NEWS & COLUMNS

Best Rap Crew
Screwball

Q.B. or Not Q.B. When Screwball put out their 2000 album Y2K, we figured it was the last gasp for New York hardcore. Four seasoned intelligent-hoodlum types from Queensbridge, these guys must have preceded Nas and Mobb Deep in everything but the rap industry, where their talents were wasted in unheard groups PHD and Kamakazee. So they were very angry. DJ Premier helped them with Y2K. Of course it was awesome. Of course Tommy Boy failed to sell many copies and subsequently dropped the group. That’s how hiphop works, pretty much.

But Screwball beat the game and came back, quickly and effectively. The crew’s second album, Loyalty, was released this summer on Hydra/Landspeed. That first break must have only made them hungrier. Now 2001 finds underdogs Hostyle, KL, Kyron and Poet rhyming with the unrestrained intensity that hiphop as a whole was too self-satisfied to muster this year. Loyalty producers Ayatollah and Godfather Don contributed beats that should have rap’s ascendant Pro Tools posse ashamed of itself. On top of that add the near-perfect guest roster of M.O.P., Cormega, Kool G. Rap, Nature, Noreaga and Tragedy, and what else can we say besides that this, too, is how hiphop works, sometimes–thank God.

Best Art Gallery
James Cohan Gallery
41 W. 57th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 755-7171

The 21st-Century Leo Castelli. This three-year-old gallery has distanced itself from the pack by dint of patience, relative geographic isolation and curatorial panache, putting on one great show after the other. Representing the best of Brit pop (like Richard Patterson, Ron Mueck and Ian Dawson) and some of the best artists the U.S. has to offer (Fred Tomaselli, Roxy Paine and Bill Viola, among others), James Cohan Gallery has quietly but steadily moved to the top of a rather spiritless art heap. Throw in the gallery’s reputation among artists for straight shooting and you have the promise of an honest, forward-looking dealer to match the mythical Leo Castelli.

Best Example of NYC Movie Theater Entropy
UA Union Square
Broadway (13th St.)
777-FILM #777

Your Silver Screen Is Tarnished. A spanking new jewel of a multiplex just a few short years ago, UA Union Square is really showing the wear and tear New York moviegoers can put on a space. It’s as though both management and the teens management hires to do the actual work have given up on the place out of sheer exhaustion. By Saturday evening nowadays the theaters are strewn with trash and food garbage that the shoe-shuffling kids don’t even pretend to be cleaning up, and the bathrooms are disgustingly filthy. The once-plush seats are getting dirty, and the floors are permanently sticky. On any given night it seems that half the electronic ticketing machines in the lobby are broken, causing long lines that sort of defeat the purpose. The service from the kids at the snack counters has become enragingly slow and surly.

In short, UA Union Square is just another beat-down New York City movie theater now, no longer even trying to give itself the airs of superiority it had when it was young and cocky.

Best Contralto
Mary Fahl

Uneasy Listening. The contralto is the black-eyed-Susan voice in a field of daisies. Never pretty: more like handsome, hard-boned. Heavy-lidded. Never eager. The female contralto (or the male contralto, for that matter) never bares its midriff. Nor does it ever go near the affects of teen bubblegum. After all, contraltos have pasts. And pubic hair. All dark.

It’s the vocal range of the lone wolf, lurking above the tenor and below the soprano. Think of contraltos like Joan Armatrading and Alison Moyet, with their fluid vibratos, mature and tragic; divas without a megaselling worldwide hit to their proud names. In pop, the contralto is not the money voice. And then there’s Mary Fahl, a contralto with a college-girl face and kohl-streaked eyes. We don’t know where she got her regal voice, but it wasn’t at Space Mountain.

Fahl cowrote and released a four-song EP called Lenses of Contact this year, and it makes us embarrassed for both the mincing stampede of girl singers on the charts and for Fahl herself, who actually cares enough to sing, literally, from her guts, while daringly carving every phrase into dizzying terrain. She never goes reedy or ragged, even on a song like "Raging Child," where she chases a "poor girl" over her treacherous range. In "Paolo," Fahl loses her imperfect guardian angel to cigarettes and wine ("wherever you are/Say a prayer for me/I’ve been dancing with monsters perilously"); "Meant to Say" is the grandest apology we’ve heard in a long time; and "Redemption," the EP’s final track, is an anthem waiting to be seized, hopefully by an audience of strange birds with a fine-tuned ear. (Redeye Distribution, www.redeyeusa.com)

Best Ongoing Party
Ladies’ Night, Webster Hall
125 E. 11th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.)
353-1600

