It’s the time of year again, when the weather turns crisp and brisk in New York City, leaves begin to fall to the ground, visions of the underworld start to surface in storefronts, and the streets brim with more cool kids than there’s even room for on any given normal weekend in downtown Manhattan. Yes, it’s the CMJ Music Marathon, 2008 style, where your pricey badge will mean next to nothing and you’ll be left out in the cold at least a few times wondering if you have time to hop on the train to get to Brooklyn for that other show. But, you know what: None of that matters because it’s New York fuckin’ City, and for five days straight, no matter what, you’re going to consume tons of beer, tons of bands, and probably walk away from it all with some sort of cold that’ll put you out for the week following, all in the name of experiencing sounds from the best up-and-coming bands in the country and beyond in one of the greatest places in the world to see live music.

Crawdaddy! is tossing itself into the mayhem of this year’s festival to check out panels, films, and the music being offered up. Each page here represents one full day of the festival, where we’ve provided some preview highlights we’re looking forward to, and then we’ll be reporting back each following morning with what we saw the previous day before. No real agenda, no real cause. We’re gonna go with the flow and see how we emerge from the festival insanity that is CMJ.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

PANELS

It’s Broken, Fix It: Modern Profitability in the Music Industry:
Duh, the music industry doesn’t work anymore as it unilaterally abandons everything it was built on for one quick fix after another. Here, industry folk shall discuss new models that they believe are both profitable and fair for all.

2009: The Best Ways to Discover the Best New Music:
With about 800 million blogs, file sharing sites, social networks, fine publications such as the one you’re currently reading, and a whole miscellaneous slew of other ways to consume music, how is it best to maximize both your precious time and the results? These people will tell you.

FILM

What About Me?, director Duncan Bridgeman & Jamie Catto, UK (Tribeca Grand, 9pm)
Bridgeman and Catto traveled to over 50 locations around the world to explore eclectic issues like God, sex, and death for a multimedia project featuring notable figures such as the late Kurt Vonnegut, Dennis Hopper, Tom Robbins, Brian Eno, Michael Stipe, and Stewart Copeland, to dig into what both divides and unites us.

MUSIC

Ready? It’s Tuesday, the start of it all, and you might be thinking to yourself that you’re going to take it easy, but our guess is that the only night you get drunker than tonight is Saturday. Hey, didn’t Rolling Stone say something about Down Under being the cat pajama’s, the bee knee’s for burgeoning new music? Well, hey hey, why don’t you go see what all the fuss is about with New Zealand’s indie pop band the Ruby Suns (The Delancey, 9:15pm) and decide for yourself. No? Okay, then just head to the Loveless Records showcase at Fat Baby around that same time for the brilliant pop of Miniature Tigers, the sorta shoegaze-y sounds of Voyager One, and the electro pop of the Shackletons. While it’s doubtful you’ll be able to get into the Williamsburg Music Hall for the “Singing DJ Jens Lekman” set at 11pm, there’s plenty of bars to head to nearby if you fail. Our bet would be to stay in the city and hit up Pianos in the LES for the Octagon, a band that sounds like four dudes in plaid shirts angling for a cross between Silver Jews and early Rolling Stones. Pretty awesome. You could also go to Pianos early for Higgins and their easy to please Beatle-esque pop, because you could certainly do a lot worse around that time and place. Another show you probably won’t get into is the Vivian Girls (11pm, Red Bull Space), unless you get there early. But if that’s how you choose to spend your entire first night at CMJ, it wouldn’t be all that stupid. One potentially stupid question though: Does the Red Bull Space serve free Red Bull? God, that sounds awful. Okay, maybe try to see HR of Bad Brains at Crash Mansion at this late hour instead.

REVIEWS

Day 1 with Andres Jauregui:
Shearwater first grabbed my attention shortly before I left San Francisco. Having missed their recent, sold-out show at Great American Music Hall in August, I was happy to discover that the Austin, TX band were the “special guest” announced for the Brooklyn Vegan showcase at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.

Shearwater might be an offshoot of lauded Texan indie rockers Okkervil River, but in this critic’s opinion, singer-guitarist/keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg made a forthright decision in leaving that band to focus on this one. With a voice that was as pure and delicate as it is strong, Meiburg haunted the stage with his ethereal melodies. They are the cores of Shearwater’s songs, but the periphery has much to say on its own. Percussionist Thor Harris, for all his Cro-Magnon features, is a subtle intuitive player that imbued the set with plenty of personality. Providing accompaniment on a homemade hammer dulcimer, a clarinet, and a xylophone played with a bow, one could not help but to anticipate what Harris would do next.

Surprise is an equally potent foil to the deceptively formulaic trappings of Baltimore’s Ponytail. Their style can be simply described as a jammy, two-guitar freak out backed by propulsive drumming, fronted by the pre-linguistic squeals of a pint-sized girl. (Are you annoyed yet?) Ponytail’s name suggests something childish, easy and perhaps frivolous, and with a casual ear, it’s easy to hear why. But the raw truth of their live show is that it’s incredibly entertaining—and as performers, Ponytail are quite skilled at what they do. Singer Molly Siegel’s body language is one of restraint. She hunches over, groans into the microphone, and slowly gyrates her pelvis as her bandmates build up the tension in each song. It’s not exactly sexy, but it is provocative. And when she releases her stooped posture into a flourish of bounces and squeals, band firing on all cylinders behind her, it’s like a sugarcoated, G-rated orgasm.

I might have derived more pleasure from Jens Lekman’s “Singing DJ” set had it not been so literal. Granted, I have no cause to complain. Did Lekman lie about his intentions? No. But I definitely expected a little more singing out of him. Sure, he mixed samples of his work in with hip-hop and R&B, which was cool enough—it brought me back to my junior high days of listening to Z100, absorbing pop by osmosis, if not by naively misguided choice. Although to be fair I might have gotten more out of this set if I’d paid Mariah Carey more attention over the years (but at what cost?). Lekman threw in karaoke renditions of “Into Eternity” and “Sipping on the Sweet Nectar” to surely sweeten what might have been a sly joke or an honest experiment. It was fun, and it got the crowd moving their feet (although the alternative, watching Lekman pick through his CD wallet and take sips of beer, left few options otherwise), but I do hope that what I witnessed tonight was a rare if not unique occurrence.

A blast from the past that I jived with perfectly was a late-night set by Brooklyn’s own So So Glos. The four-piece rock band has been tearing up the New York DIY circuit of late, playing incendiary shows in “illegal” spaces and boasting a sound that easily recalls the Clash. That might be a bad thing if 1. their politics didn’t match references 2. they didn’t  completely rock Andrew W.K.’s Santos Party House last night.  Fortunately, the So So Glos check out on both activism and attitude. “We just fixed our bus so it runs on vegetable oil,” announced singer-bassist Alex Levine before launching into “Throw You Hands Up”, a total ripper of a song that likens the KKK to the NYPD to the FCC. Instant. Classic. — Andres Jauregui