11/24 A wknd left to your own devices
Made a sick playlist for you tho!
HAPPY FRIDAY!
Thanksgiving is wack on a whole lotta levels, but we *do* love an official opportunity to express gratitude, so THANK YOU for subscribing to this newsletter and supporting the BdBK community. We very much appreciate you allowing our recs, announcements and general nonsense to invade your inbox once a week, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the sick artists and sweet spots that we aim to introduce you to every Friday. Also extremely (!) appreciative of the musicians who have contributed over the last year and a half of THE SETLIST’s existence and feeling more lucky than ever to live in Brooklyn, home of the best bands and best bars in the world (#nobias).
ANYWAY! Now that we’ve buttered you up like you’re Kramer preppin’ for a shave (the real ones know), now is when we tell you that, in the spirit of holiday laziness, we don’t have a traditional SETLIST this week. :(((((
BUT, if you’re looking for at least one specific rec to build your weekend around, we highly recommend you go see HNRY FLWR—along with Cookie Tongue, Choo Choo, Turtle Grenade—at The Sultan Room TONIGHT (tix here). A HNRY FLWR show isn’t just a concert, but a full-on experience, and once you jump into the void (and join the cult), you’ll never look back. Don’t miss it.
As for the rest of the weekend, we urge you to head to the archives, where we’ve amassed 72 artist-curated itineraries with which you can ~choose your own adventure~ and build a bomb-ass weekend featuring everything from breakfast to bike rides to shopping to shows to whatever ultra-niche weirdness you’re into.
Or at least, uh, some of it.
And in exchange for your understanding (we’ll be back next wk with Work Wife, baby!) please enjoy this long-overdue playlist with which to politely tune out your relatives, featuring releases (mostly-at-least-semi-recent, with a few exceptions) that we’re really, really into right now.
Have a beautiful weekend, babez—
Catch you @ a show soon. <3
[BUT FIRST: PRESS PLAY]
MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS
In awful and all-too-typical news, we’re losing another venue. Our fave Brooklyn basement venue The Nest announced that they’ll be closing 12/22 due to the building they’re housed in being torn down. We want to say a huge thanks to Karl, who cares so much about musicians and the local scene and has been an absolute delight to work with over the years.
For bands want to play The Nest before it closes, Karl has said that he has 12/8, 12/8 and 12/21 open, and if you can get a crowd together on a Monday or Tuesday, he has those open as well — first come, first serve.
To say goodbye, please meet us at The Nest to laugh/cry/dance at LOSER CON, a three-day Alt/Indie rock/Queer mini fest, going down Dec. 9/10/11.
For a glimpse at the basement aka sleaze pit via video and to get an idea of what it means to so many, check out a few videos of the shows we’ve thrown there over the years and a tribute to the venue, written by Superbloom, pulled from the Bands do BK book:
“The Nest is actually a dive bar and live venue in the basement of another bar called Bluebird. It has zero Yelp reviews and it’s amazing. There really isn’t that much to say about the venue itself. It has minimal to no seating, and insanely heavy bands playing ninety-nine percent of the time in a basement. But the folks who run the place, book bands and very importantly, run sound there, make it hands-down the best joint for a certain type of band, i.e. loud. A shout-out to Graham Fahey for booking us multiple times and generally just being a legend. More about the hero Sam Barna shortly.
The Nest also has a special place in our hearts because first, it was the scene of the crime for our first on-stage, guitar-throwing rock-star moment. Second, it’s where we met our spirit animal in the form of sound engineer and lights/smoke machine master of puppets, Sam Barna.
As any band can attest to regardless of where they live, the band vs. sound-person relationship can be a delicate and often fraught game. We have not always been totally fortunate in that realm, though definitely one hundred percent never for faults of our own. So when you meet someone like Sam, who not only encourages you to be loud, not only offers to help record your barely listenable set with your silly zoom recorder, not only is clearly very knowledgeable and also a very nice person, but who mid-set starts to play into your delusions of grandeur by improvising a spur-of-the-moment light show synchronized to the beat of your songs which he has never heard, and then proceeds to top that by firing off a fucking smoke machine, well, when that happens, then you know you’re in the right place. And that place is The Nest.
Also, tequila shots.”
<3
IT’S HAPPENIN’
Here’s a look at the events we’ve got coming up. Mark your calendars and come hang!
12.13 Strong Little Songs 6 (our one-year anniversary!) w/ Yellow Birch Road, Sam Pinson (of Mary Shelley), Dumb Girl, co-host Arlo Indigo for Art Start @ BdBK HQ aka Sam’s apt. - donation based // BYOB // dm 4 address
12.16 BdBK Holiday Party and Sock Drive for the Homeless w/ The Thing, TV Moms, Debbie Dopamine, HYPEMOM, Candy Ambulance, Buff Ginger @ Our Wicked Lady - tix here
Thx 4 reading! Find more fun stuff at bandsdobk.com and @bandsdobk. <3
Order the Bands do BK BOOK (!) (out now via Lit Riot Press) here.