The Perfect Mixer. First of all, there’s no bullshitting around at the door. On Thursdays, if you’re a girl, you get in free before midnight; just show your ID to the bouncer, one of a pair in NYC who sport handlebar mustaches (the other works at Baktun) and smile. Once inside, we head to the main floor first, where we’ll hear everything from bowel-shaking trance to the album version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." We dance to it all–"Teen Spirit" in particular was made for raging. Then we go downstairs to the sweaty, funky hiphop room. The air conditioning might be on, but we can’t feel it, as pairs of women dance sexy to show up the men and the men sit on the sidelines waiting for their shot, just like summer camp. Then it’s to the bathroom, where deodorant, condoms, pens and sprays of cologne are sold for around $3 each. All along the way, the male-female ratio is perfect, the crowd is so racially mixed-up that we can’t tell what sort of hottie we’re looking at and the couples look so happy that we don’t get jealous. We just look at whoever we’re with and grin. Terrific as either a singles spot or a date destination (we split the bill since one of us is free), this night has been going on forever but refuses to let up. Bonus points for the late-night souvlaki and speedy 3rd Ave. cabs available when we leave.

Best "Changes to the Program" Notice
GMM Records

Nazi Punks Fuck Off. GMM puts out some if not most of the best new American punk rock available, much of it by working-class bands like Anti-Heros, Dropkick Murphys and Hudson Falcons. They also put on an annual festival concert called the Beer Olympics. A notice at the GMM website that appeared prior to this year’s B.O. epitomized not just the moral courage and the fire of modern hardcore, but also a tone of righteous indignation so little heard in a music culture where most have long since surrendered their ability to be shocked, and wouldn’t sincerely admit to being shocked if they were, somehow, shocked.

The message read: "GMM regrets to inform its supporters that Condemned 84 will not be appearing at the GMM Beer Olympics. C-84 has opted not to perform due to the fact that two bands who have African-American members would be performing on the same stage. We are shocked to hear that one of our bands would take this racist outlook in this day and age. We at GMM are also shocked that a band that we have invested time and money with in the past would come out and embarrass us with this statement. GMM and its bands are strongly anti-racist and we hope our supporters are as well."

Best Stand-Up Comic
Sarah Silverman

Can We Have Her Baby? Sarah Silverman’s got that head-bobbing supercute hipsterchick thing going, all bemused and self-effacing in beat-up jeans and sneaks; and she’s definitely light-years smarter than us all. Probably a science geek in grade school before she blossomed into the slender-hipped knockout she is today.

Did you see her on Conan O’Brien batting cleanup for the bloviating Penn Jillette? She saved the show, turning a prepared layup session between O’Brien and herself into a piece of ur-hilarity full of bizarre pauses, glances, grunts and grapefruit slurping. She caught serious shit that night, too, having used "chink" in a joke the entire point of which was to parody just the sort of loony who actually would use that word. (Evidently, the Sino-p.c. thug brigade barraged NBC with angry mail and the network knuckled under a few days later, issuing a few pusillanimous grunts of its own.)

But best of all, Silverman’s as indescribably pretty in person as she is on tv. This we discovered recently when we spotted her walking down 2nd Ave. We swallowed, patted down our hair and approached, asking if she would repeat a funny line she has about getting serious with her boyfriend. "Sure," she said with a smile, obviously happy to oblige. "It goes like this: My boyfriend and I have finally gotten to the point where we’re comfortable peeing in front of each other–" "Yeah?" we said. And then she told us the punchline, but damn if we can recall it. See, we always seem to forget how jokes end, and truth be told, we were too busy melting.

Best Place to See Amateur Sports
Van Cortlandt Park

Top o’ the Mornin’, Mon. If you don’t know who Nissam Khan is, chances are you are neither a Guyanese immigrant nor a fan of cricket. And if you don’t know a sleathe from a shillelagh, you’re probably not Ireland-born Irish. What cricket and hurling have in common is Van Cortlandt Park, the green Eden of the Bronx at the end of the 1 train that hosts some of the best amateur sports in the country.

The amateur teams that play here are nothing like the soggy-gutted, postwork beer leagues that clog Central Park softball–in fact, they’re about as amateur as the U.S. Olympic basketball team. Many of the players are imported to the U.S. specifically to play on these teams, sponsored by willing companies that support their unpaid, amateur status with a featherbed job. From the cricket tests played by elite athletes from Barbados, Jamaica, Pakistan and Australia to the Irish games staffed with Eire’s finest, the park is New York’s international athletic zone. For Latin soccer teams and Japanese softball players Van Cortlandt Park is their new home in their new homeland. They play for the love of the sport, usually in front of a tiny audience of spouses, mates and old immigrants.

Forget thousand-dollar courtside seats to see pampered crybabies phone it in; for the cost of a subway ride you can see some of the best players in the world compete for free, simply for the glory of it.

Best Bouncer Line
Chelsea Bar and Billiards
54 W. 21st St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.)
989-0096

Scratched. We had friends in from out of town, and they wanted to play pool. It seemed a simple enough request, as we live not far from Chelsea Billiards. But when we arrived, something was wrong. Everything, actually. Apparently under the impression that boys fresh out of college were going to continue to "earn" six figures for some time, the pool hall owners had turned the place, already upscale, into a sort of Moomba for billiards. They actually had a velvet rope. We could see from outside that they’d replaced their able and affable night employee Jeff with a squadron of aspiring-model cocktail waitresses. The omnipresent Hong Kong snooker guys had apparently been tossed as well. The new patrons looked like they’d just limoed down from prom night on the Upper East Side.

We decided just to check and see what they were charging for an hour of pool. Who knew, maybe we’d see Freddie Prinze Jr. sink an 8-ball. So in we strolled, without a thought that our attire might be a problem, as we’d never heard the words "dress code" and "pool hall" in the same sentence before. We wouldn’t tonight, either. The guy they gave the job of breaking the news was, naturally, a black man the size of a garage door. He blocked our path five steps in and intoned with Barry White smoothness and a touch of sympathy: "Fellas, we at Chelsea Billiards are upgrading our look. And we’d appreciate it if you did the same."

Best Overhyped Local Band
The Strokes

Strokes Us Too Gently. A more appropriate title for the Strokes’ Is This It new album would be This Isn’t It–though you wouldn’t know that from glossy mags like Rolling Stone, Spin and NME, who are eating this crap up. Rolling Stone’s David Fricke–who, granted, is forced to write about a lot of horrible commercial bands but gets credit because he supports bands like Dead Moon, Soft Boys and the Go–calls the Strokes "Manhattan’s first big rock & roll thrill of the year." They have been compared to the Stooges, Television, Talking Heads and the Velvet Underground. But we don’t hear it. What are these writers listening to? Definitely not the Strokes–their music isn’t the forerunner of any genre, like that of the aforementioned NYC (and Michigan) supergroups. And it definitely isn’t comparable to albums like Marquee Moon or White Light/White Heat. We saw them live, and we still don’t get it. They’re mediocre–another At the Drive-In–a band with decent looks, decent guitar riffs and hi-action stage performance. Maybe that’s why the Brits let them record a John Peel session and had them make an appearance on Top of the Pops?

Where did this "local" band come from–Switzerland? Oh, sorry, that’s just where some of them went to boarding school. There are plenty of other bands in New York who are more deserving of hype, and many more who have paid their dues. So what if these guys sold out their CMJ show at Irving Plaza–who do you think bought the tickets? The people who depend on Rolling Stone and Time Out New York to tell them what’s hot, we’re guessing.

Best Local Rock Promoter
Steve Mach, Action Cat Productions

Pussy Power. Very rarely these days do we see shows at venues where we like all the bands. Sometimes we show up to see two or three bands, but most of the time we plonk down a stack of Washingtons just to check out one act.

But that’s not the case with shows at CBGB put on by Steve Mach, the club’s light man, and his production company, Action Cat Productions. Usually, these shows go to benefit animals in one capacity or another. And we really respect that. And sometimes the money goes into the bands’ pockets. We like that, too. But what we really like is Steve’s taste in music. Where else can we see bands from Minnesota with transsexual singers performing with such great locals as Charm School, X-Possible and hosts of others? And where else can we be entertained from the first band at 8 o’clock till the last at 2 in the morning? The best part is this: Where else can we see huge posters onstage behind the bands with portraits of a 3-foot pussy?

Best Ruined Concert Series
Central Park SummerStage

Bloat Is a Mighty Foe. As recently as last year, you could walk in and out of SummerStage at will. When it was too crowded inside, you could sit on the lawn behind the bleachers and hear the show from there. This year, SummerStage was often a very bad scene. Its unnecessarily jiggy website, the increase in nonfree shows and absurd number of functionaries making announcements before every performance suggest that the bureaucracy behind the once-mellow series has grown out of control.

Not content with the up-and-comers they used to book, SummerStage’s organizers now bring international stars. Perennial sponsor Time Out guarantees attendance by thousands of clueless trendoids. At July’s Manu Chao show, the park was so packed that an ambulance couldn’t get through the mob. After that, SummerStage had massive crowd control, and seeing a "free" show in Central Park meant paying heavily in frustration: having to wait on a long line to get in, being fenced off from the grassy areas behind the stands and suffering the indignity of being corralled at every turn, culminating in a cruel and pointless funneled exit.

Next mayor, please, lay off three quarters of SummerStage’s staff and scale the series back.

