The loudest band in New York

I love free concerts. A free concert is like free food, except better, because when Ben & Jerry's gives away ice cream on Free Cone Day, you get a paltry, unsatisfying dollop of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough that lasts about three minutes on a hot day. A free concert is like an ice cream that lasts all evening. And depending on who's playing the show, you might end up with a natural high and a headache at the end of it, just like an evening-long ice cream.

The South Street Seaport is but one place in the city that you can see bands perform for free on a weekly basis. I wrote about the final show of last year's Seaport Music Festival here. Compared to last year's lineup (which included The National and Battles and Menomena and Au Revoir Simone), this year's list seemed less than exciting, but one band jumped right out at me: A Place to Bury Strangers.

You may never have heard them, but you've heard of bands like them -- bands whose reputation precedes them. I still remember one spring night in 2004 when I first heard of a band named Mute Math from my buddy Won. "You gotta listen to these guys," he said, handing me a demo CD. "They're probably the best band I've ever seen." Listening to the demo was like taking a shower on a weekday afternoon: unexpected and invigorating and optimistic.

In the case of A Place to Bury Strangers (APTBS), I'd heard one thing about them that's supposed to tell you everything you need to know about them: The Loudest Band in New York. Virtually every review I've read contains this description, but who can say who originated the phrase. Maybe the band made it up themselves. Maybe it's not important. But if you know me, you'll know that it's impossible for me not to seek out a band that lays claim to being the loudest in a city full of loud bands.

I mean, come on! THE LOUDEST BAND IN NEW YORK!

Apparently, this is a band so loud that the cops once shut down one of their shows, but not until an NYPD officer declared, "This band is sick."

So three Fridays ago, I went to see them at the Seaport Music Festival. The first opening band was Black Acid, who were just finishing their set when I got there. It's hard to feel bad about missing a band called Black Acid, so I didn't. Then the most bizarre band in the world took the stage -- a second opening act called King Khan and the Shrines. (Do not visit their Myspace page unless you're sure you want to.) These guys are so obscure they don't even have their own Wikipedia entry. It was their first show in the United States, apparently, so nobody knew any of their songs, but that didn't stop them from rocking out. They played a hyperactive blend of ska, '50s rock-n-roll, and punk, if you can imagine that. Oh yeah, they had a whole brass section. And a go-go dancer who belly-danced and waved gold pompoms on stage during the entire set. And their drummer had more facial hair than ZZ Top. And -- get this -- the lead singer was a foul-mouthed Indian man who sounded like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and looked like he'd just walked off the set of a Bollywood blockbuster.

This band was a menace to the public, who, against their better judgment, began dancing in the middle of Pier 17 like the maniacs dancing on the stage. King Khan was inscrutable and indefatigable and hilarious; for forty-five minutes, he whipped the crowd into an awe-struck frenzy of laughter and herky-jerky hopping.

Now, this was interesting. These guys were supposed to open for APTBS, which struck me as a tad dissonant. This became evident when, at about 8:30 PM, APTBS took the stage to a long, metallic rumble from lead singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann. In my mind, there are three things to understand about Ackermann:

1. He makes his own guitar pedals.
2. He is the only guitarist on the band, which means he has to make the most noise.
3. He does not interact with the crowd at live shows very much at all. He didn't even address us when the band started the set, which is not that weird once you realize that APTBS is just a shoegaze band that happens to play very loud music.

When APTBS really got going, things started getting dangerous and weird. Dangerous because the band really is, quite possibly, the loudest band in this city. Weird because a band that straddles the two genres of shoegaze and noise rock is bound to attract different kinds of people who may not necessarily get along with one another. This became clear when three young people who looked like they'd just stepped off a plane from the Glastonbury Festival began moshing in the front, bumping violently into people in the process. Two guys standing directly behind them decided that this was rude behavior and weren't afraid to say so, at which point the wild trio stopped just long enough to shrug their shoulders and went right back at it. This was weird because I'm not usually conflicted about what constitutes proper behavior at any given rock concert. I mean, when you're at a rock show, you rock out. But when you're at a shoegaze rock show, and the stage lights remain dim for most of the set, are you only supposed to gaze at the musicians gazing at their shoes?

At one point, the music was so loud that even the press photographers (who were standing behind the speakers, not in front of them) had to cover their ears. I have never covered my ears at a rock show before; to me, that's like closing your eyes if the view at a tropical beach becomes too beautiful. I looked around at the people standing next to me and 75% of them had their fingers in their ears. The other 25% looked back at me in a funny way, as if to say, "Our ears won't be okay in the morning, will they?"

APTBS played a blistering 40-minute set, during which Ackermann destroyed his red Fender Jaguar and then hurled it over his head by its strings. Then, with a muffled "thank you" and a rapid brightening of the stage lights, it was unceremoniously over. The crowd dispersed quickly, dazed and slightly disoriented.

I couldn't hear much for the next 24 hours.

Italian ice and everything nice

For the next two weeks, Little Italy plays host to the annual Feast of San Gennaro street fair. The San Gennaro festival was once a religious commemoration, but is now closer to a cultural celebration marked by commercialism, entertainment and excess. Not unlike Christmas, come to think of it.

Since the festival occurs around the middle of September every year -- along the length of Mulberry Street just a block away from our apartment -- it's impossible for Sarah and me to avoid, or avoid thinking about. You see, our wedding anniversary falls smack in the middle of the festival. And so we get wistful when we see the tre colori flags being strung up by those ugly wheeled cranes, when dirty blue sawhorses are erected as traffic barriers, when loudmouthed construction workers assemble wooden stalls for rigged carnival games.

Okay, so it's hardly a romantic event. It's a noisy, crowded, sticky tourist trap, but it's enjoyable in small doses. Tonight, we walked through the street fair with our good friend Melissa, in search of the artery-clogging, tooth-melting deep-fried Twinkie, among other culinary delights. I don't know what the international reach of the Twinkie is, but if you (like many readers of this blog) live outside the United States and have never had a Twinkie, let me put it as delicately as I can: Eating a Twinkie is like swimming in the East River -- you should only do it once a year at most, because once is enough to make you sort of sick. And if possible, try to avoid doing it altogether, because the risk of death needlessly increases every time you do it.

Of course, like swimming in testy waters, eating a Twinkie can be sort of fun. Especially when it's coated in batter, deep-fried, and dusted dangerously with powdered sugar. We found one vendor who indeed sold such a monstrosity, for $3 each. On Melissa's insistence, I talked the seller into selling us two for $5. He not only agreed, but also gave us three free zeppoles, which are basically deep-fried nuggets of dough almost the size of tennis balls. They were also dusted with powdered sugar. We ate everything.

This happened after we'd eaten a whole dinner's worth of barbecued pork, sausage-and-peppers sandwiches, and curly french fries, but before the cherry and coconut Italian ices.

Two observations while walking through Little Italy among hundreds and hundreds of Italian Americans: First, Italian women are quite breathtaking.

I don't remember my second observation.

Read more about the Feast of San Gennaro here. Read more than you need to know about Twinkies here. [Wikipedia]