Welcome, welcome, everyone, to installment number one of what is sure to be a rollicking, rip-roaring (and several other alliterative adjectives) series of articles chronicling my (mis) adventures navigating my way through CMJ 2005. Please suffer through a brief introduction to CMJ and myself before getting to oh-so-meaty show reviews.
CMJ is an annual music festival put on by the College Music Journal, a magazine whose primary claim to fame is being the publisher and complier of the national college music charts (basically, which songs get played the most on the country’s college radio stations). These, in turn, have a big part in determining which bands break out of the underground into. . . the ground, I guess, is what’s above the underground.
For 4 nights once a year, CMJ puts on the CMJ Music Festival, wherein virtually every club in New York City gives itself over to putting on CMJ shows. Something in the neighborhood of 10,000 bands play. I don’t have the exact figures here at my fingertips. In addition, there are panel discussions, film premiers, and other assorted special events. These are mostly boring and I will be skipping virtually all of them.
Speaking of me, I am a music industry professional and this is my third time attending CMJ. I am a Brooklyn resident, and I have a white belt. So I know what I’m talking about, and don’t think I don’t. Now, on to the shows!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th
Queenadreena, Arlene’s Grocery
Tonight, CMJ’s inaugural evening, I was actually busy until slightly after midnight at an unbearably swanky party (where, among other things, I spotted Bully and Terminator 3’s Nick Stahl chatting with N*SYNC’s JC Chasez, Apparently, they share an agent). The first show I was able to attend, therefore, was Queenadreena's, midnight performance Arlene’s Grocery. Queenadreena is a UK-based goth-punk outfit, fronted by former Daisy Chainsaw lead singer Katie Jane Garsaw. This show marked their only US appearance in the recent past or future, a fact confirmed both by their website and their drummer Billy Feedom as he lit his ultra-Euro hand-rolled cigarette on mine after the show.
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