Best Downtown Theater Company
Inverse Theater
334-5410

In Verse. Since 1996, Inverse Theater has produced comedies (Want’s Unwisht Work, Midnight Brainwash Revival) that are pants-shittingly funny and tragedies (The Death of Griffin Hunter, Don Flagrante Delicto) that are wrist-slittingly depressing. The plays are written by Kirk Wood Bromley, a 35-year-old former poet who churns out two thousand words a day–in verse. Iambic pentameter. The language of Shakespeare. And what’s remarkable about this feat is not the antiquated medium or the wpm, but that Bromley’s plays are (a) produced at all and that (b) they don’t suck.

The Inverse productions are not for the faint of heart: the assorted tongue twisters, casually delivered profundities and plays-within-plays–often performed as quickly as the large cast of actors can move and speak–can be baffling to even the most perceptive viewer. And the plays are long–sometimes three hours. But we’ve never regretted seeing one; in fact, we come away from Bromley’s plays feeling exhilarated, wrung out, giddy. Inverse’s ambition and ingenuity give us hope for the future of New York theater.

"It takes a lot of people to get our plays produced–so many actors, so many words; they tend to be long, tend to be epic–all the things producers at the higher levels of theater tell you not to do," says Bromley from his home in Brooklyn. "That’s why I started to produce the plays myself. But the cast and crew, who dedicate themselves to something with very slim commercial potential, are the real heroes."

Visit the Inverse Theater website (www.inversetheater.com) for information on upcoming shows, and to find links to free resources for actors and theater producers. Subject titles like, "Tips for Audition-Winning Headshots," and a signup list for the "Theater Production Idea-Pak," demonstrate what a tight ship the company runs. And while the online freebies are no doubt useful to many visitors, they are intended to spread the influence of Inverse Theater worldwide.

"We wanna sell our plays everywhere English is spoken–and where English is not spoken we want them to pay us to translate them," Bromley says. To date, Midnight Brainwash Revival has been staged in San Francisco, and Want’s Unwisht Work and Icarus & Aria in L.A. Inverse is also planning to invade New York City’s parks. "Shakespeare is saturating out parks," says Bromley. "I wanna move him to the fringe and myself to the center." It’s that kind of audacity that places Inverse at the top of our list.

Best New Sports Stadium
KeySpan Park
Coney Island

Kings County Bounty. From most of the 7500 seats in KeySpan Park, home of the Mets’ class-A Brooklyn Cyclones, you can see the ocean and the boardwalk. It’s two blocks to a Nathan’s hotdog and two more blocks to a ride on the still-wicked-after-all-these-years Cyclone. The steel skeleton of the old parachute jump stands in the background like Brooklyn’s own Eiffel Tower. As a bonus, they play baseball there, too. And if you don’t think that is the recipe for a perfect summer night, then you, sir, are a great, big communist.

Best Rising Star
Vinicius Cantuaria at Tonic
107 Norfolk St. (betw. Delancey & Rivington Sts.)
358-7501

The Boy from Ipanema. Vinicius Cantuaria brought his slightly avant-garde brand of Brazilian music to Tonic several times this past year. He always drew a good crowd, not least because of his terrific vocals. When Cantuaria is singing, we can’t take our eyes off him, and we luxuriate in the cool sensuality his syllables and guitar evoke.

Word is the composer–who’s much better known in Brazil and has released a number of CDs–loves the acoustics of this small room, better known for more "difficult" music, that nevertheless manages to pack ’em in on a regular basis. Come late summer it seemed that Cantuaria was everywhere–doing a six-night stand at the Blue Note ($45 if you’re lucky, compared to $10 or $12 at Tonic), being interviewed on a weekend All Things Considered (the woman host asked him if he "sleep[s] with his guitar") and generally hitting the big time. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll never play Tonic again, or that you might not find other, comparable treasures on their schedule.

Best Post-Coney Island High Dance Party
Glam 2001 at 219 Flamingo
219 2nd Ave. (betw. 13th & 14th Sts.)
533-2860

All the Not So Young Dudes. Not since our beloved Coney Island High, or the Coney as we lovingly referred to it, closed its doors on St. Marks Pl. a couple of years back have we found a place where we aging rockers could dance to tunes we actually like. Oh sure, there have been Green Door parties at various spots around the city, and of course we love hearing Iggy, the Ramones and the Stones over and over again. But no one was mixing it up with the cool new stuff. Until we discovered Glam.

Ironically, it turns out Glam started as a "party night" at the Coney, when its big red doors were open to us who so desperately craved the PRJ (Punk Rock Juice–Malibu & cranberry). Of course, back then we didn’t know shit about it because we were too busy getting drunk, throwing up on each other and making out with David Lee Roth. But now that we’ve discovered it, our Saturday nights are booked indefinitely.

