music – Page 2 – brooklyn spaces

greenroom brooklyn

oriana on 28 Dec ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: apartment & party space | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Self-described as “Brooklyn’s underground launchpad for performing artists,” Greenroom Brooklyn is run by violinist and dancer Johnny Arco, with help from Ryan Alexander and several friends. They’ve thrown nine parties in the last year, primarily on their roof, and they bring in lots of musicians and DJs to keep everyone dancing and to foster impromptu and spontaneous performances throughout the night.

the first party, photo by Dylan Hess

They invited me out to a party in September, and I got there as they were putting the finishing touches on the rooftop decorations. It looked amazing, full of lights and art, with instrument clusters in three corners. And then it started to rain. I watched the assorted crew go from skeptical to worried, and then, once the decision was made to move the party downstairs into the loft proper, I was privy to (and a small part of) the most organized, polite, un-frantic overhaul I could have imagined. With fewer than a dozen people, in less than an hour, everything was brought inside down makeshift ladders and through half-functional windows, all the furniture in the loft was rearranged, lights and amps and mics were all wired and hung and assembled throughout the space. By the time they opened the doors to a slightly restless and sizable crowd, it looked like they’d planned on an indoor party all along.

Check out this video they made to introduce their space, and then read on for my Q&A with Johnny!

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Johnny: It evolved pretty organically. We had our first party last July; it wasn’t planned very well, but all these awesome people came. I’ve been an active musician my entire life, so I got together with some other musicians and started doing jam sessions, which turned into live music and DJ parties. We started getting better at seeing what was happening, how to get a quality crowd.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: So what, in your opinion, makes the party?
Johnny: The music’s super important, and the crowd. We make sure we have really terrific performers and DJs. And we invite people who are trying to do something, whatever it may be. That way, the ultimate goal of the party is to help people find other people who are doing things that could help them in their life, you know? People come to the party and become friends and start doing projects together.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the bands who have played here?
Johnny: They haven’t been set bands. We invite lots of musicians and they come together and play. It’s always kind of impromptu. I just make sure to invite people I respect, and say, “Oh look, there’s a microphone! There’s a guitar! What if we shine a blue light on you…?” and see what happens.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: Why did you pick this neighborhood?
Johnny: Oh man, this neighborhood totally picked me. When I first came to see the space, I had already put down a deposit on a place in the East Village. But I came here anyway, just to check it out. It was massive, with nothing built out, completely open, two walls of windows. I got here at sunset, took one look around, and pulled out my violin. I was like, “I need to play in here right now.” And it was like the most chambery, echoey, cathedral-like tone I’d ever heard in my life—well no, that’s not true, but in my home for sure. Anyway, I had to live here. And it’s been incredible. I don’t have an expensive life, I get to play music all day long, and I’m surrounded by other artists and entrepreneurs who are doing what they love and want to do. Bushwick rocks.

Johnny Arco, Reuben Cainer, & Jeff Miles, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: As an artist, are you inspired by being in Brooklyn?
Johnny: I’ve been an artist and a performer for my entire life, but I definitely feel lucky to be in Brooklyn and have this type of space. It makes it seem like every time I pick up my instrument and play, I’m doing something special. Even if it’s just some friends hanging out, I feel like I’m performing in New York City, like I’m living and making it in the hardest place for a performer to make it. It’s not “I live in Brooklyn, now I’m inspired to be an artist.” It’s “I live in Brooklyn, and I am an artist. This is what people fucking dream of.” I think that’s what everybody here feels, whether they’re doing sound or lights or just hanging up a piece of art in an apartment. It feels so real, because it is real, the Greenroom is real, we’re really doing this. And there’s also a real responsibility, because we’re living in Brooklyn, being artists in Brooklyn, being inspired by Brooklyn. There’s an obligation to make something of quality, something we’re proud to have in Brooklyn.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Johnny: We want to set up a system so that the Greenroom isn’t just the loft space itself, but something portable that we can take with us. We want to do a loft tour throughout the country, to get in touch with other people and say, “Hey, we have a cool loft space where we can do this stuff, you have a cool loft space where you can do this stuff, can we bring our crew and our equipment over and have a good time?” We’ve already got people onboard for Philly, D.C., and Boston. We’re trying to do the whole thing next March, from Montreal down to Austin. That’s the goal.

photo by Alix Piorun

***

Like this? Read about more apartment party spaces: Bushwick Project for the Arts, Hive NYC, Egg & Dart Club, Dead Herring, Jerkhaus, Newsonic, The Schoolhouse

monster island

oriana on 16 Sep ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: art gallery, studios, venue | active: 2004–2011

