{"id":270,"date":"2007-10-10T11:49:37","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T15:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2007-10-10T17:01:05","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T21:01:05","slug":"the-trouble-with-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"The Trouble with New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s the trouble, see. Last night I’m getting ready to submit a review<\/a> of Tompkins Square Records<\/a>‘ new compilation of old murder ballads and disaster songs. I’m emailing with the record label guy about it and he tells me they’re having a CD release party later that night at Cake Shop<\/a> and do I want to come? If I lived in Lansing, MI or Natural Bridge, VA this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. I’d post my review and then sit at home by the fire reading a book or something, probably petting a cat and listening to the crickets out my window or the distant crack of the polar ice melting into the ocean.<\/p>\n

But because I live in New York everything seems to be happening right here and it’s so hard not to go out. Can’t miss anything! Maybe there’ll be well-connected people to network with! Maybe something awesome will happen! Maybe I’ll meet a celebrity! Or get a free drink! Gotta go! Gotta run downtown!<\/p>\n

It’s even worse now that I’ve moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In spite of the great Brooklyn cultural renaissance of the past decade, Manhattan still has a greater concentration of stuff to do – if only because of sheer geography.<\/p>\n

\"Greg<\/a><\/p>\n

So I go down to Cake Shop and I meet the head of the label and the producers and I hear and meet some fantastic musicians. Singer and banjo picker Hank Sapoznik, who co-produced the album, got a pick-up group together, including the wonderful fiddler Michelle Yu of The Moonshiners<\/a>, to play a set of jumpin’ old-timey music. Following them, Greg Jamie of O Death<\/a> came on to perform some of the numbers from the album. Chris King, the other producer, had seemed disappointed when I told him the songs on the compilation hadn’t “disturbed” me, but Jamie’s band was certainly one of the oddest and most disturbing groups I’ve seen. So there you go, Chris – I was disturbed in the end, after all. By live<\/i> music. Which is as it should be. Of course, James Blunt disturbs me too. But that’s different. That’s not in a good way.<\/p>\n

There are some things you won’t get to see in New York, of course. Foamhenge<\/a>, for example. So it’s important to get out of town once in a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s the trouble, see. Last night I’m getting ready to submit a review of Tompkins Square Records‘ new compilation of old murder ballads and disaster songs. I’m emailing with the record label guy about it and he tells me they’re having a CD release party later that night at Cake Shop and do I want … Continue reading “The Trouble with New York”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-new-york-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}