​As you have presumably by now heard, New York Night Train host and DJ Jonathan Toubin was injured last week when a car crashed into his Portland hotel room. On Friday, Brooklyn Bowl will host a benefit concert for Toubin with performanes by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jon Spencer's Heavy Trash, Tunde Adibempe's Stabbing Eastwood, Royal Baths, and Reverend Vince Anderson. DJs will include Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers, Billy Miller of Norton Records, and Bear in Heaven. The show starts at 10:30, and tickets are on sale now. They're selling for a minimum of $25—though if you so choose, you can donate up to $100, every penny of which will go to the hospitalized DJ.

It's also worth noting that on Saturday, Glasslands Gallery will be hosting its own benefit, starting at 8:30 and featuring Xray Eyeballs, The Stalkers, K-Holes, and an acoustic Frankie and the Outs set. Full release about Friday's show below.

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Araabmuzik
Brooklyn Bowl
Tuesday, April 5

Better than: Bowling.

In the past few months, I've read a handful of articles and reviews suggesting that watching a DJ is boring. In one sense this is true, as watching the moves a DJ is making is almost always secondary to dancing to the records that DJ is spinning; watching the DJ generally happens only if the music is lacking. On the other hand, the last half-century is filled with DJs whose showmanship topped anything happening on the dancefloor before them. Even if he doesn't use a turntable, Araabmuzik is one of those DJs.

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If you're doing this costume, your synthesizer better work.

​Well, he's also playing a show, with fellow space cadets Apache Beat and Prince Rama, but more importantly, this is the world's first ever chillwave costume contest. Judged by Neon Indian themselves, which probably means that combo vest/synth/Afro-wig Alan Palomo costume is out. (If you are still undecided about what you're going as, we have some suggestions.) Check the flyer, right here:

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Glasser (top) and Zola Jesus, drowning out the crashing of pins. Pics by Puja.

​Zola Jesus/Deradoorian/Glasser
Brooklyn Bowl
Friday, October 22

CMJ needs to abolish this whole badge thing. The festival has admirably justified its existence, but we still can't understand the math behind it: Expensive as that badge is, there's a real chance of being rejected at the door of a major show whether you've got that neon-green lanyard around their neck or not. And who actually sat through those panels, anyways? Not us! (Sorry, guys.) We went rogue instead, spending the near-entirety of our CMJ weekend at Pitchfork's #Offline festival. Kanye was there Saturday night, of course, but thanks to Zola Jesus in particular, the night before was nearly as memorable.

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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.

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​Tom Tom Club is back: the new-wave dance band extraordinaire, featuring ex-Talking Heads rhythm section/actual married couple Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, is doing two shows in NYC to support their new Genius of Live LP, featuring of course their endlessly sampled mega-hit "Genius of Love." They're at Santos Party House tonight and Brooklyn Bowl Saturday night; we've got two tickets to the latter.

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​Well, that's one way to let CMJ know what you think of it, if you are the vast music recommendation website Pitchfork--by having a multi-day, 30-plus band festival in the middle of Williamsburg during the marathon's prime three nights. They're calling it #Offline, paradoxical hashtag and all; dates are set for October 21-23 at Brooklyn Bowl. The line-up skews a little Altered Zones (Sun Airway, Diamond Rings, Lower Dens), a little Jersey (Beach Fossils, Andrew Cedermark), and a lot, uh, Pitchfork (Freddie Gibbs! Marnie Stern! Avey Tare!), right down to the swagger that led the site to hold off on the announcement of their own gigantic shindig until it was only a week away. SOTC favorites A-Trak and How To Dress Well will be there, too; here's the full, three-day line-up:

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​If it worked for M.I.A., why not YLT? The beloved New Jersey outfit will kick off CMJ next week in the best possible way, playing a free show on Tuesday at Brooklyn Bowl opened by none other than SOTC favorites Screaming Females. Doors at 6 p.m., show at 8 p.m., which is slightly more merciful than last week's three-and-half hour gap for M.I.A., though if that show is any indication, expect the line to start forming in the early afternoon. Speaking of which: you just missed your chance to bid on WFMU's charity auction, in which not only would you have gotten to go to one of Yo La Tengo's eight sold-out Hanukkah shows, but you would have actually gotten to sing onstage with them, too. The winning bid (which went up about $250 in a final 10 minutes of furious eBay sniping)?

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Looks like everyone had fun this time. Pics by Puja, more below.

​M.I.A./Rye Rye
Brooklyn Bowl
Wednesday, October 6

These days, going to see M.I.A. perform comes with a healthy dose of trepidation. For loyalists -- those who choose to blame her rather tumultuous year mostly on bad luck -- last night's long-awaited free show was yet another hopeful attempt to qualify our love. Tonight was technically brought about as reparations for a poorly executed set at this year's HARD Fest (note: HARD had nothing to do with it), and maybe even as a reminder that M.I.A.'s wealth does not make her a sell-out (if that's even possible). Perhaps it was an attempt to coax back the die-hard fans who've read all about her tormented summer and started to fade out of idol-worship.

Whatever her motives, the plan worked -- the approximately 1,500 people waiting outside Brooklyn Bowl last night (only 600 made it in) proved that she has nothing to worry about on the fan front. Some had been in line since 2 p.m., seven and a half hours before the doors would even open, and while they braved it with smiles and jokes (read our interviews with a few die-hards here), a nervous, unspoken question remained: Would the wait be worth it?

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The middle section of the line outside the Brooklyn Bowl

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The staff at Brooklyn Bowl made it clear: Doors for M.I.A.'s long-threatened free show would open at 9:30 last night, and no one should bother lining up before 7. But by that time the line outside the venue (maximum capacity: 600) already stretched from the corner of Wythe and North 11 to end of the block, and then up another block to North 12. This suggests, of course, that despite her war with the Times and much-publicized sound problems at July's HARD Fest, M.I.A. matters as much as ever. These fans, all interviewed while standing in line between Wythe and Berry, would likely agree.

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