As the curtain closes on the act called 3 Catherine St, I must look again, for the sixth time in five years, for a new place to live.
Some of you may have heard the rumors about "the ultimate loft space" in Redhook, in Bed-Stuy, in Williamsburg, featuring Nate, Joe Grocki, Drew, Chak, Dustin, Big Nate, and me. We would build a studio and record bands and live in a big commune and it would be great. We talked about the "summer of building walls" and I looked forward to some manual labor in the summer, drywalling and painting and constructing the place ourselves.
Then there was the Great Flood of 2009. Our basement abode spent three days in the mildew of Brooklyn garbage and god knows what the hell is in the water around here. My mattress didn't make it, and I just barely saved the drums and amps. I spent the whole night wrapping up cables and hanging them out to dry, along with my sheets and some clothes. It was miserable.
Then we got the news about the loan. The loan that was supposed to grant access to our glorious loft space. It didn't go through. People started dropping off the lease and a general depression hung in the air. Nate and Drew moved home. April found a space in Park Slope. My options were running out.
Enter Death By Audio. Those of you in New York may recognize the name as a small all-ages venue in Williamsburg, in an old refurbished warehouse. Some of you musicians may recognize it as a manufacturer of guitar pedals. However you recognize the name, it also doubles as a living space.
Harry and the Potters play DBA
I was lucky enough to meet a friend of April's that lived there. He invited me to check out the place to see if I wanted to take the spare room that had been available for the past few months. I walked through the first half of the warehouse, through the stage area and into the back where everyone lived. I passed a row of bikes, skateboards, and various speakers and keyboards in the entry way. I emerged into a huge space with high ceilings that functioned as the kitchen/living room area. One of the guys was preparing a fish dinner with potatoes. Another was cutting out some magazine clippings and pasting them on a bass drum. It bustled with activity at all times.
There was a practice space on the first level, mostly for bands that rented time. Attached to this was a makeshift mixing room, cluttered with DBA pedals. The next room was the pedal production room. About 15 pedals sat open on the counter, in front of a wall of resistor drawers. They are debuting a new pedal in the next few months, and are getting ready for the demand.
Wandering into the next room I saw a wall full of paint cans, a workbench, screens for printing, some lumber, and an array of hand tools. There was no shortage of projects to work on. On the side of the kitchen, a second level was constructed above all of these work spaces.
Upstairs was a small living space with a projector for movies. My room would be next to this. It seems to good to be true. So I came back today to meet some more of the guys. A Place To Bury Strangers , a few of them residents, were playing their new album for an older guy from Mute Records. I sort of got an informal tour and they told me I was welcome to move my stuff in.
So I close this chapter of my life and enter the next, and I don't think it could get any better. Who knows what is going to happen from here on out.
Since the last time I posted here, I've been paid for the first two weeks of my job. As much as I loved living off of dumpster bagels and drinking $2 PBR, having money rules. Just being able to splurge again is great, and I did so this past weekend at the Bent Festival in Manhattan.
For those of you that are not familiar with "circuit bending," is the process of opening up a simple circuit and modifying it, or "bending" it, to produce different sounds. For example:
Now, most of this sounds like nonsense. Circuit bending and music are definitely two separate areas that should not be confused at first. Circuit bending is the process of discovery: finding out that your furby or see-and-say can produce the same sounds from Dark Side of the Moon. Does this mean you can make another Dark Side of the Moon with your see-and-say and a soldering iron? Absolutely not.
The first night of Bent Festival was Thursday, but that also happened to be the same night as Handmade Music at the 3rd Ward, which is essentially the same thing. So I decided to stay in Brooklyn and check out what was going on over there.
Turns out we got two performers that were scheduled for Friday night of Bent Fest. First, and most impressive, was Peter Edwards of Casperelectronics. Essentially, Peter has a bunch of different tone generators with the same clock running through the system. Each tone generator has different settings, and by modifying each one slightly, he was able to simulate a full "band" sound, using a patch bay of external Voltage Controlled Oscillators.
