Brooklyn resident Ben Sargent has attracted a rumbling of local press over the past week for running an underground (in both the “unlicensed” and “in his basement” sense) lobster roll joint in Greenpoint; the buzz seems to have emanated from Liza Mosquito de Guia’s fun video profile of The Underground Lobster Pound for food. curated.
Upon further investigation, it turns out Sargent hosts a weekly online radio show called “Catch It, Cook It, Eat It” for Heritage Radio. On said show, Sargent recently interviewed a memorable group dubbed the Night Crawlers: As the name suggests, the Night Crawlers are fishermen who prefer to spin their reels under cover of night. Armed with a simple motive — “to find the best fishing possible” — and a shared frustration over the dearth of public shore access, the Crawlers duck under barbed wire fences and pogo between rusty pier pilings to find and exploit underutilized fishing spots along the East River waterfront in Brooklyn and Queens.
There’s nothing especially remarkable here thus far — after all, Brooklyn seems to have become ground zero for urbanites who harvest their own food within murky legal parameters. What makes the interview indispensable Monday-morning jackoffery, rather, is the Crawlers’ approach to the taping: They arrived at the studio resembling a gaggle of Zapatistas, donning hoodies, ski masks, dark shades and bandanas while insisting on using voice distortion technology throughout the recording. The “Fish Slayer” and a couple of his sidekicks spend a half-hour schooling Sargent on the nuances of NYC trespassing law, the joys of falling into the soup (“I was lucky enough to fall in at high tide”), and the thrill of the potentially carcinogenic chase (“It’s sort of like a video game. There are, like, different stages, (and) the stakes are higher and it gets more and more difficult the deeper you get in…Yeah, it’s really fun because it’s a balancing act: You literally jump over stuff. I mean, it’s just like Donkey Kong sometimes”).
The highly-recommended full audio interview lives here. To put faces disguises to the voices, jump to the 4:25 mark in the video below:
Watch out, everyone — Sad Red may be actively channeling Philip Glass rocking out to Nick Drake on the Brooklyn band’s latest record, Elder. Give ‘em some space.
That may seem like a simplistic aural comparison, but it’s an accurate one. Besides, it’s not like such a course of action would necessarily be a bad thing. (And frankly, who wouldn’t want to watch that? Especially if there’s a musical exorcism involved.)
But make no mistake, Sad Red’s influences aren’t limited to one arena or genre (and you’re right if you’re thinking that a Glass/Drake one-two punch is a pretty heavyhanded move). Rather, they’re all over the map. Elder isn’t shoegazer at all, but fans of the genre are likely to enjoy this album (also, just a hunch, but Alice in Chains fans may be besides themselves).
Minimalism can be a lazy label, but not when applied correctly. Sad Red’s latest effort is moody and dark, yes, but it’s also evocative. Not a lot of bands can say that. The genre got its sea legs with bands such as Stars With Fleas and saw its torch carried on — in part, and in a big way — by groups like Grizzly Bear.
As for breakthrough potential, Elder’s album-closer, “Glass,” easily lends itself to radio play (but on a radio station that’s plugged in enough to truly “get it”), while “The Garden and the Lemon Tree” (stream below) successfully embodies the airy nostalgia of the childhood memories described therein. In short, the good gospel of Sad Red possesses the basic qualities it needs to spread further — perhaps beginning tonight at Brooklyn’s Union Hall, where the band celebrates the record’s street release with fellow locals Hungry Hands and Dusty Brown.
For the past few weeks, asshole mailmen have been bombarding DCQ HQ with “election guides” and “voting cards,” and persistent old mamasita volunteers have been stuffing hit pieces under our door. Apparently there’s an “election.” Bah fucking humbug, I say. After all, King Bloomberg already re-upped his City Hall lease with a four-year, $85 million extension, there’s no spicy legalize pot/criminalize gays ballot measures, and what the hell is a “comptroller” anyway?!?
But haunted by a childhood riddled with Schoolhouse Rock videos (odd how that cuddly little roll of paper left out all mention of “lobbyists”), I succumbed to the nagging urge to “fulfill my civic blah blah” and walked to the local polling place. The wrong one. Outside, loud factions stood on the corner opposite a bodega and screamed at the occasional passerby to vote for their chosen Latina City Council candidate (more on that later). They yelled at me going in and coming out. I feigned confusion: “Wait, who should I vote for?” The ensuing cacophony made me smile until the machetes nearly came out and I decided to mosey along to my proper voting location at the other PS whatever.
Lo and behold, I made it to PS Whatever, and with relative ease received a voting card and a place in front of a curtained booth. “Have you ever used a voting machine before?” the lady asked. “Yup,” I answered, thinking she meant the neat standing contraption with the little pokey thing that produces those pesky hanging chads. You know, a “voting machine.” Instead, I slipped through the black plastic drapes to find myself before the motherboard the little guy operated to create the illusion of the Wizard of Oz in the eponymous movie.
There were scads of rigid plastic knobs and nozzles and whirligigs to fiddle with, set amid a blinding grid of candidates and party affiliations and positions and lines. There was no clear order to the scene. It was like a drunken Scrabble marathon morphed with a game of tic-tac-toe run amok. To top all, at the bottom of the mess there was an industrial-strength red lever — the kind the villain would pull in the Adam West “Batman” series or Leslie Nielsen would employ to great comedic effect in any number of more contemporary works.
