CMJ Recap Day 5 - Transexuals, Zombies, Strangers

Alright, lets wrap this up people.
The final night of CMJ came too quick. Looking back, the amount of good music experienced was staggering even for a New York Transplant who is used to this kind of thing.

I'm not sure what happened during the day, but I am guessing it involved me beating the piss out of Ant in Blitz The Leage 2. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was it. After that, we stepped into a cold, wet night to Otto's Shrunken Head, a Tiki bar in the East Village to celebrate a friend's birthday party.

I put down a Zombie (best drink with confusing ingredients that ISN'T a Fog Cutter from the Red Dragon...Ogre, you know what I'm talking about) and a beer before heading to the Bowery. The agreement was that we would high five the birthday guy, run to the Bowery to see Marnie Stern, (Who has a restraining order out on Ant after the last time we ran into her.) A Place To Bury Strangers and Crystal Antlers, and then meet up with the party around 3 am. Surprisingly...we succeeded. We weren't thrown off course too terribly...pretty amazing.

We showed up to see the last 30 seconds of Marnie Stern...Ant threw his panties onstage.

Then it was Vivian Girls, who as of this writing, I have completely forgotten everything about...uhh...

Then I finally got to see Crystal Antlers, and they really did live up to the hype. I don't think there are any New York "fans" of this band, who know all the songs, and truly enjoy themselves non-ironically, but that's neither here nor there. They were noisy, and their songs went on for a long time, which is a good thing when it comes to noise. Check them out.


After that we stuffed in earplugs for A Place to Bury Strangers. They are loud as fuck and are pretty reckless with other people's hearing, which makes them great. I saw them for CMJ last year in a basement and it was deafening, so this year I was prepared. They weren't AS loud, but their squalls of noise were much thicker, making it harder and thus more rewarding to find the near-pop songs underneath. In my opinion, they killed it, and had me drooling and stumbling by the end of their set...which devolved into sheer feedback, the singer whipping his guitar with its own cord.


Their track "To Fix the Gash In Your Head"


The end of their set

After that, we reconvened with the birthday party to drink some whiskey and hear about the trannies that saw the birthday boys nuts by request. Good times.

Dying in a cab at 4 am on the way home, I was glad. CMJ was done, it was over. WIt was a fucking mess, but if you let yourself get into it, disregarding the branding, the bored audiences, the lame industry people, the hype, and the expensive drinks, the fact is that you have an opportunity to see a month's worth of unbelievable music in one short week. Just don't stop, you can't ever stop.