Ah, radio moving into the 21st century. It could bring a tear to one’s eye. Yesterday, John Schaefer and crew held sway at the new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space for a live version of the (sometimes) must-listen Soundcheck program on WNYC. The question of the day remains a constant source of debate amongst musicians, artists and writers in this town: How do you define downtown? What is the current sound of downtown?

The panel included Lou Reed (a man of original genius with diminishing returns each year his career has creaked by), Santigold (the better MIA who doesn’t actually sound like MIA) and the violinist from ETHEL, a string quartet that performed a beautiful commission composed by Osvaldo Golijov called “Radio.”

And what does downtown mean to these people? “Places where you could experiment and places where you could try whatever,” responded Reed. “John Zorn’s The Stone might be the only example left.”

This response is, of course, typically dismissive, but also sort of true. When friends come in from out of town, I almost always wheel them down to The Stone for a random performance. It’s actually pure in there – no merch, no food, no drinks, no minimum, no lobby. It’s just different communities collaborating in a truly experimental sense. Other venues come and go (Le Poisson Rouge has done some good lately), but The Stone has been the only real fixture that’s reminiscent of the downtown of yesteryear.

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Check out Permanent Bliss. It’s the online home of my friend and former colleague, Peter Davidson, and features some truly excellent poetry and photography. The curation is top notch and has a sort of hypnotic effect as you work through the entries. You can find one of his poems on Proyekto, too.

What is the role of improvisation in your music? 

The records are instantaneous documents of a moment with the idea that that moment can be an extended moment… it’s a month. Improvisation or spur of the moment can happen anywhere. Sometimes it’s in the outro of a song in the mix. That’s as valid as the initial live tracking of the core band. It’s a whole long period of capturing moments and never trying to reproduce anything, but more always trying to catch things. It’s about it being like a yearbook, so the musicians can listen to it and remember – or in even loftier terms, use it like a study guide of like… “Why did I do that? Can I do that again?”

I like it as a tool – like, sometimes I’ll sing a song in a way I’ve never sung it before. Once you capture it, if you listen again, you can capture and reproduce it and it’s amazing. At live shows, at the end of the show, I’ll think maybe I’ll do that again, but I don’t know how we did it in the first place. Recording, it’s looking for those, and that’s how you know that you’ve got the tape of both the overdub and the original tracking. 

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Just a reminder. 

Now you can email the editors of this here site on the right. You can also access the Proyekto Records page, which has free versions of our various records and projects. Enjoy and be careful.

4: Manny Finally Sleeps

I bought butt mountain for $3 million and chartered my own plane back to Washington Heights where I called up Ricki from the laundromat who showed up at my apartment with a bag of yay and a pump that party planners use to blow up those jumping castles for kids. He just said something about the black market and plugged it in. I was out of my fucking mind!

He latched the nozzle into the base which was laid out in the living room and weighed down by the books my accountant prepares every April. WHOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHHHHH. It was orgasmic like the first time I burnt a stripper’s hair with a Franklin cackling giggling grabbing thrusting all over the place. Ricki pumped his fist in the air. He was the inside of a Queen song.

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There’s that David Berman poem called “New York, New York,” where he says, “A second New York is being built/ a little west of the old one./ Why another, no one asks,/ just build it, and they do.” Well, that’s sort of how I felt upon finally seeing the new Yankee Stadium. It looks similar – actually, eerily similar – on the outside, and the inside isn’t much different. For some (myself included), the feeling of particular architecture can become entrenched in our psyches, and luckily, the new Yankee Stadium thoroughly understands this fan/geography relationship.

The seats still tower over the field and position the grandstands (where the real fans sit) with a great view of the game. There’s still a crass overtone in those upperdecks. Yes, it’s weird to hear someone call Redsox fans “a bunch of crosseyed faggots” when you’re not even playing the Redsox, but it also confirms you’re still alive and part of a familial group of fans. We all have weird relatives.

The game, lasting 14 innings, was an odd, up-and-down sort of affair. It was the longest Yankee game since 2002 and ran a mind numbing four hours and 57 minutes. CC Sabathia had flashes of brilliance, yet still can’t get it done. He gave up seven runs in seven innings. At least the Yankees matched that.

Then, all went quiet for seven innings. It was shutout pitch after shutout pitch. Most of the hours-wet crowd was sopping too much and tired, so they headed for the parking lots and trains. Lazily hit flyballs to Oakland outfielders were met with pandemonium from the remaining crowd. Those of us left were the true warriors. By the end, I had eight rows (four in front, four behind) to myself and was using surrounding seats like a makeshift bed. Melky Cabrera won the game on a 2-run walk-off in the bottom of the 14^th. 9-7.

The new stadium is pretty dang magnificent. True, it’s a simulation of the old, but it’s done so well that it mirrors all the historic ghosts inherent in both the field and mind. There will always be that fascinating split between the vibrancy of lives (all races, socioeconomic backgrounds and sexes) in the stands and the glitz of the new amenities. For every human success or failure on the field, there will be a state-of-the-art TV to replay the action and then run ads from Best Buy, Modell’s , AT&T, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe my companion for the day put it best when reflecting on the luxurious bathroom accommodations: “There was no line, but when I got in, there was this guy who completely dropped his pants down to his ankles and was taking a piss.”

You can’t simulate that. That man is eternal.

By Luke Kozikowski

Holy shit.

It’s boogie time.

Boogie, boogie, boogie.

Do you know what this means?

Do you know what this fucking means?!?!?

Okay, I get it!

You’re my therapist and you should be detached

Fine.

But trust me, doctor, it’s boogie time.

And I want to boogie with you.