Long ago the Wild West was a place of prosperity and prospectors, of unchecked growth and the resulting unscrupulous dis­placement of the indigenous peoples, a place filled with either hope and bravery or blind ambition, and foolish bravado (or perhaps a little of each).

It was a world where anyone could stake their claim and make a mark, where ingenuity flourished in the face of hardship, and where rules didn’t quite apply. Ultimately the Wild West typified an ideal of cooperation and coexistence within a disparate population.

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The indie-folk-rock band The Loom, from Brooklyn, and fresh off the bus from SXSW in Austin, launched Friday night’s show at Union Pool with a set of sometimes-melancholic, sometimes-upbeat original songs—several from their new album, “Teeth,” just recorded in Chinatown in February.

The band, led by guitarist and frontman John Fanning, who sports a substantial mustache, is made up of drums, banjo, electric bass, keys, ukulele, and girl in miniskirt and hoop earrings on trumpet.

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Matamoros, Santino Santino, Leisurely at Coco 66

In terms of international celebrities and onsite sexual abandon, well, not exactly, but in terms of night people who love their music and crowd the entrance like glossy, chattering birds, yes. This past Saturday night, local bands Matamoros, Santino Santino, and Leisurely each delivered strong sets, and then themselves dispersed and realigned into band/friend/fan clusters as the night went on.

Brandishing a light cream Telecaster and a throaty wail, Matamoros lead singer Jacob Morris and drummer/vocalist Matt Goldman propelled sweet garage jams into the room, like an industrial fan kicking up wind and dust in a Northside warehouse. Plenty of Morris’s notes came from high on the fret board, and Goldman’s drumming both kept time and built impressive, asymmetrical edifices to house the guitar. When Morris traded his Fender for a hollow-body Epiphone, sweet became shambolic, but the singer muscled through the mess by insistently screaming out the familiar lyric, “I just want to make love to you.” The Fender returned for the last, best song in the set, a poppier blast that saw Morris’s voice drop into a raw, raspberry tone, impressively evoking Paul Westerberg’s work in the Replacements.

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he band The Vox Illuminati made a rare NYC appearance at The House of Yes in East Williamsburg on Friday. The event “Steal This Party Thunder Gumbo III,” included bands and DJs including this blogger’s personal fave DJ Joro Boro. Amidst the bands, a dance competition between two sexy women and later a competition between two rambunctious fiddlers peppered the night.

MCs the good Doctors Dolomite and Adventure were–pardon the French–just f*#king crazy! But it was The Vox Illuminati who stole the show. Their lead on vocal and guitar, the sex glammy VOX, who bears a physical resemblance to Iggy Pop (can’t hurt any band!), along with a drummer, bass and also on vocals a pixie-cute girl in a silver lame bikini, truly rocked the stage.

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Once an eccentric backwater of the downtown music scene, Williamsburg receives the movement’s first mothership.

The Knitting Factory has been at its new location on Metropolitan Avenue and Havemeyer Street for all of three months. And this indeed is a nice little bow tie on the loopy tale of two of the city’s most enigmatic art scenes of the past twenty years—downtown music and Williamsburg.

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