Old Dude Winter took the opportunity of his last week in charge to drop a final bowel movement on us: a big ol’ pile of snow to which the city adds its own secret ingredients –mostly street juice and dog refuse– resulting in the world’s grossest Slurpee flavor. But hope may have arrived just in time with a new music video from Bigmun & Frost. Shot in July of last year, it’s a reminder of what summertime is all about in Brooklyn– and for John Bigmun it’s not just backyard kiddie pools filled with beer, it’s also the Giglio Feast that goes down every year in Williamsburg at Lady of Mount Carmel. “It’s like the most amazing thing in the world,” he said. “It’s old Brooklyn, it’s the old country.”
live music
Jonesing For Good Shows? Take Your Lady Pills
Lady Pills (Photo via PopGun Presents/ Facebook)
Lady Pills, Dead Stars, RIPS, Monograms
Wednesday March 15, 8 pm at Trans-Pecos: $10
Another one of our own bit the dust– say it with me: RIP Shea Stadium. Now what? Get out there and keep supporting DIY venues across the city. And yes, that also goes for homegrown spots that just happen to be certified-legit, grown-up, and now pleasant after years of hard and risky work– never forget that these dudes are threatened by the looming, apparently totally arbitrary powers that be.
Stoner Punk, a Post-Twee World Order, and More Shows to See This Week
(Flyer via Alphaville)
Eames Armstrong, The New York Review of Cocksucking, Scant, Brandon Lopez, Lacanthrope, Sapphogeist
Monday March 6, 8 pm at Alphaville: $10
Is life even real anymore? Well, considering that we, fine people of this once and forever great city, now have a band named The New York Review of Cocksucking to call our very own, it’s hard to believe that reality right now is indeed real. How could it be? Especially when the official soundtrack to our lives, at least for a moment– jazzily improvised by none other than the duo Michael Foster and Richard Kamerman (who have done the right thing in choosing a moniker that sounds like a James Franco-produced lit mag)– is a truly alien form of avant-garde freakwave. Lend your ears to their looping tape noise (disintegration incarnate) and saxophone sounds easily mistook for the pleasure wales of fornicating dolphins, and discover that the finite world is overrated.
Gig Alert: Ghosts of Death By Audio Past, and Bad Kids Go Out at School Night
(Flyer via School Night!)
School Night! with Active Bird Community, Mannequin Pussy, GTY, In India
Monday February 27, 8 pm at Baby’s All Right: FREE with RSVP
LA is invading Brooklyn with an installment of School Night!, a weekday showcase featuring cool bands and presumably some awkward schoolgirl attire, put on by Chris Douridas of LA’s coolest college radio station KCRW.
RSVP and get in the door free before 9:30 pm. After that you’re on your own– even so, the show will only put you out $5. Brooklyn Brewery has volunteered to play the coolest lunch lady ever and hand out free beer, which you too can partake in as long as you can get your butt in the door between 7 pm and 8 pm.
Week in Shows: a Church for PC Worship, Psychedelic Orchestras, and More
(Flyer via AdHoc)
Naomi Punk, PC Worship, Maria Chavez
Tuesday February 21, 7 pm to 11 pm at the Park Church Co-Op: $12
If this one’s news to you, throw down your laptop (yeah, like, on the ground), pick up your feet and hurry get a move on– this one starts, like, now.
Attraction numero uno is an Olympia-based band called Naomi Punk, returning from a bitty recording hiatus, presumably with an album in the works. And their name doth not betray– Punk’s stripped-down, dusty-beer-can styling tacks a refreshingly chill vibe over garage-rock tradition, which can often veer toward needless broey BS. In other words, these cats put some much-needed “punk” in garage punk.
Gig Alert: V-Day Hand Massages, ‘Devil Worshipping Blues’ in a Church, and More
(Flyer by Kerry Santullo via Facebook)
Tuesday February 14, 8 pm at Trans-Pecos: $10 in advance/ $12 at the door
If you’re anything like me, you will be spending Valentine’s Day alone. But cheer up, flying solo is not such a terrible fate– just think about all the stupid flowers you won’t have to carry around in some silly bouquet or whatever, and all that dumb perfume you don’t have to spray all over your body just to smell like the mall. Unlike everyone else, you’re gonna spend your V Day being aggressively single, which means leaving your apartment, head held high, and rocking your natural scent with pride, because you’re going to need all the pheromones you can muster.
