At this years’ NYU Strawberry Festival you may be getting a little more than your fill of strawberry short cake, sweets, fun games and prizes. Come Friday April 30, you may find yourself getting a little jolt from the screams, convulsing-upbeat guitar work and hard drumming of New Brunswick, NJ band Screaming Females.

The Festival’s live music line-up, which will also include smaller bands like Little Lungs, Hop Along, Fiasco, and JEFF the Brotherhood, was booked by NYU Freshman Shannon Murray and Junior Lauren Monaco.

“When I was thinking of a lineup, I guess I just reverted back to bands I’ve grown up seeing, who despite their increased popularity, have really remained true to DIY [Do-It-Yourself] ethics,” said Murray.

Murray heard of the band about a year ago when they played a show in New Brunswick, close to her own hometown, Westfield.

“Both Screaming Females and Little Lungs have a decidedly more pop-y sound but combine it with elements of grunge, punk, and hardcore which just works really well,” said Murray of her picks.

So who is Screaming Females?

“Screaming Females is Marissa, Mike, and Jarrett. Without that lineup it is not Screaming Females,” says drummer/manager Jarrett Dougherty.

Other members include Bassist King Mike and guitarist/singer/screamer Marissa Paternoster.

Screaming Females have played several shows in NY since their birth, sharing the stage with numerous other scene bands. (They do play here quite often, so if you truly enjoy their show, you’ll be glad you live in NY.)

Dougherty points out Shellshag and Stupid Party, both Brooklyn, NY punk bands, as some of the most notable groups he’s played with.

But there is a difference in the two scenes, according to King Mike.

“NJ is much smaller so you end up playing with and seeing the same bands more often,” he said. He continued on in jest, “In NJ people bleed a lot at the shows because the bands tend to cut themselves while performing much like pro wrestlers.”

Screaming Females started about five years ago, says Dougherty, and have since released three LPs and an EP earlier this year.

“We also have a whole new album recorded but the finishing touches are giving us issues,” said Dougherty. “That will come out some day.”

The band is definitely a growing name, and not just in NY and NJ. They are known far beyond the borders of NJ for their extensive touring, Jarrett estimating their latest count at about 420 shows. Some of these performances have included shows with Dinosaur Jr., Arctic Monkeys, and even Jack White’s latest side-project Dead Weather. They are currently touring with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

So how did Screaming Females end up scheduling a show at NYU? And what can NYU expect from this popular New Brunswick band come the day of the Strawberry Festival?

“We had been talking with show organizers at NYU for a while about Screaming Females playing some event,” said Dougherty, “This one worked out well for everyone involved…I hope they have a good time.”

King Mike’s goal: “I hope to successfully stay dry and have a good time.”

Murray’s choice for contacting the band came from her appreciation and pride of the New Brunswick music scene.

“These are bands that are equally talented, and genuinely care about the music they are making,” said Murray. “I guess I just wanted to introduce students at NYU to new music they might not have been willing to expose themselves to otherwise.”

The release of Lady Gaga’s video for Telephone, her second collaboration with R&B golden girl Beyoncé, was an event like we rarely see anymore: the video is more than 9 minutes long, and the next day, everyone seemed to be talking about how cool it was that she used Coke cans as rollers for her hair and that her sunglasses had burning cigarettes over them.

Not too long after that, Lady Gaga’s music video collection reached a billion views, thus crowning her the current queen of the mainstream pop industry and the only performer today whose visual world holds as much weight as her music.

All this branding of Lady Gaga as the only artist able to “revive” the music video is not exactly accurate. Music videos were never dead. In fact, they’re doing quite well. But unsurprisingly, they find a better home on YouTube than they ever did on MTV.

In her piece for CNN Online, Who Killed the Video Star, Breeanna Hare says that “a blockbuster, big-budget video no longer means blockbuster record sales.” And she’s right. The excitement and anxiety for the release of the Telephone video came because the EP, The Fame Monster, from which it was taken had already done well in the charts, not the other way around.

But as she wonders where the video star has gone, she forgets that in our world of internet addiction and viral videos, Indie artists are the ones making the most of the medium and becoming the new video stars.

In 2005, OK Go took the world by storm when they released their homemade jewel “Here it goes again” on YouTube, delighting viewers of cyberspace with their quirky treadmill choreography. The video was so successful that they performed it live during that year’s MTV Video Music Awards (and only messed up once).

This year they struck again with the video for “This Too Shall Pass”, which reached 6 million views a mere six days after its release. This time, they presented a Rube Goldberg-inspired succession of tumbling dominos, rolling Lego cars and cascading water motion systems. Not only are they being inventive, they manage to do even better that which big budget videos did in the past: instead of just reaffirming an artist’s position in the industry, it imposes one for those who might not have gotten the attention otherwise.

And OK Go is just one example of musicians who have fun with music videos and turn them into a master tool for Internet buzz. The duo Pomplamoose got its push with its lo-fi video and fresh cover of “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé.

Even YouTube has noticed and launched a new channel, “Musicians wanted”, made specifically for those who rely on YouTube video views and shares on personal blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages or any other social networking sites. Through this addition, musicians who upload videos will be able to make money off the plays they receive, and keep it all for themselves instead of sharing it with the labels.

So maybe it seems like the video stars are dead because, instead of having an army of marketing people provided by their label behind them, they really just have themselves. And the product that we get in the end has a lot more heart in it.

In our last issue, my close friend and fellow Troubadour founder Dominic Marcella wrote a stimulating piece on contemporary composition. This is a response to his argument regarding the decline of contemporary music in the academic world.

