third Street in the East Village, at the spot most recently home to Aces & Eights, a beer-pong-hosting house of evidently ill repute. Working with Two Boots mastermind Phil Hartman, Todd P's vision is twofold: tamales and free jazz, roughly speaking.

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Via Todd P's Twitter

So the Titus Andronicus NYE show was quite the time: First it got moved from Ridgewood Masonic Temple to 285 Kent due to liquor-license woes, then a bunch of people apparently lost their stuff. (Per TA ringleader Patrick Stickles: "Our sincerest apologies to those who had their belongings tampered with or carried off by unseen malefactors.") Ah, but maybe you just drunkenly left your coat there, eh? Had a bit too much Four Loko? Recognize your shit in the photo up there? Would you be so kind as to come get it?

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2010 was not a particularly pleasant year for venue/police relations -- see Market Hotel or Santos Party House -- and 2011 unfortunately got off on the wrong foot immediately. Ridgewood Masonic Temple, the pretty great Bushwick spot that hosted shows last year by Sleigh Bells, Das Racist, Lightning Bolt, and various others, is going dry, according to a bushwick.bk.com report on recent liquor-license snafus there that finally raised the ire of the cops. As a result, the Titus Andronicus/Real Estate show planned there for New Year's Eve by promoter extraordinaire Todd P was moved last-minute to a more, y'know, festive location. As Todd put it:

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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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Well, the ranks of the disappointed probably outnumber those who actually successfully scored themselves tickets to tonight's Yeah Yeah Yeah's anniversary shindig at Secret Project Robot. Tickets went on sale at 6 p.m. yesterday and were long gone by 7, and the internet is aflame with the three hundred plus people who waited in line only to get turned away (to say nothing of those who didn't even bother). Still: do not storm the door tonight! Promoter Todd P sends out this friendly reminder: "NO TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR, NO EXCEPTIONS." You should probably take him at his word. Because no one wants this thing shut down, and a mob of angry people outside a tiny Williamsburg storefront will inevitably lead to that. Let the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have their fun. They've earned it. All the rest of us can do is gaze in envy on these tickets:

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photo by Rebecca Smeyne

Scene from the Yummy Fur show at the Market Hotel this past January

The NYPD stopped by the Market Hotel earlier this month, much to our dismay, causing the venerable DIY venue to go dark and to relocate its already-scheduled programming to like-minded spaces like Monster Island Basement and the Silent Barn. For example, that sick Sleigh Bells May show is luckily happening at the Ridgewood Temple--good news since the stellar one at Coco 66 is already sold out. But there's finally an update on Market Hotel's future, the details of which we'll leave to Todd P:

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photos by Emily Nemens

Bonnie "Prince" Billy
April 1
Monster Island

Todd Patrick's back from Mexico, and last night our fearless local promoter hosted two very intimate, very sold-out, back-to-back shows for Will Oldham--touring on behalf of his Bonnie "Prince" Billy alter-ego--in Williamsburg's sweaty Monster Island Basement. It's something of a coup to get Oldham/Billy in such a small space, for only $12 a person, considering that last time Kentucky-born singer-songwriter played New York was at the Apollo and tickets were more than 40 bucks.

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