GET OVER HERE. (For one more roundup of the best bands you probably missed.)
[One of the dudes in Cock ESP, prior to his performance at the E4E1 noise show. This has nothing to do with the rest of this post. Photo by Nate Dorr.]
If Kim Jong Il ran an indie music festival, it would probably look a lot like CMJ. The event is basically a five day death-march with a rock soundtrack: Bands play punishing schedules that force them to schlep from Don Hill’s or Banjo Jim’s or some other place this correspondent has never once thought about actually going to (although apparently the latter has free bluegrass shows on the weekends. Sick.) to the Bell House or the Knitting Factory Old Office or a label party at some similarly inconvenient corner of the earth.
For a musician, this thing must seem like the musical version of Kafka’s the Trial: you go before one nervy, exhausted-looking, judgmental group of total strangers for about 20 minutes, pack up your shit, drive for an hour, and then go before another group of nervy, exhausted-looking and judgmental group of strangers.