I’d like to preface my response by noting one thing that my partner and I agree upon. What someone else thinks of the music you listen to does not matter. If you think it is valuable music, than it is. This would seemingly assert that the music you find void of value is, in fact, not valuable, which presents us with an obvious contradiction. As unpractical and unnecessary as it may seem, this provides many academics the excuse to attempt to define music, or at least discover the boundaries of music. Marcella offered his boundaries, and now I’ll offer mine.

Organization of sound by a human mind is a popular way of describing music. But this raises some questions. Take the following video for example.

Elephant Orchestra

In many cases, the elephants were given instruments and were allowed to improvise. The result was a sonic experience that any unknowing listener would mistake for a beautifully composed piece from an Asian ensemble. Should this not be considered music? What about the more natural processes? Whale calls, rolling waves, and the ambient noises of the forest are all considered emotionally provocative sounds by many individuals. Is a chorus of wind chimes music? Why shouldn’t it be?

My point is that there are only two qualifiers of music. First, it must be a sound or many sounds. This simply differentiates music from other forms of art. Second, it must elicit some form of emotional reaction from at least one individual. If one person thinks it’s music, than it’s music.

Music need not be performed in a group. The endless hours of fiddling alone in my dorm room on my Yamaha keyboard and my Warwick bass guitar are more important to me than any live performance I’ve ever seen. Those sounds are intimately involved with my psyche and my emotional being, and they artistically represent more of myself than any song I’ve written with any band.

Music can never be unsuccessful unless no one is emotionally affected. As long as one person has gotten something out of a musical experience, even if it’s just the lone performer, that music has successfully performed its function.

Music does not need to move anyone, if by move you mean all of the connotations of beauty that go with the cliché. If an encounter with death metal (not to stereotype death metal, which is not frightening by any means to many fans) has truly frightened an unsuspecting listener, than it has elicited an emotional reaction. Not a moving one, but a reaction nonetheless.

Music does not need to intellectually stimulate. Background music plays an incredibly important function in society. The term Soundscapes is now being used to describe an entire genre of music. As long as it adds to the scenario, even the simplest background music is as valid as a mathematical masterpiece.

At the same time, music can benefit greatly from mathematical and technical principles. Being brainy and dodecaphonic can in itself give a piece of music emotional charge. Awe over intellectual and technical ability is an emotional reaction.

Just because a certain piece of music did not move you as a listener does not mean it cannot move someone else. “Imaginary Landscape No. 1” moves me. To think that John Cage has influenced music to such a great degree, but to credit his actual compositions as experiments and not music seems contradictory. “4’33” is successful for this listener. The ambient noises can become very musical and emotional if interpreted as such.

Separating the traditional composers of the past from modern composers is also problematic. Why does tradition have to mean ancient past? Didn’t Cage compose in the past? He’s already composed, and his compositions already exist in history. So why can’t they be more of an influence for someone than Mozart? Conversely, people aren’t influenced by everything just because everything exists. If you don’t like jazz, you won’t be influenced by Gershwin, no matter how historically significant the composer was.

The idea that Cage plays a specific role for all listeners alike, different than Beethoven’s role, is highly subjective and simply incorrect. Webern gives me more emotional satisfaction than Beethoven or Bach. The following Webern string quartet is a delicate, provocative masterpiece.

If a critic suggests that people listen to Beethoven because of its emotional value and listen to Cage for entirely different reasons, than that critic is only looking at music as it appeals to them.

I will agree that not being open to all tools, including historical and traditional composers, is a deplorable act. Any composer should understand the value of all music. But actively choosing to only use certain tools is intuitive and natural. How would music have any diversity if artists didn’t pick and choose their influences?

Much of the musical dialectic that I have recently encountered emphasizes the notion of expressivity in music. I have often heard it argued that a particular piece of music is either expressive or not expressive (and is consequently either good or not good), but to focus on such a notion of expressivity is to equate music to metaphor, and that is to ignore the “music itself”.

This is not inherently bad, but it is limiting. Igor Stravinsky, for instance believed that,

There are different ways of loving and appreciating music. There is, for instance, the way that I would call self-interested love, wherein one demands from music emotions of a general sort – joy, sorrow, sadness, a subject for dreaming on, forgetfulness of ordinary existence. But that devalues music by assigning it a utilitarian end. Why not love it for its own sake? Why not love it as one loves a picture, for the sake of the beautiful painting, the beautiful design, the beautiful composition? Why not admit that music has an intrinsic value, independent of the sentiments or images that it may evoke by analogy, and that can only corrupt the hearer’s judgment?

What Stravinsky referred to as “self-interested love” can be more aptly described as the Heideggerian concept of Gestell (enframing), which relates to the way in which the world reveals itself as a resource. Utilitarianism pervades our perceptions of the world around us to the point that even human beings become a resource by virtue of our valuation of a person’s ability to carry out certain tasks (which vary according to context). For example, I think of my father as my father, my friend as my friend, my waiter at a restaurant as my waiter, and the farmer who grew the produce I buy as a farmer. These people are all defined by the service with which they provide me, or by their utility. The same thing is happening (and has been) with music.

By evaluating music based on its expressivity, whether wholly or partially, we turn music into a resource – something that is there in order to provide us with a particular feeling or experience. But, then, how should we perceive music? To emphasize its aesthetics would still be enframing – when Stravinsky mentions “the beautiful design” and “the beautiful composition” he uses “beautiful” not in an aesthetic sense, but in a neo-Platonic one.

