During the five days of the CMJ Music Marathon, we at AMG collectively saw well over 100 different bands at a dozen or so different venues around the LES and Brooklyn. Inevitably, many of these were forgotten as soon as they walked off-stage, but there were also some that really stood out. The list was hard to whittle down, but here they are, our ten favorites.

Aa (www.myspace.com/alittlea)
American Steel (www.myspace.com/amsteel)
Bella (www.myspace.com/bella)
Cut Off Your Hands (www.myspace.com/cutoffyourhands)
Foals (www.myspace.com/foals)
The Golden Dogs (www.myspace.com/thegoldendogs)
Japanther (www.myspace.com/officialjapanther)
The Narrator (www.myspace.com/thenarrator)
A Place to Bury Strangers (www.myspace.com/aplacetoburystrangers)
Polar Bear Club (www.myspace.com/polarbearclub)

CMJ was a headlong rush of dingy basement venues, an endless parade of bands with trumpets, cloth-eared soundmen and lots and lots of facial hair. While sitting and soaking my feet in a hot bath and reflecting upon the days gone by, a few things stood out:

Though Brooklyn itself was fairly annoying, the Sound Fix Cafe was a brilliant place to see a show, best venue of the week by far. The sound was almost perfect, the setting was wonderfully laid back, and the crowd was about as polite and enthused as you could hope for. And seeing the Ladybug Transistor for the first time made the whole week worthwhile.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Some of my experiences at CMJ were wonderful, others were downright embarrassing, but these are the five moments that stand out most during the festival’s whirlwind of activities, in no particular order:

Time: During the encore of Q-Tip’s set
Place: Blender Theater, standing at the bar
Moment: After I glanced at a guy in the back of the audience three times to confirm whether he was actually the DJ from A Tribe Called Quest, Ali Shaheed Muhammad looked back at me and casually told his girlfriend, “That boy’s jocking me.”

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CMJ is fast becoming one big, blurry memory, but here are a few moments — in no particular order — that haven’t completely evaporated yet.

The Brunettes and Cut Off Your Hands‘ shows at the New Zealand showcase at the Delancey. Their sets were short, but song for song, they were two of CMJ’s best concerts.

Dynasty Handbag’s incredibly messed-up, love-it-or-hate-it performance. Her schizophrenic, strangely endearing multimedia show won over a crowd of sweaty noise dudes, to the point that two crawled up and sat on the corner of the stage, watching her with something that approached awe.

Annie Clark’s dance of the seven guitar pedals during the St. Vincent show. Part graceful, part possessed, it was impossible to take your eyes off of her.

Being told by Warn Defever just before His Name Is Alive went on stage that he was instilling a strict “no note-taking policy” at his shows, “right after this one.”

The guy with the giant balloon boobs at Tuesday night’s Lismore show got the CMJ festivities started in an unforgettable, borderline terrifying way (maybe this counts as two moments).

Once the initial chaos of CMJ had passed, which mostly revolved around trying to get a pass with my name and the correct company that I work for on it, mine was a week relatively free of hysterics. There were not too many surprise guests, ridiculous cover songs, annoying security encounters, or outrageous drunks. I wasn’t barred from entering shows, kicked in the face, or arrested, and I didn’t leave the venues soaked in beer, blood, or someone else’s sweat. Despite all of this, it was still pretty fun, and it still definitely had its moments. Here are five of them, in no particular order.

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From the walls of Marshall and Orange Amps on the stage to the gallery of rock and metal t-shirts in the crowd — which ranged from Bathory to Queens of the Stone Age — to the earplugs that littered the floor, Saturday night’s Fog/Torche/Jesu show at the Blender Theatre at Gramercy was a bastion for heavier music in a CMJ lineup dominated by poppier and weirder fare. Of course, “poppy” and “weird” are apt words to describe Fog, especially on previous albums like Ether Teeth and 10th Avenue Freakout. However, on Ditherer and especially at this show, the trio brought some muscle to their sound, especally on the psych-rock tinged “We Have Vanished” and “What Gives?” Their mix of atmospheric and explosive moments and artful feedback recalled Sonic Youth, and made Fog an understandable (if not predictable) fit on Jesu’s bill. The largely black-clad crowd wasn’t entirely convinced, though; except for an intent few at the front of the stage, most people hung back. Eventually, one of Justin Broder’s complicated guitar solos won some cheers from the audience, which was some reward for being the night’s least heavy, and probably least-known, band.

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With dementia setting in from sleep deprivation and many pairs of exhausted eardrums ringing on the heads of attendees, the fifth day of shows concluded with a mega-showcase at Pianos, where a dozen bands performed. What was expected to be a relatively mellow Saturday night (considering that there were no punk or metal groups performing) was especially loud, maybe one of the loudest shows of the fest. The PA was cranked and distorted, but this didn’t stop the crowd from filling up the space and jamming up the entrance for most of the night — with the exception of Ted Nesseth of the Heavenly States, whose unreasonable volume drove most people out in a scurry. Most performances were less memorable than the shining sets by Great Northern (an L.A. poppy-shoegazer boy/girl band with serious sex appeal), Nouveau Riche (a clash of R&B and indie rock, kind of like Teenage Fanclub backing up the Brand New Heavies and guest starring Jay-Z), and War on Drugs (an anti-folk hipster duo that brought to mind an acoustical set of Mercury Rev songs performed by Suicide). Those people with enough endurance to stick it out through the nine hours of music were rewarded with one of the strangest acts of the festival (and that’s saying a lot).

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By the time Saturday limped along, it was probably too much to ask for a band to be transcendent. It was enough to hear somebody make it through their set without fumbling, preening, or trying too hard. Of course, you can’t blame bands for struggling to make their 30 minutes count for something, and just about everyone gave it the old college try, running through the loudest, most energized numbers in their repertoire with hardly a breath taken or a ballad attempted. It was enough to wear down even the gamest Marathoner. That’s why the last two bands at the Merge showcase in Brooklyn were so refreshing. Oakley Hall played an amiable set that played up the hippie-folk aspects of their sound and had the midday crowd at Sound Fix nodding along in a mellow haze, followed by Ladybug Transistor running through songs from their new-ish record Can’t Wait Another Day. Their way with a dramatic ballad is unparalleled and they were possibly the only band at CMJ who earned the right to trot out the obligatory trumpet. They’ll never be a buzz band, but they’ve built a catalog of great records that most of the blog-hyped bands will never even come near. It was such a lovely, relaxed afternoon and the Sound Fix Café was so pleasant that it was hard to muster up the will to head back into the dank basements and echoey halls that pass for clubs on the Lower East Side.

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