For those of you that didn't understand that, he plugged lots of stuff in and turned lots of knobs. Made cool sounds. This is sort of a preview into his live performance:
The second act was called E Squared. This was a more random performance, utilizing many different kinds of circuits from old turntables to card readers. They were sort of like DJs that used circuit boards.
So on Friday night, I headed down to The Tank, right on the edge of tourist hell Manhattan, and found that the space was A LOT smaller than I expected. Of course I had missed the free beer, but I was just in time to see Peter Edwards perform again.
I ran into my old friend Lauren, who is working on her masters thesis based around the circuit bending culture. We talked to Dr. Bleep, the inventor of the Thingamagoop. It is essentially a small noise-box with a photo-sensor and a few VCOs, but they're handmade and pretty cool to play with.
I also checked out an installation that used circuits with traced patterns for your hands to produce various different tones, as well as video.
For sale, there were a lot of starter kits, from stripped down Arduinos, to LED displays, to synths constructed on a breadboard. Instead of buying any of the kits, I opted to go for the book that was debuted earlier that night by Nic Collins. It is called Handmade Electronic Music, and it is a great read for people interested in getting started with circuit bending. You do not need an electronics background for it either.
Saturday night I had planned to return, but work was exhausting so I headed home. I was hoping it was going on today, but no such luck. All the tutorials and everything were Saturday afternoon. However, I'm going to start building some projects in this book and see what comes of it. I have a soldering iron and a breadboard so why the hell not.
Here's a preview to my next post: What happens when you put seven audio engineers in 2,000 square foot loft in Bed-Stuy? This could be the start of a hilarious sitcom.
Growing up playing the saxophone, I've always had a slight affinity for jazz. I played "Mercy Mercy Mercy" in my high school jazz band at age 16, and "Take the A-Train" at 17. However, I was always swept up with the hip punk rock scene, and jazz music was filed next to classical music on the "old people music" shelf of my teenage life.
Seven years later, it has become pretty much the only music in my life. Aside from a handful of bands, jazz has taken up the majority of my listening time. Tonight, I want to highlight a few great albums I've been listening to lately that you should all check out.
Roland Kirk - Volunteered Slavery (1968)
This album is one of the best saxophone albums I've ever heard. Roland Kirk, blind genius and multi-instrumentalist, mixes snippets of popular songs in with his freestyle saxophone. "I Say A Little Prayer For You" bounds into a Coltrane tribute (with the album below), which explodes into a free-jazz extravaganza. Occasionally, Kirk will warble along with his flute or just yell nonsense. This is the most fun jazz album I've heard in a long time.
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (1965)
One of the most highly regarded jazz albums of all time, and for good reason. Coltrane kills it on this one. He's in the foreground and nothing else. The songs grow and morph from beautiful melodies into improvisational masterpieces. The drum solo on this album is probably the best I've ever heard. So good.
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um (1959)
This is another upbeat, bebop jazz album reminiscent of old New Orleans jazz. Mingus records with an ensemble, alternating from a main melody line into a turn-based improv section. I hold a special place in my heart for Charles Mingus for his involvement with John Cassavetes, doing the entire soundtrack of Shadows.
Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz To Come (1959)
Coleman pioneered improvisational jazz with this album. Primarily blues based, the saxophone wails and screams through seemingly tempo-less structures. The absence of a piano creates room for the other instruments to really explore the space. The spontaneity of this album makes it great.
Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out (1959)
Kicking off with "Blue Rondo A La Turk" in 9/8, Dave Brubeck designs this entire album around the waltz, shifting from 5/4 to 9/8 to 3/4. Probably the album that spawned "cool jazz" or "lounge," using Brubeck's sauntering piano to drive most of the songs. Such a laid back album, I love it.
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (1970)
It took a while to narrow down my Miles Davis collection to one standout album, but I think Bitches Brew takes the cake. Miles was there for the dawn of avant-garde jazz, the conversion to electric, and then took jazz to the next level of improvisation. The electric guitar, synthesizer, and percussion led to the fusion of jazz and rock music. This album also utilized tape loops and reverb chambers, almost unheard of before this point. Miles is the king of jazz, hands down.