He emphasizes “la musique elle-même” (which at first seems ironic for a composer whose most famous works were ballets), but this is a notoriously difficult concept to define. In fact, Stravinsky himself defines it only by negation: it is not “the result of a reflection”, it is not evocative, and it is not the structure or the method of organization. It is certainly not music theory – to think about a piece of music as diatonic, octatonic, serial, atonal, etc. requires one to think about each pitch in terms of its purpose, and that would be enframing.

Musicologist, Pieter van den Toorn explains that the secret to “music itself” is the listener’s relationship with the music. He says, “This relationship is given immediately in experience and is not open to the inquiry that it inspires. Moments of aesthetic rapport, of self-forgetting at-oneness with music, are immediate. The mind, losing itself in contemplation, becomes immersed in the musical object, becomes one with that object.” At first, this seems like an admirable solution, but how do we enter such relationships? “Moments of aesthetic rapport” implies that they are still based on emotiveness or expressivity, or another aesthetic phenomenon, which in turn reduces music, once again, to a resource.

Our minds have been conditioned to enframe. “Function” and “purpose” are central tenets of our systems of logic and reasoning. Heidegger claims that the presence of enframing in these systems makes it impossible to use them to escape enframing. Perhaps, then, there is no logical, positive definition of “music itself”. To define it through negation may be the best method we have of comprehending it, and is not entirely impractical.

There is certainly a virtue in defining music by its expressivity, or by “assigning it a utilitarian end”. It has brought joy to countless listeners, and will undoubtedly continue to do so in the future. Yet, it is important to remember that this is just one way of perceiving music. It is not the “right” way, nor is it the “wrong” way. A work cannot be considered unsuccessful music, “Because it is not moving,” or “Because it is not emotive or expressive.” These claims have relevance only within a single system of perception, and as Heidegger and Stravinsky point out, there are others in which they do not remain valid. We should enjoy these characteristics when they are present, but we must always remember that it is possible to perceive or appreciate a piece of music in more than one way.

You have to have been studying abroad on a different planet if you haven’t seen (or at least heard about) the video from 2005’s UltraViolet Live that shows a nascent Lady Gaga (alias Stefani Germanotta) performing. At 2010’s version of the all-school talent show, you could almost hear the question, “Who’s next?” 20 competitors, each representing one of NYU’s residence halls, took to the stage to try and give us an answer. Whether singing Mozart arias or beat boxing, an impressive array of talented performers had their five minutes of fame on Skirball’s stage. Given the talent-show-nature, those who shone the brightest had, like Gaga, a complete act, a novel presence. But regardless of who won, the February 25th show was an entertaining snapshot of the NYU community.

The show was hosted by Derrick Comedy member and NYU alum DC Pierson, who enjoyed making fun of overenthusiastic audience members and overly flirtatious artists. The night started with indie band Winter, North, & Night giving a noisy, vocally passionate rendition of an original song. Kudos went to vocalist Chris Duggan for his expressive and enthusiastic singing. Crowd favorite Martha-Sadie Griffin (after declaring “I’m single, just putting this out there” ) got the crowd going with acoustic versions of rap hits like Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” that showed off her large range and great sense of comedic timing. Guitarist Eric Kim took up the single-and-mingle banner and wooed the audience with his poignant original “Wine.” After a tap dancing interlude by Greenwich Hotel’s Lauren Lashua, classical pianist Francis Guo wowed the audience with his version of Lizst’s virtuosic “La Campanella” and an awesome lace ascot. Carlyle’s Don’t Forget to Write took things down a notch with their mellow, barefoot “Coast to Coast” which included a brilliant use of harmonica and dance. Carissa Matsushima sold the audience on her flirtatious take of the Queen of the Night’s aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Alex Goley and his band (as yet unnamed) played “Don’t Let Me Go Alone” showing off a beautiful voice and indelible mandolin playing. Christian Oreste and Noah Welch thrilled the audience with their acoustic, stripping version of Britney Spear’s “Intoxicated” that included a very well placed moment with a glitter filled bandana. Phoebe Ryan’s band was the most professional-sounding of the night, including a string section, bells, creative lyrics, and overall polished sound, particularly impressive from a freshman. Guitarist Andrew Onore sang an original song with gusto, managing to fill the stage by himself. After David Sangillo’s juggling, Daniel Eiseman gave another polished performance of his song “Tiger” which started off as a piano and vocal number and blossomed into a jam complete with trumpet and sax. Meghan Offtermatt and accompanist Daniel Lee offered a different take on Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” that showed off another lovely voice with theater sensibilities. Paolo Bitanga did a little bit of everything. A combination of break dancing, piano playing, singing, and beat-boxing kept the audience guessing. Lionel Yu played an original piano waltz that developed several catchy themes in complex variations. Andrew Flockhart, the ultimate winner, had a great act, escalating from creating simple beats to singing and beat boxing at the same time; just when things couldn’t get any crazier Flockhart pulled out a harmonica and played, sang, and beat boxed at the same time. The crowd went wild, and it came as no surprise that the judges chose him as the winner. To finish off the evening Brother Goose played a mellow composition about the beach with box percussion and strings.

Perhaps in a nod to Lady Gaga, the judges chose the performers of the evening as winners, awarding 2nd place to juggler David Sangillo and 3rd place to poi performer Shaun Sim. Regardless, there’s no doubt several of the performers of the night have more than enough talent to be seen far beyond Skirball’s stage.

It’s hard to know what to make of post-modern music. Sometimes, one might wonder if it is music at all.

There is no clear-cut definition of music – musicians, philosophers, and scientists have been arguing about it for years. But why bother? In an ideal world, everyone would simply listen to whatever he or she enjoys, regardless of what it is called or how it is classified. Unfortunately, this isn’t an ideal world (obviously), and I believe that certain pervasive misconceptions about the role of music have been leading, and continue to lead today, to a decline in the quality of contemporary composition.