Week in Shows: Netherlands of Brooklyn, ‘Nihilist Queer Revolt,’ and More
(Flyer via Saint Vitus)
Wednesday February 8, 6:30 to 11 pm at Saint Vitus: $15
Given the heavy flow of benefit shows going on around town these days, it seems inevitable that a band called Netherlands would pick Planned Parenthood as their cause of choice. Proceeds aren’t going directly to Planned Parenthood, but instead will be funneled into a PAC known as PPNYC Votes, which supports candidates running for political office at the state level. But wait a sec, aren’t we doing pretty well when it comes to reproductive rights in New York state? Actually, not so much. As one of the show’s organizers explained on Facebook, there is still a majority in the State Senate “opposed to reproductive rights.” You, like me, probably assumed that these Biblical, stick-up-the-you-know-what holdups of complex, usually self-hating origin (I mean, Brad Patton, the shimmery blond and toothy-smiled gay porn star, made a really convincing Mike Pence) were reserved for rural representatives, the same guys (they are all guys, let’s be real) who wilt at the sight of a stray tampon string. Wrong-o again. Four of those PP-blockin’ pols are from our very own city.
Week in Music: Resistance Raffle & Riot, No Shame in Tear Jerkers, and More
(Flyer via Alphaville)
Scully, B Boys, Decorum, NOIA, The Christian Peslak Band, Milk Dick
Friday January 27, 8 pm at Alphaville: $12
The Trump opposition movement continues with more benefit shows extending well beyond Day 1, including this Friday-night gathering in support of Planned Parenthood. Tunes will be provided by Scully, a dream pop/cloud rock trio by way of Oakland (née The Splinters) still drifting on the bleary vibes running through their most recent release, No Sense.
Also newgaze from Decorum, and the music of NOIA (aka Barcelonian musician Gisela Fulla-Silvestre), which, if you can imagine such a lovely thing, is the sonic equivalent of knee-buckling onto a stack of 50 body pillows. And two just-announced acts– Milk Dick (foot-stompin’/milk-and-cookies-style garage punk, a la The Black Lips) and a “special secret band” B Boys (think: Goo-era Sonic Youth) have been tacked on to the lineup too.
Week in Shows: Teen Dreams Abound, Discover Digipoetics, and More
(Flyer by Alec Lambert)
Thursday January 19, 8 pm at The Gateway:$5 in advance/ $8 at the door
Well, there’s a super compressor of shows happening this week between now and, as The Gateway calls it “the inevitable.” And we can’t think of a better way to keep your spirits up and get the ol’ body machine moving than a Retail show. You’ve probably seen retail, since they’re one of the hardest working bands in Brooklyn, a borough full of musicians who churn out records, shows and, in Retail’s case, self-replication by way of march, at a grind-till-death pace.
The question is whether that has been in the form of a sticker stuck to a dive bar bathroom door, or at an actual show— but if you know, then you know. If you don’t, you gotta go. The band’s new record Dead cranks it up by nearly every measure, with face-blasting screams that have the kind of sharpness shaped only by scar tissue. It’s majorly fast, unadulterated hardcore. In other words, total catharsis.
Tags: Art + Culture, Babycastles, Bushwick, diy, Greenpoint, live music, MATCHLESS, music, Retail, shows, The Gateway, The Glove, White Rope
Shows this Week: Icons of Noise Do the Supergroup + Knockdown Stays Nasty
(Flyer via Knockdown Center/ ‘Nasty Women’ & ‘Stay Nasty’)
Stay Nasty
Thursday January 12 through Sunday January 15 at Knockdown Center: first night free, $10 individual, $20 all access pass
Earlier we told you about Nasty Women, the massive new exhibition bringing a whopping 1,000 pieces of art made by 700 artists (all of them women and female-identifying) to Knockdown Center this Friday. The organizers have lined up a “very diverse” group for the everything’s-for-sale exhibition (if you buy it, you get to drag it out the door with you that day), which pretty much guarantees a feeding frenzy. Sounds scary? Well, suck it up and relish in the competition because, seriously, when’s the last time you truly got excited about anything? Plus, if you can bring yourself to cough up a hundo bill–at the very most, since the art work must be priced at $100 or less (yup, that even applies to the fancy sparkly art stars involved in the show)– you can feel like a somewhat sorta decent half-human because all the proceeds are going to Planned Parenthood.