UPDATED: More from Deerhunter/Atlas Sound "Secret Show"

[New (better) photos added below, mostly of Knyfe Hyts]

Took lots of photos from Friday night's showplex at the "Market Hotel" in Bushwick proper. This "secret show" was about as ridiculously New York/Burg "cool" as it gets--it was announced only last Friday and tickets were only available for purchase (cash only) from the Cinders art gallery in Williamsburg. Umm. Yeah. Best of all, as it was a "secret show", this meant that not only was it announced late and to little fanfare, but, best of all, the venue was to be a secret as well--we were asked to leave our email addresses at Cinders so the location and time of the show could be sent to us the night of the show via cryptic Todd P message. At 6:00 last night the details were sent to us, including the lineup of Deerhunter (rather than Atlas Sound, other band of lead singer Bradford Cox, as advertised), AIDS Wolf, Knyfe Hyts and another (shitty) band.

Yes, one band was called AIDS Wolf (or, in the words of Todd P "Wolf with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"). They were, thankfully, as bad as any band called AIDS Wolf should be. The first band was pretty "ungh" but, despite Doorknobs's complaints, I really liked Knyfe Hyts (ex- "Ex Models"). Deerhunter though were truly awesome. In town recording their new album, they came out in essence to play it straight through for an audience. I'd never seen them before or really even heard them--I'd only listened much to the Atlas Sound side project--but they really spoke to me and sounded great.

I'll post pictures of the other bands later, but unfortunately, the battery on the nice camera I was using died after I grabbed two shots of Deerhunter, so I can't retrieve the photos yet, but here's a few of Deerhunter I took on another camera I borrowed.

I've added the photos I took with "my" nice camera so the photos below are a mixture of those I took with that camera and those taken on the second borrowed camera (the last four):

"Pre-game"


Matt, moments before he sprung from his seat and flipped the table over


Doorknobs wondering whether or not the J train will ever come

The Rings


Second band The Rings, who we could pretty much do without


The Rings guitarist grrrrrrllll pwwwrrrring it

Kynfe Hyts (pron. "Knife Hits")


Knyfe Hyts singer/guitarist/bass player, in full


You know it's good when the heads go back and the guitars go up.


This man has so much hair that Doorknobs thought, from far away, that it was all fake.


Knyfe Hyts brought on this strange English footie hooligan looking "rapper" and coolster companion. Not good.

AIDS Wolf


The makeshift Market Hotel bar--they charged me $1 for a tiny cup of OJ


E-bad and Doorknobs argue over who deserves more the opportunity to stab the singer of AIDS Wolf in the throat with a guitar string


Glitz and Glitter of the rooms of the Market Hotel

The main event: Deerhunter / Atlas Sound


Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox, a sight to behold.


Beginning the show with a Pylon cover

[camera change]










Covered in sweat, but wide awake at 3:15 am


That's it for photos, but here's also are a few tracks for you to check out:

Deerhunter - "Calvary Scars (Daytrotter session)"

Atlas Sound - "Activation" [I'm obsessed with this track]

Knyfe Hyts - Running Free (Iron Maiden cover)

Week 14 NoDrugs: "Healthy Living" concluded

So last night I concluded a week legitimately free of all non-doctor prescribed drugs. Minus one single half-gulp of Pepsi on Wednesday night, I went the entire week without imbibing in caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol (or anything else). Making this week, in a weird way, one of the most successful weeks of Hyperliving I've had so far; and I like the fact that the premise was so simple.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), holding off on cigarettes was by far the easiest thing of all. Despite smoking for many years, I think I've managed to maintain a decent relationship with cigarettes by only smoking them when it's actually fun to do so. Never in a perfunctory fashion, never in the morning, and rarely even with habit or ritual except in the most general sense (summer night outside on a porch or in a backyard, during a set break at a concert, after a gigantic meal at a restaurant), and almost always (terrible periods of "life breakdown" excepted) in moderation. Maybe i'm "addicted" (I put that in quotes to annoy friends/family members/non-smokers) but it feels like I still have that one under control. There were a number of times this week where I felt like I wanted or "would enjoy" a cigarette, but often I think this was due to the fact that I would be in an environment/situation where I'd also want caffeine and/or alcohol, and so my desire for cigarettes was more of a flailing out for stimulants than any specific cigarette-related need; either way, it wasn't particularly difficult to hold off.