Now, I’m not audacious enough to posit a comprehensive definition of “music”, but I will submit that it must have certain qualities. The first quality is intentional organization. Whether one is listening to tonal, atonal, pantonal, or even chance music (chance music still requires someone to choose the context and a mode of interpreting and organizing the notes), it has been, in some way, structured by a human mind. Other requisite qualities are more obvious, and include rhythm, timbre, and dynamics.

Another thing to consider is that music is interactive. It is not inherently so – I can go play an instrument alone in my room for hours devoid of any human interaction – but any form of music that requires more than one person to be played or is performed for an audience is. Now, the purpose of any interactive music is, on the most basic level, to stimulate the listener.

Based on the previous suppositions, all sound can be organized into three very broad categories: successful music, unsuccessful music, and non-music. The difference between successful and unsuccessful music is the degree of stimulation experienced by the listener. Music can be considered successful when the listeners are emotionally “moved”. I say “emotionally moved” because, as Balzac so wisely put it, “The heart must be within the domain of the head.” Feelings are a mental process, and the act of feeling presupposes mental activity. A piece that requires more mental activity is that much more successful. As humans have proved over the years, intellectual stimulation is essential to being, yet, at the core of music is the aesthetic principal, and this cannot be ignored.

Successful music appeals not merely to a part of one, but to one’s entire being. Music that has only cerebral appeal is not successful. Its aesthetics – the way it sounds – not merely the nature of its sonic organization is important. Successful music can be beautiful, ugly, graceful, brutal, or anything in between, but it must appeal to our (figurative) hearts. Arnold Schoenberg understood the importance of balance in music:

It is not the heart alone which creates all that is beautiful, emotional, pathetic, affectionate, and charming; nor is it the brain alone which is able to produce the well-constructed, the soundly organized, the logical, and the complicated. First, everything of supreme value in art must show heart as well as brain. Second, the real creative genius has no difficulty in controlling his feelings mentally; nor must the brain produce only the dry and unappealing while concentrating on correctness and logic.

To assume that one is more valuable than the other is dangerous; one risks limiting the amount of stimulation and consequent pleasure a piece of music can provide. Similarly, to assume that one is easier than the other is equally foolish; a dry, brainy dodecaphonic piece is often easier to compose than an emotionally charged romantic symphony. (A brainy yet emotionally charged dodecaphonic piece, on the other hand, is quite a marvelous thing.)

In order to help illustrate this point, I will provide links to two examples of unsuccessful music. The first has been created with insufficient intellectual activity. The result is deplorable. It is an improvisation performed by Bruce Coates and Han-Earl Park; have a listen:

The musicians thought only about the feelings they wished to convey. They did not think about sonic structure and how they could organize sound to elicit an emotional response. The result is interesting, but not moving. I would not go so far as to say that it has no value, but its value is not musical. It is interesting much the same way in which two children poking each other with sticks is interesting (that is, merely as a quasi-fascinating interaction between two people).

The second example is a piece entitled “Imaginary Landscape No. 1” by John Cage. Cage employed an interesting strategy in composing this piece, emphasizing rhythmic structure. It is interesting, clever, and well-thought out, but by no means moving.

“Imaginary Landscape No. 1” works better as a sonic experiment than a musical composition, and in that respect, it is successful. Cage is showing his audience different ways that sound can be organized, and is encouraging them to think about the effects this organization has on human perception. He has taught audiences to reconsider cultural notions of the relationships between sound and music. In “4’33” (a piece in three movements that is essentially four minutes and 33 seconds of the performers not playing their instruments), the performance becomes about the ambient noise audiences overlook or intentionally tune out.

Cage is more concerned with making a point than composing successful music as I have defined it. The question, then, and here is the crux of the matter, is who cares if I consider his “music” successful or not? In an ideal world, absolutely no one would or should care about how I classify his work. The problem is that many, many contemporary composers prescribe to a ridiculous notion of musical evolution. They see what people like John Cage are have done and believe that it is modern music, and so they emulate, try to improve upon, and take inspiration from it, while largely ignoring the compositional systems and modes of the past.

This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. Their work still has value, but most people don’t go to see a performance of Cage’s work for the same reason they would go to see one of Beethoven’s. Many post-modern composers refuse, whether from pretentiousness, fear of seeming “backwards”, or a ridiculous desire to be modern, to compose with all of the tools available to them.

Igor Stravinsky’s three famous ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring are excellent examples of successful, modern music. They have both emotional and intellectual appeal, and are limited only by their aesthetic considerations. In The Firebird, for instance, Stravinsky uses polyrhythm extensively, and though there is relatively little melodic movement, the ballet is indisputably moving. In Petrushka, Stravinsky makes clever use of bitonality, and in Rite of Spring there are even atonal sections.

Stravinsky was intelligent, inventive, and courageous. He was not afraid to break from tradition, nor was he afraid to embrace it. He was willing to use any means necessary to create the desired sound. This should be the attitude of all contemporary composers. Only then will their work truly be the result of unbridled human expression and not of a method, trend, or imagined obligation.

What?! St. Paddy’s Day already happened? Crap. Well, in any case, here’s a handy guide to creating your 2011 St. Patrick’s soundtrack. I’m Italian you say? I have no reason/right to be writing this? Never you mind that. Just pour yourself a car bomb with your Lucky Charms, pop in the Boondock Saints DVD, and make sure you bring a camera. Erin go bragh.

