“What did he say?” The dumb blonde to my right was asking her meathead date what Zach Condon, band leader of brass-fed indie faves Beirut, had just uttered moments before during some in-between song banter this past Sunday. Whatever he said, she had discerned that it was amusing, her brain dimly making out the crowd’s response: a collective guffaw.
She hadn’t heard what caused those amassed to cackle because, in the same irritating way she had gabbed her way through each Balkans-comes-to-Brooklyn number the ‘Rut Crew tore through, she had talked over all the comments Condon made during the set as well.
What he had just pronounced, in response to an audience member that yelled “never break up!” at the 10-or-so players on stage, was good-humored agreement, smirkingly huffing “Beirut forever!” in mock-triumphant reply. Echoing a classic line from a 10-years-past Ol’ Dirty Bastard Grammy speech that the Wu-Tang rapper made after uninvitedly rushing the stage, Condon then exclaimed: “Beirut is for the children!”
It was a reference that brought a wave of knowing laughter from a segment of the crowd, but it wouldn’t have mattered if the dumb blonde had heard him. She surely wouldn’t have understood, and the emotion she experienced—of being left out—would have pained her regardless, if only for a different reason.
She can, I fear, expect to feel left out less and less. And all while I experience what’s described above with teeth-grindingly increasing frequency. So who let this know-nothing—full of brilliant, mid-chorus observations such as “This sounds like carnival music!” and “I know this song!”—into the show? I blame the same entity that made Beirut famous in the first place: the Internet. This mind-boggling invention has obviously done a lot for music. Apart from eating into record company profits, it has been an amazing tool for getting previously left-field acts out to the public’s ears. But just as blog giveth, blog taketh away.
Beirut, made a loft-hold name by bloggers, used their initial from-the-ground-up ‘net buzz to catch the attention of the established media and a much wider array of listeners. But when ink went frenziedly onto glossy paper as the major mags faithfully recited Beirut’s story, Condon and his cohorts shared the spotlight with the very blogs—so necessarily mentioned in the band’s narrative—that so effectively publicized their dirges and chansons in the first place. People found out about Beirut; but in doing so, they also found out about the blogs that helped said band colorfully ascend like a hot air balloon.
Fast forward to last Wednesday: Little more than a single post to BrooklynVegan, our local indie music blog must-read, announcing this last-minute Sunday Beirut show at The Music Hall Of Williamsburg, sent twitchy fingers a-clickin’ over to Ticketmaster in search of Will Call hookups. The band could probably sell out The Music Hall every night for an entire week, so the prospect of an intimate one-off before the group hit the West Coast for a formal jaunt was a good one. Good until it fell, Wordpressed and Moveably Typed, into evil hands.
It’s no secret that big bands attract casual fans: They’re the same half-enthused, there-to-say-they-were-there cretins you suffered silently next to last time you mistakenly bought tickets to see an overcompensated joke go through the motions for multiple nights in some sprawling cavern uptown. But a Sunday night Williamsburg show, put together on a whim, is precisely the kind of event meant to circumnavigate the radars of the capital-L Laggards. Too bad they’ve started reading all the music blogs.
I am comfortable asserting that The Music Hall is a great venue. From sightlines to sound systems, the gears efficiently turn there (and Beirut played splendidly), but now that there are so many venues of the same size, we’ve spread “there-to-respectfully-listen” numbers to thin. Put one quarter of us at The Music Hall, an equal fraction at Bowery, another quarter at Gramercy and the rest at Luna Lounge, and thin ranks get thinner still, with plentiful space for the unwashed, yearning to be free from sobriety, to huddle near the stage.
And it was not an isolated incident: I was at the same venue only two days prior, midway through a set by a lively Dylan-ish quartet called The War On Drugs (already, of course, blogged about by dear old BrooklynVegan), when the overly enthusiastic, highly inebriated woman to my right tried to start up a conversation.
Headlining band Bishop Allen—a fun, but polite, literate and melodic bunch (the sort that would not seemingly inspire her present alcohaze)—were her absolute favorite, she said. But what to make of this drunken fan, who would proceed to continually yell in the ears of friends and strangers alike after said favorite band takes the stage? Who has picked entirely the wrong band to get sloshed to?
I gave every indication that I didn’t want to talk, wordlessly nodding and keeping my eyes on the band as she spoke, but she persisted. As I took notes in my little black book, she tapped the digital camera I had placed on the stage in front of me, asking what exactly I would be taking pictures for.