Run by DJ Nikki Kane, unarguably the hottest chick with headphones to ever hit the streets of New York, the tunes vary from the Dead Boys to Weezer to Buckcherry to ELO! Finally, someone who knows rock ’n’ roll history and is not afraid to play it, along with new stuff that the hipsters in the East Village are so afraid to admit they like. DJ duties are shared by Michael T., whom we first met years ago singing "Sweet Transvestite," and whom we still have a small crush on today.

The night is fun and brings us back to the day. And with added bonuses like go-go dancers and bartenders who actually worked the Coney, we couldn’t be happier. Unless Glam 2001 were every night.

Best Reason to Defy Trends in the Art World
Thomas Krens’ and Frank Gehry’s "Bilbao Effect"

Practically Papal in Their Pomposity. Sure, everybody agrees that the Gehry-designed Bilbao Guggenheim looks terrific (despite the rusted titanium). But what about the art it’s supposed to house? In a word, it is terrible. Made up of gargantuan objects better sited within concrete plazas and corporate lobbies, the Bilbao Guggenheim’s heavy-metal sculptures (among them the works of Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra) and mural-sized paintings sit there for the express purpose of glorifying the cathedral-like power of this globalizing museum juggernaut.

Like 21st-century versions of Pope Julius II and Donato Bramante–the Renaissance fellows who destroyed the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome with a design so excessive it helped precipitate the Protestant Reformation–Krens and Gehry now propose a multiplex version of the Bilbao Guggenheim near Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. The Guggenheim, the McDonald’s of art museums (with franchises coming soon to Las Vegas and Brazil), already has very little to do with art. Another Manhattan Guggenheim would be another monument to global capitalist pomp and muscle, and only confirm New York’s lack of artistic originality and gross corporatism.

Best Cheap Movie Theater
The Museum of Television & Radio
25 W. 52nd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.)
621-6800

What’s On? Who Cares? Ever since the Worldwide cheapie theater closed down earlier this year, it became pretty much impossible to get into a movie theater in New York–even the revival houses–for less than nine bucks. Who needs that, especially when the crap they’re showing is hardly worth three?

There is–and always has been–one exception, however. The Museum of Television & Radio. The $6 admission even gets you into the archive. Like a multiplex, there are three theaters downstairs, all of them showing a continuously running variety of series, curated in such a way that there’s always bound to be something you’ll be interested in. Over the past few years, they’ve offered a "Woody Allen’s Television Days" series, a collection of Super Bowl commercials, a Muppet retrospective, a collection of Mr. Bean episodes. Animation, news events, dramas, comedies–there’s always something good. Pay your six bucks, see what’s on, go downstairs to one of the always-nearly-deserted air-conditioned theaters, and you’re set for the day.

Better still, there are never any commercials. Unless, of course, that’s what you went there to see.

Best Rock ’n’ Roll Soundman
Noel Ford, the Continental

Golden Fingers at the Board. Being the best rock soundman in New York is no easy task. Not only do you have to know how to work some pretty darn confusing equipment, you need to know all about the guitars and amps the bands use, as well as their drums and their talent. If a band has a lot of talent, it’s pretty much just riding the lead guitar knob. But when a band sucks, and plenty of them do, it’s up to the soundman to cover their mistakes and make silver out of shit.

And that’s why we love Noel Ford so much. Noel, pretty much a fixture over at the Continental for many years now, knows his stuff better than anyone. And whatever he doesn’t know, he reads about, figures out, then uses that knowledge. Lord knows the Continental books plenty of bands, and just on the odds alone a lot of them are gonna suck. But somehow Noel, with his golden fingers and ears of platinum, makes listening to a bad band not only tolerable, but sometimes downright enjoyable. Several bands have liked working with him so much they’ve taken him on the road with them. We hope one day, if our band ever gets successful enough, we can take Noel with us. But we know by then he’ll be on the cover of every sound magazine and we won’t be able to afford him.

Best Country Band
Lancaster County Prison

Dogshitkickers. Believe it or not, New York City has a healthy country music scene. Not Shania/Garth country either–we mean non-pop, ass-kicking, hide-the-billygoat country. Artists like Star City, Elena Skye, Buddy Woodward and Nitro Express, Swampbelly, the Hangdogs and the Blind Pharaohs run the range from bluegrass to honkytonk to country rock.