It feels a bit trite to talk about the demise of Williamsburg cool, an inevitability that only the most obtuse and culturally unaware would still argue isn’t happening, but it would be impossible to write about Monster Island—one of the last of this wave of DIY art and music spaces to succumb to the changing neighborhood—without mentioning it. Monster Island held on longer than most. Although the building will finally be torn down in October (to make room for yet another shiny new zillion-dollar high-rise, presumably), all the space’s components will be relocating elsewhere, and all the members of the collective seemed cautiously excited for a new beginning.

art studio

The two-story former spice factory is home to a massive amount of culture and art. You could reasonably call it a super-space, in the music sense of rock supergroups. There’s the Monster Island basement, one of the early DIY music spaces in the hood, among those where Todd P got his start. There are the two not-for-profit art galleries Live With Animals and Secret Project Robot, there’s Brah Records, and Oneida’s recording studio Ocropolis, and Mollusk Surf Shop, and Kayrock Screenprinting, and dozens of art studios and practice spaces. There have been hundreds of multi-media art shows over the years, and countless Brooklyn bands got their start or found their footing here, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Animal Collective, DUBKNOWDUB, Golden Triangle, Ex-Models, Knyfe Hyts, K-Holes, Xray Eyeballs, Hair Jail, Invisible Circle, Try Try Try, and Divine Order of the Blood Witch, just to name a few.

outdoor mural painting

One of the really beautiful things about Monster Island is how interconnected everybody is; everyone has been in a band or side project together, helped each other put up an art show, swapped studios, worked in one of the shops, lived in each other’s rooms, and just generally collaborated on everything. While I was interviewing Eli—a longtime resident, worker in the silkscreen studio, member of a couple bands, and artist with some pieces on display for the block party—he knew everyone who walked down the block, introducing me to them by listing all the bands and art shows they’d been involved in at the space over the years. It’s a really beautiful family atmosphere, and while I, like everyone, am disappointed that this Williamsburg institution is the latest to be killed off by relentless real estate development, I’m confident that all the artists and all their creativity and energy will find many more places to thrive.

[all photos by Maya Edelman, from the final block party & “Nothing Gold Can Stay” art show]

art studio

brooklyn spaces: Is there something going on here basically all the time?
Eli: Pretty much. The galleries have art shows up about three weeks of every month, and there are music shows in the basement usually four nights a week. If I hang out for more than an hour, something will start to happen. Before I worked in the building I was here almost as much as I am now, working in the galleries, hanging out, helping people with their art, listening to my friends’ bands practice.

brooklyn spaces: It’s amazing how interconnected everyone is.
Eli: One of the things that’s always been exciting for me about Monster Island is the synthesis of art and music. Nobody does just one thing, and there’s always collaborations. Everyone’s in each other’s bands and makes art together. Kid Millions and I put out a book through Kayrock’s book series, and Wolfy and Kid Millions are doing a silkscreen poem book thing. Some of the hardest-working and most brilliant artists I’ve ever met are in this building.

Live With Animals gallery

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about a particularly memorable art show.
Eli: These Are Powers did a record-release art show that was really exciting, probably 100 people had pieces in that. “Our Town” was the group show for the 2010 block party, and everyone built their portion of “our town.” I made a headshop with Sto from Cinders Gallery; Alison from Awesome Color and Call of the Wild and Red Dawn II made a leather bar, which was horrifying, this cardboard room with large-penised muscular men, and a glory hole and glued-down empty poppers bottles. Maya made a planetarium, Chris made a comic book store, Christine who works at the silkscreen shop made all these squirrels and pigeons and put them all over the place. It was an incredible show.

Man Forever

brooklyn spaces: Okay, now tell me about some amazing music shows.
Eli: The weirdest show was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ tenth-anniversary show. A lot of us have known those guys for a long time, so that show was kind of just for the fans. But it was so packed. Alex and I had to kneel on this ramp leading up to the stage and basically support the weight of the crowd on our backs for ninety percent of the set. And somehow that was awesome. Recently Oneida did a twenty-four-hour show, which was pretty insane. They played two-hour sets all night, and then at 5 a.m. they played their new record live during a pancake breakfast. Half the people had been up all night drunk, the other half were just waking up. It was one of the strangest shows I’ve ever been to.

K-Holes

brooklyn spaces: How about some good parties?
Eli: Every year Kayrock and Wolfy did a thing called Holly Jolly Sabbath the Sunday before Christmas. All the lights would be off, and they hung a Christmas tree upside-down and painted a pentagram on the floor below it, and we’d just sit around, drink mulled wine, get stoned, and listen to every Black Sabbath record back-to-back. Oh, and the first block party I ever came to, it was pouring rain and everything had been moved inside, and it was chaos, people packed in everywhere, just sweaty, giant craziness. I wandered from one place to another and band after band would start playing. It’s still probably the best party I’ve ever been to.

art studio

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being in Williamsburg, or Brooklyn in general, has influenced the space?
Eli: There’s some strong Brooklyn pride in this building. No one ever wanted this place to be something you could have in Manhattan. But at this point, being a space in Williamsburg has become a fight. When Monster Island started, there was no one on the street. There were prostitutes and people trying to pick up prostitutes, and that was it.

