still from "Radio Riot"video on youtube
It was my friends birthday last night, and I headed out to the old Tobacco Warehouse at Brooklyn Bridge Park for an evening of physics and music, sponsored by Union Hall, a bar/club in Park Slope. I had not heard of the opening band, "Tiny Masters of Today" prior to last night, and I'm more than happy to report that they should have been the headliners, and kicked the asses of the other bands. Well, I only stayed for about 1/2 song by the headliners "French Kicks" and the other band sort of careened between ambient and pop, and then ended up just playing pop. I saw Sonic Youth on July 4th for the second time in my life. The first time they were truly sonic and I was in an auditorum, so the feedback ricocheted off of the walls, and I was enveloped in it. I was gleefully dazed afterwards and while I never bought anything they recorded, I left the show thinking it was the best live show I'd ever seen next to the Ramones at the old Channel club in Boston. The July 4 show this year was good, but I didn't feel the same energy, maybe because I'm older, they are older, or I just found them sounding the same as anyone else. I still have a girl crush on Kim Gordon in that 'I want to be just like her, but I'll never be as cool' way. Last night I found that a bunch of 12 year olds (well, the drummer looked maybe 16 or 17, and I'm still unsure if it was a boy or a girl, like the old Barbarians song goes) rocked harder than Sonic Youth, and were a whole lot more fun. To be fair, part of my reaction was "holy shit, they are so young, and so skinny, and who are their parents?" There is a novelty factor there, but it wore off and the music took over. The sound wasn't great as the vocalist, Ada, was drowned out by the guitar and drums at times, but I could still here her barking out the lines in straightforward song-speak whine. They even did a brilliant cover of House of Pain's "Jump Around." At one point Ada asserted herself, asking the audience to stand up, because seeing all of us sitting down depressed her. Nearly everyone stood up. Kim Gordon move over, I want to be as cool as Ada! Here is a link the their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/tinymasters
Being at Brooklyn Bridge Park, I finally got to see the Olafur Eliasson waterfallls. When I tried to see them about a month ago, it had just turned 10pm, which meant lights out and water off. I've heard various accounts of how disappointing they are, and all that "well, it's just not like a real waterfall, and I have one at my country house" thing. For all of you who do look out on to a waterfall from your kitchen window upstate, great! But being a fresh air fund adult stuck in NYC for most of the summer, I found them to be lovely. The skeletal fragility of the scaffolding and the patterning of the water cascading off if it, and moving with the wind, was eloquent, especially the one in the distance on the Manhattan side from the Brooklyn Bridge Park. If you look at a natural waterfall, you don't quite get to experience the way the water cascades off the rocks, because you can't see it in the round. Eliasson's waterfalls allow you to do that; to focus on the flow of the water itself. I forgot my camera, of course.
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