Sunday morning near-return to "normal living" (minus Vegan-week required replacement of milk with Soymilk)

Abstaining from caffeine, on the hand, was a bitch. As a man who, as I've repeatedly explained and documented, hardly sleeps at all, I rely on caffeine to keep me going throughout the day. And this week I learned that I rely on it a lot more than I've realized. Basically everyday this week except last Sunday, I had a splitting splitting hammer-on-forehead headache take over my life sometime between the hours of noon and 3pm. This was almost shocking because I basically never get headaches for any reason, and I imagined that caffeine-migraines were more the domain of eight cups-a-day HyperCoffeeDrinking Queens like the Sweeetheart and E-bad. Well, unless it had something to do with the additional lack of nicotine in my body, I was pretty wrong, either about who gets headaches or how much caffeine I really intake on a daily basis.

Alcohol is kind of an "eh". During most of my week I don't even really think about alcohol, but I definitely got a reminder this week about the degree to which alcohol is inscribed into the regular socialization behaviors of urban twentysomethings. I wasn't in many situations during the work week where I thought too much about alcohol either way, but Friday and Saturday evening were pretty much in-your-face confrontations. Friday I went to a 'Burg bar with friends specializing in fancy, tasteful international beer and then went a four-band show in a Bushwick loft that run until 3:30 am. Saturday I climaxed the week amusingly by attending a party with over fifteen kinds of beverages, literally every one besides water containing alcohol or caffeine. Obviously it really doesn't matter, and I spent most of the each night taking photos (and getting lessons from Ben D Saturday on how to improve my indoor phototaking), but it was definitely interesting to note how firmly rooted our behaviors are that many of us reflexively grab drinks when the sun goes down on weekend nights. It was nice though to open my wallet this morning and see that it still contained almost as many dollars as it had in it on Friday afternoon.

It was an interesting week. I still haven't had a cigarette yet, though I'm sure that will change before I go to sleep tonight. I have had already four cups of coffee. I am curious whether the insights gathered this week will disappear immediately, or if I'll hold onto anything. Probably not disappear, but sit in the back of my non-implementing mind memory.

Onward.

Continuing exploits of "The Heart Beats." - I Heart Yoko

We went to the studio last night to record some stuff for The Heart Beats. and laid down a few more tracks for the "EP". Things are coming along well, albeitly slowly (an unfortunate problem of making music when you aren't very good at playing music).

The final tracks I think will be finished next week after Imanant and I can record the rest of the vocals, but here's one for fun now, a track we laid down as the last of the evening, called "No Pussy Blues (Ode to Yoko)". I could explain it but it'll be more fun if I leave that for later.

Enjoy (or don't):

The Heart Beats. - "No Pussy Blues (Ode to Yoko)"

Week 14, Day 4 No Drugs liveblog: The oopsssssss

So I just accidentally broke the rules.

We are in the studio recording more trax. Hungry, we got some pizza and I reached for the pepsi and took a sip and thought, "this is great..." and then realized my mistake.

Week 14, Day 3: Dreams of Candycane Tobacco Leaves

Not sure how to report on this week. Not a lot to say other than that I feel tired and antsy and have been "getting headaches" each of the past two days. Which is odd mostly because I pretty much never get headaches for any reason, so obviously I am curious if they are related to the deprivation of caffeine and nicotine from my system. All day at work I yearn for cups of coffee and all night I yearn for cigarettes and maybe a beer.

Returning to the point I brought up in my post yesterday, here's a funny anecdote from a friend:
[ED. NOTE, after the fact: SAID FRIEND HAS CORRECTED MY MEMORY AND REMINDED ME TO INCLUDE THE INFO BELOW IN RED THAT I LEFT OUT THE FIRST TIME.]

"Two things about my dad: 1)he is kind of OCD, and 2) he has a gluten allergy. However, despite his allergy--which he has had his whole life--he loves pasta, beer, bread and other things he isn't supposed to eat. When I was growing up, he would occasionally decide to have an evening of eating these foods, for the love of the game; this would then result in him spending two hours that night in the bathroom, before finally exiting and leaving the room smelling as if someone just relieved themselves of a giant, decomposing rat carcass.

"Finally, after years of these increasingly sickening shenanigans, my dad's doctor said to him, 'You have to stop this, seriously. NO MORE GLUTEN.' So my dad finally stopped. After a little while, he slowly began to find ways around his allergy--rice beer, wheat-free pasta, etc. But even after much searching, there was still no solution to the fact that you can't have wheat-less bread. What's hilarious is that before he had fully committed himself to a lifestyle of "living right" and seeking for healthy alternatives, he DIDN'T EVEN LIKE BREAD. But once he wasn't allowed to have it, he became OBSESSED with the idea that he needed to be able to eat bread and began a quest to find bread that he could digest. Obsessed. He even drove six hours away to enroll in "Gluten-free Baking Program" at a culinary school. I could see a look in his eyes that said everything about how badly he thought needed to eat bread (while somehow still "not breaking the rules"). I thought of you when I read your blog post and began imagining seeing the same look in your eyes."

