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.

07/17/08 Fiery Furnaces @ East River Park, New York, NY

This free evening of local indie rock was enhanced by the riverside ampitheater venue, not to be confused with its Brooklyn counterpart, East River State Park.

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.

07/15/08 Mickey Hart Band @ Irving Plaza, New York, NY

07/15/08 • Irving Plaza • New York , NY
Set 1: Shakedown Street, Manila Farewell, Seven Seconds, Self Defense, Tolongo, Fountains Of Wood, Eyes Of The World, Good Lovin’
Set 2: The Center Prelude > The Center, Strange World, Your House, The Other One > Arabian Wind > The Other One > Sugaree > Scarlet Begonias > Fire On The Mountain
Encore: Papa Was A Rolling Stone > Aiko Aiko

This incarnation of the pernicious percussionist' solo band was highlighted by the appropriately psychedelic tones of San Francisco stalwart Steve Kimock and String Cheese Incident keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth.

The two sets included such Dead essentials as Shakedown Street, Scarlet Begonias and The Other One, along with a classic pairing of Scarlet/Fire, the latter of which is Hart's signature Dead composition.

LISTEN HERE!

07/01/08 Kode9/Dave Q/Juakali/Forward Motion Theater @ WFC Winter Garden, New York, NY

Of the Love Generation's tragic decline, Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, "with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." With none of the cultural gravitas, but similar proportionate respect to musical integrity, this was an inversely comparable temporal watermark for that divisive once-microgenre known as dubstep.

At the precipice of dubstep exploding beyond the bass underground, albeit in a bastardized form, one of its progenitors enlightened the womp-seekers with no pretension in an appropriately cold and characterless echo chamber, backlit by ominous monochromatic dancing shapes.

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.

06/21/08 Consider the Source/Sampson & The Folkadelics/Lachi @ private party, Queens, NY

I had been throwing progressively larger parties in my backyard for a couple years at this point. My buddy dubbed one Baller BBQ and the moniker stuck.

We had also had live music before but only loose jam sessions; this time we stepped up our game with 3 bands and a PA system.

We've had several since, each one better than the last, but this one took us to the next level and it will always be recalled as such.

To start with, in a move that flabbergasts me to this day, I managed to book the local virtuoso Middle Eastern jam metal trio Consider the Source to headline, proof eternal that MySpace was once good for something.

The party started off as usual - the regular stalwarts arriving first and tens of stragglers filtering in at a steady clip towards sundown. The bands all brought the heat, peaking with Consider the Source jamming an ambient metal improvisation while my friend spun fire betwixt the impressed guests.

Until that evening, I had oft wondered exactly how raucous a celebration I needed to concoct in order to arouse the ire of the neighbors to alert the authorities. I no longer have that query.

My friend was playing drums with a legally blind Nigerian pop singer at the time and she addressed the police from the microphone inquiring of a Semitic inclination to their noise concerns - "Did you say we have to turn it down because this is a Jewish neighborhood?" - misinterpreting "residential".

Volume reduced, drunken escapades persisted well into the summer night, a tradition set in stone.