Where the Tourist meets the Traveler

Start spreading the news...
...I'm gonna be a part of it!

YES I finally made it to New York City Saturday night, midnight. I'm now staying on the couch in my aunt's apartment in Manhattan.

So yesterday was our first day out and about touring. She tells me that my visits are the some of the only times that she really goes out to see and tour the city, so she seems to tolerate my staying over! XD Just kidding of course; I love my Aunt Tammy.
She is an accountant by trade, and she is working for a company called The Gilt Group. It's a start up company (a few years now or so?) so tells me about the cool, innovative, and really fun and exciting work environment that goes along with the huge work load of getting the company on its feet. Well, that's New York for you: fast-paced, busy, but always exciting.

That morning, we got up at a glorious 11:00am and went out for breakfast at The Good Stuff Diner. Three pancakes covered in strawberry slices and a whole plate of scrambled eggs smothered in cheese later, we were off again to the day's first activity: Broadway.

Winter Garden Theatre where we saw Mamma Mia!

I suppose that as a person who has been to the Big Apple before on one occasion or another and as a bit of a connoisseur of the arts (or something like that), it is some kind of failure on my part that I have never been to Broadway. Oh well, my occasional failure as a tourist is not something that I regret.

I was hoping hard to see Phantom, but considering the impossibility of that, I gave her a list of a few other big names that I was hoping to see and was glad to have tickets to Mamma Mia!.

our seat, seventh row

You don't have to know or like the show to at least level with me on being glad to see it. It was funny, exciting, colorful, loud, musical, and wild. I have to say, I could dig it. ABBA has always been a band I can appreciate, so it was a really fun show, and the performance was spectacular. Broadway, you have not let me down.


That afternoon, we headed back into the subway and HopStopped a way across the river into Brooklyn for something that I had found on Village Voice called the New Music Bake Sale. We saw that there was music and baked goods and community and thought that it sounded nice.

On entering, we turned down the alcohol option and went in to find a place filled with tables and people  and bake sale items. There were cakes, pies, cookies of all kinds and shapes, French pastries, cookie dough brownies, cheese cake-filled strawberries, turkey chocolate chili, macaroons, rice krispie treats, brownies, bacon cupcakes, and so much more, all for sale.

view over the top of the Bake Sale tables

The Bake Sale was essentially a kind of promotion social for these musicians, so everybody was talking about their work or passing out fliers or telling you about stuff. Bands from all over the area had a table each that they had filled with merchandise, decorations, and baked goodies that they had made, all to help support and promote themselves. There were albums and posters and shirts for sale and everything was centered around this theater stage so that you could hear some of the people perform every hour on the hour.

New Music as defined to me by one of the musicians is essentially a reinvented music style, written by contemporary composers. To my understanding? It is experimental sound.

While we munched on brownie and cookies and sat in the balcony, we listened to Janus Trio, Sideband, Concert Black, Sweat Lodge, Joey Molinaro, and Newspeak, and all of them brought something different to the table.

Janus Trio was a band with a harp, a viola, and a flute that...played...we think? There was this weird cacophony of sounds and plucking and the whole thing seemed so eclectic (we also had just arrived) so I thought that they might have just been tuning or warming up. But after a while of this, they put away their instruments and thanked the applause.
It was so...strange and uncertain, but then again we had only just gotten there, so we hadn't quite scoped out the place just yet. And besides, Janus were the ones who brought the cookie dough brownies and cheese cake strawberries, so any uncertainty was quickly overlooked.

Sideband and their musical pods

Sideband was a laptop orchestra. Everyone sat in a semicircle with Macbooks in their lap and a little sci-fi speaker pod machine thing sitting in front of them, and they played their entire number on the laptop keys, pumping electronic sounds and mixes out of the little "instruments" at their feet. I have heard of laptop orchestras, so I was on board with the whole scene.
Here's a link to a video of that song: "Beepsch"

Anyway, the more interesting thing was the second song when they brought out these joystick style machines that were even more alien. The had two strings that the musicians pulled from the little box, and the way that they moved the strings affected the sounds that the box made. I can't describe it, so I have a video for you on that one. Be warned though, it's a little long. You can't really see it very well due to the poor quality, but they are holding the end of a string from their box in each hand as they move.

Next, this group called Exapno brought out three different little bands and artists. Exapno is like a big workshop in the Brooklyn area that people can use as a work space and community for whatever they want. It's kind of like a Gold's Gym for everyone else. Musicians, artists, writers, you get the idea.

Concert Black's most interesting section was the percussion line. The drummer set out a bass drum with a pedal and a xylophone on a big folding table, and that was as conventional as it got. He was bringing out pie tins and cooking pots attached to foot pedals, empty glass jars and bottles, a shot glass, a pewter lawn ornament, dishes, ceramic tiles, wood blocks, a dinner bell, whatever you can imagine, he had it. With four little hammers (two in each hand) he beat out the rhythm to the songs on his little collection. Here's a link to their video while they play their song "Mvt 1 from RE: You better find those blue pills if you plan on giving her more than lip service". We were mostly watching to see him.
Sweat Lodge came out with two electric guitars, a flute, and a pianist and did an interesting number of their own.
Joey Molinaro (probably my personal favorite) came sawing on a violin and stomping out all of his percussion with his feet. He was his own one-man-band, and had a really nice thing going on.

I talked to Joey later and found him to be really amicable and friendly. I had been watching him get set up and he seemed really shy and introverted, so I was talking to someone from Exapno who introduced us and we hit it off immediately just talking about things.

Almost everyone from the Bake Sale was like that, very open and friendly and interested. They asked us if we played, where we were from, talked about their music, asked us about us and we talked about cool things going on, interests, and just whatever. They were all so excited and just simply earnest and open - that's something you don't get often in New York City.

I really enjoyed hanging out with everyone and talking about stuff. New Music isn't exactly my scene, but I can appreciate the creativity, and sometimes you strike gold in the midst. Like Joey, in my opinion, and a few other people who were working on some neat projects. Things like a word collection and a dance meets music interactive project and others. They were all really kind and I enjoyed the baked goods as well.

We listened to an interesting slam poetry meets the Peanut's orchestra number from Newspeak and decided it was getting late. The Bake Sale would last until midnight, but it would take us a while to get home. We made one last little sweep around and picked up some more brownies from Janus, then headed out.

Aunt Tammy told me later that day I had earned cred on both sides of the spectrum: That afternoon I got tourist cred on Broadway and that evening I got street cred at the New Music scene.

I'm Jonathon and this is my life.



http://www.icareifyoulisten.com/
https://www.newmusicusa.org/
http://www.janustrio.org/
http://sidebandband.com/
http://soundcloud.com/concertblack
http://sweatlodgemusic.org/
http://joeymolinaro.com/
http://newspeakmusic.org/