nyctaper

[photo from Ira’s Hanukkah Diary]

When we posted the nyctaper recording of Yo La Tengo’s performance from this seventh night of the Hanukkah shows, we spoke about their encyclopedic knowledge of popular music. In the selection of Willie Alexander and The Boom Boom Band to open this night, it was as if YLT covered an entire volume of that history. In a forty year career, Willie has in Zelig-like fashion crossed paths with almost all elements of popular culture — from the Velvet Underground to the Rathskeller in Boston to French New Wave to even Stephen King. A summary of his career biography reads like a novel.

It was with that level of experience that The Boom Boom Band took the stage Saturday last, and in true rock-n-roll fashion delivered a non-stop blistering forty-five minute set of pub/punk/power/poetic pop. As if undeterred by the passing of time, the band whose debut album appeared in 1978 performed energetic renditions of a career’s worth of material, and finished the set with an appropriately manic “Dirty Eddie”.

We recorded this set from the same location as the YLT recording and the sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Email nyctaper with a request for the download location of the FLAC files.

Firefox users can Down Them All! at once (here).

More about FLAC

Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band
2008-12-27
Maxwell’s
Hoboken, NJ USA

Digital Audience Master Recording
Recorded from Front Corner of Sound Desk
Dead Center, approximately 30 feet from the PA

Neumann KM-150’s (AK-50 Hypercardiod Capsules) > Monster XLR Cables > Apogee Minime > digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (set fades, slight level adjustments, downsample) > CD Wave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Premiere Download offered at
http://www.nyctaper.com
nyctaper@nyctaper.com

Recorded and Produced by
nyctaper
2009-01-05

Setlist:
[Total Time 43:35]
01 High Tide Heroes
02 [Charles Olson]
03 Fred Buck’s Footsteps
04 Hey Kid
05 Hit Her Wid de Axe
06 Looking Like a Bimbo
07 Aaww
08 Hair
09 Radio Heart
10 Dirty Eddie

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Willie Alexander, visit his website, and purchase his official releases directly from the store at his website [HERE].

I love this bill scheduled for Vanishing Point on Thursday, January 15. El Jezel is a Brooklyn-based trio who write quirky and engaging pop — they also have a wicked sense of humor. We have had our eyes and ears on them for while but we have never seen them live, and missed their CMJ show this year. The rest of the bill comes from similar backgrounds and musical approaches. Coyote Eyes are a relatively new experimental trio. The other bands are My Teenage Stride (Paste Magazine Band of the Week last September), Tayisha Busay (played Santos Party House on New Year’s), and I’m Turning Into.

Our readers will recall that Rafter impressed the heck out us when he opened for The Loom in November. The nyctaper recording of Rafter’s set is [here]. We were excited to see that he will return to NYC at the end of this month.  Yesterday, Cake Shop posted a listing for January 31 that will be presented by Impose Magazine that features Rafter and other artists to be added.

I guess its not so secret, since its on the web site of the venue — Matisyahu is scheduled to perform tonight Monday January 5 at the Rockwood Music Hall. His band is playing at 8pm and then Matis will perform an hour-long set at 9pm.

Matisyahu recently performed eight Festival of Lights shows at Webster Hall and at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. We recorded the second night of Webster [here].

[image by Songbirdnest]

Happy 2009 to all of our readers. This promises to be an interesting year for NYCTaper. There are four major areas of development for the site, with more details to follow. NYCTaper has been invited to produce a weekly radio show for a large new fledgling web radio station. The details are still being worked out, but expect more information in the Spring. We also expect to present more concerts this year, the first of which is our exciting show on January 11 at Pianos, featuring members of Camper Van Beethoven and special guests. One other development is too early to announce, but involves a new association with some excellent people in the web music industry. And one final major piece of news we are obligated by law not to discuss at all, but its huge, believe me.

In 2009, nyctaper will continue to offer music news, reviews, and of course free downloads of our many live recordings. We expect to attend the following shows, with the caveat that more will be added and some changed.

Upcoming Shows:
The Antlers / Sharon Van Etten / Pet Ghost Project:
January 3, 2009 Cake Shop

Camper Van Beethoven:
January 9 and January 10, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Jonathan Segel (of Camper Van Beethoven) / Victor Krummenacher (of Camper Van Beethoven) / Sharon Van Etten / and Special Guests:
January 11, 2009 NYCTaper Presents Sunday Night at Pianos

The Loom / Treasure:
January 13, 2009 Pianos NYC

Animal Collective:
January 20, 2009 Manhattan Center Ballroom NYC

Animal Collective:
January 21, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Naked Hearts:
January 22, 2009 Cake Shop NYC (CD Release Show)

Ponytail:
January 23, 2009 The Bell House Brooklyn

The Annuals:
January 28, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Blank Dogs / Woods:
February 6, 2009 Market Hotel Brooklyn
February 7, 2009 Less Artists More Condos NYC

Jason Isbell:
February 26, 2009 Bowery Ballroom NYC

Grizzly Bear:
February 28, 2009 BAM Brooklyn

When Blank Dogs were announced for No Fun Fest a few weeks ago, they were also set for ToddP shows on February 6 and February 7 with venues TBA. Today Todd posted the venues — the Blank Dogs show on February 6 will be at the Market Hotel and February 7 is tentatively (now confirmed) for Less Artists More Condos. These shows will be recorded by nyctaper.

Both the dates include Woods on the bill. Our one experience with Woods was our positive impression of the opening set at Monster Island with Love Is All. Woods are also scheduled to play Bard College and Vassar College in early February.

