Marisa Brown: Let’s talk about the title of the event: Mos Def Big Band Presents: A Tribute to Detroit’s J Dilla. I have to say I was expecting something a little different. First of all, a big band (not a bass-key-drum-trumpet-trombone-sax/keytar/talk-box/flute six-piece, though Mos Def did apologize for that confusion), and secondly, more than just… Mos Def. Obviously there are a lot of different factors involved in arranging guest star appearances, but I expected, if nothing else, some of the Detroit rappers to show up, if not one of the thousands of MCs who have been doing Dilla shout-outs during their live shows for the past two years.

That being said, Mos Def certainly proved his knowledge of Dilla’s work throughout the show. I caught some Slum Village, a lot of his solo work, De La Soul… what else am I forgetting?

David Jeffries: Momma Yancey didn’t even come out, and she was right back stage. She’s hardly the shy type, so it seemed a conscious decision. Maybe it was a jazz thing, since he and his band were often acting as a jazz ensemble. When a jazz artist does a tribute album they aren’t expected to call upon associates of their subject matter. Seemed like this was equal parts interpretation and celebration. To be honest, after watching Dave Chappelle’s Block Party again recently, it was nice to see something tight and self-contained rather than a pile-on party.

As far as Dilla material, using Slum Village’s “Fantastic” interludes along with Ruff Draft’s “Let’s Take It Back” as motifs was an amazing device. Heard a bit of J-88’s “Look of Love” and that blew my mind.

MB: That’s a good point, about it being a jazz thing, but I still think that there should have been some other MCs onstage, even if just for the encore. Intended or not, it seemed to drive home the point that even though a lot of people talk about how Dilla’s influenced them, they’re not out there doing anything for him. I know there are factors that come into this, but the audience doesn’t know any of this, they just know what they see, and I think having Busta or Q-Tip or even Guilty Simpson or Slum Village would’ve meant something. Ma Dukes, too — why she didn’t come out for a second or two is beyond me. I remember seeing her at the Stones Throw show in Detroit a couple of years ago and she was up there dancing along with the crowd. Maybe she was trying to keep the focus on her son, but even so, the show was as much about Mos Def (who was honored with the title of “Visiting Professor”) as it was Dilla.

Don’t let this make it seem that I didn’t enjoy the show, because I thought it was actually pretty amazing. But I think it was mis-titled, and I’m having a hard time getting past that. Maybe I was just psyching myself up too much about a Phat Kat verse. But Mos was great — and he sang a lot! — the band was tight, the audience was receptive, and I’m pretty sure I caught bits of Barrett Strong and the Pharcyde, so that automatically makes for something pretty damn good.

DJ: Yeah, and being in a big hall with 2000 or so seats sure makes it feel like Busta or Common are going to jump up there. Maybe the lack of guests has something to do with an arts grant or something, who knows? Mos Def seems to have this ongoing issue with keeping his audience uninformed, and I think The New Danger and True Magic got a universal ‘Huh?’ when they were released. Strange thing is, I listened to a little of both of those albums after the show and their free form feel was a perfect complement. Now, did all those 2000 people know Dilla’s work? The show didn’t give them anywhere to go next, no obvious step #2. Too insider, but really, what about that third name on the poster: MLK? No mention of the man or holiday till Mos Def received his award. Strange.

I loved the show, and I don’t even see it as a missed opportunity. Mis-titled, for sure, and more suited for an intimate venue but amazing band, set list, and audience. Hope it was captured for posterity but I sure didn’t see any recording equipment, least not video.

MB: At least we can call him Professor Def now.

And speaking of the audience, it was great to see such a wide range of people there, from 15-year-old punks to gray-haired couples. That might have been my favorite part.

DJ: If the audience was your fave, I get to pick the guy playing a keytar hooked up to a talk box. He played like Zapp meets George Duke and looked like Eddy Grant. That is what you call cool.

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)

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.

Standing in the crowd waiting for the Harlem Shakes‘ show to start, some hipster sidled up and said, “Good set.” I said, “Yeah…um…,” and he’s like, “You guys were great.” He must have seen that I had no idea what he was talking about because he said, “Aren’t you the singer for Professor Murder?” Dude, I wish. That guy is a stone fox!

The Brooklyn Vegan party at the R Bar was probably the most unpleasant concert experience I’ve ever had, and that includes almost being crushed to death at a Rolling Stones show. Being smashed into a tiny room jammed to twice its capacity with sweaty, cranky, and extremely tall bloggers, liggers, and curious industry types waiting for Black Kids to finally get their gear sorted out was as close to hell as I ever want to get. Once the band started playing, it was like being transported to some heavenly place where the Ronettes are making out with the Go! Team while the Cure plays croquet with the staff of Pitchfork and the Motown session cats cut the Arcade Fire’s hair. Or something. It was really too loud and hot to hear anything.

Fishboy!!

