Let's play catch-up!

I have been MIA over the past few weeks. Trouble is, I went to Peru for a week (for my birthday!), then when I got back to New York, I had to pack up all of my stuff and move it around the city. Now about seven or eight different people are storing my stuff over the summer while I am gone.

Where am I? LIVING IN HELSINKI, FINLAND!

The next few posts are going to be me playing catch-up, hence the sudden boost in posts. Enjoy!

Em

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

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

Brooklyn in Tokyo

I left my mark on Tokyo! BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

I just came back from a nine-day trip to Japan, including Kyoto and Tokyo. Independence Bar in Asakusa (an area in the north-east side of the capital) is something to see. It was a gem among dive bars, like something you might find in Williamsburg around the Lorimer or Graham L train stops.

Independence has cheap beers – at least in comparison to the other parts of the city. Happy hour runs from 10-12 and the two lovely little Japanese girls who own/run the place will churn out both good and bad hip hop until dawn. Hell, they'll even let you DJ off of youtube if you want. They asked us to tag their billboard and the huge barrels they had. So, I did. Several times.

If you ever go there, tell them I say hi.

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Bat For Lashes – Prescilla

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