I thought this was all great fun, so I uttered not a word to the usher lady looming outside. I yanked the big red lever all the way to the right, which prompted the Wizard of Oz machine to release a satisfyingly Adam West-y “ka-chunk!” I voted for mayor (against Bloomberg just because, you know, fuck the man and whatnot). I slammed The Great Lever back over to the left like an ice road trucker intent on reaching Fairbanks before the whorehouse closes. The console displayed a little “x” next to my mayoral candidate of choice. One motherfucker down. I grabbed the lever again to throw it back over to the right; it wouldn’t budge. I juggled some switches and flicked some knobs — no reaction. My voting was done. The machine stared at me, daring me to feel entitled to some class of explanation: “You dumb motherfucker. Gentrification’s a bitch, ain’t it? Your old-timey neighbors wouldn’t have been so cavalier with my Great Lever. Now go home and watch The Wire on your Macbook.”
So I did. And my curtailed vote didn’t matter: Bloomberg won (albeit not as handily as most had expected), and my vote wouldn’t have changed the local City Council race — incumbent Diana Reyna took it easily despite being thrown under the bus by Assemblyman Vito Lopez, her former boss and benefactor, a Brooklyn Democratic kingpin, and, awkwardly to the fullest, her current neighbor up on South 5th Street.
Lessons learned: Don’t antagonize the mobs picketing in front of polling places, not all NYC public schools are the right place to vote, and never, ever disrespect The Great Lever.
If you happened to miss the Vic Chesnutt/Clare and the Reasons show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last week, you’ll probably want to consider braving the hipster battleground more often.
Now firstly: It’s true, Clare and the Reasons has probably gotten the word “ethereal” in their live reviews more times than they care to count, but hey, if the shoe fits, you gotta wear it, right? Right. But hold that thought for a second. Is that a washboard I spy? Okay, sure, makes sense — after all, gotta cover all the bases. And every band playing in Brooklyn these days has to meet their one-washboard quota (see: Buttermilk’s monthly CashHank tribute). And just in case you get bored, there’s a kazoo involved too. So much to soak in. For short attention spans (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t have one these days?), this is possibly paradise.
There’s more though — vocally, Clare’s voice is the vocal equivalent of a theremin, warbling like the soundtrack to a silent film. It easily fits in with everything the band tackles, including a cover of Phil Collins’ “That’s All,” which is complete with a tuba. Beat that.
Vic Chesnutt is a worthy match, however, even though his sound is light years away from the Reasons. Chesnutt is a perfect storm, akin to a slightly angrier Tom Waits, but one backed with full orchestration. (And as a side note, the man is an immensely talented songwriter, so kindly don’t confuse him with ’80s country crooner Mark Chesnutt.)
It’s important to note that Vic is not waiting for anyone. He’s going to take his sweet time languishing in his songs, and he doesn’t care if you’re along for the ride. And that’s a good thing—nothing is compromised, but everything is received by the audience in full. The man is here to tell stories (“Chinaberry Tree” was especially spot-on storytelling) and he hopes you’re there, but no biggie if you’re not. He’s cool with that. Kind of like an uncle who’s seen it all.
Chesnutt has proven that he can play all kinds of sets — he opened for Jonathan Richman at Bowery Ballroom earlier this year and played a very different, almost slyly kooky set in that show. But mirth mostly wasn’t in the cards for the set he gave the Music Hall — and it still worked seamlessly. The strings made it haunting, and the all-seated performance (Vic uses a wheelchair, but the rest of the musicians stayed seated as well) brought about a purposefully dark set that contained little goofing around — other than the occasional wry aside — but still managed to bear no expense at the overall energy of the show. Funny how talented musicians like Chesnutt can pull that off.
Last Sunday, those fucking hipsters from the Brooklyn Kickball league gathered at The Woods to close out the 2009 season, which lasted four and a half years and involved more plot twists than the secret script Tarantino wrote in the Video Archives bathroom one night while railing banana-slug lines of glass and Adderall. The friendly folks who man the taco truck at Metropolitan and North 3rd St. drove the whole operation over and slung tacos out back, Miller provided three kegs of shit beer, and a scrumptious cake was supplied by one league authority who does not appreciate it when people point out his resemblance to Dave Attell (shades of the latest episode of Curb here).
Flip-cup, cake-eating (insert pun here), racist jokes, white-person dancing, and copious Jameson consumption ensued. Some assholes decided that chasing whiskey shots with pickle juice was a good idea. Turned out it was. Who knew? Like chicken-n-waffles but you end up barfing all over your shoes and missing work waking up slightly later than usual the next day.
Despite the presence of all these vital components of unnecessary Sunday-night debauchery, something was missing: Gawker. If you, like most other cubicle captives, pass your weekdays before noon reading bullshit like this very “‘zine,” you might recall that Gawker’s aspiring fameballs grew a massive hard-on for “Kickball Hipster” mockery just last year. Sometime in the past twelve months, though, the hipster kickball beat writer either got canned or found a job that didn’t involve giving a fuck about narcissists like Julia Allison; the relevant posts now read “contact information for this author is not available,” with bylines removed.
So here you go — the much-discussed EXCLUSIVE! DCQ drunk-photo gallery of all the totally normal partying:
