Review: Patrick Wolf at (le) poisson rouge

To get Patrick Wolf alone in a room for a private concert would be not only an awesome feat, but also a delight. His show at (le) poisson rouge last night was intimate and charming—and it’s probably as close as most of us will get to having him serenade us personally.

But it was more than just a concert; it was a conversation. It was a night of storytelling and music, with Patrick Wolf. Wolf shared family stories, inspirations for certain songs, funny anecdotes, and more. The crowd interacted with him enthusiastically, applauding and cheering at every opportunity, and there seemed to be an equal exchange between Patrick and his audience. (He even got two—count ‘em—two standing ovations!)

This was Wolf’s first live acoustic performance in New York in years. He played without a set list, which he said he missed being able to do. He opened his set to requests, which incurred a barrage of Patrick Wolf song titles. He played the ones he could do with his acoustic set (and even pulled out his dulcimer for one song).

Read the rest of my story for the New York Press here.

So fabulous.

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Lady Sovereign – So Human

Review: Lady Sovereign & Chester French at Highline Ballroom

Note to the viewers of Lady Sovereign’s show at Highline Ballroom last night: when a musician points her microphone at you, you’re supposed to sing. Yes, that’s right. You sucked as an audience.


You could see it on Lady Sovereign’s face, as she rhymed her Brit-rapper heart out – she was annoyed. She kept trying to pump the crowd up with her hilarious stage antics: flipping the Sovereign-goers off, grabbing and caressing her boobs, and even splashing beer all over the kids right in front, à la Gallagher. She handed beers out, too, and went around the stage pouring Heineken in fans’ mouths. Who cares about swine flu?

Lady Sovereign pours beer into a fan's mouth

In fact, the sharing of the booze sparked a “Swine flu, Fuck you” chant during her hit song “Love Me or Hate Me.” A few enthusiastic admirers reveled in the messy beer fountain, and these people were generally the ones with their arms pumping at all times. There were a handful of people rocking out to her electro-grime music, but the majority of the audience refrained from dancing and cheering. When Lady Sov left the stage the first time, she looked back at the crowd members and indicated that they should go nuts in about two minutes (just in time for her encore).

Read the rest of my review for the New York Press here!

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Luniz – I Got Five On It

Review: Ratatat at Terminal 5

Talk about moving on up. Ratatat, a band that, three years ago, was pretty fresh on a lot of people’s iPods has basically become a household name in the music world. That could be why, at their Terminal 5 show on Tuesday, April 21, there was a sea of teeny-bopper fans and frat boys. And lots of grinding.

The show itself was a spectacular display because of Ratatat’s always awesome stage production. The two main guys – Evan Mast and Mike Stroud – used to play with a third member, but they seemed to replace him with even more strobe lights, which made the concert quite literally electrifying. This was a good choice, however, because the light show was perfect: the strobe lights burst out, declaring the peaks of each song, while not distracting from the projection of videos behind the duo. (The projection works well with the group because of Stroud’s tendency to walk in front of it, leaning back or headbanging or whatever he decides to do, casting a massive shadow that mimics his movements.)

And seeing Ratatat live is spicy, like the hot sauce on the rim of your Tecate (which they were drinking onstage). Because they dropped the third stage member, Ratatat had to rely on lots of pre-recorded stuff. But the things they do live make up for it, like fast-paced drum solos lit up by a flood of red or blue light. The beats are bass heavy, with glittery synth chimes and spicy guitar riffs. Once the bass kicked in, as with any good dance music, the crowd started grooving. When the synth flickered in, the dancing intensified. But all of that is just set up. The bass and the synth combine in anticipation of something more intense and somehow abstract, and that’s Stroud’s guitar. It cuts the repetitive nature of each song with its irregularity, making it the real hot sauce to the equation. And playing classics (har har) like “Wildcat” and “Seventeen Years” interspersed with newer tracks like “Flynn” and “Shempi” ensured a pleased audience.

All photos by me

See my original article on the Washington Square News blog.

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Simian Mobile Disco – Love

Pete Hamill V3.0

Remember how I said I had a photo of me with the legendary Pete Hamill? HERE IT IS HELL YES.


I reviewed his book Downtown: My Manhattan earlier this year, and also chronicled an interview my class had with the dude. He's great, and I wish he was my grandpa. Thanks for everything, Mr. Hamill!

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Damien Jurado – Desert

A talk with Pete Hamill is serendipitous

Everyone should get the chance to see life through Pete Hamill’s eyes. His books undoubtedly give you a glimpse of it, as I mentioned in my review of his book Downtown: My Manhattan, but reading his words are nothing like listening to them. 

Today, Hamill came to talk to my Beat class at NYU and my 10 fellow students and I were engrossed by his 90-minute talk. In person, he looks just like he does on the cover of the book, but a little bit older and wiser. His eyelids sag a bit, giving him a wispy, sentimental look. 

We grilled him on his life – from his bouts with alcoholism to his divorce, from realizing he was a writer (and not a painter) to his optimism for the Internet. We each got the chance to ask him questions, but sometimes, I forgot my questions in his captivating narrative. He told us about the old journalism days and, though he never had a beat, he loved talking to musicians. This is when I stopped thinking and just turned to listen. 

“Music, to me, is the highest art,” he said. (Yes! I thought.) “The problem with musicians is that it’s hard for them to explain themselves. They don’t have a language because they don’t need one.” (Yes, yes, yes!) 

And the most fascinating person he ever interviewed was not Gloria Cardinale, as he joked (though any arts journalist would be happy to interview her, I’m sure – as would I), but Max Roach, a famous African-American drummer who worked with great jazz musicians like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Hamill himself talks about them as if they were here only yesterday. He manages to combine days of yore with modernity in a wonderful grandpa-esque form of storytelling. 

Now, Hamill enjoys a life split between New York and Cuernavaca, Mexico. He’s married to a Japanese writer (this being his second marriage), and he has two daughters. But he is still wed to New York. In our interview, Hamill described New York as “existential,” “a marvel,” and a city that’s about possibility, and “the remaking of self.” 

His book doesn’t cover it, so we had to ask: is there anything Pete Hamill, New York’s wonder boy, hates about the city? Definitely. Some things annoy him, from the Starbucks on every corner to women who cart around nine-year-olds in strollers (and how the strollers can be like Hummers, he said.) 

He hates not seeing children wandering around the streets of Brooklyn, getting themselves in trouble and falling in love with the wrong people. (“I just worry that they’re having virtual childhoods,” he said.)

Another one of his hates, which I felt at heart because I hate it too, is the disappearance of great bookstores and record shops. He described how marvelous it is to walk into a store for one thing (a certain book or record) and walking out with something else. You can’t do that with iTunes or Amazon.com. 

“You lose a sense of serendipity,” Hamill said. 

Man, how can he do that! He just made me fall into a whim of sentimentality – one of the things I wasn’t fond of in his book – and love it! I lost my usual cynicism in the midst of his tales. He signed a postcard that I got in Japan for me. He also was more than happy for a photo op. (Photo to come soon!) 

All I can say now is: Thank you, Mr. Hamill.

Review: Asobi Seksu at Bowery Ballroom

Last night, I went to see Asobi Seksu play at Bowery Ballroom. It was a fantastic show!

You can read my review on the New York Press blog here. Be sure to browse my other photos below the story!

I went to the show alone, since I was covering it, so the beginning was kind of boring. Me and a beer and my cell phone, at least in between bands. Then the show came on, and I was blown away. My favorite part was when the band was about to leave stage for the first time. Yuki, the lead singer, took off her necklace, placed it on the mic stand, and went to tackle the drums. She took control of them and banged out the same heavy indie-rock beats that had been playing only moments before. To put it concisely, it rocked.

And of all people for me to casually start talking to, I pick the NYU grad student who used to be in the band. After the venue cleared out, he introduced me to the current lineup, who are all so nice and humble. Yuki's boisterous laugh is completely antithetical to her small figure. Billy was really polite and interesting. James was hilarious, and I hardly spoke with him because I couldn't think of any witty retorts. I, unfortunately, did not meet the drummer.

Several of the band members' families were at the show, so people lingered around for a while. Quite a few ex-members were there as well, so it was like one big happy reunion – and me. No one opposed to my presence, though. In fact, everyone was quite welcoming. A few hours and a beer later, it was time to go home.

All in all, good night.

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Chew Lips – Solo

A Personal Narrative of Drugs and Youth and 9/11

I guess the events of 9/11 will always be fuzzy in my mind. Not fuzzy because of confusion or disillusionment, but fuzzy because I have never had a clear idea of what happened there. I visited the site a week ago and took a walking audio tour of the surrounding areas, a program run by the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, to get a better idea of the tragedy.

On September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes hurtled into the two World Trade Center towers in downtown Manhattan. It was an apparently coordinated suicide attack by al-Qaeda. An estimated 2,749 people were murdered that day.

All that is clear to me. They are the basic facts. But, when this happened, I was all the way in Los Angeles, just waking up to a normal school day. I was in the eighth grade.

Anything that happens when you’re 13 is less important than you are. And years later, even the most vivid memories always seem to glaze over with uncertain details and missing bits. The only memories I have from that day are as follows:

My parents called to wake me up for school. Our family had just added a second phone line to our house, one for the kids, one for the adults. A ringing phone was my alarm clock.

One parent (I can’t even remember which) said: “Good morning, it’s time to get up for school. Oh, and a plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Fuzzy from sleep, that meant nothing to me. Even passing by the television to the kitchen for breakfast didn’t thrill me; I was 13. And I had never even known what those two towers were. I had only seen them in pictures.

After that, things blur again. I remember that our teachers weren’t allowed to show the news to us during school hours, and I remember the image of the smoking towers and the scrolling news lines. But that’s about it. The rest is lost in my 13-year-old mind.