[photo by Matt]

This is another one of those recordings that sounds a lot better than we originally thought. The process of recording Sharon Van Etten is always subject to the room noise, and during this particular night at Pianos there was much — including what sounded like a reconstruction of the soundboard booth directly behind us. Fortunately, the directional microphones avoided a good amount of the noise so that this is definitely a very listenable capture. In terms of a review of the performance, we will defer to Matt from The Music Slut blog, who wrote an excellent piece on this Sharon show the day after the event. Read it [HERE].

Sharon Van Etten will perform quite a bit this month. Tomorrow night, she appears at Cake Shop with The Antlers and Pet Ghost Project. And on January 11, she will open the NYCTaper Presents show at Pianos with members of Camper Van Beethoven. Sharon will also perform this month at Zebulon, Glasslands, Secret Project Robot and Joe’s Pub. Complete information is at her MySpace page.

Use the Ligit Search on the right for four other Sharon Van Etten recordings on nyctaper.

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Email nyctaper with a request for the download location of the FLAC files.

Firefox users can Down Them All! at once (here).

More about FLAC

Sharon Van Etten
2008-12-08
Pianos
New York, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Recorded from Front of Board
30 Feet from Stage

Neumann KM-150’s (AK-50 Hypercardiod Capsules) > Monster XLR cables > Apogee Minime > digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge 8.0 (set fades, slight level boost, resample 16/44) > CD Wave 1.95 > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Recorded and Produced by
nyctaper
nyctaper@nyctaper.com
2009-01-01

Setlist:
[total time 43:15]
01 Consolation Prize
02 Strong (false start/tech problems)
03 Strong
04 I Fold
05 I Am Giving Up On You
06 Call It a Joke
07 You Didn’t Really Do That
08 Picking Up Rocks
09
10 I Wish I Knew
11 Damn Right

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Sharon Van Etten, visit her website, visit her MySpace page, purchase one of her custom-made self-released CDs directly from her website, and purchase her new CD Because I Was In Love when it is released in 2009.

This was just announced this morning, that “The Dead”, which includes original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and longtime member Mickey Hart, will tour the East coast in April and May. The band also includes Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti.

The local dates include one MSG date, two shows in the Meadowlands, and one at Nassau. The presale date is January 13, and the regular onsale date is January 23.

April 12 Greensboro NC Greensboro Coliseum
April 14 Washington DC Verizon Center
April 15 Charlottville VA John Paul Jones Arena
April 17 Albany NY Times Union Center
April 18 Worcester MA DCU Center
April 19 Worcester MA DCU Center
April 21 Buffalo NY HSBC Arena
April 22 WilkesBarre PA Wachovia Arena
April 24 Uniondale NY Nassau Coliseum
April 25 New York NY Madison Square Garden
April 26 Hartford CT XL Center
April 28 E. Ruther NJ IZOD Center
April 29 E. Ruther NJ IZOD Center
May 1 Philadphia PA Wachovia Spectrum
May 2 Philadphia PA Wachovia Spectrum
May 5 Chicago IL All State Arena
May 7 Denver CO Pepsi Center
May 9 Los Angel CA The Forum
May 10 MountView CA Shoreline Amphitheater

[ Best Friends Forever in Philly this summer: photo credit]

We became big fans of Best Friends Forever this year. We saw them live four times in 2008, including this opening set of the NYCTaper CMJ show. The band had three shows scheduled that day, but still agreed to do our show, for which we are eternally grateful. The downstairs of Cake Shop quickly filled for their 3:30 set and BFF delivered a burst of their energetic pop to start off the day. Expect to hear more from BFF in 2009, as they have gathered some major label interest.

This recording was a surprise holiday present. We were going through some old wav files, including the soundboard feed that we ran for this CMJ show — a recording we originally thought was unusable. Fortunately, while the rest of the downstairs sets have problems, the BFF set is actually quite well mixed soundboard recording and has very little of the peak distortion that plagues the others. Enjoy!

The nyctaper recordings of Best Friends Forever in August and at another CMJ show are [here] and [here].

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Email nyctaper with a request for the download location of the FLAC files.

Firefox users can Down Them All! at once (here).

More about FLAC

Best Friends Forever
2008-10-23
NYCTaper CMJ Show
Cake Shop
New York, NY USA

Digital Soundboard Master Recording

Soundboard > Edirol UA-5 (Oade Digimod) > digital coaxial > M-Audio Microtrack > 16bit 44.1kHz wav > Soundforge 8.0 (level adjustments, set fades) > CD Wave > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2008-12-31

Premiere Download offered at
http://www.nyctaper.com
nyctaper@nyctaper.com

Setlist:
[Total time 18:42]
01 Eisenhower is the Father
02 HWF
03 Circus
04 Handpocket
05 Twins in Love
06 Disaster

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Best Friends Forever, visit their MySpace page, and purchase their official releases at the Plan-It-X Records Website [HERE].

It has been two and half years since Camper Van Beethoven performed live in NYC. We were there to record that Irving Plaza performance (listen below) and we will be there when they return to NYC for two nights at Bowery Ballroom on Friday January 9 and Saturday January 10.

The shows are being billed as a 25th Anniversary celebration, although the actual 25th anniversary show took place last February at the Fillmore in San Francisco. CVB bassist Victor Krummenacher is performing the opening set at the Friday show.

NYCTaper Presents Show:

[Victor Krummenacher and Jonathan Segel of Camper Van Beethoven]

On January 11, NYCTaper presents Victor Krummenacher and Jonathan Segel from Camper Van Beethoven as each perform solo sets at Pianos. The evening begins with a set by the incomparable Sharon Van Etten at 9 p.m. Special guests are expected for this Sunday evening show.

When: Sunday, January 11, 2009
Where: Pianos 158 Ludlow
Sets:
9 p.m. Sharon Van Etten
10 p.m. Jonathan Segel
11 p.m. Victor Krummenacher
Tickets: $10 at door

Listen to the NYCTaper recording of the last Camper show in NYC: