Twitpic via @oakroomny

​Lady Gaga superfans would be advised to just generally stake out the Oak Room on Wednesday nights during months that the fame monster is not on tour--after guesting during pal Brian Newman's residency there back in September, she reprised the cameo last night, surprising an unsuspecting audience with an ocean of fake tan and covers of both "Someone To Watch Over Me" and "Orange Colored Sky." Someone got it on YouTube, naturally:

More >>

via

​We feel bad for Jeff Mangum, who probably has some trouble leaving the house in this city without people acting a little strange. So we respect and applaud his decision to return to the stage in secrecy, as he did on Saturday night, when he played ten Neutral Milk Hotel songs to a delighted audience of 75 people at The Schoolhouse. Among them was a bootlegger, of course, who captured the second half of the below setlist, according to Pitchfork:

More >>

"Surprise performance in NYC tomorrow," La Roux's Elly Jackson tweeted yesterday. "Ill be performing a few songs in a secret location." Well, now we know where: 3 p.m., at Times Square's Renaissance Hotel. How this is going to work we have no idea, but anthemic English synth-pop and Times Square make a weird kind of sense together. Plus, you know there's this guy Kanye West, he's got a record to promote, and he just happened to record a song with La Roux recently:

More >>

Extra Place

​Well, it's not that secret--both The Fader and the CMJ Music Marathon have already made use of Extra Place (we've been there before, too), the new private, "never open to the public" performance space that is located on, wait for it...Extra Place, the blind alley off 1st Street between Second Avenue and the Bowery. The street has a long history--see, for instance, this iconic photo of the Ramones "standing alongside a wrecked car in a garbage-strewn alley," as Forgotten New York's Kevin Walsh once put it. Lately, both Bespoke Chocolates and Montana Knox Apparel have moved into the tiny, crowded dead end. And now comes Extra Place, the venue, here to revive the "renegade spirit of the Bowery," complete with a CBGB "shrine" containing the "wall and sink from original CBGB bathroom (odor not included)." Anyway this place isn't exactly meant for regular humans but if you were to get in, this is what you would see:

More >>

Titus Andronicus at Webster Hall last year. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

​Well, this will be great, if you can make it inside: the mighty Titus Andronicus are playing the extremely modest-sized Bar Matchless tomorrow night with the So So Glos, for free. It's a private show, but you can get in with an RSVP to this Facebook page right here. As more than one person on that thread points out, the Bar Matchless capacity is somewhere in the vicinity of 100 people, and more than 400 have already responded. Our advice? Show up early, unless you want to see a replica of what happened at Coco66 last Friday night. In the meantime, a member of the Titus camp just sent us the trailer for the "upcoming final episode of the Titus TV series" (something we weren't entirely sure even existed until just now), which has a seasonally appropriate Halloween theme. Not to mention a menacing cameo from none other than the band's fellow Jerseyite Ted Leo:

More >>

Twitpic via our pal Yancy Strickler

​Kanye West
Brooklyn Bowl
Saturday, October 23

Better than: Pretty much everything but the Blow.

Let us go now to Brooklyn Bowl, where the hour is just past 2 a.m., the enthusiastic but mostly ineffective CyHi Da Prynce is winding up his set, and bounding out now comes Kanye West himself, Horus chain like a wrecking ball, pyramid rings gleaming, launching into "So Appalled," the crowd that by now knew this was coming screaming anyway, Prynce at some point wandering off the stage, West shrugging off his coat and staying, shrinking a large building down to something smaller, more intimate--more CMJ-like, even. (Not the letters "CMJ" have a lot of meaning for Kanye West.) He did five songs. It was great.

More >>

Fashion Week tends to bring out musicians -- consider Guns N' Roses's secret performance at the John Varvatos store in the spring, or the formidable line-up that Ralph Lauren, Balenciaga, et al. have put together for the next week or so. And Kanye West has a penchant for performing unannounced shows around New York, whether it's Fashion Week or some random night in August. So it's not exactly a surprise to learn that as the clock struck 3 a.m. last night, West mounted the bar at one of the the hardest doors in New York, the Standard Hotel's Boom Boom Room, and preceded to give an impromptu performance for those lucky enough to be in attendance. The pictures -- what few exist -- look amazing:

More >>

Jim Jones gives punk rock the gas face. All photos by Rebecca Smeyne.

​These are strange, wonderful times for hip-hop fans in New York. Former Roc-a-Fella mogul and Jay-Z cohort Damon Dash is running a modern day version of Warhol's factory out of a rented loft in Tribeca. Curren$y kills time at Bubby's, down the street (where the other day we dined, in close proximity to Jay and Beyonce). And Harlem's Jim Jones, once and future Dipset capo, will happily jet across the river and crash gnarly DIY punk shows. At least, he did on Friday night, where the impossibly resilient Less Artists More Condos/Under 100 kids threw a party featuring Lionshare, Tough Knuckles (featuring Under 100's Ariel Panero on guitar), Das Racist, and Snakes Say Hisss, who brought Jones out for a supremely awkward and awesome cameo appearance at the end of the night, right before the cops showed up. In the back was Damon Dash himself, looking on with pride--an increasingly regular, though no less shocking, sight at DIY shows citywide. Intrepid photographer Rebecca Smeyne was there, of course; her photos and a bit of crazy-looking video are below.

More >>

Maro Hagopian

Scene from Rubulad's Bunny Hop party earlier this year.

Oh, Rubulad. The low-rent Cosmic Cavern. The Burning Man of Brooklyn. The place NYU students write home about as what it's "like to be inside the brain of Lady Gaga." Well, the Bed-Stuy communal-living space that intermittetly functions as a packed party den is apparently having some problems. Big ones. Ones that don't allow them to inhabit the first floor of their premises. Or as the Brooklyn Paper so delicately puts it:

More >>

Rebecca Smeyne

Monotonix at Europa

Big week around these parts. Not only does this Saturday, July 17 mark the tenth anniversary edition of Siren Festival, but in the lead-up to the big day, we're just announcing a fairly amazing free pre-party that will take place this Thursday, July 15. Details are in the flyer after the jump, but do we really need to say anything else besides Monotonix?

More >>