Our favorite is the bizarre country/Celtic/punk band from Astoria called Lancaster County Prison. Their instruments include guitar, bass, drums, banjo and bagpipes. They play every song as if it’s their last, and we’re not sure that’s a compliment. Their club shows invariably turn into Pogues-style donnybrooks where every song gallops to a pile-driving crescendo that most bands reserve for encores. Their audiences tend to span all ages, with drunken revelers not sure whether they should pogo or clod-stomp; most just fall over after a while. A recent show at the Irish Rover in Astoria saw the band play from 11 at night to 4 the next morning. We left around 1:30, after lead guitarist Gerald Donnelly started carrying on about his grandfather in the IRA; we have uncles in the IRS more deserving of soapbox polemics. Still, we encourage you to stay through the hammy ethnic arse-kissing that all Irish bands fall prey to–if only to hear the bagpipe solo in their cover of "Delta Dawn." Lancaster County Prison are true country punk-rockers.

Best Letdown
The Bridge and Tunnel Club’s Songs for Carpetbaggers Come and Gone

Dance 10, Looks 3. Sometimes a lyric sheet is more fun than the actual CD. "When I heard you and she were engaged/I found out at the bar/I smiled a smile no one could fake... You’ll enjoy her family and their cult religion/Her mother’s manipulation and her dad’s alcoholism/You deserve that, you deserve the best/Enjoy, enjoy it all."

That’s from a track called "Things You Sing to a Urinal" by the Astoria-based Bridge and Tunnel Club. Other gems here include "Song for Getting Stood Up in Front of a Dance Club":

Young people drinking beer

What did they have to forget to have fun in here?

What kind of jobs did they have to get to afford it here?...

Why did you ask to meet me down here?

And from the title track, along similar lines: "Sick of the theme bars on Avenue A/Tired of them I need to get away right away/Ten-dollar cover and nine-buck drinks..."

Yes, the lament of the recently arrived, relatively impoverished New Yorker, in this case apparently an immigrant from Philadelphia. These are the feelings we’ve had but felt were disloyal and suppressed. For fear of betraying our exes, ourselves, the glamorous myths of New York, whatever. Don’t worry, Bridge-and-Tunneler, stick it out and you’ll mind it all less.

Oh...the music. Somehow we knew it wouldn’t match up. Standard, plodding indie rock of the poorest recording quality we’ve ever heard, way beyond lo-fi. Son, keep on saving your money by not drinking in those bars and put what you save into some rehearsal and recording studio time. Then get back to us.

Best Coach
Herman Edwards, New York Jets

Put the Rookie In. Yes, he’s a rookie, and hasn’t done much of anything, but Herman Edwards is so refreshing. He gives great soundbites, and is willing to play and lose a round of golf with the Post’s portly reporter Mark Cannizzaro. After the bitter press conferences of Bill "I’m always right and you’re just a bunch of shitheads" Parcells, Edwards’ cool is a welcome relief.

And Edwards, whose team is 1-1 as of this writing, will turn the Jets around: he has a track record of helping turn around New York franchises. As a player for the Eagles, Edwards–as has been repeated over and over–picked up "the fumble" in November ’78 that Boardwalk Joe Pisarcik dropped in the last seconds of a meaningless game, which gave the Eagles a miraculous win.

What isn’t written about was how "the fumble" made the Giants turn everything around. That game became the rallying cause for beleaguered Giants fans: they had had enough. Season ticketholders started burning their ducats outside of the Meadowlands, and Giants management saw that, after almost two decades in the wasteland, they would have to produce a winner. So they brought in the Tuna, drafted Simms and Taylor, and by the early 80s they were a contending team.

Let’s hope Herman Edwards can do the same for the Jets. Lord do they need it.

Best Worst Band
Worse

No Better, Just Worse. They play for free and nobody shows up. We used to think Dick Army was the best worst band, what with their lack of talent, abuse of the audience and redneck crazy-ass cracker of a drummer. But ever since they moved to Brooklyn, they’ve become tighter, better performers, and are even putting out a real CD. It’s like Matt, the singer, wants them to be a real band. Sad. Plus they hardly ever come to Manhattan anymore. Which means they’re not from New York anymore. Pussies.

Then along comes Worse, the brainchild of ex-Furious George bassist Evan Cohen. Not only do these guys play to empty clubs packed with cobwebs and cockroaches, their drummer recently missed a bus and made the band miss their CBGB debut. Songs from these guys include one where the singer yells about preteen hairless wonders, and one called "I Get My Coke from the CIA" that’s so stupid it’s not brilliant. When Evan first called us and asked us to guess what the name of his band was, we guessed Pile of Shit. Turns out it’s Worse.

Best Movie Theater
Regal Cinema’s New Roc City 18
33 LeCount Pl.(betw. Anderson & Main Sts.)
New Rochelle, 914-235-3737

"I Am Howard Hughes!" Honestly, is it even worth getting excited about the next big upcoming major-studio movie? You can catch Jurassic Park III fever or Planet of the Apes mania, but the cure is only going to be administered in a hospital full of imbeciles rustling candy wrappers and chatting away like they’re sitting in front of the world’s biggest home theater.

