04/07/09 King Britt/Derek Plaslaiko/Zemi17/etc @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple, Brooklyn, NY

Though slightly past its prime, The Danger still knew how to put on a spectacle. This party brought ice sculptures and banh mi to the cavernous Brooklyn Masonic Temple, along with an eclectic line up. Things got a little weird.

04/13/09 Mission: On Mars @ Zebulon, Brooklyn, NY

I always thought this Indian classical fusion group deserved a little more love. Both the band and two of my favorite Williamsburg spots at which I saw them are now defunct.

03/22/08 Orchard Lounge/Pet Cemetery/The Indobox/Digital Frontier @ Paul Robeson Theater, Brooklyn, NY

Despite all the raucous behavior one would expect when allowing crunchtronica heads upwards of a 30 pack each in a dirt-floored church basement, the most memorable aspect of this was when my non-scene friend saw some kidz going gaga over some heady crystals in the bathroom light.

02/07/09 Soulive @ The Bell House, Brooklyn, NY

Seeing a favorite band in a smaller, brand new venue is always a treat. This night started at a friends' Park Slope apartment and took an adventurous turn to local funk ensemble HeyLady's practice space for a drunk and disorderly jam session after party. LISTEN HERE!

01/24/09 Electric Junkyard Gamelan/ATTN: @ Rubulad, Brooklyn, NY

This go-round at the expansive play land of Rubulad featured a couple of local acts. We came for the aesthetic allure of Electric Junkyard Gamelan's DIY twist on the traditional Indonesian ensemble, and we discovered the 8-bit beats of the eminently un-Googleable ATTN:.

01/08/09 Brooklyn Freestyle Sessions w/Mobius Collective @ Rose Live Music, Brooklyn, NY

For my 26th birthday and to kick off an incredible year of music in style, I decided to go all city over the course of a long weekend. Tonight was the Brooklyn portion of the festivities - a jam session at one of my favorite Williamsburg haunts.

The next night took us to Boogie Down Bronx for a graffiti art gallery opening featuring work by several of my friends, after which we wound down back in Queens at L.I.C. Bar.

12/31/08 The Danger continued @ warehouse, Brooklyn, NY

The early hours of 2009 were spent much as the early hours of the year prior - in a sweaty warehouse dancing the night away. It was no match for 2008 though. The Danger never really recaptured the fleeting devil-may-care whimsy of One Night of Fire, try as it might.

09/13/08 Lightning Bolt/Growing/Krallice @ 979 Broadway backyard, Brooklyn, NY

This Todd P back to school party took place at a vacant lot under the JMZ line. The trains constantly rumbling overhead complemented the drone metal of Krallice and the more ambient drone of guitar/electronics glitch experimentalists Growing.

The Bushwick lot was perfect for the art school punkfuckery of Lightning Bolt, who elected to situate their sparse set-up in the midst of a rowdy all-ages crowd nearly to their detriment.

08/31/08 Team Robespierre/Ninjasonik/Whales & Cops/PoPo/DJ C-Lo @ Office Ops, Brooklyn, NY

This sparsely attended party provided skyline backdrop photo ops and not much else save for a Man Man side project performance.

Things kicked up a notch with an appearance by local hip hoppers Ninjasonik. Their entourage ensures a beer-soaked mosh pit whenever and wherever they perform. Team Robespierre ostensibly put on a show but I'd be hard presses to recollect it.

We followed the Ninjasonik crew to the after party at Happy Endings, an LES hipster hangout that still features the tiles of its previous life as a day spa.

08/17/08 Aesop Rock w/El-P, Rob Sonic/Chin Chin @ McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn, NY

I made it to a fair amount of Pool Parties while they were still going, but I undoubtedly would have made it to many more if they did not take place in the relatively early Sunday hours when I was often still on Saturday night.

But even after a lengthy Saturday, I had to drag myself to Williamsburg once again for a free show by one of my favorite lyricists in backpack rap, Aesop Rock.

Overcast skies early kept the crowds away and allowed me to hit up the inflatable slip 'n' slide for the first and only time.