There are many more I could write about, but I think this is a good cross-section of what I've been listening to. Needless to say, the late 1950's were a great era for jazz music, evolving from a traditional music into an experimental phenomenon. The musicians were pure soul, playing what they felt at the moment. It's pure emotion, and the saxophone can convey it the best. I've been dying to get back into playing jazz in New York, and would love to play sax with a small group one or two nights a week, just to get back into the swing of things.
I really want people to add to this list. If you have a jazz album you can't live without, put it down here. I really want to expand on my collection.
It's true, I'm finally working. 5 days a week (to start) at NYCe Wheels, a specialty bike shop that sells folding and electric bikes. Although I've never really gotten into this type of riding, I've got to admit the bikes are pretty cool.
Brompton, one of our folding bike brands, is so light and compact that I can't help but post this video, for the sheer convenience of the thing:
The folding bikes are great for New York, a city where everyone wants to save as much space as possibly while simultaneously saving the environment.
The electric bikes are pretty sweet too. Our biggest clients are Chinese delivery guys, who pay over $1500 cash to take an electric bike on the job. They cover it in cardboard and duct tape, which I suppose makes it look flimsy or cheap, but in reality they are pretty powerful.
My boss is a great small businessman from Austria. Knows all about conserving energy and good business plans, and is very tech-savvy. Our website is pretty high-tech. He also chided me for not commuting to work, so I started riding the 10 mile commute to and from work:
This post is going to be an observation of New York that is strictly my opinion. Since I've only been living here for a short time, I obviously do not have the tenure nor experience to accurately comment on this subject. Corrections are welcome, and comments are always appreciated. Again, this is personal experience and observation.
Based on what I've observed since living here, my plethora of New York City-based films, and what I know about music in New York, the center of activity has been constantly moving around the city since the 1950's. Rent is cheap in certain areas, poor aspiring musicians move to that area, and it becomes a great cultural center for music and art. So WHERE does this happen, how long does it last, and why?
Times Square
I guess the best place to start is Times Square. The commercial tourist center of the world, Times Square is probably the last place you'd go to see young artists these days. It's packed with retail stores and expensive restaurants, and while there are many shows around the area, they are usually very established people charging outrageous prices. However, it wasn't always like this.
In the 1920's, Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire were tied to Times Square and referred to it as The Tenderloin, the most desirable place to live in Manhattan. After the depression, it was a haven for gambling and strip clubs. It was considered dangerous in the 50's, and it wasn't until Rudy Guiliani started his mass cleanup in the 1990's did the area become commercialized.
Carnegie Hall, on 57th St, was a main attraction for people like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk. Midtown (between 14th and 59th) is still the center of New York industry and activity, but in the 1950's, there were many more seedy bars and small jazz clubs.
Greenwich Village
If you go to Greenwich Village today, home of NYU, there is still a great amount of music and cultural activity. Washington Square is always alive with street musicians. The West Village has great food and small music clubs, and there is a good deal of young aspiring students. However, it's kinda missing something nowadays. The Village at night reminds me of Beaver Ave in State College, just a lot of young kids drinking and walking the streets. Rent is expensive, though, and it kind of seems like a museum that wants to reflect what it once was.
I had this same feeling the last time I visited San Francisco. North Beach, the home of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, and William Burroughs, was the West Coast equivalent of Greenwich Village. In the late 50's and 1960's, they were the centers for Beatnik activity. Bob Dylan, the Mamas and the Papas, Peter Paul and Mary, Jimi Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, The Velvet Underground, Joan Baez, and many others got their start here. The Weather Underground was also based in The Village. If you visit The Village today, it is a great place for dinner. Washington Square is bustling on a nice day, and there is music everywhere. People are generally a little older though, and it seems like the Bohemian days of old are long gone.