Dropkick Murphys: “(F)lannigan’s Ball”

-Not particularly Irish-sounding, but this reinterpretation of the traditional “Lanigan’s Ball” is basically the “Kung Fu Fighting” of drinking songs. You’re likely to get a contact buzz and a black eye just from listening to it.

Great Big Sea: “The Night Pat Murphy Died”

-A song about a dearly departed fellow whose funeral goes tragically, alcoholically awry. Needless to say, the events described therein sound like an absolute blast. You know, provided you’re not the dead guy.

The Dubliners: “Whiskey in the Jar”

-The G.O.A.T. of drinking songs. If you’re not plastered by verse 2, something is terribly, terribly wrong.

The Pogues: “The Irish Rover”

-The Irish Hall of Fame, if it existed, would likely be comprised of shepherd’s pie, James Joyce, and this song (side note: doesn’t Ronnie Drew look like Sean Connery?).

Flogging Molly: “To Youth (My Sweet Roisin Dubh)”

-Nevermind that the phrase “roisin dubh” isn’t pronounced anything like you think it is; the fiddles, flutes, horrendously depressing lyrics and lead singer Dave King’s soft, Celtic brogue is enough to transport you to the fair glens of Ireland. Or, ya know, the nearest Guinness tap.

By Chuck Furlong

An international line-up of musicians came to NYU to raise money for earthquake victims in Haiti.

On February 23, the Student Senators Council hosted NYU Students for Haiti: A Benefit Concert at the Skirball Center. The featured acts included Ghanaian Blitz the Ambassador, rapper Nyle, and the headliner, Grammy nominated Katia Cadet. The proceeds were donated to UNICEF.

Senator at-large Mustfa Manzur organized the concert. He said he was the only student senator in New York City when the earthquake hit Haiti on January 12.

Manzur said that one of the first questions he asked was, “How do we organize the student clubs to raise money?”

“We researched the big charities,” said Manzur. “There aren’t enough direct-to-Haiti funds.”

He said that they didn’t want proceeds being diverted to operating and advertising costs. They decided on UNICEF’s direct-to-Haiti fund because approximately 90 percent of the money donated goes straight to Haiti. In total, the concert raised almost $1500.

“However!” Manzur said in an email, “We did raise over $4000 dollars in corporate donations to put together the concert, which we will try to donate as well.”

As for the event, senator at-large Chirag Hirawat said that they decided to organize a concert, because it generates donations and is a good time for everyone.

He said the council reached out to all the NYU interns they knew at music venues and other music businesses.

“It was really grassroots,” Manzur said.

But, Hirawat said, “It was tough to get exactly what we wanted.”

The student senators were in a race against the news cycle, and, on that Tuesday night, the weather as well. Manzur said they had sold more tickets than the actual attendance, but people didn’t come because of the rain.

In spite of the rain, the concert raised almost $1500.

“However!” Manzur said in an email, “We did raise over $4000 dollars in corporate donations to put together the concert, which we will try to donate as well.”

Despite the small group of attendees, the musicians still put on a great show.

Rapper K Bain, who is from Brooklyn, opened the concert. He worked hard to warm up such a small crowd. Like all good groups of college students, the audience had congregated mostly in the back of the theater, leaving the front rows nearly empty. But at the end of his set, he was able to say that he was glad to see good people out for a good cause.

Blitz the Ambassador, from Accra, Ghana, and his backing band, the Embassy Ensemble, followed, jump-starting the audience with their unique blend of sound.

“This is hip-hop music, not a frickin’ recital,” he said, encouraging the crowd to stand up.

The band combines funk, hip-hop, and jazz (just to name a few styles) with traditional Ghanaian music, including a rap in the singer’s native language. Afrobeat could describe their style, but they have a distinctly 21st-century tone to their sound and political message. Blitz the Ambassador sang, rapped, and played djembe, while his Embassy Ensemble and a video screen played in the background, creating a multi-sensory experience that brought the audience to its feet.

With the crowd standing, NYU alum Nyle prepared to perform. His band, the Naysayers, took the stage, while he entered from the back of the auditorium. As he took the stage, he encouraged the audience to come forward. Many moved forward several rows, emerging from the shadow of the balcony.

When the headliner, Katia Cadet, took the stage, her performance style was distinct from the opening acts. While jazz and hip-hop influences were easily detectable in each of the acts, Cadet’s performance had a more laid-back, soulful feel,

Cadet said that she would describe it as “PopUrbanWorld.”

“But only if you have to put it into a genre,” she said.

One of her opening numbers was a cover of “What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye. She said she picked that song because of the relevance to the concert’s purpose.

“‘What’s Going On?’ is always relatable,” Cadet said after the performance.

Later in her performance she covered another song, “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper.

“The lyrics are dead-on,” she said. “They’re about lending a hand.”

The most relevant part of her performance, though, exhibited a strong Caribbean influence. Reggae, tango, and other styles of the region were evident in her songs. She debuted her new song “Lan Mo Devan M,” which she sings in Creole.

Cadet was personally affected by the earthquake. She was born in Haiti, and though she grew up in Montreal, Canada, she still has family on the island. Cadet said that she lost two uncles in the earthquake. A third uncle lost everything, she said.

After hearing about the earthquake Cadet said she dropped everything to promote aid for Haiti, including organizing a tour.

“Turnout has been pretty, pretty good,” she said, “but it’s starting to slow.”

