Anticipation - Cut City - Mammoth - 2007

Here in New York it is CMJ week. For those of you not familiar, allow me to explain. CMJ weeks is sort of the music business equivalent of sweeps week. For one week all of the music press and record label talent scouts descend down onto New York City. In order to accommodate all of the bands that will clamour for the attention of these music industry luminaries, every single bar that has anything remotely resembling a stage books bands all day long. Indie record labels book the bigger clubs in order to showcase their talent stable, and smaller bars take the unsigned masses.

This will be my 9th CMJ week since moving here. My attitude towards the festival has evolved in stages characterized thusly:
Stage 1 - "CMJ is one of the best parts about living in this city! I can't believe I get to check out all of these awesome bands"
Stage 2 - "These CMJ shows are kind of a pain in the ass...you have to deal with a truck load of tools, drinks are expensive, and the band you want to see is going to play a short set cause they gotta fit in those other bands. But I really want to see this band, so I guess I'll deal.
Stage 3 - "There is no fucking way I'm going to a CMJ show"
Stage 4 - "Fine, I'll go to a CMJ show, but I'm showing up five minutes before the band I want to see and leaving immediately after"

So, Wednesday night my roommate had talked me into going out to Southpaw and seeing his friends' band. Now Southpaw is in reasonable walking distance to our apartment and the show was at 830 so I figured it wouldn't be too bad for a cold Wednesday night's entertainment. But we showed up only to discover that there was a $20 cover. Okay...now I've been here long enough to know that everything is more expensive than you think it should be...but seriously, if you want to attract attention to your band, making people pay $20 just to walk in the door is not the way to do it. Alex and I decided the only appropriate response was "fuck that noise" and we went and got a few beers at a local bar. It was the only reasonable solution to that.

This is that band that I thought was Interpol and is not. I still like it better than Interpol.