I told her the simple truth: I would need some photos in case I decided to blog about the show later.
Greg Burgett ruins music with his blog, songsaboutknives.com
She hadn’t heard what caused those amassed to cackle because, in the same irritating way she had gabbed her way through each Balkans-comes-to-Brooklyn number the ‘Rut Crew tore through, she had talked over all the comments Condon made during the set as well.
What he had just pronounced, in response to an audience member that yelled “never break up!” at the 10-or-so players on stage, was good-humored agreement, smirkingly huffing “Beirut forever!” in mock-triumphant reply. Echoing a classic line from a 10-years-past Ol’ Dirty Bastard Grammy speech that the Wu-Tang rapper made after uninvitedly rushing the stage, Condon then exclaimed: “Beirut is for the children!”
It was a reference that brought a wave of knowing laughter from a segment of the crowd, but it wouldn’t have mattered if the dumb blonde had heard him. She surely wouldn’t have understood, and the emotion she experienced—of being left out—would have pained her regardless, if only for a different reason.
She can, I fear, expect to feel left out less and less. And all while I experience what’s described above with teeth-grindingly increasing frequency. So who let this know-nothing—full of brilliant, mid-chorus observations such as “This sounds like carnival music!” and “I know this song!”—into the show? I blame the same entity that made Beirut famous in the first place: the Internet. This mind-boggling invention has obviously done a lot for music. Apart from eating into record company profits, it has been an amazing tool for getting previously left-field acts out to the public’s ears. But just as blog giveth, blog taketh away.
Beirut, made a loft-hold name by bloggers, used their initial from-the-ground-up ‘net buzz to catch the attention of the established media and a much wider array of listeners. But when ink went frenziedly onto glossy paper as the major mags faithfully recited Beirut’s story, Condon and his cohorts shared the spotlight with the very blogs—so necessarily mentioned in the band’s narrative—that so effectively publicized their dirges and chansons in the first place. People found out about Beirut; but in doing so, they also found out about the blogs that helped said band colorfully ascend like a hot air balloon.
Fast forward to last Wednesday: Little more than a single post to BrooklynVegan, our local indie music blog must-read, announcing this last-minute Sunday Beirut show at The Music Hall Of Williamsburg, sent twitchy fingers a-clickin’ over to Ticketmaster in search of Will Call hookups. The band could probably sell out The Music Hall every night for an entire week, so the prospect of an intimate one-off before the group hit the West Coast for a formal jaunt was a good one. Good until it fell, Wordpressed and Moveably Typed, into evil hands.
It’s no secret that big bands attract casual fans: They’re the same half-enthused, there-to-say-they-were-there cretins you suffered silently next to last time you mistakenly bought tickets to see an overcompensated joke go through the motions for multiple nights in some sprawling cavern uptown. But a Sunday night Williamsburg show, put together on a whim, is precisely the kind of event meant to circumnavigate the radars of the capital-L Laggards. Too bad they’ve started reading all the music blogs.
I am comfortable asserting that The Music Hall is a great venue. From sightlines to sound systems, the gears efficiently turn there (and Beirut played splendidly), but now that there are so many venues of the same size, we’ve spread “there-to-respectfully-listen” numbers to thin. Put one quarter of us at The Music Hall, an equal fraction at Bowery, another quarter at Gramercy and the rest at Luna Lounge, and thin ranks get thinner still, with plentiful space for the unwashed, yearning to be free from sobriety, to huddle near the stage.
And it was not an isolated incident: I was at the same venue only two days prior, midway through a set by a lively Dylan-ish quartet called The War On Drugs (already, of course, blogged about by dear old BrooklynVegan), when the overly enthusiastic, highly inebriated woman to my right tried to start up a conversation.
Headlining band Bishop Allen—a fun, but polite, literate and melodic bunch (the sort that would not seemingly inspire her present alcohaze)—were her absolute favorite, she said. But what to make of this drunken fan, who would proceed to continually yell in the ears of friends and strangers alike after said favorite band takes the stage? Who has picked entirely the wrong band to get sloshed to?
I gave every indication that I didn’t want to talk, wordlessly nodding and keeping my eyes on the band as she spoke, but she persisted. As I took notes in my little black book, she tapped the digital camera I had placed on the stage in front of me, asking what exactly I would be taking pictures for.
I told her the simple truth: I would need some photos in case I decided to blog about the show later.
Greg Burgett ruins music with his blog, songsaboutknives.com