Oliver Ackermann makes Total Sonic Annihilation—the stompbox, that is. With a flick of his pick, strings vibrate sending a signal to the magnets of a humbucker pick-up. Then down a cable it goes, through the metal casing of a tin box, bouncing in and around a series of cleverly arranged resistors and capacitors, up a cable once more, and into an amp with the volume cranked. Out comes a screeching, amorphous sound, unleashing an all-out assault on those tiny bones in your ear, sending them into frantic vibration. Out comes tone so gut wrenching and dirty it might just make your stomach turn. It’s a face-melting, mind-blowing mess of noise, heaping with a mix of feedback, overdrive and fuzz with a vengeance, a thirst for bleeding eardrums.

Since 2002, he’s been fabricating stompboxes out of his industrial warehouse space in Williamsburg under the label Death By Audio—a name for the record label, performance venue and practice space for A Place To Bury Strangers, his three-piece band in which his effects get put to use. Through his electrical ingenuity and the performing prowess of his band, the group achieved some steady local popularity. In 2007, they earned the title, “New York City’s loudest band” from several online reviewers. In August of that year, they released their first full-length album, earning consistently favorable reviews from online music magazines and high acclaim from Pitchfork Media. This would mark the beginning of their national attention.

Their exploration of noise, feedback and textural music led them to be termed The Jesus and Mary Chain revivalist, or more broadly Post-Punk revivalists. Their resemblance to The Chain is fairly obvious, leading some to call their music heavily influenced, others, lightly sampled (note the chord progression in APTBS’s “I know I’ll See You” and The Chain’s 1985 “In a Hole”). So it’s fairly easy to plug Ackerman and APTBS into a lineage of independent artistry. On an aesthetic level, one may draw a line back to Punk and New Wave. Marked by the do-it-yourself ethic and the elusive aesthetic of DIY, APTBS’s what we would call “Indie” a few years ago, “Alternative” a decade back, and so on and so forth. On the ethical level, considering the idea and the attitude, their forerunners go much farther back.

Self-reliance—we can go all the way to Thoreau, even Emerson, but lets not. Every time Ackermann strums his guitar, he alludes to the man that gave Rock and Roll its instrument. His initiative in constructing Total Sonic Annihilation, in tailoring and crafting his own sound, reflects the same ambition that Les Paul exhibited in 1945 when he slapped a pickup and a fretboard on a strip of 4×4 lumber, thereby inventing the first solid-body electric guitar. Most of all, it mirrors the audacity implicit in first amplifying sound in such a sense. Les Paul rid the performer of old barriers and institutions, allowed his escape from the logistical and social confines of the academies, orchestras and concert halls. He gave power to the individual, freedom to perform, to play, and to play loud. In one aspect, he had a heavy hand in prefiguring the narrative of independence and originality in Rock music.

Now, whereas Les Paul’s initiative might be considered audacious because of what it meant to first amplify sound like this, what Ackermann does goes one step further. It’s subversive and dissociative, aesthetically, because of what it means to do what he does to the sound. He does not merely amplify the frequency emitted by the pluck of a string; he bends, tweaks, scrambles and destroys it. He makes noise; neither its melodic potential nor its tonal qualities are very apparent. As a result, he is forever in conversation with the culture of subversion that Les Paul’s audacity helped foster.

In the 25 years after Les Paul, came the LP and music finally became a “thing.” The industrial machine took hold and new institutions and barriers were erected. Corporate-run record labels put a premium on big stadiums, big album sales, and big profits, and so too on glossy, crystal clear and expensive recording. Thus was born, Arena Rock. Then, in the early-to-mid seventies, scores of artist and musicians swarmed the dirty, decrepit, and cheap land of Downtown New York, “a dark and dangerous place,” according to art critic Marvin J. Taylor, with a “spirit of insurgency.” He writes: they “rejected the marketplace of commercialized music and returned rock to its roots. Instead of large orchestral, overproduced theme-albums performed in massive stadiums, [they] stripped music down to basics…and played small local venues.” They were self-made, self-packaged, and self-promoted. Small clubs, lo-fi college radio and gritty, often caustic photocopied fan-zines were their equivalent to stadiums and mass media.

In 1974, Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell convinced the owner of a blues, country and bluegrass club, a “dank dive on the seedy Bowery,” to let their unrecorded band Television play. Punk Rock was born. Taylor writes, “CBGB’s deserves credit for what would become a permanent underground in the rock and roll field…later taking on the designation of ‘Indie Rock,’ never fully crossing over into the mainstream.” It is out of this tradition, the flock to vacant space, the independent, DIY ethic/aesthetic, the subversive character from which Ackermann and APTBS come out.

However you label the underground, it’s clear it had as much to do with the real estate market as anything else. A touch of subversion may have always been present in Rock music. Punk and New Wave and its offspring are different because they were fostered by concentrated urban communities of people embodying and emphasizing these attitudes toward business practice and artistry. Driven by sympathetic venues and receptive audiences of crusties, ruffians and some kids it just went from CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City to Market Hotel, Death By Audio and Sweatshop.

The revival movement that Ackerman represents coincided with a yuppified village, soaring rents, and ultimately the exodus of artists to the cheap, sprawling land of Williamsburg. New York Magazine referred to this on the cover of their November issue as “Brooklyn’s Sonic Boom.” Unfortunately they’re about half a decade too late. Land developers and speculators have been vigorously at work and today’s real estate market poses new changes, new problems, and new frontiers. Moreover, what we’re looking at now might just be “Williamsburg’s Sonic Glut”—a stale feed of delay-pedal Rock and over-hyped avant-pop. How cutting edge are the revivalists?

