Another morning another hangover. Not too bad today, but I’ve felt better. Adam drew a map for us of a couple of good breakfast places: the Rabbit Hole and Fabiane’s. We decided to give our favourite, Egg, a try first but it was packed and there was a long line so we opted for Fabiane’s – a French deli and both ate baked eggs, Kev with salmon and me with spinach and hollandaise.
We had some time to kill until lunch (we’d arranged to meet Alan for sushi before heading on to a day party at Pianos organised by The Planetary Group). We got a couple of take out coffees from this great little place called Oslo and I picked up a free paper about the Williamsburg and Greenpoint arts scenes.
There were a couple of local shows on that looked worth a peek and Kev was also keen to check out Buffalo Exchange for some girlfriend present shopping. We spent a mellow morning ambling around Williamsburg – picked up a few bargains in Buffalo Exchange, although sadly not this Sesame Street jacket.
Next stop a quirky little exhibition on North 6th Street at a gallery called Figureworks. The show was a homage to the life and work of Michael Jackson with one room full of portraits and another decked out like a church shrine. Entertaining but a little creepy.
After a filling sushi lunch we made our way into Manhattan and back to Pianos on Ludlow street. We bumped into Tam and Elize there and Tam pressed some drinks tokens into our palms. Time for hair of the dog again. We watched a few nice acoustic acts up stairs and ate some free food. Soon it was time to take a walk down to Santos Party House (what a name) on Lafayette below Canal Street.
We met Ziggy there. He’d spent the day trying to get over his hangover. Evidently he’d stayed out for some more drinks the night before and apparently lost an arm wrestle to a buff Swede before showing off his trademark yoga move in the street. Good times.
Ziggy also had another implausible story to tell. He’d received a couple of emails from Nassir, the guy from LA who’d missed our Rose showcase. Zig had received this email from Nassir:
“Hey ziggy,
We met briefly at the rose last night after I found out that I had missed your set. Thank you for offering your promo material to my friend emily and I…been listening to it non-stop on the way to the airport for my flight back to LA and was so excited about the music that when I got to the desk to check in my bags I realized I might never have another chance to see your music live….
So now I am writing to you from the airport to let you know I canceled my flight, with the intention of catching your show at central park tomorrow. Can you please share the details (w/set time) of the show so I don’t miss it again.” (If you don’t believe me, Nassir has written a very nice blog all about this on his site FoundTrack.com here).
I thought to myself, shit . . . this Nassir must need his hard drive defragmented, our music’s definitely not good enough to warrant canceling a flight to LA . . . but when I met him the following day he turned out to be extremely nice and completely normal.
. . .
Anyway . . . more on that later. Back in Santos Par-tay Haus, we watched Domino‘s latest signing Chief who are an extremely tight four piece rock outfit with excellent vocal harmonies. We hung around to see a few more bands – none of whom were doing anything for me. There’s a hell of a lot of 80s synth pop revival going on and to be honest none of them are adding anything new to the genre so why bother? Then we made our way back to the Music Hall of Williamsburg where we managed to catch the biggest buzz band of the moment The xx and a little of School of Seven Bells set. The xx have nailed a really distinctive sound and we were particularly impressed with the guy who plays the beats live – he appears to use a couple of MPCs and pedals and it sounds tight. I think The xx are a great new band although they don’t really go in for much audience interaction and their stage presence is extremely dead pan.
Kev, Zig and I drank some more expensive beers in the bar downstairs before stumbling in the direction of home. It would have been a good point to call it a night, but we were coerced (without much persuasion) into a dive bar playing classic hip hop. Kev and I spent an hour our so rapping along to 80s and 90s tracks and sipping on ghetto tequila. Ziggy ducked out after half an hour. I think he was bored of me and Kev and I don’t blame him. I think I owe the DJ an apology. I kept going up to him, swaying all over the place and requesting tunes by Nas or Doom. From then the night gets hazy.
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