No. 1 from Big Digits at Glasslands; photo by Cami

SOTC has raved about the cavernous Williamsburg art-space that is Glasslands on several occasions. But there've been plenty of other times ye olde host has resisted the temptation to regale you with self-indulgent anecdotes of seeing U$AI$AMON$TER play a tech-problematic set on a relatively uneventful Thursday. Or heading there to check out a former coworker's band and discovering grown men running around shirtless, with tomahawks and handmade headdresses. Or neglecting to attend a private Glasslands performance from a super-secret guest who was. . . Matisyahu (?!). . . because, well, it was Matisyahu.

Despite Matisyahu misstep, it sucked to hear that Glasslands shut down temporarily—with a venue of such questionable legality, temporary almost always means eternity. So it's with great sliding-scale joy that we repost this e-mail from Glasslands's Brooke Baxter, who suggests that the art space has gone and made itself legit:

Dear Sexy Friends, We are happy to announce that Glasslands will be reopening! Our first event will be the Lolita Party on August 17th. We will also be having a big ol Grand opening gala on Sept 7th to celebrate our new official legit status. Big thanks to all our friends who were [sic] routing for us and especially to Death By Audio! There were quite a few rumors of why GlassLands had to shut down. The truth is Rolyn and I were chosen as finalist on the hit tv show America's got talent. We had quite a show stopper/jazz hands routine but we lost, so we're back. No biggie.

lots of luv
Brooke Baxter of GlassLands

Fur Cups For Fur Teeth; photo by Cami

Full schedule posted below.

Hippies sailin' on: Brightblack Morning Light

Brightblack Morning Light, Endless Boogie
The Rocks Off Concert Cruise Boat
August 6, 2007

By David Marchese

DOWNLOAD:
Brightblack Morning Light, "Everybody Daylight"(MP3)

A boat, some blunts and Brightblack Morning Light. For the dreamily swaying and deep-toking numbers aboard the Half Moon last night, that's undoubtedly a trifecta approaching Tinkers to Evers to Chance levels of perfection. For me, not so much. I like to stand, or in the case of a Brightblack show, sit with my mind quiet and mouth agape as much as the next fella—and getting zonked from time to time is probably necessary for maintaining sanity in this dirty, noisy town—but a state of zonk can be brought about by many things. Just last night, the soft undulations of the East River, the geometric beauty of light reflecting on water, the glowing windows of the island's office buildings—there was plenty aside from the music to get lost in. But the step between coaxing a dream and compelling a snooze is a difficult one. It's also one Brightblack couldn't make; at least not for me, not sober, and not nearly as well as undercard act Endless Boogie.

If you can hear the universe in the sound of an electric guitar and suspect the secret to life is hidden somewhere inside a shuffle, then you might consider making Endless Boogie your new masters. These four leathery geezers play monochord John Lee Hooker stomps that go on forever, then go on some more, before arriving at a place where the simple introduction of a new riff achieves face-melting force. Extra color comes courtesy of the jerky-like singer/guitarist's strangled croak and Gump-simple lead lines, which, like Forrest, are always right time, right place. This was make-out music for broads and bullies. Rough. Relentless. Rocking. The thick stink coming off the river combined with my lack of hydration may have been playing tricks on me, but when the Half Moon brushed by Lady Liberty somewhere between the beginning of Endless Boogie's set and infinity, I could've sworn I saw that big green mama hitch her toga up a couple inches and gimme a wink.

I'm also pretty sure she stifled a yawn during Brightblack. I get that this band of longhairs is trying to take bits and pieces of various zone-out touchstones (freak folk, dub, In a Silent Way, Miles) and strip them down until all that's left are hints and whispers. And granted, there was something pleasingly alien about cruising around Manhattan enveloped in the band's amniotic echo, but quiet music doesn't have to be so flat. The band doesn't know enough tricks to make its mix of hushed, unintelligible vocals, warm, woozy keyboards and nature-noir horn and guitar licks interesting. At least not interesting enough to compete with the sensory smörgåsbord of a night, a boat, a river and a city. No peaks. No valleys. Hardly any fun.

Looking for clues to the band's appeal, I resorted to a quick mindmeld with a cotton-mouthed, bloodshot gentleman three feet to my left. So that's it: the music was dripping like honey from a spoon. But when I exited his smoke-addled brain, "dripping" became "watching", "honey," became "paint," and "spoon" became "dry."

PREVIOUSLY
Bad Brains on a Boat

William Bowers's work makes a cameo here every Tuesday. In case you missed it, the dude writes for Pitchfork, Paste, Magnet, plus his work's been in a da Capo anthology. Send him your spiritual healing at Puritan Blister.

Linda Sundblad, can you hear the sea?