Since Les Paul, and since Television, with the arrival of the digital revolution, maintaining this DIYethic has become infinitely more accessible and far cheaper. In 1991, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, the paradigm of shoegaze—a genre where you stare at your feet and churn out a wall of noise—cost nearly $500,000 to produce and almost drove their record label into bankruptcy. Ackerman sells Total Sonic Annihilation for $150 plus shipping and handling. Developments in recording equipment and software have given every musician the opportunity to produce near pro-quality recordings at a considerably low cost. The rise of the mp3 and peer-to-peer file sharing networks single-handedly revolutionized the entire music industry, vastly shifting distribution practices in favor of small artists and fans.

Eric Harvey, contributing writer for Pitchfork, says in his dissertation-length “Social History of the MP3,” “[MP3s] facilitated the rise of an enormous pirate infrastructure; ideologically separate from the established one, but feeding off its products, multiplying and distributing them freely without following the century-old rules of capitalist exchange.” He argues that “[As] individual pieces of recorded music made to flow through a network more quickly than their predecessors [MP3s] relied on independent music for the creation of an expansive new music market […] which put a serious dent in the existing major label market share.”

As a technological development, the mp3 empowered independent musicians like APTBS, satisfying and reinforcing their dissociative ethics, breaking significantly from the old model, corporate-driven record industry. This new digital music commerce has largely done away with the middlemen, between artist and fans, between expression and consumption. According to Fuller, the new networked model is “radically decentralized [and] has few barriers to entry.”

The promotional side has changed as well. The nature of mp3s makes them especially vulnerable to leaks, to be ripped from online storage accounts giving fans outside the industry “the privilege of hearing completed albums well in advance of their official release date.” This provided music fans with the “built-in capacity to double as promoter and distributor,” paving the way for countless new fan-critics to engage in conversations about music and encourage readers to consume music by instantly offering it up to them. From about 2003, hundreds of diverse music blogs sprouted up, often with more creative, sophisticated writing than that of many professionals. “Pitchfork’s own rise,” says Fuller, “coincided with the mp3 market glut.”

As the decade progressed, however, “the sheer number of mp3 blogs started to outpace the amount of writing and conversation about music.” According to Fuller, “Thousands of new blogs started up over the next few years, including those that mimicked gossip and news blogs by posting a dozen updates per day and selling ad space.” With the old, industrial model of music and advertising wasting away, PR firms “quickly developed strategies to repurpose them by exchanging access to pre-chosen tracks for free promotion. As a result, mp3 blogs have become one of the key examples of small-scale, curated promotional model.” As such, they had also had a hand in reestablishing, in part, the old profit driven model and subtly disempowering the independent artist once again.

Fuller says that as a direct result of the explosion of such “Indie Rock” blogs, by early 2005, coverage in major news outlets and music magazines surged and “led to that bane of every subculture: widespread exposure.” This explosion paved the way for major organizations like the Associated Press to issue articles like “Indie Rock Goes Mainstream…Almost” and make sweeping generalizations about the “Indie” culture based on a grossly unrepresentative “mainstream” fringe artists. AP claimed in 2005, observing bands such as Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes, that, though once priding itself on being underground, today Indie Rock has no desire for cultural change, and is much more acceptant of the corporate world.

Though Fuller refrains from lamenting this outcome and crying for “what could have been”, he nevertheless mourns what he sees as the endangerment of music criticism and journalism. He claims that publishers and advertisers have lagged behind, leaving competent and talented writers “in the lurch”, and said, “We desperately need people to get paid to listen, discuss, contextualize and critique on a full time basis.” Perhaps this is a call for competition.

Matt Tyson, founder and editor-in-chief of EARFARM.com, a music blog with a bent for long-form journalism, is one of those competitors. From about 2006 on, Tyson said in an interview, “For better or worse, there have risen a good 10-15 indie music blogs that established themselves as ‘the voice’ of the entire music blog community.” Little has changed since then, because their popularity is derived not from content, but rather the common, traffic-related snowball effect, which “goes a long way towards explaining why the Indie ‘scene’ has been so stale and motionless the past few years.” Many of these blogs climbed to prominence with the help of “the old bait and switch technique”, building readership on celebrity gossip and then converting content to music.

Tyson said, “The junta of music bloggerati clings to their traffic, a behavior that’s caused many of them to forgo taking risks…bloggers have taken traffic numbers and let them go to their head, let the numbers drive the content.” He states, “There’s little independence left when all of the ‘top blogs’ are posting the same twenty songs, or artists, or press releases. In a way, they’ve become the same kind of machine they were seemingly raging against when they started blogging.”

The closest thing we have today to a “blog of record”, Tyson believes, is Pitchfork Media. And though he considers it to be “an essential modern music publication”, he still says that, “[They are] guilty of a bit of a bait and switch. The site started out showing off personality and uniqueness… and then they got too big for their own good and lost focus… that’s the nature of their becoming today’s RollingStone.” It is this kind of monotonous coverage, the singular voice that has had a detrimental fragmentary effect on the Indie Rock community. This type of behavior slowly reestablishes the old profit-driven model, infusing it under a mask of “independence,” and perhaps fosters and reaffirms coverage of the type found in the AP article.

Two years after they earned a coveted 8.4 from Pitchfork, APTBS signed to Mute Records, a subsidiary of EMI, one of the Big Four music labels. To the club musician, playing dingy dives for 20 people, most of whom showed up for the $2 Pabst and free tater tots, they were going to produce a major label release, and they were going to make a whole lot of money doing it. Exploding Head debuted on Oct. 6 and earned reviews far less favorable than expected. It appeared that they had lost some momentum, and lo and behold, this time Pitchfork put it best. Zack Kelly writes, “About halfway through Exploding Head you really start to forget why A Place to Bury Strangers sounded so exciting on their self-titled debut two years ago…[Exploding Head] doesn’t put up much of a fight…revealing it’s secrets too fast and too loose. It’s more than a little greedy.” Their once refreshing take on noise music and feedback had devolved into dull, repetitive and unimpressive drivel.

