Whelmed (CMJ Wrap-Up)

I’m wrapping as fast as I can, honest.

Am slowly back-blogging – a bad way to go about it – those day-by-days and band-by-bands that need attention.  As if the right way to do this is a week after-the-fact, crimping together fuzzy notes from my ‘book and fuzzier impressions from my brain.  Should be done, shortly; updated entries have a big [EDIT] tacked on to their title.  Just figured it was easier to keep everything in one place, and in order.

It’s almost unfair that Arcade Fire – who, by all accounts, stole last year’s CMJ – came back and did it all over again, this year.  While it’s nice to be reminded that all the acclaim is justified – and just plain nice to see them, again – it’s cruel to not only bring your bad selves back to proven ground, but to bring in unnecessary cavalry.

That was a great moment, when David Bowie came out on stage during the Fire’s encore.  Even though it had been all-but confirmed beforehand (Bowie’s site held a message that Bowie fans should attend the already sold-out show “because you just never know who might be the band’s special guest!”).  Even though it was basically a reprise of a network television appearance (though “Queen Bitch” was a nice surprise, does anyone have an mp3 of the band doing “Five Years”?!). 

That’s firepower that, say, a little band from Minnesota forced to schlumph its instruments around on the subway can’t hope to match.

Or can’t they?  Because while AF’s Win Butler had to ask the Summerstage crew to dim spotlights so he could see the packedpackedpacked house, I got to chat at a bar with Cloud Cult’s Craig Minowa, talk Theremin with Wolf Parade’s Hadji Bakara, wile away an amount of downtime with Perry Wright as endless as his band’s name.  It seems to me that CMJ is about this sort of immediacy.  And the Arcade Fire are gone, baby, gone.  They’re off to Bowie-land.

This is the first time I’ve even nibbled into CMJ.  My attitude years past was that, if I’m going to spend money to see a band I want to see, I’d rather avoid the abbreviated showcase sets that riddle these four days and see them play their own show.  But this year I was up for sampling new stuff, sight unseen, and while that leads to much hitormissitude, it can lead to a lot of surprises.  And, freed from fighting for room at shows featuring local bands – thanks, Clap-Hands folk, for drawing away a lot of the fire – most shows were actually more comfortably-audienced than usual.

Yes, I feel kind of bad that I was one of only two people watching The Orion Experience, and that I walked out mid-set.  Sorry, guys.

It was an awful lot of fun knowing that – badgeless, mind you – I could wander in and out during the afternoon between Pianos and Cake Shop and Rothko and... without paying entrance fees, catching bits of this and that.  If nothing else, it was a living, singing example of what I’d said at the fest’s outset:  There’s always music here, everywhere, we don’t need some clusterfuck to spell that out.

CMJ still seems the best opportunity you’ll ever have to miss something great.  But this is New York, and the world goes through here.  So I’ll get you next time, Two Gallants, New Buffalo, Gossip, and Towers of London (well...).  And all the rest.

It is a bit too much music.  Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work:  I can’t recall for the life of me what some of the bands I heard sound like, even some of the good ones.  But the great ones, they stand out.

I’m happy to have seen Wolf Parade (even though I already had tix to see them in October), and look forward to the they’re-not-cuddly backlash (there’s no way that David Bowie’ll be playing with them, next year (Tom Waits, maybe; oh, that’d be sweet)).  I was oddly happy at those afternoon too-early-for-rock shows.  Happy to find Orenda Fink (see her live, even if you’re underwhelmed by her CD).  Ecstatic that Cloud Cult – ten years, and this is only their second trip to NYC?! – came back so soon after their last visit, happy to see them twice... and hopeful that someone saw them that will give them the leg-up they deserve.

And, yes, I was happy to see David Bowie do his guest-star bit, to see the Arcade Fire continue their well-deserved ascension.  Perhaps they came back, this week, to both remind both listeners and bands that good things do come of all this.

*

Was a bit exhausting; I am old.  By the end of the four (only four!) days, I’d lost about all of my critical faculties:  The only adjectives I had left at my disposal were “bouncy” and “pretty.”  Which is probably why I’m listening to very glossed-over pop, right now.  But more about that later.

One of my favorite CMJ moments was:  Doing dishes.  Seriously.  They were piled so high in the sink you’d think I was housing a cadre of diamond-mining dwarves. 

*

I don’t usually take photos during concerts; the camera helped me remember who the hell all these folks were, this time, and was a welcome distraction during duller ditties.  But it is a distraction, and other than the odd outdoor gig – Stripes, possibly, and Narrows, probably – expect a return to the old, boring text-only stuff.  I’ll leave the picture-taking to the professionals.  The world only needs so many angles of some dude holding a guitar.

I put most of my more visible pics on my Flickr account, all chronological-like.  So, here:

Day 2:  Cloud Cult, Heavenly States, Arcade Fire/Bowie, Sound Team, Bell Orchestre, Orion Experience, Plastic Constellations

Day 3:  Cursive, Orenda Fink, Criteria, Maria Taylor, Pony Up!, Giant Drag, Prayers and Tears of Oh My God This Name is So G*ddamned Long and I Liked That at First but Now it’s Getting a Bit Tiresome, and Octagon.

Day 4:  Wolf Parade, Rogue Wave, Kinski, Fruit Bats, The Comas, Voxtrot, High IQs.

(Didn’t bring a camera along the first day for Doves-Marjorie Fair-Unsomething’d.)

See, now, that ain’t much at all.  I should quit my whining.  Did blow off some post-CMJ stuff I really meant to hit.  Had waited a good long time to see Australia’s Morning After Girls, and couldn’t drag my ass over to Rothko Monday night... and, even though I’d bought a ticket already, passed on  last night’s Thunderbirds! show at the Merc, where I’d hoped to catch a couple local acts I’ve managed to keep missing (Mommy & Daddy, Oxford Collapse).  Next time, kids.

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