Small Black at Market Hotel, 11/7/09

Saturday night, the four members of Small Black spent so much time setting up their various electronic tools and toys onstage at Market Hotel that you couldn't help but bristle with anticipation of what sounds these local dudes (whose self-titled EP came out this fall on CassClub, and who I kept trying and for various reasons failing to see during CMJ) might come up with. Happily, they energetically run the gamut from cute, plinking piano trills and chippy electronic riffs, with the lyrics unintelligible most of the time. The showpiece being "Despicable Dogs," not nearly as neat as it sounds on the record, but rather a lilting drunken Irish pub-crawl melody, punctuated by a dizzy merry go round calliope accompaniment.

Mp3 - Small Black - Despicable Dogs

The cool kids

How often do you get to hear fiction writers read entire stories in one sitting? In my experience, almost never. But last night at NYU's Lillian Vernon House was different. Contributors to the past and current (shown above) issues of Epiphany defeated the Curse of the Fiction Reader (i.e., when you can only read three pages of a 12-page story, nobody knows what the hell you're talking about).

Editor Jeffrey Gustavson plays emcee.

Lara Tupper steams things up with "Ting!," a tale of hot encounters between cruise ship crew.

April Naoko Heck gets in our face with her non-confessional confessional poetry (note that's an index finger, not a middle!).

Your next chance to experience current Epiphany work will be Wednesday at 7, upstairs at Pianos, during the official issue release party. Rumor has it there will be people reading, but it will be business as usual, at only about 5 minutes each, so, alas, poets win again. But as always, we fiction writers have liquor to make up for that.

Saturday Night Lit

UPDATE: See corrected date for issue release party below:


Grab this chance to hear writers read their selections from the past two issues of Epiphany Magazine; last spring's Naked Psyches and this fall's Who's Still Alive, at the Lillian Vernon House at NYU, 58 W. 10th St. It's the first of two Epiphany events taking place this week; the second one will be Wednesday at 7 at Pianos. The lineup tonight is as follows:

Part 1
7 - 9 P.M.
Last Spring’s Classic:
NAKED PSYCHES Issue

Keith Hendershot, “I Heart You Past August”
Susan Ruel, “Medium Shuffle Blues in E”

Part 2
9:30 P.M.
The New Issue:
WHO’S STILL ALIVE . . . / (l)ove = (o)cean
Lara Tupper, “Ting!”
April Naoko Heck, two poems
Michael Ferch, four poems
H.V. Chao, “Jewel of the North”

It's all curated by Epiphany editors Jeffrey Gustavson, Willard Cook and Karol Nielsen. Who knows, maybe next issue it will be YOU reading. Or even me.

As Elvis would say, it's Girls Girls Girls

Grass Widow seem a lot like the Vivian Girls. There's three of them. They play rather lo-fi, melodic punk. Most of them are refugees from various other bands. They're even playing with the Vivian Girls tonight at 8 at Market Hotel. But the song"To Where," a terrifically melodic track which accomplishes more in a few minutes than I thought any lo-fi track could, goes from spare and dissonant to lofty and meditative, and kind of beatific. In an-ever-more crowded club of Me Toos, it's a lovely standout. With new records on out this month on Captured Tracks and Make a Mess, they're they're poised to distinguish themselves from every other Girl out there.

And speaking of Girls, if you weren't one of the lucky ones to who gets to see Girls at Bowery Ballroom tonight, maybe you're luckier than you think, because there's a Girls afterparty going on at Market Hotel after the show, so if you see Grass Widow, you can get the best of both worlds. Though I'm not sure if Girls themselves will be up for making the trek all the way over to Bed-Stuy, (Market Hotel is a pain in the ass to get to even for me, and I live in what's technically the next neighborhood over). But the good news is no matter what, there will be Girls in some way, shape or form. Plenty of 'em.

Mp3 - Grass Widow - To Where

If friending the author of bad-ish review of your book on Facebook is inappropriate, then I take everything back

So my review of "How to Be Inappropriate" by Daniel Nester went up early this morning on Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and before I'd even gotten a chance to look at it, the author had already posted a link on Facebook and sent me a message thanking me for writing it, apparently before I'd even woken up. Indeed, not everything in the review is glowing, but for the record, he perhaps thought I disliked the journalistic pieces more than I actually did. In any case, he was gentleman enough to not take it personally. Is that the ultimate impropriety? Or is it perhaps, actually, old-fashioned politeness? In any case, well played, Mr. Nester.

Chikpiks (Halloween is overrated, who's with me? Edition)

In honor of the day, I bring you the 20 Worst Vampire Costumes, no doubt inspired by all of the quality vampire literature in bookstores these days. Since I couldn't find any Jane Austen/Mr. Darcy costumes on the webs, feel free to submit any you spot while you're out in the Halloween trenches tomorrow night.

Oh, and here are some scary Halloween events/parties, some of which I may actually appear at (no costume guaranteed).:


And at Mercury Lounge, featuring the insane live show of garage rockers Black Taxi (keeping ska alive in the best possible way), and awesome electro-glam duo Hank and Cupcakes, both of whom I've covered here:


Are you missing the Vivian Girls? Seems like they've fallen off from their previous 5 shows a week schedule since their sophomore album came out. Well here's your chance. I'm sure they'll be doing something scary.


SACRED BONES RECORDS HALLOWEEN

Wooden Ships
Vivian Girls
Crystal Stilts
Religious Knives

:: dj Keegan Cooke

| 171 LOMBARDY ST @ VARICK AVE |
171 Lombardy St @ Varick Ave | Greenpoint, Brooklyn
| 8pm | all ages | $12

| curated by Caleb Braaten |

And yeah, this is 20 bucks, but the description makes it sound pretty impressive. Plus, it's "secret." Yeah right.


The Last Masquerade

From the site: "Three vast spaces in the dark heart of Brooklyn have been re-imagined for
this all-night adventure. Over three dozen artists and performers will
infuse these forgotten structures with a pre-apocalyptic fairy-tale built
on music, mischief and a heavy dose of the unexpected."

260 Meserole St., Bushwick Brooklyn
and continues at two indoor loft spaces steps away...

7pm through 7am : Saturday October 31st.
$20 : Costumes will be rewarded : 21+
Arrive before 8:59pm and you pay only $10.

And for those who have far, far more endurance than I for looking at more bad vampire costumes:


Afterparty at Market Hotel

Starts at 1:30 a.m., immediately following the Mt Eerie/Liturgy show.

Djs include Veronica Vasicka (founding member of East Village Radio and electronic label Minimal Wave, lover of new wave, italo-disco, and house music) & Steve Summers (whose Back From The Future mix is below):

80% chance of smoke machine, $5 at the door (free for Mt Eerie/Liturgy showgoers).

Mp3 - Steve Summers - Back from the Future


And finally, Bobby "Boris" Pickett is sadly no longer playing in New York or anywhere else on earth, but the sole act of hearing "Monster Mash" once is enough to call my Halloween a success. So, via Audio Muffin, I present to you:

Mp3 - Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers - Monster Mash

May he rise as a zombie in peace.

What's the deal? Your weekly Publisher's Lunch deal snark

Publisher's Lunch says: Hannah Pittard's THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY, about a girl who goes missing on Halloween and how her disappearance unexpectedly transforms the lives of those who knew her, in particular, the neighborhood boys, whose memories, curiosity, and teenage lust keep them searching for information, rumors, theories about her disappearance for the rest of their lives, revealing their stumbling paths to adulthood, their tragedies and devotions, and her relentless enduring significance to them and the possibilities of her fate, to Lee Boudreaux at Ecco, for publication in Winter 2011, by Jim Rutman at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).

Indichik says: Enough with the missing-kid books already, okay? It isn't just that this sounds exactly like The Lovely Bones, which it does (and I swear I've already used this feature to talk about a previous ripoff of that book). But it's that the national "media" continuing to hyperventilate every extremely rare instance of this, causing perfectly reasonable parents to live in fear because they, ridiculously come to believe that this is some kind of epidemic. And I don't hold fiction writers above that standard, no matter how literary they claim to be. It's all a form of exploitation and pandering; like mysteries and thrillers, violence and death and grief ; people are (let's face it) sick and it's what they want to read about. I almost might remind you that traditionally, most successful novels featured children who didn't go missing. David Copperfield, anyone?