Blog: Friction NYC

The God Bless Bloc Party DVD looks pretty festive, go out and get it Tuesday the 17th. "Turning away from the light...Becoming adult...Turning into my soul...I wanted to bite not destroy...To feel her underneath...Turning into my soul!" still GETs me HYPE!!! Live performances of 13 songs, including Banquet, Helicopter, Like Eating Glass, She's Hearing Voices, This Modern Love, So Here We Are, Positive Tension, Price Of Gasoline, The Marshals Are Dead, Pioneers, Blue Light. Luno, and Little Thoughts. God Bless Bloc Party DVD - Trailer [...]

Get off the couch and stop watching cheesy shows like Dancing With the Stars . Come out to Tonic on Thursday night and check out Stars Like Fleas , Charles Atlas and Roxy Pain . Stars Like Fleas , live show include 8 members/ex-members of The Silent League, Fiery Furnaces, No Neck Blues Band, Papa M, Mercury Rev and Gold Sparkle Band (with the instrumentation being piano, acoustic, electric and slide resonator guitars, baritone sax, bass clarinet, pocket trumpet, fiddle, banjo, glockenspiel, melodica, laptops, pedal steel, [...]

Bryan of Man in Gray and many other affiliations organized a great show at Asterisk Art Space this Saturday. The show is being sponsored by Stereoactive NYC and The Deli Magazine and features 2 rooms of live music and DJ Tedward all for $8. The bands go on at 9PM and include Unsacred Hearts , The Hypertonics , Dirty Excuse , and The Fatales in the front room, while the back room [...]

Wolves are so 2005, the new year ushers in a whole new species for band names...THE CASSETTE TAPE. There's everyones favorite new band Tapes 'N Tapes, Forget Cassettes , and my personal favorite Cassettes Won't Listen . If you haven't heard of Cassettes Won't Listen yet, my guess is that you'll be hearing plenty of them and very soon. Initially, based on CWL s sound, press image, and reviews from other sites, I thought that "they" were a full [...]

I just came back from a weekend of snowboarding in Vermont . This was my second outing this season and it's no surprise that snowboarding is taking over. It's so big now that there seems to be a resurgence in snow fashion like there was back in the 80s. In the 90s it all went away and gear was just gear...all function. Now it's taking on more of a street theme and blending the function with form. Burton even has a Paul Smith-designed jacket. I've been riding [...]

TWAS THE NIGHT OF THE ROSE BOWL Twas the night of the Rose Bowl and all through the land, All the Longhorns were stirring, even the band. The tickets were purchased for the game, room, and air In hopes that Saint Vincent would soon be there!! The fans were tailgating from their truck beds, While a vision of a championship danced in their heads. And Bevo in his bridle, and me in my cap Had just popped a cold one before the first snap. [...]

Yeeeee-hawww!!!!! Ya'll know what time it. Its Friday! GET HYPE!!! What makes it even sweeter is our University of Texas Longhorns are the fuckin' National Champs. Christian, James, Theo and myself (alums) have been waiting for this all our lives. There were some haters (Ray) and national media following doubters. It turned out to be the GREATEST COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME EVER , possibly in all of sports. Tha Horns were led by the mighty Vince Young who gave [...]

Tonight we'll be checking out the last event of the season for Guggenheim and Flavorpill's First Fridays. Diplo will be laying down the tracks. Come and feel the buzz, enjoy great music, grab a cocktail from the cash bar, and explore the latest exhibition, RUSSIA! 9PM to 1AM $15 admission (cash only at the door).

Every once and a while you discover one of those bands that capture exactly what you're looking for in terms of sound and mood at the time. The band that has been doing that for me in the last month or so has been Brooklyn's Emma La Reina . Drawing from the sounds of the early 90s, Emma La Reina plays brooding indie rock tinged with female vocals. They blend the perfect concoction of UK shoegaze and DC emo with swelling walls of sound broken up by down-tempo vocals. [...]

Somehow New Year’s is always over-hyped and never lives up to your expectations. It always just seems like “another night out.� Well, this year proved to be quite different, aside from being a little bit stressed, this New Year’s was probably my best ever. We owe a huge thanks to all the roommates at 301 W 18TH for giving up their home for a night to throw this party. Also, thank you to all of you who came out and rang in the 2006 with us. I don’t know who said it, but [...]

I have to tell you that our self-loathing-hipster Justin knows more than anyone I have met about our much-loved NY music scene and the indie-rock-land in general. In all his Encyclopedic knowledge, unfortunately there were a few envelope-destroying albums that he forgot... TOP 10 Non-Indie-Rock Albums of 2005 : 10. Vanilla Ice : " Platinum Underground " - seriously, best album of the decade! [...]

Oh yeah, Ya'll know what time it is. Its time to Get Hype!!! Friday, the day before New Year's Eve. We Crackers are throwing a fantastic bash , so if you haven't RSVP'd and paid, it may already be too late. Whatever you end up doing, keep it super festive, safe and Van Damme Hot! Heres to having an explosive 2006 . U2 - New Year's Day (mp3)

So many good things have happened to us this year. From the start of the blog to all the FRICTION shows, it all seems to be a blur, but one big happy blur that is. So here are some funny-ass pictures to remind us of how many ridiculously good times we've had:

Thanks to everyone that listed their favorites in the comments over the last five weeks. To compile a Top 10 based on your comments and my Top 10, I assigned a point system to each ranking. Albums listed in the 10TH spot got one point, while albums listed in the number 1 spot got 10 points. For example, Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary was listed once in the second spot and twice in the first spot, giving it 28 points. It worked out really well, granted we had a five-way tie for [...]

I purchased a friend of mine the Decemberists Picturesque double LP for Christmas and even though I don't particularly care for the Decemberists, I wanted the album for myself. It just felt really good having something in my hands. The packaging, the booklet, the extra songs on the album. It's something that we're all losing out on in this digital age of ours. You can't compare tearing open a new LP, putting it on, and sitting down and reading the liner notes to downloading an album from iTunes . The [...]

This week rounds out my Top 10 of 2005 with numbers 2 and 1. Leave your two favorite albums of the year in the comments and follow the links at the end of the post if you missed the last 4 weeks. 2. Wolf Parade :: Apologies to the Queen Mary Hyped-up Montrealers live up to their expectations and more. A great album teamed with an energizing live show earned these guys the number two spot on my list. All Music Guide wrapped up all [...]

i'm not trying to pull a gothamist and provide near-consecutive blog coverage of the transit strike, but i thought i'd at least share some of the pictures i've captured. crackerCAM conveniently lives across from the forest hills LIRR station, so i caught a few pics of the line for the insane morning commute. the real prize is the last picture, which i scored at midnight of an MTA worker removing the "closed" sign from the local subway station; you'll also notice a bus recently placed into service in the background. i waited 30 minutes outside to take that [...]