NYC ilxors: I am calling you out

last time i saw live outdoor music it was a terrible local metal band (sounded like pantera if none of the members had learned to play in unison yet and if their equipment kept shorting out every five minutes) at a motorcycle event. on the plus side, i got to have funnel cake.

i sympathize with peeps who dont like all the detritus of going to show if your buds arent around. then again missing bands i like always makes me feel guilty for missing LIFE and shit.

dilemma imo

yeah but at the same time i can count the number of LIFE CHANGING GIGS i've seen on six fingers and would need a calculator and a 20-year calendar to count up the total number of gigs i've seen and after a while the cost to effectiveness ratio starts to fuck with an older gentleman.

not that EVERY show has to be "life changing" but still.

oh ya totally. but the same thing goes with parties or any social events... what if its THE ONE

maybe Dylan going electric would've gotten more fan support if funnel cake had been served.

i'm also at that point where show-going isn't an all-night (or all-day) socializing activity for me, and so with the "let's all hang out!" aspect removed, if the bands suck (or are just faffing their way through it), i get kinda cranky.

jesus what are you going to be like when you are actually old? i shudder to think.

scott i have been waiting to be old since i was like 9. don't think this is me complaining.

too lazy to read this thread and c'mon, we're new yorkers, we're supposed to be jaded. I probably won't even go see neo-Neu! tomorrow night, though I will probably go see the XX. But in the end aren't we all too busy sitting around trying to figure out how to pay the rent? I don't know, i stopped going out regularly around 7 years ago, and for the record that was BEFORE I met my girlfriend. I did go to TWO shows at Bruar Falls last week though, so maybe I'm coming back.

Real answer: Not enough chairs at shows.

oh ya totally. but the same thing goes with parties or any social events... what if its THE ONE

― the itsytitchyschneider (s1ocki), Thursday, August 5, 2010 10:30 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the ones you don't go to are always THE ONE

I think Lincoln Center, where the neo-Neu! show is happening, actually does provide chairs for its outdoor shows. Now I've said that, I fully expect to be trampled underfoot by thundering herds of NYC-based ILM board members on their once-yearly outing to a show.

What if you go to the show and everybody else thinks it was THE ONE, but you just couldn't get into it? Isn't the resulting isolation worse than if you had stayed home?

no because at least u know u tried - can blame externals instead of ur own sad self

I will go see Beak> and People of the North at Bowery though, which I just found out about thanks to this thread. At least that one I can drive home quickly from.

I've no idea how the NYC ATP works but I'll happily rep for the UK events that I've been attending since around 2002. The chalets aren't exactly luxurious but there's a degree of comfort there that yr average 35+ music lover might appreciate more than putting a tent up in a muddy field.

Every stage is indoor. There are rarely queues for anything (though there have been a couple of problems in recent years at Minehead with bigger acts on the main stage) and it's never overcrowded. I can't remember seeing a fight or hearing of anyone having any serious trouble - everything feels safe. If you don't want to see ten bands a day (like, e.g. my partner who isn't overly into music but comes with me every year) there's plenty to amuse yourself with around the site or a huge beach nearby if the weather's good. It's all a wee bit old-farty and chin/beard-stroking (lots of beards!) at times but it's still a lot of fun and the events are small and intimate enough that you usually get a chance to talk to the bands. Almost every time I've been there's been at least one band that has grabbed my attention and got me enthusing to disinterested friends for weeks.

The line-ups of the ones I have attended have, on the whole, slanted heavily towards post-rock and math-rock with a smattering of noise and old post-punk/new wave bands and the occasional token hip hop or dance act so if that's not your thing I wouldn't recommend it - though there have been curators that have gone against the grain a couple of times.

Last but not least, you tend to meet good people.

The line-ups of the ones I have attended have, on the whole, slanted heavily towards post-rock and math-rock with a smattering of noise and old post-punk/new wave bands and the occasional token hip hop or dance act so if that's not your thing I wouldn't recommend it

that's the most obnoxious thing in the assumption put forth by the original topic - that if you aren't going to see this music of a decidedly narrow subset on the global scale, you don't love music? ehhhhhh.

That is why with age I turned into a jazz d-bag.

the place on the corner three doors down from my shop is gonna open and have jazz shows regularly and i am SIKED! one way to get me to a show is have it be 50 feet from me. plus, tapas!

I'm working the door at my friend's house show in a few weeks because of the promise of liquor-filled cupcakes

that's the most obnoxious thing in the assumption put forth by the original topic - that if you aren't going to see this music of a decidedly narrow subset on the global scale, you don't love music? ehhhhhh.