On the other hand, what if you had the world’s biggest home theater to yourself? That option is available at the end of a short train ride. On the Friday morning that the Latest Big Production debuts, head to Grand Central and get on the Metro North New Haven line. You’ll ride for about 20 minutes before getting off at the New Rochelle station. Go up the stairs that take you across the tracks, and make a right. Walk down North Ave. and take another right at Anderson. You can’t miss the shining exterior of New Roc City, home of Regal Cinema’s New Roc City 18 multiplex.

The New Roc City mall is, in itself, an amazing idiocy. Built as the host of a vibrant downtown New Rochelle nightlife, the structure boasts an arcade and ice-skating rink that are usually deserted during the day. Fortunately, the same can be said of the huge movie theater that anchors the structure. Regal Cinema spared no expense in giving New Rochelle the best in today’s moviegoing experience. There’s stadium seating, incredible sound, huge screens set in huge auditoriums–and, best of all, that splendid isolation. The first screening on Fridays is usually at noon, and folks who went there to see American Pie 2 on opening day enjoyed their own private screening room. There may have been another couple toward the front, but we couldn’t tell from our vantage point toward the back. At the same moment, some poor sap had paid way more than our $6 matinee price to see the same movie in a New York City theater surrounded by morons who hooted over half the sophisticated punchlines.

Riding off to New Roc City has become one of our last resorts for making decent movie memories. And after the film, enjoy some of New Rochelle’s finest dining. You’ve never seen so many donut shops in one humble downtown area. Or you might prefer to sample the restaurants of the actual New Roc complex. The Applebee’s is okay, but skip the Chevys. It’s not nearly as good as the Times Square location.

Best Upcoming Museum Exhibition
Tom Friedman, Oct. 12-Feb. 3
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
583 Broadway (betw. Houston & Prince Sts.)
219-1222

The Art of the Everyday. Arguably the most influential sculptor of his generation, Tom Friedman (b. 1965) wowed them a couple of years ago with a critically acclaimed show at Feature, his Chelsea gallery. Using everyday materials like blue toothpaste, laundry detergent, bubblegum, pencil shavings and sugar cubes to make inspired, absurdly precise constructions (the sugar cubes were used to make a lifesize self-portrait), Friedman queries everyday perception while neatly morphing high art and lowbrow consumerism. See this show. You’ll never look at a box of cereal quite the same way again.

Best Yankee Stadium Outrage
Aggressively Slow Refreshment Stand Workers

Beyond Postal. Okay, Mr. Steinbrenner, we get it. You spend money on a championship team, not fans. As long as we win pennants and the Series, yes, we can do without drinkholders, ushers or enough room between seats to cross our legs. That’s all fine. And banning beer in the bleachers–fuck it. Maybe that was something you had to do. But tell us, George, why aren’t the people who serve refreshments from stands at Yankee Stadium on commission, like the roving vendors apparently are? Have you never noticed that the roving vendors hustle, while the pretzel jockeys in the corridors move so slowly that it’s almost impossible to keep from jumping over the counter and strangling them?

We know you don’t care if we feel like we’re treated badly, because you think we will keep on coming, and if we don’t you can move to Jersey, and you’re right. But these sluggish employees are costing you a lot of money. Yeah, they’re unionized, and impervious to any whip-cracking, so we’re not suggesting that. But they will move for more money, and with the increased sales that commission brings, you’ll end up with more money as well. More money, George. And we won’t have to miss two innings because we were only fourth on line. Everybody wins!

Best Reason to Mourn Napster

Blocked Our Kicks. We didn’t know we found the treasure until the first lyric.

"Miss Christina drives a nine four four..."

Oh ecstasy. This is it.

"Satisfaction oozes from her pores..."

Our head, squashed between oversized headphones, lolls back.

"She keeps rings on her fingers, marble on her floor..."

And then, one of our favorite commentaries on the age of plenty:

"Cocaine in her dresser, bars on her door/She keeps her back against the wall."

That would be the opening stanza to David and David’s "Welcome to the Boomtown," a minor hit from the early 80s; the song had a few months of airplay before it turned to ashes. But, like many songs from the shadowland of our high school, "Boomtown" stuck with us. We never saw it on an 80s compilation album, and you can bet that David and David CDs were not to be found in the chain record stores where we lived. Up until that great night when we downloaded "Boomtown" into our very own hard drive, all we could recall about the song was that first stanza. But if you can hum a few bars of a lost song, you know there’s another goof slumping around in the universe who has not only used that song as a mantra nonstop for 20 years, but sports a hookup with enough gigs to make an amateur goof’s daydream come true.