The opening band Chin Chin played a Lite FM disco R&B that someone likened to the band on The Loveboat. Afterwards a DJ spun the kind of block rocking beats that inspire B-Boys to show their stuff, which those in attendance did, busting out an array of gravity-defying handsprings and spins.

Finally, Aesop Rock hit the stage with a couple friends in tow. His verbiose grandeur is actually better suited to the studio, but hip hop rarely translates well live anyways. The block party feel and old school beats were a fitting end to a long weekend of musical adventure.

08/16/08 The Homosexuals & others @ Rubulad, Brooklyn, NY

While failing to find a roving street party akin to The Danger's that night, I did find a multilevel warehouse wonderland much like the Lunatarium of lore, from which the Danger sprung. Our next stop was the long-standing, but now defunct artistic living/performing/projecting/dancing/eating/etc. space for a performance by veteran punkers The Homosexuals, which appeared to feature only one original member along with my friend's cousin on bass.

The space featured nooks and crannies and weirdness befitting the hundreds of creative minds that had past through over the years. Upstairs featured the main stage, bar, side stage and lounge and a ladder to the rooftop cinema if you could find it. Downstairs featured two expansive dance floors with DJs spinning funk and hip hop and soul until well after dawn. Nearby, a multilevel structure resembling an indoor tree house beckoned the weary into amorphous cuddle puddles.

We would return several times often with friends in tow. It was always a revelatory experience, but would never match the thrill of discovering a new playground for late night dreamers.

08/16/08 Pandamonium & private karaoke party @ New York, NY & Brooklyn, NY

After the Central Park show, I headed downtown for a roving party convening at Union Square. Ever since the previous summer's Night of Fire, I had been (and still am) craving a comparable subway party. It is no small feat to wrangle throngs of party people via MTA to a second location, all the while maintaining appropriate levels of camaraderie and bacchanalia.

This event was called Pandamonium and initially appeared to be aiming for the whimsical with its crudely constructed cardboard panda masks and other panda-centric accoutrement.

It was only once we arrived in Williamsburg that we were privy to the anarchistic nature of the gathering. Buckets of canned beer spilled into the streets and fire dancers spun on busy intersections. Soon the crowds began marching and tossing debris into the streets. When police helicopters began circling overhead and SWAT team vehicles lurked, we knew it was time to head elsewhere before things took a turn towards the outright illegal.

Back in Manhattan, we gorged ourselves on Jack Daniels and Domino's in a friend's private karaoke room birthday bash. Drunkenly warbling "Don't Stop Believing" may have been an appropriate climax to any evening, but this particular pleasure packed evening, we were just getting started.

08/08/08 88boadrum w/Gang Gang Dance @ East River State Park, Brooklyn, NY

The original boadrum took place in Brooklyn Bridge Park at exactly 7:07pm on the 7th day of the 7th month in the 2007th year after jeebus. A concept of the Japanese noise psych freak whatever rockers The Boredoms, the boadrum incorporated 77 drums and a sort of composed accompaniment by the band. The spectacle drew unforeseen crowds, and many were relegated to bird's eye views from the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. Not wanting to fight the masses, we wandered elsewhere and stumbled upon a Korean gallery opening with a delicious buffet.

By 2008, the trinumeral event was a bi-coastal, Nike-sponsored affair. The Boredoms held down Los Angeles and enlisted local noiseniks Gang Gang Dance to conduct the concurrent New York performance. In order to stem the crowds of 2007, the New York event was moved to the larger East River State Park and employed a free ticketing system.

Forecast rains never materialized, but Nike was kind enough to provide 88boadrum ponchos, a unique memento. As for the music, the band seemed nearly inconsequential anchoring a cacophonous rumble of 88 drum kits spiraling outward across the East River under a perfect July night sky. It stands as one of my most memorable musical experiences.

08/07/08 Chromeo DJ set @ warehouse, Brooklyn, NY

This otherwise nondescript warehouse throwdown, complete with an unnecessarily lengthy entry line, inadequate bathrooms, and all the Colt '45 cans we could carry home, was made memorable by the left-field appearance of costume-clad members of Kaiju Big Battel on the dance floor, which erupted when Chromeo dropped "Killing In The Name".