I think this year's lineup is the most homogeneous/indie-tailored they have put forth thus far in the US but thinking back on past stateside ATPs I've seen Terry Riley, Jackie-O Motherfucker, The Magic Band, Cannibal Ox, Harmonia, Aphex Twin, The Cramps, Anti-Pop Consortium, James Chance, Billy Childish, My Bloody Valentine, and Suicide at various events. If that's a "decidedly narrow subset," then I'm just more narrow-minded than I thought.

you are more narrow-minded than you thought

That group of bands is legitimately considered a "narrow subset?"

to ppl on ilm maybe, to ppl in the "real world" no

yeah that's a normal narrowness of subset for any festival or thing, really. i don't know, it's not i wouldn't be able to tell a canibal ox song from an mbv one but it's not like you went to see miley cyrus open for cannibal corpse or something. they're all loosely experimental, big deal avant-garde dudes with semi-classic albums under their belts, or influential older weirdos reuniting.

that's pretty irrelevant, though, festivals aren't supposed to be a projection of your openmindedness and it would be retarded if they were. atp is like, a festival really finely geared towards people like whiney. it's not "something for everyone" who loves music

man scott's post upthread is maybe the greatest and most dear to the center of my heart ilx truth bomb i have ever read. i want to get the words "new local yokelism" tattooed to the inside of my brain

Compile a collection based on that idea and then don't actually release it.

Yeah, Scott's post is great. That was essentially my life for about 10 years.

Also, he mentioned Horse Spirit Penetrates at some point in a recent thread (this one i think). Kieran is a great guy, want very much to see HSP at some point!

Have several really fond memories of Groundmonkeys, his previous band, whom I never would have seen without the very locally generated small-time show scene in Virginia I was lucky enough to be around at the time.

From what I remember (this was several hundred shows ago) Horse Spirit Penetrates were pretty great live.

Cool, maybe I'll get my chance.

Longtime ago show I saw that was amazing: Groundmonkeys, White Mice, USAisaMonster, and Lightning Bolt. All very good live bands.

Groundmonkeys played here once, I've got a cd! They played with Buddyship, iirc, who were also excellent.

Yeah, AT and Jeremy can be pretty wild. Kinda derailing thread, sorry. Reminiscing. ATs band Necronomitron was really great live as well. Crazy single-kick pedal playing by that drummer.

Alright, back to festivals being difficult and live shows being sometimes boring ...

Sorry, AT and Jeremy are Buddyship, lame to name drop. Fun band for sure. Just good folks I am fond of, not trying to be all "I was there".

to ppl on ilm maybe, to ppl in the "real world" no

― markers, Thursday, August 5, 2010 1:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

To people in the "real world," the subset is "bands I've never heard of."

indeed

"real world" = pitchfork round these here parts iirc

I can personally attest to the awesome live show experiences of USAisamonster (RIP) White Mice and Lightning Bolt - separate shows though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7exiE8m_3hI

wait, what? this question is posed to NYC ilxors almost as if ATP were actually in NYC. but for me, at least, it's probably easier, cheaper, and more convenient to go see a festival in Chicago than to go to ATP, so I don't really get what NYC has to do with anything.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, August 3, 2010 7:37 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

instead we have 100,000 wantrepreneur chillwave morons fighting for valuable altered zones space

― torch song trill o.g. (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, August 4, 2010 3:33 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I want to bring this sentence in front of a focus group in ohio and ask them to guess its meaning

loooool

feelin sympathetic to all the NYC ilxors who got called out on this controversial thread. keep your chins up guys.

― _▂▅▇█▓▒░◕‿‿◕░▒▓█▇▅▂_ (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, August 4, 2010 2:34 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can i just say
i have a full time job
and relatively little leisure time and money
to go see a few bands i like
that i could see occasionally throughout the year

nyc ilxors

^

otm

WE CAN'T PAY OUR RENT WORKING 20 HOURS AT THE KWIK-E-MART AND WRITING TWO ARTICLES A MONTH FOR SO CALLED ALTERNATIVE WEEKLIES

most festivals to me are like "go to see a band you like play a shorter set, with more opening acts/other bands you don't care about, for more money than if they were just headlining a club"

yep. festivals are terrible mostly.

there's lots of posts upthread from me and MFB about how ATP isn't really like most festivals, but I like regular festivals too, so whatv

I don't think festivals are terrible, they are just impossible in my life.