The Lower East Side
Initially a primarily immigrant neighborhood, the gentrification of the Lower East Side happened when rent in The Village started getting very high. These days, the LES is still a pretty hip place. The rent is low, for Manhattan, and there are moderately priced bars on Ludlow St and Rivington. The Mars Bar (2nd Ave & 1st St) is one of my favorite bars in Manhattan. The Lit Lounge has a huge basement with DJs all the time. The Cake Shop is a great bar/coffee shop with bands every night of the week.
The LES has a lot of art galleries, and is probably the easiest area to get a gig for a new band in New York. I've played in the Lower East Side several times with the Bullet Parade, and friends of mine continue to play there all the time. It's probably one of the cheapest areas to live in Manhattan, but gentrification peaked in the late 1980's, and people started moving across the bridge...
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Across the Williamsburg Bridge from the LES sits Williamsburg, the hippest place on the map. Since 2000, gentrification of Brooklyn has been spreading outward along the L Train, beginning with Williamsburg. What started as a small, mostly Hasidic population has turned into one of the biggest music centers in America. Since 2000, musicians have been erupting from this area. Acts such as TV on the Radio, Akron/Family, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, and many others got their start in Williamsburg. At the Mccaren Park in 2007, bands played at the pool, and there are plans for a 2009 North By Northeast festival that spans across Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Small venues like Union Pool and Death By Audio are having great shows with lots of up and coming acts. Williamsburg has been referred to as "The Haight-Ashbury of ironic self-loathing" and is consistently called the hipster capital of the world by many people. Living in East Williamsburg, I see a lot of similar fashion and trendy stuff going on. Everyone has been pretty nice that I've met, though, and Williamsburg is a great place for the mid-twenties crowd. Bars are always packed and there is always something to do. However, in recent years the rent has skyrocketed. It is probably more expensive to live in Williamsburg than many areas of Manhattan. So what did people do? Move down to the next stop on the L Train until that area explodes. Williamsburg has been expanding in this way, down the L, until the L passes into the next Brooklyn neighborhood:
Bushwick, Brooklyn
Bushwick had previously been a pretty rough spot in Brooklyn. Lately, though, the rising rent in Williamsburg combined with the neighboring Bed-Stuy cleanup program has made Bushwick an affordable and fairly safe community. The 3rd Ward is a great artist/community space. The Surreal Estate is a loft space related to Food Not Bombs and The Freegans in Bushwick. They've had some great shows and DJs there. Goodbye Blue Monday is an amazing space under the J Train that has bands every night, a cafe, and a huge backyard complete with another stage and great decorations. Bushwick is definitely coming into its own as a great, affordable place for artists and young, poor college grads. Across from a huge loft space is the bar King's County, the Archive Coffee shop, and a late night falafel joint. When we have to move from our apartment in East Williamsburg in May, we're looking into Bushwick. It's affordable, and very much alive.
Bed-Stuy
The last area I want to hit on is Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Bed-Stuy. Birthplace of East Coast hip-hop (Notorious B.I.G., The Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Lil' Kim, Mos Def, Talib Kweli), Bed-Stuy was, up until very recently, a pretty rough patch of Brooklyn. The Spike Lee joint Do The Right Thing is set here, as well. This neighborhood is not off of the L Train, but the above-ground J, M, and Z Trains. Starting in 2005, police have cracked down on the area, and as of 2009 it is one of the most improved areas with a decline in crime and increase in safety. The 123 Community Space is in the heart of Bed-Stuy, supporting freegans, bike-builders, sewing workshops, and food shares. The younger people moving to Bed-Stuy have a great sense of community, and there is a good incentive to get involved with the outreach programs in the neighborhood. Though Bed-Stuy is still pretty rough, I wouldn't mind living here either. The rent is cheap, and I'd feel great getting involved in community-based activities.
Now that I have a job, I've been searching for new neighborhoods to live in. I know there are places I haven't even touched on in this post. Park Slope, DUMBO, and Greenpoint are all very worthy neighborhoods in Brooklyn, albeit very expensive. A loft space somewhere around the L Train is ideal, although I'll take whatever I can get. It's amazing to be around so many places in New York that have experienced such a cultural revolution. I just want to be a part of it today, wherever it's going on.