In the “Hey, You Can’t See them All” file:
Saturday Looks Good to Me
Drug Rug
The Broken West
Apollo Heights

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.”

Time: Minutes after some dude who was rambunctiously hanging from a pipe dropped on-stage and seconds after someone in the audience chased a member in the band with a kick drum for pouring a beer on his head.
Place: The Delancey
Moment: Anarchy became unity during the rollicking eight-minute frat-party singalong of “All the Tired Horses” at the Narrator’s set. As three microphones made their way around the crowd, drunken strangers put their arms around each other and bellowed the anthem’s two lines at the dingy ceiling wholeheartedly, hoping it would never end.

Time: Just after Arrington de Dionyso, lead singer of Old Time Relijun, mike-checked with some Popeye-like throat singing.
Place: The Knitting Factory, towards the back
Moment: When the wispy-bearded frontman dispensed a few drops of what we’ll call naturopathic medicine (but was probably LSD) onto his bandmates’ tongues from a small brown vial, right before launching into a psychedelic no-wave freak out in his white dress shirt and black spandex biker shorts.

Time: Ten minutes after I fought desperately with a pushy photographer who really wanted my primo spot so he could take pictures of Japanther in action.
Place: The Knitting Factory, front and center.
Moment: Nearly getting kicked in the mouth by a crowd-surfing Mexican wrestler as I shouted along with “River Phoenix.”

Time: During the Yo Majesty show, three minutes after a bystander with a Jheri curl in a leather jacket asked what the hell they were singing about.
Place: The Highline
Moment: Learning that the “B” in Jwl B. stands for boobs.

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).

Seeing the 1990s play an exclusive afternoon show in the famed Village Underground with their new bassist Dino. This was right after, mind you, the crowd stood affixed to the television screens around the bar watching the two finalists of the Nintendo Wii ping-pong competition fight it out for first prize. Hmm.

The Maccabees‘ live KEXP performance. The band sounded good, but the dramatics of the guitarist Felix White, who had apparently entered the studio insisting he couldn’t even touch his instrument because of a severe infection in his hand, were what made this so great. Once on air, he proceeded to play absolutely fine, though between songs he would double over in pain and grimace intensely. It was either a display in human perseverance and dedication to art, or um, extreme wussiness.

The wonderfully generally unaffected audiences at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. No matter what happened, they hardly seemed impressed. Jump onto the floor excitedly: we will just look at you. Yell out for a hometown reception: we will clap a little. Bring an excited fan on stage and then shove him into the crowd: we will watch him fall. Ouch, Brooklyn, ouch.

KRS-One and Immortal Technique commenting on Kanye West’s choice of “tight red pants” at the 2007 BET Awards at the State of Hip Hop panel. Let’s just say they weren’t big fans.

Jon Pareles.

Before Torche went on, one guy in the crowd asked, “Do they sell earplugs at this show?” “I hope so, because this is going to be insane,” his friend responded, and he was right — Torche was the yang to the Fog’s yin, a mighty riff machine that got fists pumping, fingers pointing, and heads banging. Their set included songs from their self-titled album, as well as the In Return EP; songs like “Holy Roar” and “Vampyro” lived up to the promise of their outrageous names, serving up a sludgy-yet-driving sound that’s been dubbed “stoner pop.” Torche’s lead guitarist looked and sounded amazing: Sporting a huge mop of wavy black hair that must have taken years to grow, a thick black mustache, and a well-loved Gibson Explorer, he cranked out speedy, soaring, just showy enough solos. The drummer was also a beast, laying down elaborate, 16th note-laden rhythms on the kick drum while surrounded by a blur of arms and sticks. The show was full of rock cliches — including playing in near darkness, evil laughter, and the singer holding up his guitar and sticking out his tongue — that worked in a non-ironic way. In fact, it was an almost perfect heavy metal show, marred only by vocals that were too low in the mix (it’s a real problem when the shouts for “more vocals!” are a lot louder than the singer). Even if they were only at 10 instead of 11, Torche’s low, lunging riffs and grinding grooves spoke volumes.

In sharp contrast to Torche’s heavy metal thunder, Jesu’s stage presence and sound was austere, and the audience showed its appreciation by swaying to and fro with eyes closed instead of headbanging. Justin Broadrick and company started off the show with a few bleak yet blissful songs full of beautiful drones and sonic cathedrals straight out of shoegaze’s glory days, albeit with a much bigger wallop. The drama and the volume ramped up steadily — by the the middle of the set, Jesu was tearing into it, and Broadrick threw himself into the music, hunching over and arching back. Despite the volume and intensity, the show was restrained and, occasionally, felt slightly detached; it didn’t help that the sound problems that started with Torche’s show carried into Jesu’s, making Broadrick’s already whispery vocals nigh-on inaudible even if you were standing right in front of him. Even the heaviest power chords were graceful, and the occasional whiff of pot smoke underscored the chilled vibe. Broadrick said little except for the occasional “Thank you very much,” but sounded like an English gentleman even when talking about the “shit” he was going to play at his DJ set later that night in Brooklyn. Even though Jesu didn’t sound quite as massive during this show as they do on record, it was still a solemnly, fearsomely beautiful show.

