Archives for November 2009

The videotaping of the sound/performance installation “Music for 100 Carpenters” by sound artist Douglas Henderson, currently on view at The Boiler, was a live performance there last night.  It was an earful of composed noise featuring selected occupational “music” drawn from the carpenter’s daily palette, including the sound of thousands of nails shuffling in brown paper bags, and in cotton nail aprons which the carpenter/musicians held and wore, and shook on cue.

The most powerful of the sounds, hammering nails into 4x4s, dominated the score.  Harnessed and manipulated, the collection of “instruments” evolved into a powerful orchestral cacophony. Paired in twos in front of saw horses, 100 or so volunteers, many of them real carpenters, lined the perimeter of the gallery space, while the audience were seated in the center.  For each eight or so musicians there were “job supervisors” reading from sheets of music.  It would be curious to see the music­ annotations and to learn how they could keep time—a magical feat.

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Photo: Tamara Hellgren

Brooklyn Drummer Jerry Fuchs Dies After Fall Down Elevator Shaft  [Spinner]

Developer Offers Tenants Piece of Quiet  [NY1]

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Tom Tom, the online magazine devoted to female drummers, is finally launching its debut print issue. Their launch party, tonight at Bruar Falls on Grand St, promises to be a rockin show.

Mindy Abovitz, drummer  for Taigaa and More Teeth, as well as a Rock Camp instructor, founded the magazine with friends. It features interviews with women percussionists and drummers (Alison Busch of Awesome Color, and Frankie Rose of the Crystal Stilts). Tom Tom (online) also acts as a portal of information, offering technique tips and links to encourage the young girl drummers.

Playing tonight: math-rock influenced Each Other’s Mothers who make smart angular and jazz-influenced compositions, and Zombie Dogs, who bring back oldschool hardcore with fierce drum rolls, a female singer who yells like Ian Mackaye, and lyrics about “the pit.” Also in the house will be Painted Face (a brother and sister duo from DC, Allie ex Eystek), and a DJ Set by Telepathe.

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Vice Magazine’s Halloween 2009 throwback to 1994, my campy Debut-era Björk-era hairdo as part of my costume for the event, and the Portishead and Veruca Salt-laden playlist I had blasting as I was twisting my hair into the requisite pin curls, got me to thinking: are we—meaning myself and my fellow Gen XY Brooklynites—getting ahead of ourselves in the current iteration of the 20-year fashion cycle?

Fashion trends of the past half-century often show recyclage from looks seen two decades earlier. Cases in point: the vivid hues and synthetic materials popular in the 1980s got their start in the 1960s. The baggy pants, baby tees and visible navels of the late 1990s? As a high schooler, I raided my mom’s closet on more than one occasion to cash in on such ensembles. I was in the high school class of 1999. My mom? Class of 1977.

Now, as whatever-you-want-to-call this decade comes to an end, baggy sweaters atop stretch pants and slouchy ankle boots have made their grand return onto urban high streets and trickled their way down into small-town strip malls across America. This all makes sense in terms of 1989 redux. Check out the cover to Paula Abdul’s 1988/89 single “The Way That You Love Me.” Ten-odd years ago, as we were cracking open our cans of Surge and grooving out at house parties to Moby, the more blunt among us might have said to someone working the off-the-shoulder look, “Unless you’re being ironic [or going to an 80s-themed party], take that off!” In 2009, not so much.

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