View And Response: Kate O'Brien's Portrait Of Amanda Palmer

This portrait of Amanda Palmer by Kate O'Brien reminded me of a little Valentine's Day incident last year wherein I was lured into attending a "Happening" in Ft. Greene with the promise of exotic and swarthy companionship (shall we say).

The location: It was seemingly a squatted factory of the kind that was so popular Pre-9/11 with poor college students and reprobate young adults; red brick and crooked floors and exposed beams. Paintings were on the wall in a fresco style and they were poorly done, garish and ugly. There were several floors of the party and several rooms per floor and at least one corner of each floor had a makeshift bar with tiki lamps, christmas lights and cheap off-brand liquors and cans of watery, warm beer. Also on each floor was a stage whose boundaries were marked on the ground with reflective tape. Naturally, there was a band playing each stage in a different musical style. The crowd was young -- perhaps underage -- and enthusiastic in the way that young people are when they are allowed outside of the house and horny and drunk and drugged.

So the Girl I was with (who shall remain nameless) and I couldn't figure out what to do. Some of our more resilient traveling companions (the idiots that took us there) went off in search of booze or weed or both. Some of the others lingered against the furthest wall from the action in hopes that death would come swiftly and painlessly. The Girl and I looked at each other and slipped off past the throngs of sweaty, bepatchouli oiled college freshmen and we stumbled downstairs to dance. And we danced close... very, very close... to swingin' oldies and sweet soul music for what seemed like seconds but was more like hours and the room stopped spinning and our buzz wore off and we both realized that -- hey -- we were both huddled for comfort because we were fascinated by each other, true, but also because we were trying to protect each other from sweaty, bepatchouli oiled college freshmen. Time to go.

I grabbed her hand and we headed back upstairs from the room we had left hours before. As we fought up against the current of stumbling girls in awkward heels I heard the sound of a broken piano and a female voice singing in a strange affected English contralto.

"Fucking bitch thinks she's Amanda Palmer!" I turned and said to the Girl.

"What?!" She didn't hear me.

I turned back to find the exit. Of course it was Amanda Palmer playing a solo show on a broken piano on Classon Ave. with about sixty rapt post-teens sitting cross-legged on the floor like kindergarteners waiting for story time.

I turned and whispered in the girl's ear, "We need to go. Now."

We Go On After Some Lip-Synch Chicks.

So I think I might put a moratorium on covering Battles of the Bands, not just because we need to think of peace in these troubled times, but because they are no less weird than they were when I was a misguided youth. Disparate acts, three song limits, a harried and hurried pace that serves no one (least of all the showcase bands) and varying qualities of M'sC succeed in keeping everyone off balance and looking for the exits once their friends' sets are done.



Frankly, this particular BoB was doubly confounding, mostly due to the latter awards giving-portion of the show where the majority of gifts and trinkets (Golden records?! Pieces of paper!?) seemed to be given to the A&R, MGMT side of the production rather than to the bands themselves. This brings me back to my original confusion with the Blast:Beat program and where the money goes, where the money lies once it gets there, and who OWNS the bands' music and who ultimately runs the promotion -- something that their website never cleared up. If I remember properly, my fwiends over at Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn described it as seeming like a '4-H Club for kids in bands,' a criticism which seems valid sonically -- meant literally, "as I say it in my head it makes me laugh" -- as well as in practice.



Stream of thought bulletin: While poking around the internet we arrive at Blastspace.com, the ground-level Facebookian arm of the BlastBeat.org website. PLEASE LOOK AT THE UPPER RIGHT BUTTON WHICH FEATURES "COCA-COLA BLASTBEAT." I ain't sayin' there's something sinister going on, but this...



...should be enough to remind anyone of the awful Coca-Cola budding filmmaker commercials they show at the movie theaters during "The 20" or whatever the fuck it's called. It should remind the oldsters of Up With People being sponsored by Gilette. It should definitely make any self-respecting punk give pause.



It occurred to me, and I said as much to Hugh Crawford, that the history of Rock Music is written by the bands whose gumption and spit determined their destiny rather than the whims or skull scratching decisions made by talent fair judges. In fact, the only two acts I could think of at the time were Stevie Wonder and James Brown, and a suspicious search of Wikipedia (sue me) quickly showed those examples to be wrong. Now, the only one I can think of is Kelly Clarkson (sue me).

Creepy Corporate Overlording aside, all of this is the ball-hording way of saying "so what?" Yes, a trip to Ireland would be a major, life altering experience for a group of teens who might not have had the privilege of traveling outside the United States, and seeing the competition might inspire even greater things from those involved but the failure to make the trip in this particular instance isn't in the ballpark of worst things to happen. The Sub-20's music scene in New York (you can call it "Kidcore" if you want, but that's bogus and sad) is too dense and rich -- and too competitive and talented -- to hold anything less than the best the age bracket/genre can provide and by extension... you know what Sinatra said. Further, the support group of enthusiastic Post-Teen bands whose song structure and public attitude implies reckless juvenilization is there to lead the way and provide access, instruction and perhaps most importantly, a valuable crossover audience:

An audience with money.

This is meant as consolation to all the bands that lost, whatever form they took. My favorites included.

I Feel Like I'm Moving Further Away From It.

It's been almost a week since I shot Radiates and because I am old and my memory fades easily, I'm having a difficult time recalling details. Seeing as I'm left with impressions, I have managed to make the lamest music review since that time that Chris Ott reviewed the Slanted And Enchanted reissue for Pitchfork with the [awful], scanned, hand-written pages.

As we might (or might not) remember, being young means curfew and the promise of swift and brutal justice at the hands of parentals if curfew is broken. This is not all together unjustified as The City is a horrible place full of crazies and situations that would put Young White Girls In Peril. In short, I get the point. This leads to a certain problem for young bands that draw the last straw and go on with the post-curfew slot in a three-act bill: You have no one to play to, or the number of people has decreased to the point where the room is half empty. Sad story, bro.

Please recall the Ideal Gas Law, which can be used to show that the pressure of a gas (particles) in a small volume is greater than that of an equal amount of gas (particles) in a large volume.

Because the Ideal Gas law is expressed as an equation (PV=nRT), you can also determine how small a volume has to be to achieve the same pressure with fewer particles. Of course, people don't react in the same way that a gas does -- they'll go where the want to. It's up to the band to make them want to go. With that in mind, I think this illustration makes sense:



I call it Gin's Ideal Crowd Law.

In practical terms:

They Covered Can't Hardly Wait. The Suicide Lyrics Version.

So yeah, The Mighty Handful. Great name. They are actually a sextet, and I like to think it's all part of the joke. I know them through Dan and more specifically Dan's kid, who's the drummer. My deep thoughts about this event are still gestating. in the meantime, I will offer you the rich, reduced broth of the experience.

"We're gonna play a song... ...the last time we played it someone's -- and I won't say whose -- someone's parents got upset."

(From the back of the house) "Were they yours?"

"No, they weren't mine. This song is called 'Uptown Drunks'."

(cheers)

The song is on their Facebook and Myspace pages. It has a medium tempo and a singable chorus. It's about teenagers "experimenting with each other," if you know what I mean. Just sing about sex. Of course. Cut to the chase. If you're going to make parents upset go right for the jugular. If you're trying to woo Sally from homeroom go straight for her skirt.