One reason I decided to have this week begin Sunday after I woke up rather than Saturday night at midnight (and have the week run until I wake up next Sunday) was because I wanted to avoid what would I imagine would have been an otherwise pathetic experience of midnight hitting and me lighting up a cigarette. This was fun and cute after a week of not listening to music--which, trust me, was WAAAAAY harder than this--but I'm self-aware enough to understand that this would just be sad.

On related topics, I've been mulling over the thought of quitting smoking (don't get too excited yet, mom). I haven't really reached the point yet where I actually want to never smoke, but it seems sort of silly/crazy that I've been smoking as long as I have, and I feel like i'm beginning to reach the endpoint where anyone will believe me when I assure them that I'll be able to quit "when I'm ready" (my "ultimate end" is always "when the baby is on the way", but at the pace i'm at now, who knows when that's gonna be). This past fall I had gotten to a point where I was as close to quitting--only one or two a week--as any point since my year of quitting six years ago, but since then things have gone back to the way they were, and here I am now. Wishing I could break some rules.

Week 14, Day 2: Where are my cigarettes?

just stepped outside the office and spent 2 min rummaging my bag for cigarettes until I realized i'd taken them out for this week. Habits!

Week 14, day 2: no drugs

i want coffee more than anything right now, which is funny because i don't even drink coffee many days a week due to laziness or lack of desire--but now i want it badly.

i think that for me, having "boundaries" is really the issue. even with music, which i do run all day long, i don't mind forgoing sometimes, but when i'm "not allowed to" then it's like my existence becomes cruel death.

I will attempt to explore this notion further as the week progresses.

Week 14, Day 1: Drugless

So i'm still lazily working on wrap-ups of shows this week, but today I got started on a week of "natural living" (minus of course the doctor prescribed concentration medication).

Why did I choose this week?

I live relatively healthily (erm), but I could do better. These are my habits at this point in my life:
- nicotine (smoker, 1-4 cigarettes per day, occasionally none)
Began smoking in April 1996. Have gone through many phases as a smoker, beginning with a few cigarettes a day and working up toward nearly a pack a day into college. Quit for basically an entire year from September 2001 to October 2002 (minus one or two). Began smoking again with increasing frequency, going up beyond a pack a day until spring 2004, when I began a gentle decline that continued until to the point where I've basically been for much of the past four years of one to four cigarettes a day (making a point to rarely smoke before the workday is over). Throughout 2007 I cut down to only two or three cigarettes per week, but over past few months that number has gone back up again to "normal" levels. I will attempt to argue to you that I am still "Not Addicted to Smoking" after all these years.

- caffeine (coffee drinker, 1-3 cups per day)
I have been drinking coffee daily since 1995 as a morning ritual. I've never really gone through a period where I "drank coffee all day", though for years in high school and college I would drink multiple evening cups at diners and at home. Since moving to New York in 2004, coffee drinking during the week is roughly confined to a single cup in the morning with maybe another cup during the day. Weekends I have a few more. With coffee, the ritual certainly matters a lot. Right now I am depressed thinking about leaving the house.

- alcohol (1-2 drinks occasionally on weeknights; "going out" on weekends)
I began "drinking" in the same way as most teens--via liquor/beer swiped from parents and friends of parents. I've never been much of a drinker, though since graduating college and moving to New York I've developed steady behavior patterns of drinking beer or wine regularly with dinner and going out on Friday/Saturday night and having a few more drinks, sometimes getting drunk. In the past few months, I feel that both of these behaviors have increased slightly. My main concern with drinking alcohol is simply that it is expensive; a Friday or Saturday night out in New York can empty a wallet. Unlike smoking or coffee, I don't think I'll have any problems/difficulties not drinking alcohol, but it is certainly a little strange to go out in the evenings with friends and realize you may be the only one not drinking.

-------------------------

We'll see how it all goes. I felt kind of depressed yesterday and maybe that was connected to a lack of caffeine/nicotine (smelling coffee in the morning certainly made me feel shitty), but it might have just been the cold/darkness. I'll certainly be able to test the strength of my nicotine addiction this week at least.

-JB