Last Friday night, in the midst of CMJ, cops raided the Greenpoint venue Coco66, shutting the venue down for the weekend and necessitating a hasty week's worth of construction to get the place up to code. On Thursday, the police hit Santos Party House, using months-old drug charges to shutter the popular venue on the eve of Halloween weekend. And on Saturday night, north Brooklyn's 171 Lombardy was hit, as cops arrived in the middle of the Pelly Twins and Todd P-presented Mischief Night concert there (featuring the Smith Westerns, Dom, and new SOTC crushes Sweet Bulbs) and broke the party up. Luckily, the show found a new home at the Silent Barn, and Dom went on there in the venue's kitchen, circa 4 a.m.

Still, that makes three in a week--four if you count the West Village's Love, which was reportedly shut down recently as well. Was 171 Lombardy part of a pattern of potentially Halloween-fueled, stepped up nightlife enforcement by the NYPD? Or was it an isolated incident, business as usual at a venue that is only quasi-legal to being with? Promoter Todd Patrick--one of the people behind Saturday's show--leans toward the latter. "These three shutdowns are a suspicious coincidence," he told us, "but I see a lot of evidence that they originated from initiatives by three very different agencies within the police, and under very different circumstances." One man's conjecture, but no promoter is more active in Brooklyn than Patrick is. The rest of his take:

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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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​Seems like just yesterday Japanther were bringing out 2008's Tut Tut Now Shake Ya Butt, staging punk rock operas in the basement of PS122 with Penny Rimbaud from Crass, causing trouble in various Barnes and Nobles, and getting robbed on the A Train. But a new year brings glad tidings--a new record, Rock 'n' Roll Ice Cream, due out on Menlo Park March 2nd; a new member, the Soviettes' Anita Sparrows, whom the band met out in California on Christmas Eve; and a new single, "Spread So Thin" (download below) which adds a new layer of demented girl group harmony to the band's usual fuzz n' buzz melodic tricks.

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​More info on the switch here. Not a good sign for 171 Lombardy, the sporadically active (and awesomely Google Street Mapped) Greenpoint venue that was originally set to host. Still--Yummy Fur!

​The Yummy Fur, the delightfully skuzzy Glasgow indie-pop band, didn't make it across the ocean in their initial 1992-1999 run; college radio love never quite did buy anybody a plane ticket, either then or now. But being in Franz Ferdinand definitely is good for a transatlantic flight, and so drummer Paul Thompson, who got his start in the Yummy Fur and went on to become a big, big rock star, will be making the trek to America this month with the band's original frontman John McKeown and long-serving guitarist Brian McDougall. The occasion? Ten years since the band's breakup, plus a What's Your Rupture?-issued greatest hits comp.

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Todd P is riding for 171 Lombardy St., which seems to have no name as yet, just an appealing description: "171 LOMBARDY ST @ VARICK AVE is a wonderful, big (but cozy) new space in a dramatic location w/ a beautiful roof patio overlooking the Midtown skyline, the Greenpoint industrial district & the Kosciusko Bridge -PLUS- it's air conditioned & heated & has a killer soundsystem & good acoustics & great dance floor lights & no neighbors." The mind sort of boggles at what this space was being used for prior to September, when it quietly began hosting rock shows--MNDR and Lemonade played the venue a few Fridays ago, and on Saturday, 171 will host Ian Svenonius' Chain and the Gang, Fiasco, and Preacher and the Knife, whose tribally fucked "Ghost House" we posted a couple hours ago. The whole thing's meant to go till late--the New York Night Train dance party will take over when the bands finish up--which should test that whole no neighbors assertion. But who could turn down a great view of the Greenpoint industrial district?