Monster Island basement

brooklyn spaces: So how does everyone feel about leaving?
Eli: It’s the same feeling as when you move out of an apartment, like “Oh man, I’m not going to live here anymore. But I get to live in this other place!” I mean, everyone’s sad that it’s ending, but nothing is really dying. This won’t be a place to hang out anymore, but that just means you’ll have to go to Secret Project’s new space in Bushwick or Mollusk’s new spot in Williamsburg. But still, I’m definitely keeping my keys to this building, or maybe we’ll have a key-melting ceremony or something.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any comment about the transformation of Williamsburg, all of that?
Eli: I’m sure I have a lot to say about that, but it’s old and it’s what happens. It will keep happening everywhere until some global catastrophe. To some degree, on some level, Monster Island brought it on ourselves. You do something that helps make the neighborhood cool, and the neighborhood will get cool, more people will start showing up, and then people with money will come in and ruin it. The cool thing is always going to precede the thing that is the cause of the destruction of the cool thing. There was a long time that I was saddened by the change, but at this point I’m kind of resigned to it.

Secret Project Robot

Like this? Read about more art & event spaces: Swimming Cities, Gowanus Ballroom, The Schoolhouse, Flux Factory, Vaudeville Park, Rubulad, HiveNYC

death by audio

oriana on 7 Jun ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: music venue | active since: 2007 | links: website, myspace

I’ve been to Death By Audio a few dozen times, but somehow I always forget how cool it is. My friends’ doom metal band Bloody Panda played a brain-meltingly loud show there a few years ago, and I saw my other friends’ band Dead Dog there last summer. Todd P books there a lot. The shows are always raw and raucous, which of course befits one of the early Williamsburg DIY venues.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

When I went a few weeks ago, the show was as crazy as I expected. First was Bubbly Mommy Gun, a weird psych rock outfit, who had their saxophonist hiding behind the wall and playing through a tiny window. Next was Mugu Guymen, a duo with the guitarist kneeling over dozens of pedals and the drummer just going crazy, playing faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. Last was Makoto Kawabata (from Acid Mothers Temple) with Pikachu (from Afrirampo), who flailed around and leapt up onto her drum kit and grabbed a microphone from out of the ceiling to scream into. Amazing, amazing show.

Bubbly Mommy Gun

Q&A with Edan, Death By Audio’s booker

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space and your involvement.
Edan: Death by Audio was a pedal company before it was a show space. Oliver Ackermann from A Place to Bury Strangers moved in in 2005. At first they rented out the front part as a photo studio, but after a while that didn’t pay the rent, so they started throwing shows. I worked the door at some of the earlier shows. I was booking shows around town, but I just kind of started bringing everything here. Then one of the bookers didn’t want to do it anymore, and I took over.

Pikachu

brooklyn spaces: Is there a particular kind of music that’s generally the focus?
Edan: It’s whatever I want to listen to. I wouldn’t have a show here if I didn’t want to see the band. But I feel like I have a pretty broad musical spectrum. It tends to go toward noisier music, heavier rock, heavier metal, and weird harsh noise stuff. But there’s all kinds of pop here too. If it sounds awesome, and if I think it’s going to be cool live, we put it on.

Bubbly Mommy Gun

brooklyn spaces: What are some favorite shows you’ve booked or seen?
Edan: Last summer we had Ty Segall, Charlie and the Moonhearts, and a bunch of other awesome bands. That show was amazing. The best part of that was Ty and Michael had a project together before that, and they did a duet at the end as an encore. That was really cool, it was something I never thought I’d see. And all kinds of band reunions, or people saying they saw videos on YouTube of bands playing here and were like, “Oh man, I want to play there.” Universal Order of Armageddon said that, Party of Helicopters said that. Paint It Black, we did a show for them, that shit sold out in an hour. I never even sell advance tickets for shows, and that one was gone in a day, which was crazy.

Makoto Kawabata

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a struggle or a triumph you want to share?
Edan: I have all kinds of trials! The more it’s a personal thing, the more effort you put into it, the harder it is when you lose to things like money. That’s not what it’s about, but you know, sometimes bookers come in and put holds on dates and tell me I’m going to get some band and I’m like, “That’s fucking awesome, they’ll be great.” And then a month later the booker’s like, “Oh, we were never actually going to bring the show there, we were just holding it in case we couldn’t find a bigger space.” That kind of stuff is soul-crushing. Or there’s always some show that I’m missing a band on, and I end up sitting in front of a computer for hours, emailing tons of bands and getting so many nos. It takes a long fucking time. Then I go to work at like seven, run sound all night, get off at three in the morning, have to clean the place twice. But it doesn’t matter, because I get to see all the shows, you know? I’m always excited about anything that’s here.