07/27/08 MGMT @ McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn, NY

The summer of 2008 was undeniably the summer of MGMT. Their soaring psychedelic pop spewed forth from the earbuds of every hipster's iPod. "Time To Pretend" captured the devil-may-care cynicism of a generation.

Booked before that anthem and "Kids" made MGMT the It band, the McCarren show served as a homecoming of sorts, and just about everyone in the hipster capital of NYC wrapped around the block for a glimpse at indie superstardom.

Not wanting to stand around for hours, we hatched a plan. After briefly surveying the circumference of the venue, we spotted a weakness in the VIP section. After scaling the fence, dropping onto a trailer and then behind some Port-o-Potties, we walked casually out of the VIP section and into the vast expanse of the decommissioned public pool. It ranks as one of my all-time most daring concert entries.

The show itself was as good a time as any Pool Party. It really was difficult to have a bad time in such a sunny carefree atmosphere.

The highlights of course were the faithful renditions of their radio hits. At one point they all took to mini-keyboards for a sole extended jam that their neo-hippie aesthetic all but required. This was a band on the cusp of living up to its hype.

07/21/08 The Death Set/Ponytail/Ninjasonik/The Mae Shi/Joan of Arc @ Market Hotel, Brooklyn, NY

For my girlfriend's birthday, I decided to take her to see The Mae Shi, a band we had been digging lately, hooked on the ubercatchy single "I Get Almost Everything" off their Biblical-themed electronic pop punk album HLLYH. They opened the show with an a cappella sing-along version of that number, and the show took on a spiritual revival aspect when the band draped the crowd in a large white sheet and began a psychedelic punk dirge fueled by a flashlight barrage.

The other acts on the bill were disparate, but united in their DIY ethos and an eagerness to play in a stuffy Bed-Stuy loft on the hottest night of the year. Even the bodega beers were warm.

First up was the indie underground Cap'n Jazz associated Joan of Arc. Built largely on the masterful squelch of guitar feedback, the group set the tone for a largely distorted evening.

I hadn't heard of Ponytail before this evening, but I have since become a huge fan. Dustin Wong's swirling leads spearheaded the caucophonic assault fronted by the inimitable manic exuberance of singer/screamer Molly Siegel.

The Death Set's headlining set featured a guest stint by local Brooklyn hip hop hipsters Ninjasonik whose tongue-in-cheek raps were perfectly augmented by The Death Set's electrified skate punk jams.

The rest of the set typified the energy of the dutiful all ages crowd, but when a crowdsurfer landed on my head, it was time to head back to Queens.

07/20/08 Golem/Sway Machinery/Michael Showalter/DeLeon/Soulico @ Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

This showcase for the now-defunct JDub Records featured a decidedly semitic blend of performers ranging from the off-kilter comedic stylings of Michael Showalter to the klezmer punk of headliners Golem. The highlight was when the crowd cajoled a park vendor into dancing the Hora.

07/17/08 DJ Spooky @ Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

Ever the innovator, DJ Spooky presented his multimedia treatise on African culture, featuring his trademark instrumental beats paired with captivating images and soundbytes that painted a stark picture of modern racism.

07/16/08 Stuart Bogie's Superhuman Happiness/Charles Gayle Trio/Colin Stetson @ Tobacco Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY

This free show at the picturesque open-air Tobacco Warehouse in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge featured three accomplished saxophonists - Antibalas leader Stuart Bogie, free jazz maven Charles Gayle and journeyman Colin Stetson who has logged time with everyone from Arcade Fire to Tom Waits.

During Superhuman Happiness' headlining set, intergalactic NASA images were projected on the screen for a spacey funk affair.

06/26/08 Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Music @ Jon Cohrs' loft, Brooklyn, NY

The allure at this inner Brooklyn loft dance party was the low-tech, hi-brow classical glitch of Tristan Perich's symphonic concoctions.