Blog: nyctaper

[ photo by Steve Cohen ] Jeremy Messersmith is an outstanding singer-songwriter from Minneapolis with a sweet voice and lilting melodies. His new album The Silver City is an ode to his hometown and contains a cover of "Skyway" by the Twin Cities greatest band, The Replacements . The CD was produced by Dan Wilson of Semisonic . Jeremy begins a tour this week that begins in St. Paul and comes East. The tour includes stops at World [...]

• Jeremy Messersmith - Virginia

Our patience has been rewarded. NYCTaper was moved to a new server tonight with unlimited disk and bandwidth. I just started a download of a recent popular recording and the speeds are literally 100-times faster than the crawling speeds from earlier this week. One problem did occur with the transition - I am not receiving any emails that have been sent to nyctaper@nyctaper.com for the last 16 hours. I expect this problem will be fixed, but in the meantime, if you need to email NYCTaper, use this temporary email address. [...]

We are truly grateful that so many of our blogger friends came out for the NYCTaper CMJ Show on Thursday - and brought along their cameras. Pat from Pop Tarts shot this excellent up-close video of a portion of the Bearsuit set. There is also a review and some really nice pictures at Pat's site [ here ]. Sharon Van Etten [photo by Pat ]

The current name of the club is Rehab and it still has on its website "formerly Club Midway", and its located at 25 Ave B. Apparently, its closing its doors in the very near future, possibly as early as this weekend. The band Quiet Loudly had been booked to perform tomorrow night, and were canceled by the booking agent of the club today. They've posted an excerpt of the email on their MySpace page and it contains the following: "I am no longer [...]

[image by Songbirdnest ] We are taking a deep breath after CMJ and catching up with the backlog. NYCTaper will resume recording shows on Thursday, with a two-for in Brooklyn. After that, its back to multiple shows a week. Here are the shows for this week: Thursday October 30: Sharon Van Etten 9 p.m. at Spike Hill O'Death 11 p.m. at Music Hall of Williamsburg Friday October 31: [...]

[photo by Soundbites blog ] It was hard to miss the pre-CMJ buzz about Women . It was even harder on Tuesday afternoon to get inside of the downstairs room at Cake Shop to see their performance at the Pop Tarts CMJ show . I managed to work my way down the left side into the area left of the stage and what I saw left my mouth agape. This was astoundingly authentic neo-psychedelia performed by a quartet of extremely talented musicians. The rhythms were precise, the [...]

We don't do photos here, just recordings. For the photos we rely on the generosity of others. On many occasions that generosity has been extended by Bryan of the excellent Subinev blog. Yesterday we had pleasure of meeting and chatting with him and bonding over our mutual admiration of one Ms. Van Etten. Bryan took some amazing photos at our show as you can see below: Sharon Van Etten headlines the Upstairs room at Cake Shop with an entrancing and captivating set. [...]

[ photo credit ] When we saw the car with the Minnesota license plate drive up to Cake Shop , we knew Best Friends Forever has finally navigated their way through the confusing East Village streets to find their way to the NYCTaper CMJ show on Thursday afternoon. After a quick load-in, the energetic trio performed the opening set of the show and quickly filled the downstairs room. This was our second BFF show in the past 18 hours, as we were lucky to catch their set at the excellent [...]

Paul Simon imparts wisdom to Jason from The Bloodsugars "Pop Masterpiece" elicits forty-nine thousand hits in a google search. One of rock criticisms' most tired, overused and cliched phrases can be the signifier of a complete lack of imagination in the writer's method. Or, in the case of my attempt to define The Bloodsugars BQEP release, its just an instance where the phrase truly applies. Listen to "Purpose Was Again" streaming on either The Bloodsugars website or MySpace page , [...]

Oxford Collapse in Seattle [ photo credit ] Oxford Collapse closed the outstanding Pop Tarts CMJ Afternoon Party yesterday at Cake Shop with a raging set featuring material from their 2008 release on Sub Pop called BITS . As the trio performed their full bodied guitar-bass-drums power pop with equal parts manic energy and irreverence, the enthusiastic crowd voiced their obvious pleasure. Oxford Collapse performs three more CMJ shows, all evening events: Oct 22 New York, NY @ Crash [...]