Mugu Guymen

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts about being in South Williamsburg these days?
Edan: Some of the first underground DIY shows I saw were around here. There’s a place that’s just now newly a condo where I watched Lightning Bolt play in a dirt pit, and Liars, and Panthers, it was a really sick show. Glass House Gallery was one block away, I saw tons of shows there, I saw Dirty Projectors play to like three people there. I grew up on that, in my adult life, my Brooklyn life. I’ve watched Williamsburg go from totally weird-ass back streets to something more normal, although people still walk down here thinking it’s the edge of the world. I used to have people leave after their shift and get mugged for the $20 they’d made, but it’s not fucking like that now. It’s totally safe, totally normal. Death By Audio and Glasslands and 285 Kent and Glass House and Main Drag Music and so many other spots, we’ve helped change what’s safe and unsafe.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Edan: Just to continue, to maintain the quality, and to keep appreciating it. I don’t want to get bored of doing this.

***

Like this? Read about more music spaces: Silent Barn, 285 Kent, Shea Stadium, Bushwick Music Studios, Newsonic, Dead Herring

shea stadium

oriana on 16 May ’11

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: music space | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook

There is something magical about the little corner of East Williamsburg south of Grand Street and east of Bushwick Ave. Within just a few blocks you have 3rd Ward, House of Yes, Werdink / Ninja Pyrate, the Acheron, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Paper Box, and Shea Stadium. Plus the Anchored Inn, Yummus Hummus, Main Drag Music, a slew of other factories and art spaces, and who even knows what else. Brooklyn creativity is dense all over, but even so, that’s quite a little group.

DJ Unicornicopia, photo by me

I live ten minutes from the whole cluster, but embarrassingly, I’d never been to Shea Stadium before. It’s a really nice space, roomy and welcoming, with some good beat-up couches and a great terrace. As with most DIY Brooklyn venues, Todd P has thrown shows here. My friend’s band Krallice has played here—that’s them in the big picture at the top of the post.

I interviewed Adam, who started the space, and then I stayed for a quirky cool show, with Pam Finch, Duncan Malachock, and DJ Unicornicopia.

Demander, from Konstantin Sergeyev's Flickr

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space?
Adam: We moved in here July 1, 2009, and we had our first show on July 4th. That show was a lot of fun, because we hadn’t done anything in terms of building out the space; we just plugged PA speakers into the walls and went for it. There was no stage, nothing. People were dancing and these enormous clouds of sawdust were getting kicked up. After that we took a week or two to just put up walls. It’s a slow process: you add this, you add that. It’s always a work in progress.

Fiasco, from Brooklyn Vegan

brooklyn spaces: How many people are involved in making this happen?
Adam: The main people are me and my friend Sean, who was with me from the beginning, and Nora. My friends in the band So So Glows all live here and help out with the shows, and we have a revolving door of some other really cool people who help out. Nora actually started as an intern, but it was clear from the beginning that she was going to become more than that very quickly. She just was really hungry, and she had the right attitude and the right ideas.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the live archives.
Adam: The live archives was sort of the impetus behind the space. I work in music—I’m a producer, engineer, and musician—and I always wanted to open up some sort of space, but I felt like the last thing this area needed was another recording studio. Plus I wanted to do something a little less sterile and a little more fun and interactive. So I was like, “Let’s start throwing shows and I’ll record them, and we’ll build up this massive archive of performances.” I think at this point I have about 1,400 sets.
brooklyn spaces: What’s the goal? Just to amass a huge amount of recorded live music?

Worrier, from Konstantin Sergeyev's Flickr

Adam: Yeah. I think that in ten, twenty years, what’s happening in this area is something people are going to want to know about, and it’s nice to be able to capture it. When we first launched the site, I was getting letters from people who live in Alabama, Kentucky, Australia, New Zealand, saying, “It’s logistically impossible for us to get to New York and see these bands that we love, but through your archives, we can connect.”

brooklyn spaces: Is there an overarching kind of music you aim for?
Adam: If we like it, we book it. It’s really that simple. The stuff we have is all over the map. And it’s a pretty healthy mix of local bands and touring bands and bands from other countries.