At one point, Indie Rock was not as much a genre label as it was a descriptor. Nothing about the word “Indie” actively invokes any type of image or sound to describe music. It describes music in terms of what it is not: not corporate, not mainstream, not establishment, not profit. Does APTBS still fit? Maybe not.

“Indie is dead. What’s next?” concludes Rachael Maddox in her epic February Paste Magazine article. Well, duh. Get with it, man, your “resounding 8000-word ‘yes’” is a little behind the times. Lets try keep in mind that language is inherently flawed and imprecise to express something so elusive as music, to represent that which is representation in itself. So beware of reductive epithets, of labels and numeric grading shrouded in a false air of scientific empiricism. What’s next? How about more than one word and more than one blog. Or, maybe less.

This past October 24th, as part of the CMJ festival, the Temptress hosted about 500 fans (probably a few more than the boat is supposed to hold) for the festival’s only metal show. The show featured Virginia grindcore band Pig Destroyer, who played between New Orleans bands Goatwhore and headliners Eyehategod.

“We saw this show and we were like, ‘we have to play this show with Eyehategod on a boat,’” said Scott Hull, guitarist of the band. “I mean come on. It’s on a boat.” While few of the musicians and fans could find the right words to describe what was so special about a show on a boat, everyone seemed to agree that the setting made this far better than your average metal show. To add to the perfect surroundings, a few bolts of lightning decorated the skyline only hours before the show began.

From the dance floor, the Temptress seems roomy. The wooden floor, acting as the stage, is surrounded by a second floor balcony. Carpeted standing room with a very low ceiling circles underneath the balcony, and an outdoor deck was open as a smoking area away from the show. Add a couple hundred fans and all that personal space quickly disappears, especially for the band.

“I felt like I was playing in a war-zone,” said Hull. During Pig Destroyer’s set, fans pushed the band off the floor and backed them against their amps. The couple dozen eccentric fans in the front lines got a very intimate show. After only a couple of songs, though, no one else on the boat could see the band underneath the flailing limbs of the pit. The few lucky fans missed out on vocals, since the PA was situated a few feet behind them. JR Hayes, the band’s vocalist, was still vaguely audible over the amplifiers.

“It was crazy,” said Hayes, who rarely needed to make eye contact with fans despite commanding tremendous stage presence. “I’ve never played a show like this before.”

That would be saying a lot, considering how much popularity has come with the band’s newest studio release, Phantom Limb. Pig Destroyer, however, has established a reputation for not playing a ton of shows. The members have noted various reasons for the lack of gigs, an uncommon occurrence in the metal world, and the influx of fans has not prompted the band to change their ways.

“It’s not about playing a ton of shows, it’s just about playing the good shows,” said Hull. “And it’s about hanging out with the fans at the shows we do play.” The band certainly did just that, though it may have been because of the tight confines of the venue. Nevertheless, when the majority of the other musicians were nowhere to be seen, Hull and Hayes joined drummer Brian Harvey (Blake Harrison, samples, was feeling a little seasick) on the deck and in the audience talking with fans.

Playing on a boat was certainly a new experience for the band, but playing in New York was a little more familiar. “We love playing in New York,” said Hull. “We’ve always had good shows in New York.”

“Well, except for the first one,” Hayes corrected. “Our first show in New York was at the Knitting Factory, and there were only, like, 12 people there.” Hayes laughed as he told the story, while Hull struggled to recall the gig.

The band has come a long way from that first New York gig, though, and Pig Destroyer is now considered one of the leaders in a very strong subgenre. “We’re sort of a third generation grindcore band,” said Hayes.

Pig Destroyer has not been afraid to venture elsewhere in their career, even releasing a one-track doom metal EP called Natasha (sonically, a polar opposite of grindcore). “I wanted to create an auditory experience,” said Hull, the primary writer on the specific project. “I want you to put it in your DVD player with your 5.1 surround sound and sit in the middle of the room.”

The intricate musical and lyrical details are not limited to Natasha, and really come to the forefront on Phantom Limb. “With Phantom Limb, we got to jam out on these songs for two months,” said Hayes.

Jamming out on grindcore songs is an interesting notion, considering the typical length of a track is about a minute. There was an advantage to the song lengths for the fans on the Temptress, though, as the forty-minute set featured more songs than most would expect. The quick-hit style had many exhausted early in the set, but the audience and the band seemed to respond by using the sense of weariness to fuel more energy and movement. A dim red spotlight peered through the thicket of raised arms, causing shadows to jump wildly on Hayes.

Later on in the evening, Hayes found himself leading the cast of 500 again, this time in a very different way. As the Temptress pulled in, Hayes stood at the front of the deck with a cigarette, looking straight ahead at the Manhattan skyline, the Intrepid brightly lit up just to the left of the dock. Fans had been approaching him all night, but at this moment no one seemed to want stand within 10 feet, leaving the musician to sing along with Eyehategod’s set, faintly sounding from a set of speakers, in a light drizzle.

Pig Destroyer has found itself, despite increasing popularity, at a point of satisfaction. The members know a higher pinnacle can be reached, but enjoying the present seems more important and goals remain short term. “We just spent all summer building a studio,” said Hull. “There’s no new material yet, but we’re ready to get back to work.”

For Hayes, however, there is one long-term goal. “I just want to play with Slayer.”