Since I've been living in New York, I've delved pretty deeply into its history. I've been on a Scorsese kick, with Gangs of New York and Mean Steets. I've downloaded lots of Miles Davis, Coltrane and Monk. I've been listening to a lot of the hip hop to come out of Brooklyn, and I've been reading This Side of Paradise, which has its moments in the city.
Since watching Cassavettes' Shadows, the 1950's have emerged as this golden era of New York. Miles Davis and Coltrane are playing Carnegie Hall. NYU is starting to produce a great atmosphere of music in Greenwich Village, and the twenty-somethings are living in a glamorous utopia. Looking back, of course.
Maybe it was the movie Diner by Barry Levinson that did it. This has nothing to do with New York, and was filmed in 1982, but it is a look at 1950's Baltimore, and features Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, and Kevin Bacon in their very early years.
The whole lifestyle is just different. Marriage in your twenties, dating, dancing, etc. It's pretty great. The false innocence makes it appealing. Just the nightlife in general. I mean, check out this picture of a club in New York City from the 50's:
Real musicians making real music that they actually felt at the moment. They played it for people who felt it and danced because they were compelled to dance, not because everyone else was doing it. There were no DJs or mashups or impersonal grinding up on strangers. There was an art to it, and there was feeling. It took great effort and practice to dance in public, and if you cared to pick up a girl, you'd learn. Hard to find that in a bar nowadays. The dating scene is bleak, impersonal, and lifeless.
Woody Allen's Annie Hall or Manhattan also seem to capture the romanticism of the city. How you can step out of the bustle and enjoy the whole damn thing. That's kind of what hit me when I read Kerouac. The love of a place, rather than a person. How you could visit a place and just "dig" it. The bars, the buildings, the expensive restaurants...these aren't what make a city great. It's the view from the South Street Seaport at midnight, watching the waves break on the Manhattan Bridge. It's the graffiti on Morgan Avenue in Bushwick, the unknown artist El Camino reigning over the broken down buildings. It's the Spanish owner of the bodega on the corner, who will let us pay her back in a few days because we're her best customers. It's the feeling in your hair as you fly down the Williamsburg Bridge on a bike. It's the bartender at Mars Bar giving you shots and talking about punk rock.
Reading Fitzgerald, I always got a lost sense of romanticism. How could I keep living through this endless bustle, day by day, working, distracting myself, staying occupied without any sense to stop and appreciate anything. The Jazz Age. Romance at its finest. The saxophone is the dominant instrument, playing on pure feeling. Not an electric guitar noodling on already-written and re-written riffs. People are passionate for each other and for life, and they seem to have some standards that keep everything relatively wholesome. I want to stop entertaining myself and start living. I want to be enraptured by everything I do from now on.
"I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last; a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't." -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Going back to my old cooking blog for a minute on this one:
I've been obsessed with different styles of eggs lately. Making them hard boiled, fried, over-easy, etc etc. When I looked into poached eggs though, it got a little challenging.
The idea of poaching eggs involves dropping an egg into ALMOST boiling water. The best way to do this is bringing water to a boil, then turning it down and stirring it until there are no bubbles.
Crack each egg and keep them in a small container, like a ramekin. (I used a 1/3 c measuring cup.) You want something big enough to contain the egg, but small enough to dip under the water in your pot. Now, this is the hard part:
Dip each cup under the hot water and let the egg flow out. If you're skilled, you can use a spoon to push the whites around the yolk. Make sure each egg is contained and not touching another, or they will stick.
Cover the pot and let it sit for about 3-5 minutes. Pull the eggs out with a slotted spoon and you're finished! This is probably the best and healthiest way to cook eggs, as it involves no pan-frying and is very fast.
On another note, Laz and Grub visited for two days. We ate some sushi at Yummy Village, ate falafel in Williamsburg, and just walked around Manhattan and Brooklyn. Turns out the bartender at Bushwick Country Club is from Scranton, so we got a round of shots. Living in NEPA for all that time really pays off, I guess.
Okay, much to do today. Freelancing can get distracting.
