Honey, The Men, Foster Care, JJ Doll
Friday May 6, 8 pm at Alphaville: $8 in advance/ $10 at the door
The season of leisure is (sorta, almost) upon us, but before you can pull out your pastel polos and Adidas flip flops n’ white socks (predicting that a health-goths-in-hot-weather with ’80s Beverly Hills golf club vibe will dominate Riis Park Beach Bazaar this summer), you gotta ease into that seasonable mindset of giving very few fucks. Without the zen attitude, you’re just another banker boy who spills mustard on his Comme des Garcons tennis shoes and makes his French bulldog Daisy pay the consequences. In my opinion, the best way to avoid wanton animal abuse is to eliminate all possible stress factors– that means lining up your go-to tunes for the summer far in advance so that when it comes to making an all-day playlist on the fly, you’ll be ready to go.
Mykki Blanco
Market Hotel is Back, For Realz This Time

Sleater-Kinney’s sound check before their December 16 show, and the pole heard round the world (Photo by Konstantin Sergeyev for New York magazine)
Market Hotel did a remarkable job of capturing our attention with that Sleater-Kinney show. It’s almost as if the place is run by someone who knows a thing or two about putting on a great show. Huh. But since the Liquor Man and his cohort of party poopers (er, the State Liquor Authority) had only granted a temporary license for the soft opening, we were starting to get a real bad case of nervous dry mouth at the thought that perhaps we’d be waiting a long time for the Bushwick DIY venue to officially throw open its doors at Broadway-Myrtle. After all, we’d waited about half a decade already…
Shows: a Fest For Grade-A Grating Noise and a Change-Up at Nothing Changes
Our only utterance of advice for this week: pack em in, kids. If you’re as unsettled about the end of summer as we are, consider taking some of that aggression out at any number of these shows (there’s enough punk to go around for all of yous) or, better yet, gaze at some of these truly gnarly noise-makers in awe of frustrations much deeper than your own. Best, best, best of all, though: see what happens after a legendary rapper denounces her medium but returns to the stage anyway for something altogether new. Cheers to spiteful finales.