Maybe it’s because the last show didn’t start until well after 2 a.m. that the crowd was only comprised of about ten people, but it’s more likely most people saw a guy playing the least sexy, least rock & roll instrument known to man and did a quick 180 back to the meat market of a club next door. Using no pre-recordings, Brian Wolff, otherwise known as the one-man band called Wolff, painted a colorful canvas of sounds through a beaten up, duct-taped tuba. With the assistance of guitar pedals — delay, distortion, bass-synth, envelope filters, phaser, whammy pedals -– a simple full-bodied horn was digitally transformed into loops that mimicked the electro sounds of Björk’s Post, with airy Sigur Rós lulls creating a gentle, eerie ambience. A transducer mike in the mouthpiece picked the soft vocals of the former member of Austin’s Drums & Tuba, while an acoustic guitar pickup inside captured the high and low frequencies that he tapped on the rim and bell of the horn for percussion. After building off his newly developed beat, he blew a meaty bass line, clicked his pedal to capture it, and switched to a horn solo, disguised as a synthesizer. A lone breakdancer moved rigidly to the beats in the center of the floor, while a few onlookers leaning up against the wall scoffed appropriately at the weirdness of the scene. Those who understood the intricacy of the music at hand were certainly impressed, but most were just confused. The goofy pop-locker explained later that he had no idea what the tuba guy was doing and that the that he was just “caught up in the groove.” The few others who looked past the gimmick and picked up on the true genius of Wolff would go home late in the night, excited to tell their friends about the underdog of the fest and ready to have sweet dreams filled with the futuristic songs of a very eccentric artiste.

Click here to see videos of Wolff in action on his MySpace page.

First, it was off to Arlene’s Grocery to hear the live full-band debut of the Capstan Shafts. The records they’ve released have been bedroom power-pop gems full of short, twisty tunes played and sung by Dean Wells alone. Moving form the bedroom to the stage isn’t easy, and Wells didn’t just fumble the ball — he deflated it entirely. His backing band clearly didn’t know the songs and spent the whole set trying to catch up (except the bass player, who seemed happy to just jam along to his own tunes and just hit random loud notes when he couldn’t think of anything else to do). It’s hard to fault them too much since the average Capstan Shafts tune lasts about a minute and has a bunch of chords; the blame has to rest on Wells’ shoulders since he’s the guy who picked them. A far better option would have been to just play the songs solo; his delicate melodies might have been audible then and not buried under a wet blanket of guitar shop noodling, false starts and broken rhythms. This ill-starred show might have been the biggest disappointment of the week.

A quick dash to the Mercury Lounge to hear Georgie James’ pristine, well-executed indie-pop restored some faith in both pop music and the ability of a New York City soundboard operator to get a decent sound. It’s amazing how much a clear sound — not pushed to the brink of cataclysmic overload — can help a band. It gave the songs a chance to survive and GJ have a batch of good ones. John Davis and Laura Burhenn might not be chew-the-scenery types, but their sweet and cheerful persona on-stage was like a breath of sweet and cheerful air that was too often sucked out of the air by smug bloggers and jaded hipsters.

Speaking of hipsters and bloggers, there were a few in view at the Wooden Shjips show at the Annex. After clearing the stage of the high school drama production that was Bryan Scary & the Shredding Tears, the band hooked up their pedals and launched into an awesomely loud and hypnotic groove punctuated by wild oscillating organ and some wah-wah riffing not heard since the heyday of grunge. The hype was seeping in and turning into a kind of hysteric disbelief when the guitar player began to sing and the bubble burst. If ever a band should be all instrumental, it is the Wooden Shjips because the weedy voice did not match the majestic noise surrounding it. As the songs rolled by, it was all too clear that the band didn’t actually have any songs worth remembering, and by the time the bass player pulled out his trumpet(!), it was time to call it a night. And a Marathon.

What changed everything practically immediately was the closing set by Rochester punks Polar Bear Club. The air sparked and a jolt of electric energy shot out — the crowd went apeshit. It was what Dear Tonight had the potential for, but PBC achieved with ease, single-handedly turning a night of politeness into an experience. Skinny lead shouter Jimmy Stadt took the surging fans in stride, brushing off multiple tackles from behind like it was nothing, completely unfazed that every fist pumped had the potential to take him out, with every outstretched arm trying (and often achieving) to drag him into the pit. He simply threw his mike to the side and joined in with everyone climbing on shoulders, falling over themselves to get that much closer to the stage, to the band, to the music they couldn’t shout along to hard enough. If CMJ was meant to find your new favorite band, it’s no surprise PBC’s merch guy was having a hell of a time keeping up on the way out.