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One Occupy Wall Street group is taking May Day to places that probably don't get a lot of protests -- the Lower East Side's nightclubs.

Tonight, a faction of OWS called the Musicians Solidarity Council hopes to draw attention to the common practice of clubs bringing in musicians without actually paying them by protesting inside a few venues.

"It's really important to recognize that musicians are workers. Musicians are part of the 99 percent," Matt Plummer, a musician who is part of the council, told the Voice this morning. "I've played in clubs...that are clearly bringing in a lot of money...but we finish the night with a couple dollars a person."

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Sam Levin

Goldi, left, and Alphonzo Terrell, 29, with Occupy Guitarmy, in Tompkins Square Park this afternoon.

You can't arrest a song!

That's part of the idea behind one faction of a large network of demonstrations and protests planned for May Day -- the day of action this Tuesday that some suspect will push Occupy Wall Street into the spotlight again in a major way.

The group Occupy Guitarmy has actions planned all day Tuesday and held a rehearsal this afternoon for anyone who wanted to show up in Tompkins Square Park.

We thought we'd stop by and chat with some of the folks behind this portion of OWS and May Day to hear what their goals are for Tuesday.

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Usually when we post videos of things that happen on the subway, they show the underbelly of New York's underbelly. But sometimes lovely moments do happen on trains, like the one above via Gothamist. Last night, after news of Whitney Houston's death spread people on the 2 train responded with an impromptu "I Will Always Love You" sing-a-long.

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As we noted last night, singer Whitney Houston died yesterday at the age of 48. She was found dead of unknown causes in her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Beverly Hills police Lt. Mark Rosen told the Associated Press that "there were no obvious signs of any criminal intent." The death of the woman with the unbelievable voice also rattled our area. Last night, the Apollo in Harlem saw mourning and memorials. The New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where Houston sang as a child, remembered Houston in a small early morning memorial service. Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan will perform in Houston's honor at tonight's Grammy ceremony. [AP, CBS, Star-Ledger, NBC NY]

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Sad news out of Los Angeles tonight: The Associated Press reported that Whitney Houston has died at the age of 48. Houston was found dead in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she was scheduled to attend producer Clive Davis' pre-Grammy party tonight.

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Who said train conductors were mean, boring stickler-ish types shushing you in the quiet car, punching your tickets through a thinly disguised veneer of hatred, and kicking you off the train after you pee drunkenly in the vestibule? Train conductors are fun, too! Some of them are even sort of comedians. Like this guy in a video posted on YouTube yesterday. "I was born to be a clown," he says, "but I found this job instead." Indeed.

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Yesterday President Obama was in town messing up your commute fund-raising. His fourth stop of the whirlwind tour was at the Apollo Theater where, as you see in the video above, he expanded his known talents into the musical arena. Just a few bars come out -- "I'm...so in love," from Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" (you know, Obama's 2012 re-election theme) -- to the cheers of the crowd.

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Not so euphoric, young lady.

The latest in things that your mom and probably Mayor Bloomberg have been telling you are bad for you for ages (though of course you've failed to adhere to their recommendations to stop doing them) is...walking with headphones. Yep, walking around with your own very special theme song piped into your ears to the exclusion of any other sounds is not only the only way we want to live, it also might lead to your demise. According to the journal Injury Prevention, which has a vested interest in such things, "the number of people killed or seriously injured as a result of not being aware of their surroundings due to ear buds or headphones has tripled in the past six years." (Probably, the number of people traveling with personal musical devices plugged into their ears has also tripled, but no matter: Knowledge saves lives!)

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via @maydersen

Last night Patti Smith was at the beleaguered Chelsea Hotel, playing what appears to have been a new-hotel-management-planned event to which tenants were not invited, but the architect and others were. New hotel management, for the record, is King & Grove, "a new lifestyle hotel brand defined by modern luxury with eclectic influences" (the photo at right is from last night's event). Tonight, Smith is scheduled to perform for the tenants, a move evoking a flurry of criticism from none other than her intended audience. "It's like a chocolate-covered cow pie," said Arthur Nash, 39, an archivist and writer who has lived at the hotel since 2005, to the New York Times. "It's momentarily sweet, but then you get right back to the cow pie."

Smith has outlined the reasons for her involvement on her website, but her performance at the apparent behest of new hotel management does seem a hard pill to swallow. As Jeremiah's Vanishing New York puts it, it's still "hard to accept that Patti Smith is working with the developers who are gut renovating the Chelsea and evicting its tenants."

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Check out what happened on the subway, which is news, because it involves two people of different races and genders joining together in a dreaded place of lo mein fights and death threats to create beautiful, beautiful music. (Or, possibly, if you are a curmudgeon who hates hearing music that is not coming from your own personal earbuds while in transit, it is an awful racket that is really irritating, and did you ask for a performance with your commute?) Anyways, this is sweet, right? People are smiling and looking at each other! On the subway! Take it to the bridge!

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