We searched and found "Boomtown" on Napster. Being a long, undanceably intricate song about urban class structure and the classlessness of drug abuse (maybe this was why the song disappeared without a trace), it took literally half the night to download. But the joy at a search and seizure well done kept us pacified until at least, oh, morning.

The same thrill happened with the download of a few other lost songs, and the discovery of some new ones: Michel’le’s Dre-produced and press-on tuff "Nicety" and "No More Lies," which outdid Shannon’s equally tuff "Let the Music Play"; Solomon Burke’s "Cry to Me" (used to such great effect in the seduction scene in Dirty Dancing); Stevie Nicks’ "Sleeping Angel" (from the pre-abortion scene in Fast Times); Tori Amos’ cover of "Purple Rain" (live and rare, maybe); Van Halen’s crucial ’83 US Festival opener of "Romeo Delight" (where Dave yells, "I forgot the fucking words!!"); and Skid Row’s tour de force "Monkey Business" (best metal scream ever, and who the hell wants to buy the whole album?).

Who wants to buy the whole album, indeed. Just as it seemed like Napster couldn’t be any more free and freaky, the drones who wanted us to buy the whole album stepped in and put a block on just about everything. All that was left were some raggedy numbers by the Artist (he ain’t no record company slave) and little else. Napster’s home page apologized profusely for the inconvenience caused by the court injunction, and promised to revamp Napster so it was bigger and better than ever, but we knew what was coming. The site quickly became a morass of searches and uploads executed in sneaky Pig Latin (if Madonna gets blocked from the upload, certainly DaMonna will make it though the hoops?), and finally, the night came when any search brought up an endless scroll of Britney Spears’ latest single. This made us real paranoid. We wrote to our congressman, and we got a nice form letter in return. Now we don’t go near Napster anymore.

Best Local Record Label Founder
Neil Cooper, ROIR

Let It ROIR. Starting out with a cassette-only label way back in the late 70s and early 80s, Neil Cooper not only had a vision, but an ear for really great music. By releasing tapes from such stunning acts as Bad Brains and the Stimulators, as well as various New York City hardcore compilations, Neil grew his small company into a worldwide entity that’s still going strong today.

Unfortunately, Neil isn’t. He passed away this summer. But not without first rereleasing some of the best music New York City and the rest of the world have ever had to offer, on CD. Recently we have heard some classic tracks from the New York Dolls, the Dickies, GG Allin and lots and lots of the reggae and dub that Neil seemed to love so much. Every time we ran into the guy he was always smiling, and always had the youthful energy of a 16-year-old on speed. He was liked by his peers in "the industry" for being so innovative, and loved even more by the artists who worked with him. We’ll miss Neil, but we know that his vision for ROIR (Reach Out International Records) will be carried on by his son and the rest of the staff at that wonderful label.

Best Insult
The Score

There’s a Big Con, All Right. Con men say of a mark too dim to know he’s being swindled, "You can’t knock him." That’s us all over when it comes to summer movies. The August heatwave found us roving between screenings at our local multiplex. We saw Jurassic Park III and Planet of the Apes. We saw Legally Blonde. We saw Rush Hour 2. We didn’t complain. You couldn’t knock us. Or so we thought. Then we saw The Score, a heist flick by Frank Oz, best known as the voice and hand behind Miss Piggy. The movie stars Robert De Niro as a Montreal jazz club owner and tony safe-cracker who wants to make one last big score and go straight. Marlon Brando plays a wealthy fence who needs one last big score to pay off his debts to a dangerous mobster. And Edward Norton plays an up-and-coming felon who needs one big score to make the big time. De Niro and Brando call in the most vapid performances of their careers. (Yes, we saw The Island of Dr. Moreau.) Their characters are individuated by accessory–Brando by his louche kimonos; De Niro by his taste for high-end bottled water. Just in case you’re considering taking a look, here’s how it ends: De Niro cracks the safe and gets the goods. Norton tries a double-cross, but De Niro pulls a switch and leaves Norton holding the bag. Not a bad first act, right? Unfortunately, that’s the whole show. What makes the movie truly insulting is the filmmaker’s expectation that the merest sheen of sophistication–the old Montreal setting, the jazz club, the famous movie actors–can paper over a story that falls short of a middling episode of The Fall Guy.

Best Place to Dryhump an Old Friend in a Pool of Stale Whiskey
Mercury Lounge
217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.)
260-4700

So It Wasn’t That Dry... Yet where else outside of one’s own home can one feel comfortable falling off one’s bar stool and then "saving it" by "giving it" to another girl on the ground while simultaneously making the sign of Satan? Nowhere but the Mercury–and possibly the odd Mexican border t