Wednesday brings another pair of excellent CMJ afternoon shows at Pianos (158 Ludlow) and Cake Shop (152 Ludlow). The Pianos event is presented by our friends at Ear Farm and features Drink Up Buttercup, Sam Champion and Takka Takka. The Cake Shop show is presented by Terrorbird Media and has 10 bands downstairs including Women and Takka Takka. We spoke to the guys from Women yesterday after their impressive set at the Pop Tarts show and we'll be capturing audio of them today.

[ photo credit ] On Friday night, I got to "pal around" with all-around nice guy John Vanderslice at the opening of the new music club at the downtown 92Y Tribeca . Following an excellent opening set from cutting edge comedian Michael Showalter , John played an enjoyable hour-long solo set that included three new songs from his anticipated March 2009 release . John was equally gregarious in his interactions with the audience and in the performance of his intelligent songs. He is set to finish recording his album and [...]

Impose | e4e1 present: 2-stage T.G.I.T fest P&L celebrate the release of their new record on jagjaguwar 12am: double dagger [baltimore] 11:30pm: the coathangers [atlanta] 11pm: parts & labor [record release!!] 10:30pm: flying [tour kickoff!!] 10pm: rahim 9:30pm: boo and boo too [lawrence, KS] 9pm: dinowalrus 8:30pm: fiasco 8pm: pwrfl power 7:30pm: pictureplane [denver, CO] 7pm: BDRMPPL [denver, CO] 6:30pm: scary mansion 6pm: air waves $5 TUESDAY [...]

Two of our favorite blogs are presenting some of our favorite bands at two different venues - at the exact same time (gr!!). On Tuesday, the Pop Tarts Suck Toasted "Bagels and Beer" afternoon show at Cake Shop features our old friends Bridges and Powerlines and The Antlers , but also has some bands on the bill that we would love to capture. The Music Slut afternoon party at Pianos has the Shackletons and Lissy Trullie , who were so impressive at [...]

Sharon van Etten / Secret Garden from hoovesontheturf on Vimeo . We were first introduced to the music of Sharon Van Etten interestingly enough through an email from The Antlers that announced some recording details of their soon-to-be-released CD. Sharon provides vocals for a couple of tracks. While we had heard of her, we had not yet heard her sing and decided to do some research. A quick google search and a few minutes later we were watching astounded at the raw talent exhibited in an [...]

[photo courtesy of Nate - More Excellent Photos from this Show here ] We had such a good time when we saw Love Is All twice in June [ recording ] and [ review ], that we decided to repeat the experience in almost identical fashion - an intimate show at a tiny venue combined with a larger affair. When Love Is All opened for Of Montreal at Roseland on Friday last , the crowd was only about half full, but from our balcony view [...]

The most rewarding aspect of operating this blog is watching the growth and success of the bands that we have profiled. In May, when The Loom impressed the heck out of us at the NYCTaper Anniversary concert , we believed it was only a matter of time before they hit. And like clockwork, this year The Loom have gathered an impressive list of credentials - a Jezebel profile , a performance at the Montreal Pop Festival , their first tour, a RCRD-LBL profile , a Hooves On The Turf [...]

[photo courtesy of jonny leather ] In an ongoing display of the most disgusting and reprehensible behavior music blogs have witnessed, troll blog BrooklynVegan has continued to abuse and foster abusive comments about outstanding garage-rock phenoms The Vivian Girls . Tonight the Vivian Girls announced enough : I would just like to say that the original statement that I made was never intended to make it into an interview. There never should have been a comment made on the situation [...]

In 7 days, Bridges and Powerlines will perform at the NYCTaper CMJ Showcase at Cake Shop - Thursday October 23 at 4 p.m. Its no secret that here at NYCTaper we are big fans of Bridges and Powerlines . They played at the NYCTaper Anniversary Concert in May, and we have featured recordings of Bridges and Powerlines here three times - at Pianos in May , Cake Shop in May , and the After the Jump Fest in June . We are also [...]

[ photo credit ] Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson returned to NYC from a month long-tour across the country in support of his newest self-titled release last Wednesday. Miles performed an intimate show at Glasslands , and his tight and well-received set included some new numbers from a release tentatively titled "Summer of Fear", which he will begin recording soon in anticipation of an early 2009 release. We recorded this set in "matrix" fashion, mixing a soundboard feed with our Neumann microphones mounted on the railing in front of the stage. [...]