Jefferson High, photo from Impose Magazine

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship like with the community?
Adam: I have a pretty good relationship with all of our neighbors, especially our landlords next door. They’re from Lebanon, and they’ve been here since the seventies. They used to own all of Meadow Street, from Morgan to Waterbury. Every single building. Now they’re down to only two or three, and they run a furniture business across the street, Mona Liza Fine Furniture. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. They were sort of the pioneers of the neighborhood; they came when it was just junkyards and tire fires and gang violence. And they’re the coolest. When the weather gets nice, they bring a big table out onto the sidewalk and cook dinner for everybody. It’s like old-school New York. And they’ve been nothing but supportive of us. It wouldn’t be possible to do what we do if they weren’t so cool.
brooklyn spaces: Do they come to the shows?
Adam: Sometimes, but usually they don’t stick around very long. What happens more often is people at the shows will go over there, because they’re outside all the time, hanging out, smoking hookah, cooking. People wander over and hang out all night, getting drunk with the landlords.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: Was this neighborhood in particular a place you wanted to be?
Adam: I didn’t know too much about the neighborhood before we moved in. I grew up in Bay Ridge, and I’ve lived in Brooklyn for the majority of my life, but this neighborhood was one of the few in the borough that I really wasn’t very familiar with. I’m happy that we landed here because this is really a great, great neighborhood. And I think it’ll continue to get better, unfortunately probably to a point that will prohibit us from being able to keep doing what we do, but that’s part of the cycle. Eventually your time comes and you have to reevaluate and figure out a different path. This neighborhood is changing rapidly, and we’ll just see what happens.

Fresh and Onlys, from The Owl Mag

brooklyn spaces: It’s true; even in the last five years, it’s become completely different.
Adam: Totally. It’s such a strange neighborhood, because it’s so close to the things you want to be close to, and kind of far from the things you want to be far away from. You have privacy, you have space, and there aren’t many public businesses around, so you don’t have noise complaints. It’s completely amazing to be three blocks from the L train and not have to worry about noise complaints. I don’t really think that’s possible anywhere else. You basically have the keys to do what you want, and in Brooklyn in 2011, that’s so rare. These few blocks might be the final frontier.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Adam: Really just to keep doing what we’re doing for as long as possible. I know it’s not going to last forever, so I want to enjoy it while we can.

***

Like this? Read about other music spaces: Silent Barn, Death By Audio, Fort Useless, 285 Kent, Newsonic, Bushwick Music Studios, Monster Island

newsonic loft

oriana on 15 Apr ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: music & parties | active: 2000–2011 | links: website

all photos by Maximus Comissar

Newsonic was terrific. It was way way out at the edge of South Williamsburg, virtually unmarked, and a complete shock when you walk in. Just an absolutely vibrant space, full of découpaged furniture and great art and twinkling lights and linked televisions playing crazy video montages and a bookshelf made from a hollowed-out Coke machine. It had a lovely chill vibe and good music and just incredibly nice people.

Over the years, it was inhabited by about twenty different people, primarily musicians and artists, and they just quietly threw amazing shows and parties for over a decade. With hardly any web presence, they were totally underground, spreading the word through NonsenseNYC and a handful of party lists. Check out my interview below with Brian and Seth Misterka, who was there from the beginning.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a bit about the history of the space.
Seth: We found it in the back of the Village Voice classifieds, and it was just an empty warehouse. It was really a blank canvas; the landlord gave us totally free reign to create whatever we wanted to. My original partners were a fellow named Massa, who was working for Francis Ford Coppola as an assistant, and my friend Jeremy, who worked for MTV and played in bands, and I was working at Miramax and playing in bands. We were all musicians, and we were all involved in either film or television, so we built the space out to be a music venue from the start. It’s the perfect environment for music, because our neighbor on one side is an auto mechanic, the other is a grocery store, and below us is an office, so we can play music basically any time without bothering anybody. There could be a raging party in here with a hundred people or more, and from the street it’s as if nothing’s happening at all. So it’s like this little secluded artist colony in the middle of the industrial part of Chasidic Williamsburg, this really mystical neighborhood.

brooklyn spaces: Were you putting on shows from the very beginning?
Seth: From the very beginning. The space had a built-in stage from its days as a factory, so we framed it out and started throwing shows, and they immediately were so much fun and so successful that we just kept doing it.
Brian: In the three years I’ve been here, I’ve never been to a party where there hasn’t been just a completely good vibe all around. Everybody loves it here; it’s impossible not to enjoy the space. It brings out the best in people, it really does.
Seth: It’s kind of an out-of-the-way destination, it’s a place that you have to hear about it and then make a point of coming to, and so because it’s not the kind of space that you’d just be passing by, it gives it a kind of a special nature.

brooklyn spaces: So why are you guys moving out?
Seth: The landlord just wants to shuffle things around. It really reflects the broader change in the northern part of Williamsburg, with its expansion of real estate and population; that’s also happening down here. This building is going to be turned into offices. You know, money talks and the artists walk.

brooklyn spaces: But you’ve definitely nurtured a lot of artists through here.
Seth: Absolutely, yeah. There’s been so many different phases of the place, and everybody has brought a different vibe. We’ve found so many great, creative people over the years, and they’ve all contributed different things to the space, which has allowed it to take on the character it has. In addition to the parties, I’ve also had a recording studio here, and I’ve recorded all sorts of bands. My band is Dynasty Electric, and we’ve also recorded a lot of big indie bands from the 2000s, like Battles, Parts & Labor, Shy Child, and El Guapo, as well as a lot of jazz records.
Brian: Seth also recorded two records with Brian Chase from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and they’re planning on recording a third with a jazz duo they have, Brian Chase and Seth Misterka Duo.

brooklyn spaces: How would you describe the kinds of shows you put on?
Seth: Usually it’s a laboratory kind of show, with four or five bands and DJs. It’s a good platform for people to play, a good opportunity to play in a more relaxed environment and for a bigger crowd than would just be hanging out at the clubs.
Brian: Seth makes very eclectic picks. You’ll have a dance band, then you’ll have an indie band, then you’ll have a raga band, and then you’ll have these old guys who play for, like, what band was it?
Seth: One time the drummer from Saturday Night Live, his band came down.
Brian: And they had so many instruments! It was insane. There’s always a different atmosphere, a different thing, and it’s all connected into one night.
Seth: The thing with Newsonic—which is also the name of my record label—the idea has always been about the spectrum of sound, new sound, whatever it is, regardless of genre. Because I’ve been a working musician and have that access and connections to so many great musicians, the parties have become this secret party for musicians. Great musicians just want to come here and play, not for the money or whatever, but for the experience, just to be part of this energy that’s happening down here. We’ve always kept it on the lowdown because it was kind of amazing that we were able to throw parties for ten years without any trouble from the neighborhood or anything, and we didn’t want to jinx our run. But now that it’s ending, we just want to celebrate and show off the space while we have it, and to document it. We knew something cool was happening here, so we want to capture it like a time capsule and share it.

***

Like this? Read about more underground party spaces: Rubulad, Red Lotus Room, The Lab (Electric Warehouse), Bushwick Project for the Arts, 12-turn-13, Gemini & Scorpio loft

jerkhaus

oriana on 11 Mar ’11

neighborhood: sunset park | space type: music & living space | active: 2004–2011 | links: none (sorry!)

The Jerkhaus is an incredibly lived-in communal-housing and punk-show space. They’ve had almost sixty roommates over the seven years the house has been active, plus hundreds of crashers and couch-surfers and short- and long-term guests. Not to mention the bands that come through to play shows, and all the people who stop by for parties and gatherings of all kinds.

It’s housed in a fancy-looking brownstone, and in fact I was worried that I had the address wrong, until a couple of pierced boys with torn shirts let me in. It’s a terrific mess in there, full of bikes and records and ashtrays and posters and busted chandeliers and foam-leaking sofas and sagging stuffed animals and speakers and graffitied subway signs. It’s, in other words, an incredibly loved space.

Rudi and Kever, two of the Jerkhaus’s founders, were super nice and welcoming, and they chatted with me for a couple of hours.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the Jerkhaus.
Kever: Well, it’s a punk house in Brooklyn. Tons of people have stayed here. It’s like an old-fashioned step on a bum’s path, like a hobo travel point. There’s a sign with a little picture of a chick rocking out with a guitar, a dude with a bindle, some space cleared out on the floor.
Rudi: People stop by and say, “Someone who used to live here like three years ago said we could stay here.” When we moved in it was really cheap, and we had plenty of space for people to sleep on the floor. Right after we moved in, the RNC took place, and there were all these people nobody knew staying here. We had all this soundproofing foam from the people who lived here before us, so we just laid it out and had pretty much one floor as a giant bed.
K: I like the idea that we were housing people who were going to the RNC to fuck it up, to protest.
R: It was cool being a part of that. At that point I didn’t have much of a mind to protest, so I stayed home and gave people towels and directions to the beer store, or I called my roommate’s mom to be like, “Dave’s in jail again, just letting you know. Don’t worry, he’ll have a vegan sandwich when he gets out, thanks to the Anti-Capitalist Kitchen,” which is what Food Not Bombs was called then.

brooklyn spaces: Has there been trouble over the years? Has anybody come in and fucked shit up?
K: Yeah, there’s been pains in the ass, but nothing too crazy. There’s been no theft of property, to my knowledge. No violence, really. It hasn’t been bad enough that I think people should be afraid to have a house like this.

