The Rock Lottery began in Denton, TX in 1997 (and in Seattle in 2006). This will be Brooklyn's second annual Rock Lottery. The premise is simple, but effective. Twenty-five hand picked musicians meet at 10:00AM at the evening's performance venue. These volunteers are organized into five groups through a lottery-based chance selection. The five separate groups are then released to practice at different locations. The musicians have twelve hours to create a band name and three to five songs (with a one cover-song limit). The groups will then perform what they have created that evening in front of a waiting audience.

This goes down Saturday, 11/19, at Knitting Factory with names like Liam Finn, Britta Phillips, Yuki Chikudate of Asobi Seksu, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, Dan Friel & Billy Jones. More listed below...

Continue reading "'Rock Lottery' returns this year -- 25 musicians perform together in Brooklyn Saturday"

most photos by Amanda Hatfield

The Hold Steady/Caveman @ Beekman Beer Garden

As promised, everyone who showed up with a ticket (and then some) got in no problem to our free Hold Steady/Caveman show at Beekman Beer Garden in NYC, one of five total events that happened around the country as part of Evenbrite's Concert Confidential series on Saturday night (9/17). Each of the free shows had a charity attached, and ours was VH1 Save the Music Foundation (which we raised $4295 for!).

Though we were planning for a while, the date of the show was only announced 10 days earlier with the headliner revealed just 5 days before the show, "tickets" on sale just 2 days before, and the opener revealed just 1 day before.

Thanks to everyone who helped put this together, Eventbrite, the venue, the bartenders, the weather for staying cool and dry, everyone who came by, DJ Billy Jones from New Moods for playing sweet tunes before both bands, to Caveman for a jammin' set of tunes from their just-released debut album, and to headliner The Hold Steady for a raucous almost-2-hour set that never got boring (as usual). Check out their full setlist and more pictures from the whole show below...

Continue reading "The Hold Steady & Caveman played the free BV/Eventbrite show @ Beekman Beer Garden (pics & setlist)"

photos by Timothy Griffin

New Moods @ Swan Dive (BrooklynVegan Day Party)

After playing their last hometown show at a swanky NYC art show benefit, Gang Gang Dance will bring it back down to earth with a show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 4th with New Moods and Ghetto Gothic DJs. Tickets go on sale today at noon. The show takes place five days before the release of the new Gang Gang Dance LP Eye Contact on 4AD, and is currently their only announced U.S. headlining date.

GGD joins names like Guided by Voices, No Age, and many others as part of the 2011 edition of the Pitchfork Festival in July. And theye're on the finalized lineup, which was announced today, of the UK's Great Escape Festival (May 12-14 in Brightton).

New Moods, who are opening the Music Hall show, killed it during their noon set at Swan Dive at the BrooklynVegan day party on Saturday during SXSW (they went on right before Oh Land on the same stage). They actually had a bigger crowd than Baths who was playing on the bigger stage outside at the same super early time, I think because as people walked in the front door, they were sucked in by the "a precise and raucous four-piece" with captivating back and forth vocals by the intense Billy Jones (I first became a fan when he fronted Other Passengers and then got to know him through his work at Sin-e and then Pianos) (he has also since written for this site on occasion) and also-solo artist Melati Malay (she also plays in Young Magic who recently signed to Carpark). The band is rounded out by Gang Gang Dance engineer Sean Maffucci and drummer Steve Garofano. You can listen at their bandcamp, and you can see pictures from their set in this post.

More of those pictures, the rest of Gang Gang Dance's tour dates and stuff, below...

Continue reading "Gang Gang Dance announce Brooklyn show w/ New Moods (who played BVSXSW -- pics & dates)"

interview by Billy Jones, top photo by Michael Lavine

TV on the Radio guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer David Andrew Sitek has announced his new project Maximum Balloon. Not surprisingly, the TVOTR / Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Liars / Dragons of Zynth / Holly Miranda / Scarlett Johansson producer worked with a host of guest artists on the project, which will see the light of day in the form of a self-titled album on August 24th via DGC/Interscope Records.

"...Then Aku (Dragons of Zynth) called and said he was in town and asked what I was up to and I said, "Making a song that you have to come and fix!" So he came by the studio and he laid the vocals down. We pretty much started Maximum Balloon on that day."

Other guest artists on the album will include Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone from TVOTR, Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Yukimi Nagano from Little Dragon, Holly Miranda, Theophilus London and more. David Byrne is rumored. Aku from Dragons of Zynth is featured on "Tiger," the first track to be released off the album. "Tiger" will be available on iTunes and all digital partners on June 15th, but you can also hear it in a video below, or today at www.MaximumBalloon.com. In addition to "Tiger", Maximum Balloon will be regularly releasing a series of digital singles in the weeks leading up to the release of the album.

Billy Jones of new musical project New Moods, who last conducted an interview for this site in 2006, called up Dave on Friday to discuss the making of Maximum Balloon, barbershop quartets, Cyndi Lauper, the future of TVOTR and more. Their chat starts here....

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Billy: Hey Dave, Can you hear me?

Dave: Yeah...

Billy: I rigged this to be on the speakerphone of my Blackberry to be recording through GarageBand, a slightly complicated setup...

Dave: Awesome, put me through The Crystalizer...

Billy: I actually have you through Long Panning Ping Pong Delay right now...

Dave: I can't wait for Soundtoys to come out with an iPhone app.

continued below....

Continue reading "an interview w/ Dave Sitek of Maximum Balloon (the TVOTR guitarist/producer's new project w/ many guest vocalists)"

The weekly "Sessions at Santas" series continues at Santos (Santas) Party House tonight (6/30) and next week (7/7). Tonight looks something like this:

Tuesday, June 30, 10PM
Sessions at Santa's curated by Billy Jones
with Gary War, Demonlover, Coconuts, U.S. Girls and DJ Dutch E Germ

Next week features a "special improv set" by Gang Gang Dance, and tickets are on sale. All GGD dates below...

Continue reading "Gang Gang Dance - 2009 Tour Dates (improv set @ Santos next week ++ non-GGD Sessions show tonight) "