Last week, when I went to the WTC site, I was drugged up, and not on purpose. I had been really sick during the previous days and was trying to clear my lungs by using Mucinex. But, of course, I’m one of those rare cases that experiences stronger-than-normal side effects with this particular drug and I was actually high. Lightheaded. Confused. Blurry eyed. And fuzzy.


So, even though I had an emotive voice narrating the whole event from start to finish, I could hardly concentrate. The $10 tour seems obscure and distant to me now. My notes from the day are scribbles of quotes and random details. I was tipsy! I could hardly walk straight! How was I supposed to take in the enormity of the tales and tragedies displayed before me?

All I know for sure is what anyone can see there right now: that the remains of 9/11 are a sad and unfortunate shadow of what used to tower triumphantly into the sky.

But I look at it another way. The remains are beautiful. And on a sunny day, you can see the beautiful reflection of the sun bouncing off the glass buildings surrounding the site, while cranes and rusty metal arch in front of them, indicating the rebuilding of a new monument, a new downtown, a new America and (we hope) a new world.

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Julie Doiron – Will You Still Love Me In . . .

Book Review: Pete Hamill's "Downtown: My Manhattan"

Pete Hamill knows New York. There’s no arguing that. His book Downtown: My Manhattan, first published in 2004, is a crash-course in New York history and culture, both for natives and outsiders. He skillfully blends nostalgia with New York now, giving readers history while making his present-day activities somehow relevant.


The son of Irish immigrants, Hamill incorporates his own Brooklyn-born past with the immigrant tale. He takes readers on a walking tour of his downtown, pulling us from Battery Park to Times Square (and beyond!). He weaves through history, narrating the Knickerbocker tale, revealing Herman Melville’s Pearl Street birthplace, reporting the mysterious appearance of the angry bull in front of the Stock Exchange and telling about the founding of the Village Voice. There’s just so much to take in!

Nostalgia is key, mostly because of the constant loss – and acceptance of loss – that New Yorkers face every day. Hell, I become nostalgic for New York’s past, and I have only lived here a few years.

His style is conversational, but still eloquent. His stories are informed and sentimental, and they add context to a city that over eight million people call home – eight million people who probably know little about its amazing story.

The only drawback of the book is that the reading can sometimes become tiresome or heavy. This is not because of Hamill himself, mind you, but because of constant facts and historical details that weigh down the narrative at times. Well, sometimes it's Hamill's fault. He gets a bit too sentimental every once in a while, which might distract readers (like me). But it isn’t long before he makes his next reference to the film Black Orpheus or to playwright Harold Pinter or some other fascinating detail, pulling readers back into the glorious past of New York.

It’s a good read, definitely. Still, not as good as Miroslav Sasek’s children’s book, This Is New York.

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Telepathe – So Fine

MANHATTAN STORY: Brothers at Bowery

There are lessons to be learned at The Bowery Mission, a homeless shelter located at 227 Bowery in Manhattan. Whether feigned or factual, the stories I heard when I visited last week were the kind that stick with a person, and they keep ringing in your ears days later.

There was Alexander Romero, a clean looking guy wearing jeans, a jean jacket and a nice blue sweater vest – who used to do crack, weed and cocaine. And then there’s Steve Zakrzewski, a man who looks like anybody’s father in his checkered blue collared shirt (with a tie) and glasses – and he took the long route south with alcoholism. Or even the Bowery’s Director of Outreach, James Macklin, who was once a participant in the Bowery’s program because he lost a business to cocaine and found himself sleeping on the A subway train.

“I was a taker and not a giver,” Macklin said. “Cars, clothes, women and song. Now, I’m a giver instead of a taker.”

The people who come through The Bowery Mission, which was established in 1879, go through a program that involves learning about the Bible and taking classes to better situate themselves for the job market. The Bowery Mission even houses and feeds its members while helping them find jobs when they graduate from the program. The meals are open to the homeless, too, not just those who found their way to the homey institution.

Religion plays a major role in their rehabilitation. Each person there had a story of, not exactly rags to riches, but rags to Jesus. They all shared stories of how they got caught up in bad things – drugs or otherwise – and told us students that we should never let anything control our lives, except for faith in God.

The organ pipes in the chapel at The Bowery Mission.

Zakrzewski said that accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior was what helped him most.

“I never had that motivation, that comfort, that peace of mind before,” he said. “And there’s a lot of counseling between brothers.”

Those involved with The Bowery Mission really become a family – a pack of brothers, lost and found.

That’s the thing that stuck out to me most: the brothers. In the living quarters, which looked like a mixture between an army bunker and a college dorm with its rows and rows of bunk beds and closets, I found a sign: a sign that reminded the brothers to turn out the lights when not in the room.

It addressed them as “Brothers.” Next to that, it said “& Bro’s,” which was scribbled out, and “Brethern” [sic] was written above that. The misspelling was charming rather than annoying (which is saying a lot for me, a spelling and grammar nut), and its sentiment was as endearing as it was welcoming.

Take notes, Beau!


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Animal Collective – My Girls