brooklyn spaces: Did you set out from the start to have a space like this?
K: Yeah. But our landlord and the neighbors are a big reason that it’s been able to go on for so long.
R: We’ve always paid rent, and there’s always been someone the landlord could go to and say, “Don’t let your friends sleep on the roof,” or “No live music. Have a party, but don’t have live music.” Of course we’ve had live music anyway, but if there wasn’t a complaint, it didn’t really matter.

brooklyn spaces: How about the running of the space, like buying toilet paper or cleaning the kitchen. Is it all collective?
K: It is all over the place. We had house meetings for a little while, but they were the worst fucking thing in the world.
R: It just kind of became whoever buys toilet paper buys toilet paper.
K: The pains and joys of communal living.
R: I’ve left many notes, but I gave up. I have a different outlook on it now than I used to.
K: You learn to expand your comfort zone.
R: It’s not a bad thing. You know when you walk into a room where there’s cigarette butts all over the floor and beer cans everywhere? That means someone had fun. Probably ten people had fun.
K: Beautiful, Rudi!

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship with the neighborhood and the community?
R: I’m very proud to be a punk kid who has lived in southern Brooklyn for a long-ass time. I didn’t move here because there was a cool café or a hip bar nearby. I’ve seen the neighborhood change a lot; there’s not a lot of hipster-driven stuff here yet, but it’s coming. I’m glad that I lived here when I did because I think I got a much better feel of living in Brooklyn, like Brooklyn Brooklyn, not just an offshoot of the Lower East Side. I don’t know if that’s an asshole thing to say, but it does give me a sense of pride. I’m also glad that I lived in a place that had so many people being creative, even if they were just making a zine or trying to change the world by not bathing. A lot of weird people have lived here and had a lot of unsavory professions and made a lot of weird art and music, and I’m glad that they had the space to do that.

brooklyn spaces: So why is the Jerkhaus ending?
K: Our landlord’s selling the place.
R: The building is in considerable disrepair. A couple of months ago we were having toilet trouble, and when the landlord and the repair guy came in, they were like, “We have to fix the toilet right now because the floor is rotting out under it, and if someone sits on the toilet, it might fall through the floor.” The place was cheap when we moved in because the building was not in the best condition, and we obviously didn’t care. We just keep paying rent anyway. We’ve had bedbug infestations and all this other stuff, and the landlord has just been like, “Well, tough noogies. You’ve got horrible roommates.”
K: Right after we moved in, one of our roommates was like, “Hey guys, look what I found! Just lying in the street!” It was a mattress. So from the beginning of the whole thing we had bedbugs.
R: At the time you had to go to Washington Heights to get bedbug-specific killer, because bedbugs weren’t such an epidemic yet. Of course, since then, everyone and their mother has them.

brooklyn spaces: So you’re saying you had them before they were cool?
R: Pretty much, yeah. We pretty much started the trend.

brooklyn spaces: Is anyone going on from this to create the next incarnation of the Jerkhaus?
K: Fuck no. Others because they don’t have the ambition, and Rudi and I because we’ve already gotten all the love and joy we can get out of this place. We sucked it all right out. The burnout rate in this job is pretty high. I’m surprised I held it for as long as I did.
R: You’re the patron saint of Jerkhaus!
K: I’m the biggest jerk!

***

Like this? Read about other communal living spaces: Hive NYC, Treehaus, Dead Herring

silent barn

oriana on 9 Feb ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: music space | active since: 2005 | links: website, facebook, twitter, myspace

update spring 2013: The Barn is back! Now in Bushwick, and bigger, more diverse, and more ambitious than ever. Read my profile of the new space here.

update October 2011: In July, the Silent Barn was completely ransacked. About $15,000 worth of equipment was stolen, and the space itself was violently sabotaged. But demonstrating the indomitability and resilience of the NYC DIY music scene, the people who run the Barn launched and completed a Kickstarter campaign in September, raising an incredible $40,000 toward a new space.

photo from Showpaper

Silent Barn is an all-ages music venue. It’s also a living space with a rotating cast of roommates, the walls feature dozens of murals by local artists, and there’s an intricate recording system with mics scattered throughout the house. Silent Barn is also home to a zine library with over 700 books, and the DIY videogame arcade Babycastles. It’s one of Todd P‘s many go-to venues.

This one is kind of a cheat, I know, because Ridgewood is of course in Queens. But Silent Barn is barely in Queens, literally across the street from Bushwick, and anyway, it really exemplifies the kind of space I started this blog to cover: relatively unknown, DIY-great, creative and fun and unique. Plus it turns out that one of the bookers (Jordan Michael, who is also the editorial director of the DIY music listings publication Showpaper) is a friend of a friend, and he was happy to let me poke around and take pictures, and he graciously chatted with me while setting up for the night’s show, plugging in mics, digging through buckets full of cables and wires, telling sundry band members where to load in, and arguing with other Silent Barn folks about who’s worse at setting up PAs and which bands have made the latest unreasonable demands. Interview below!

