CMJ Wrap-up, Pt 1

instead of taking up a ton of space in print talking about events that have already happened, i'm publishing my cmj wrap-up to the blog. what follows is part one, the first day. events happen in real time.

“You get friendship or nothing. Friendship or nothing: make your choice.” It’s about 12:30 a.m. on a hot-assed Brooklyn night, and instead of resting up for my first day at the College Music Journal’s 25th Annual Music Marathon (universally referred to simply as CMJ), I’m sitting up in my friend’s Park Slope apartment’s day-bed, watching a scene unfold out on 15th Street. A woman and a man out on the street are clearly in the middle of some relationship woes and a second man has intevened and mediates, giving the first man the above ultimatum. It’s not pretty, but it usually never is when something you’ve invested a lot of time and energy into falls apart and breaks your heart. Two years ago, after a year in the city itself and two more on the outskirts trying to “make it,” New York City and I broke up. And I chose nothing.

I’ve never had a lot of love for the Big Apple, but I’m gradually warming up to it. CMJ holds forth the promise of bands, panels, bands, parties, bands and alcohol to lubricate any outsider’s opinion of the city itself. To get the basics out of the way, for the last 25 years, CMJ the magazine has been holding CMJ the music conference here and the event itself is roughly on par with South by Southwest, although not quite as large or centrally located. The venues for shows are scattered throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, with the majority located on the Lower East Side. Curiously, though, HQ is up at Lincoln Center at 65th and Columbus, which is where I find myself Thursday morning at 10 a.m. to collect my press badge, photo pass and giant bag of worthless promotional crap. The laminated badges for entry and photo privileges come on a lanyard weighted down with coupons for money off at the Virgin Megastore, free downloads from iTunes and I think … yup, nothing else useful, so I ditch everything but the necessities and jam it into my bag for the time being. I begin to perceive a stratification amongst the badge-holders here: rubes who wear the whole shebang around their neck all the time with all the extra freight, the more efficient folk who’ve stripped the lanyard to its essentials but are still wearing it while they’re browsing Tower Records, the cool kids (mostly band members, it seems) who have it dangling througha belt loop just below a T-shirt hem and then the undercover people who are only pulling it out when they need it. I hope I’ve done the right thing.

In what would become the pattern for the whole conference, I pick Twin Cities bands over anyone else and head down to Piano’s to see the Plastic Constellations play an early set at 2 p.m. The assembled crowd of roughly 15 people (including Frenchkiss people like Steve [Wittman], who was instrumental in signing TPC to that label, and label-buddy/Minnesota ex-pat Craig Finn) didn’t fill the room, but the Constellations, fresh off the road from Pittsburgh, Penn., brought it, and the people rejoiced. The expereince of seeing a lot of music in a small amount of time ata festival or a conference such as this tends to hone one’s sense of what one likes; if it’s uninspiring, you just get on to other things, but when it’s great, it’s an almost sixth-sense feeling of quality, and TPC has this. The guide for CMJ describes them as funky and poppy. Well, that’s one way to look at it. I hang around talking to bassist Jordan Roske for a while and drinking a welcome afternoon beer (Brooklyn Lager: damn, this stuff is good and I miss it) but they have to get their stuff out and back to the van for their short drive over to their second of four shows here in New York at Mo Pitkins.

During the day, there isn’t a whole lot to do other than panels, and herein lies the essential problem of layout with the conference. All the panels are up at Lincoln Center, but all the parties and day shows are on the Lower East Side. Plus, I’m partial to downtown since that’s where I live so I choose to kick around the Village. Have I mentioned that it is ridiculously stinky hot? It is, and I pick up a spare T-shirt for later, which really ends up being the clutch move of the whole day. A couple of slices of pizza and a few miles later, I arrive at Mo Pitkins for a Minnesota-centric event being promoted by Vitriol Radio and Fanatix Promotion and the Current.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really understand who’s behind this event; I bumped into Jesse Stensby and crew at the airport coming out here and they’re here in force and armed with lots of Current stickers and coasters. As far as I can tell, the Constellations are the only Minnesota band on the bill, but soon enough, we’ve taken over. Minneapolitans at the show include: folk hero Rob Skoro, bassist James Buckley, 2024 Records’ Dave Campbell, Hideaway Studios owner Joe Mabbott, singer/songwriters JoAnna James and Chris Koza (laid back and enjoying the festivities now that their own (fairly successful and well-attended, apparently) showcases were last night) and Vamp Music mogul Craig Grossman. The guide promised that CMJ was like “a high-school reunion” every year and sure enough, Mo Pitnik’s has welcomed the alumni of Twin Town High.

If Piano’s was a tiny place, then Pitnik’s is microscopic, and it seems unlikely that TPC will tear it down in Godzilla fashion with their first chord, so the soundguy clamps downtight on the borrowed amps. Result: guitarist/vocalist Aaron Mader’s Jazzmaster sounds thin and not at all rock-ready, the vocals are pushed to the absolute breaking point and generally, the show doesn’t flatten the crowd quite like it did earlier in the afternoon. They laugh and make the best of it though, and shortly after they finish, I’m off to the Living Room to check out a longtime favorite of mine Chris Lee, unaware of the fate that awaits Plastic Constellations in Brooklyn later that night.

That’s called foreshadowing. Chris Lee is a singer/songwriter from Brooklyn who writes literary blue-eyed soul and delivers it in a falsetto that’s sometimes eerily reminiscent of Jeff Buckley. His simple setup at the Living Room is bass, drums, guitar and cello and the venue’s a great one for his intimate, barely-there anthems and his cover of the soul nugget “I’m Your Puppet.” People sit at tables, cabaret-style, and the one-drink minimum (on top of what I’ve already had) is just enough to push me to my maximum for the evening. So I’m glad to be sitting and glad to be listening to music in a drowsy state, especially since it’s unlikely that Lee’s Misra Records will ever get him out to Minnesota for a show. When and if it does, he’s well worth checking out for fans of Buckley pere or fils, Coldplay or any of those Coldplay-alikes like Athlete or Keane.

My battered feet and hazy state demand a return trip to Brooklyn pretty early tonight, but I’m counting on the nights getting later as the conference progresses. The hot, hazy and humid conditions preclude any kind of worthwhile sleep until four in the morning. No fights break out, but I’m awoken at 8 a.m. by a man dragging chains down the street outside. No, I’m not kidding.