Maybe it's just me, but CMJ felt weird this year. It just dragged and dragged and dragged and was then over in a flash. I'm really glad that I spent the last night of it at Crash Mansion djing though, surrounded by friends, Cribs, and free beer and breakfast. seriously, can i get sausage mcmuffins and krispie creams and cute british rockers at all of my dj gigs please? thank you. unfortunately, this all ended on a really sour note when someone got shot (not. kidding.) at the hip hop club upstairs (BLVD) and the venue ended up having to shut us down before The Cribs even got to take the stage. They will be back soon though -- the boys have been touring for two solid years now and played FOUR shows during CMJ alone! Everyone who saw them had excellent things to say though, and I'm so glad. They are absolutely ones to watch.
The good thing about staying at one venue for many hours and djing between bands is that you get to see a LOT. The GoStation and The Adored (who have a bass player easily confused with one Brandon Flowers) played a pretty stellar sets, though I could have done without the ridiculous 10+ minute song that the Blue Van chose to close out their set with... good grief. The highlight for me, however, was a band that pretty much left my jaw on the floor. Group Sounds are, without question, totally fucking insane. The crowd loved them (and most of them wound up on stage WITH the band at the end of their set), the keyboard player got completely naked, they made out with people DURING their show (I have only seen a Pearl Jam coverband do this before) and they had everyone worked up into a crazed fun times frenzy. I can't exactly tell you if the music is really even that good to be completely honest, but I know I have the ep around here somewhere so I will figure that out soon. Regardless, a great live experience that had me jumping around quite a bit. Check them out.
Otherwise the rest of the week was OK, I managed to see We Are Scientists at the Fader space on Saturday and then wished I had spent more time there sitting around drinking free sparks and reading glossy magazines than running about in the nasty humidity. And We Are Scientists were awesome, as predicted and told to me by all. I can't wait to see them again.
I also surprisingly (maybe?) saw CYHSY at Mercury, which I guess based on the insane amount of people outside was "the show to see." The guys all expressed how tired they were before the set, and it was sort of evident until about midway through when suddenly the set took off and by the time they launched into "Satan Said Dance" the crowd was def. into it and people were jumping around and screaming satan which I have personally never seen before though I've heard about it. I for one stayed in the back with their manager and a smile on my face. You can get that song and some other live mp3s here. I hope the band finds the energy to knock em dead through the rest of their tour.
Ok well I think that's it. Back to regularly scheduled band/music consumption.