Provincializm: She Blanks the '80s

It keeps winning, the Noriega decade, and at such a pace that no one can authoritatively assess the methods or merits of its innumerable shanks and flanks. As conflicted witness to both its original incarnation and its explosively multifaceted revival, I get residually hung up (queue Madonna queuing Abba) on the flawed qualitative distinctions that were a lazy snob’s nifty record-buying filter way back before these pluralist times during which “Laffy Taffy” can rest unironically—nay, wholeheartedly—on an iPod between Deerhunter’s “Lake Somerset” and Roxy Music’s “Ladytron” (not to be confused, of course, with synth-pop backlookers, Ladytron the band, who also do DJ tours, like New Order’s Peter Hook). When I fancied Kelly Osborne’s 80s-assed singles, I thought I could feel my Minutemen albums loathing me, like sentient toys I’d philosophically abandoned—then Mike Watt goes and does sessions with Kelly Clarkson, as if to coo “quash that self-beef” into his fans’ anxious lobes. My precious copy of Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward suffered the 90s in secret between my mattress and box springs, but now I’m a grown man fronting bright Modular tees, sweatbands, and mirror medallions to uncomplement my Misfits devilock haircut? Last week at a club, I saw a DJ kill the Smiths’ “Panic” (canonical “good” 80s) after one floor-clearing verse, transitioning into Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend (a fine-the-first-time rehash of canonical “bad” 80s), which prompted a stampede, packing even the unsteady platforms separating the booty zone from the bar area. Some leftover reactionary part of me wants to ask, “Is our children being breast-fed vomit?” Enter the wondrously recombinatory Linda Sundblad, who should be huge, huger than hairspray, Hairspray, and certain (hollaback) household names.

Plan B publisher Everett True is baaaaaaaack. Last week, he recalled knowing who the Pipettes were way before you. This week, he reminds you once again that he was there and you weren't. Oh yeah, he once wrote a book called Nirvana: The Biography (da Capo Press), which is useful to know before reading this column. E-mail Everett at [email protected].

Pete and the Pirates.

Hugs and Kisses

This Week: Stolen Recordings

No one’s ever headhunted me to be an A&R; person.

Any YouTube file with the keywords "escort,""video," and "all through the night" is gonna get a remarkable amount of Web traffic, but the viral success of Escort's "All Through the Night," "a Technicolor blast of dance-floor dynamite," wasn't due to the clip's perviness. It was, as you likely recall, the singing Muppets:

For this week's dead-tree version of this publication, Brumpster Harvilla hung out with Escort one week into their "fame" to find out the story behind the Hensonized story:

Irvin Coffee, a jovial filmmaking friend of the band who's worked on The Chappelle Show and a documentary called The Beauty Academy of Kabul, sat down with eight DVDs' worth of raw Muppet material and bashed it out. "Discounting all the technological bullshit, it took three days," he recalls.

Harvilla also went to see Escort at Stuyvesant Town Oval and came face-to-face with one member of Escort's self-appointed septuagenarian street team:

Everyone in the Oval is hella smiley, onstage and off, from the pogoing young 'uns to the twentysomething beanpoles carrying Other Music bags, to the nearby dancing queen who informs me several times that she is (a) 78 years old and (b) really excited. "If they can bring this out in me—a 78-year-old lady!" she marvels. "I haven't felt this good in ages!"

Perhaps it was "All Through the Night"'s lyrics?

When you wanna sex me
Give it up
If you wanna freak me
Give it up
You don't have to take me out
Just pick me up and turn me out
Give it up

READ
Down in Front: Muppet! at the Disco

Dirty Projectors

No Context

By Zach Baron

If you have not yet heard the two-headed heavenly beast that is Harptallica, get ready to bow before the beauty of post-irony. Harptallica is a pair of young women who do two very important things:

1) They pluck celestial sounds from gilded harps.

2) They do so while covering Metallica's greatest hits.

Harptallica is both the joke and the punchline, the tribute-band equivalent of the old kneeslapper, So this dyslexic walks into a bra. . .

Two other things to know about Harptallica:

1) They are not actively seeking out Joanna Newsom to join them. The online petition soliciting Bill Callahan's GF to join these "viralist string-thrash sensations Harptallica in holy matrimony for a live stadium tour. . .no later than December 31, 2007" is the viral handiwork of an old friend of ours, a little known Boston-based Metallica head who once wrote one of the funniest pieces ostensibly about Metallica's craptastic, symphonic double CD S&M;. For what it's worth, OTDude's petition is so popular that at blog time, there was a total of. . . one signature. Help the brother out.

2) Harptallica is coming to the Knitting Factory Tap Room on September 20. Tickets available here, a link provided less as a service and more as evidence.

Sadly, those Thriller-reenacting Filipino inmates do not have anything confirmed in New York. Someone pleeeeaaassse start a petition to get them here.

Heaven knows, William Bowers is the new movement in town.

Provincializm: Spandex From Spain

I'm giving that Monday columnist one last jab at my Pitchfork homesnakes before I’ll stoop to spoof more than his sagacious one-sentence-paragraph leads. What I mean to say is:

Dancepunk 2.0 is the new hair-metal 2.0.

Are you?

<3
SOTC

The Virgins headline the Mercury Lounge tonight with Lissy Trullie & The Fibs, Frankpollis, and Eric Gaffney (of Sebadoh). Tickets available here.

What that Jack Daniels guitar will do to a man...

Our next-door neighbor has a newsflash: