Thursday, March 03, 2005
Hot Hoboken Shows
You didn't hear it from me, but there's a rumor that Sonic Youth is playing Maxwell's on Saturday, April 16, with tickets on sale tomorrow. I respect the hell out of Sonic Youth, but I've never personally been a fan. "Talk amongst yourselves about Sonic Youth is neither Sonic nor youthful. Discuss." But then, who the hell am I? Maxwell's tickets are normally available through Ticketweb, and in person at Tunes in Hoboken (225 Washington Street—I think they used to have a website, but it seems to be long gone) and Other Music in Greenwich Village.
Other notable upcoming Maxwell's shows that are not sold out according to Ticketweb: Wreckless Eric on Thursday, March 10; The Dears (with The Winter Pageant) on Friday, March 25; and the one and only Robyn Hitchcock (with Amy Miles) on Saturday, March 26. The Hitchcock gig is a 7 p.m. show, doors at 6:30, which means I can actually go see a show on a Saturday night before my usual Saturday DJ gig. Sweet. If memory serves, I haven't done that since a Capitol Years date at Maxwell's in December 2002.
On a more urgent note, tonight is The Writer's Hang's seventh anniversary show at The Goldhawk, and host Scott E. Moore and guest Jim Boggia will be joined by one of my favorite songwriters of the '90s, ex-Hobokenite Freedy Johnston. The show is at 8:30 tonight, and it's a $10 cover at the door. Read my 1997 interview with Freedy to properly psyche yourself up.
And then there's that big pink elephant in the room known as the Hoboken St. Patrick's Day Parade. It's a tradition that Hoboken has its St. Patrick's parade on the first Saturday in March, so as not to compete with the big parade in the city. It's been a wildly successful move for Hoboken businesses, and particularly the bars. The first Saturday in March is always the biggest bar day/night of the year in Hoboken, by a lot. The bars open at ridiculously early hours, some at 8 in the morning—and they get lines out the door. By the time I start DJing at The Goldhawk around 10 p.m., the whole town will have been drunk for six to ten hours. Anyone who stops by should expect a good dose of revelry, but don't expect to hear the most adventurous DJ set of my career.
Black 47 is also playing at Maxwell's that night, breaking what seemed to be Maxwell's longstanding tradition of burying their head in the sand and pretending that the town isn't overrun that day with barely legal drinkers who haven't quite mastered the art of alcohol tolerance. I used to love Black 47, I still think their first two albums, Fire Of Freedom and Home Of The Brave, are good, and I'm sure they still put on a spirited set. But the most recent album of theirs I heard, New York Town, was wretched, and the fact that their new CD is called Elvis Murphy's Green Suede Shoes isn't too promising when you consider that the band already has an album called Green Suede Shoes.
I don't want to bash Larry Kirwan, a talented guy who was always charming and nice when I met him a bunch of times in the early and mid-'90s, but it sounds like he needs some new ideas. I wish him well, and I bet it's still damn near impossible not to have a good time at a Black 47 show.
P.S. Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and listened to my new show/podcast. Get the MP3 here while it's hot. There will be a new show up next Wednesday, and you don't want to fall behind...