Juiceboxxx, photo from Fiddle While You Burn

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space?
Jordan: It was started six years ago by this band Skeletons. They lived here and used it as a practice space, and they started playing shows and having their friends play shows. Over time there’s been dozens of people who have moved in and out, and lots of people who get involved don’t actually live here, like myself. This isn’t really my project; it doesn’t really belong to anybody, it belongs to the community.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get involved?
Jordan: Me and Joe, who lives here, work together on Showpaper, which is basically a publication about DIY music spaces like this one. I also work with comics and zines, and I started the zine library here. About a year ago I curated some workshops with the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, they came here and did some workshops on making indie comics. Then I did a benefit show for the zine library where if people donated a zine they could get in for free, and that went really well, and I just realized I liked and was good at organizing bands. Organizing bands in a space like this is kind of like marbles. You know the game marbles, where there’s a circle that’s like a wall, and the marbles all just roll away on their own momentum out of the wall? It’s kind of like that.

brooklyn spaces: Is it always the same kind of music?
Jordan: No. Tonight’s show is indie-rock-punkish music, and the show I have Saturday night is all chiptune, and the last show I did was a mixture of hardcore punk and local hiphop, and the show before that was folk. So I’d say it’s just all good music. I don’t know, everybody’s called me a music snob my whole life, but now I’m a curator.

brooklyn spaces: You mentioned that there’s a system where all of the rooms are recorded, not just the show space. What’s that about?
Jordan: That’s Lucas’s project. He’s a cassette artist, and he’s in the band Woods. It’s a recording of the entire space at the same time, not just a recording of the bands that play. So on a Friday, you hear the Dominican restaurant next door playing bachata music and people screaming at each other.

brooklyn spaces: And it’s used for what? Just to have?
Jordan: To record. To survey.

Team Robespierre, photo from Brooklyn Vegan

brooklyn spaces: Since this is a blog about Brooklyn, do you have any opinion about whether a space like this could have happened somewhere other than Brooklyn?
Jordan: Yeah, it could have happened in Ridgewood! I mean, there’s tons of spaces like this, all over. One of my favorite things about doing this is getting to meet all the people that are participating in places like this from all over the world. They all have their different things, but they’re all similar. There’s a place in Bushwick called Shea Stadium, their sound booth is an actual recording booth, on their website they have professional recordings of all their live shows. There’s a place called the Rhinoceropolis in Denver that’s a lot like this, there’s The Smell in LA, there’s Whitehaus in Boston; in every city there’s a place like this. It’s normally run by people who are in bands and can’t get anybody to book them, so they just have their friends come over and play for them, and then their friends want to play, and then people who came to their friends’ show want to play, and it just becomes a thing. It can totally happen somewhere other than Brooklyn. Actually, I’d say one of my major pet peeves is when people talk about Brooklyn like it’s this wonderful Oz place, the only place where things like this can happen. There are tons of cities, like Athens, that have a much more historical independent music scene than New York. I don’t really think New York’s all that special, to be honest. I’m way more impressed by Philadelphia or Baltimore. All the people in Baltimore are doing cool shit all the time, and they’re in a lot more danger than we are here. This isn’t a great neighborhood; it’s not a bad neighborhood, but it’s not great. But Baltimore is horrible.

Wham City, photo from Hyperallergic

brooklyn spaces: Anything else you want to tell the world?
Jordan: Yeah, don’t hang out outside the doors. We’re not BYOB, don’t bring in your own beers. And don’t be a dick about it when I try to take your beers away from you; it’s my friend’s house, I can take away your beer. And I want to stress that we really don’t let kids drink here. And don’t smoke upstairs, people live here. Smoke downstairs! We let you smoke inside, just go downstairs, stop being a dick about it.

brooklyn spaces: So generally stop being a dick?
Jordan: Yeah, stop being a dick.

***

Like this? Read about more music spaces: Shea Stadium, Death By Audio, Dead Herring, Fort Useless, Bushwick Music Studios, Newsonic Loft

bushwick music studios

oriana on 3 Jan ’11

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: music venue | active: 2009–2010 | links: myspace, facebook

Bushwick Music Studios was an underground music venue in the heart of the East Williamsburg Industrial Park. It was totally unfussy—just a tiny bright blue windowless room in a nondescript warehouse, with a handmade balcony for the soundboard, DIY lighting, and a makeshift bar selling Four Loko and PBR. But during its yearlong run, it became one of the staples of Brooklyn’s underground music scene, packing in over a hundred sweaty kids on most nights. BMS’s early shows were block-wide, all-night affairs, with music blasting from several adjacent unoccupied warehouses.