Barryfest Endorses: Basement Shows
Without any knowledge of history or topography, one would think that a city with as much filth and poverty as New Orleans would have a stronger hollowed-out basement scene. But unlike our blighted correlatives all the way up in Detroit, we don’t live the basement life, which is a shame considering our ballooning numbers of [...]
The Strange Confluence of Internet Media, Semi-legitimate Live Music Establishments and Hardcore Punk
It should have been artlessly apparent to anyone who attended Siberia’s Saturday, October 15 showcase of California supergroup Off! and Brooklyn newcomers Cerebral Ballzy – bands who overwhelmingly appear to represent the heart of a new wave of tradition-burning and norm-ducking hard edged music – that it was a categorical smash success for every party [...]
Thoughts on Voodoo And The Current And Future State Of Music
That the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience dispatched the second Le Ritual Stage to expand the electro-focused Le Plur area and add an additional DJ venue should come as no surprise to anyone who made it out to City Park last Halloween or attended literally any other weekend music festival in the last 12-18 months. Last [...]
Barryfest Endorses: Avant-Garde Side Projects
With a Webster’s Dictionary definition like “of or relating to an intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts, especially in the arts”, it’s no wonder so many musicians get blindly lost in the unavoidable pretention of being “avant-garde”. Some musicians spend their entire lives attempting to meet the aims of that definition, and are accountable [...]
Barryfest Endorses: Smoking Cigarettes at Rock Shows
I have long argued that any city-wide determination on whether or not the proprietor of private business was allowed to permit smoking on his premises was draconian at best and unconstitutional at worst. If people think a particular bar is “too smokey”, they are free to drink or seek employment elsewhere – just as they [...]
Barryfest at South By Southwest, Part 2: SXSW Is Shallow and Pedantic
I’m generally not the kind of guy that notices, asks for, or even cares about American politics at rock shows. In fact, there was a time, somewhere between Rage Against the Machine’s second album Evil Empire and, not ironically, when Bono started begging George W. Bush for money on behalf of all 3rd World countries, that I wanted every nineties band to just shut the fuck up.
Barryfest at South by Southwest, Part 1: SXSW Is Decadent and Depraved
I’ve been to South by Southwest a few times in the past several years, the experiences of which have been experiments in the cause and effect of not planning for something that requires concise preparation. Results have been varied, the luck of the draw sometimes providing me with posh hotel accommodations and free drinking, and [...]
Barryfest Endorses: Listening to The Doors During Mardi Gras
It was once thought, among philosophers of the Current and Future State of MusicTM, that the Doors made the perfect music for extreme cold weather in big cities. However, the nuances of such a notion confounded, mystified, and ultimately divided experts who, unable to account for the vast sociological, economic, and ethnic diversity that characterizes [...]
