///we ended up having two shows at CMJ on Friday. the first being part of the Portland Showcase at the Knitting Factory during the day… we were grouped into this showcase thanks to our friends at Tender Loving Empire… load in was at noon. it was intense. three floors of rock music. all day.

we played right in between good friends and Tender Loving Empire labelmates Super XX Man and Jared Mees & The Grown Children. it was a tight stage. we rocked it hard. it was a our last show with The Grown Children on the two week family tour we’d been on and had started in Clarkston, WA. their set after ours was the bestest. it raged. we were all onstage for their last song. perfect end to two weeks of awesomeness.

the whole Portland Fest day was a big love fest with friends. our buddies Merrill and Patrick from Sister Suvi even made it over. soooooo good to see them. very bummed we weren’t able to catch any of their sets. we also made some new friends in Strangers Die Everyday who played before Super XX Man and were very very cool.

here’s a blogger review from this afternoon set… that includes some very kind words aimed at us: Best of CMJ includes a big photo of lots and lots of the people that performed that afternoon… including Lisa and I (in the back).

we wrapped things up at the Knitting Factory then headed over to Williamsburg (Brooklyn) for our night CMJ showcase at The Charleston… grabbed some epic pizza across the street, then hunkered down for a rather strange but super fun show with Capitol K, Peachcake and Team Genius. all were super nice. we closed the evening out at around 1am to a cozy and rowdy basement of friends and friends of friends and CMJ showgoers in general… even our recent tour buddies Low Red Land showed up to rage with us… and The Grown Children! and Scott from Super XX Man! and Marty! and Steve-o! and Kyle! and so on and so on. fantastic end to a wild wild couple of days.

things got really weird after the show at where we were supposed to crash nearby… so we said goodbye to The Grown Children then cruised back to Steve-o’s for another night of comfy, but not very much sleep…

///gilbert

///rolled into NYC around 6pm and headed straight to Greenwich Village and the church where we were supposed to check in for the CMJ Music Marathon that was already two days over and would be what we would be up to for the next two days. www.cmj.com

after getting checked in we met up with The Grown Children then went on a direct pursuit for Indian food. we succeeded in that mission, but parking was a whole nother story. Jared and I drove around for a good 30 min before finally settling on a spot near the restaurant… turns out it was metered until 10:30pm!! so i got nailed with a $65 parking ticket… not too stoked about that…

but the amazing Indian food made up for it… as well as the company…

from there we cruised to the Lower East Side and spent the evening venue hopping catching a bunch of CMJ shows… highlight being bumping into our friends from We Vs. The Shark and then catching their side project’s set at the Cake Shop… Pegasuses XL. it was awesome. although sound at the Cake Shop wasn’t all that awesome. soon found out that the best part of CMJ was bumping in to friends and chillin with friends… friday would embody this spirit super well… thursday was a good start…

also dropped in to the Mercury Lounge, the Living Room, the Bowery Ballroom, Crash Mansion and Arlene’s Grocery. ended at Arlene’s and just hung out at the bar since we were with our friend Steve who didn’t have a CMJ badge… super fun night. hangin with Jared, Brianne and Megan in NYC. we were all very excited. we were originally supposed to play a Fanatic showcase this night, but it being cancelled allowed us to just chill and roam… it was nice.

we all crashed that night at Steve-o’s place in Brooklyn. yet another late night.

///gilbert

We headed into the city and ended up eating Indian food again. At the same place. Cuz we love it. We were getting free internet on the street, so I walked around checking out some cool toy stores and such while Eric tried to keep up with the machine. Steve met us after work, and Marty came and met up with us once again. We had several more friends come down for this, our final NYC show on this tour, which was very exciting.

The Lit Lounge is very cave-like. Dank. Dark. Crooked walls. Little pockets of magic. Basement. It was fantastic. Sounded great too. We did get the chance to see a huge cockroach down there, so the trip felt pretty complete at that point. We played with a solo artist from a band called The Study. He was nice. Helped us carry our gear down the crazy steps into the dungeon. He was good too. We all really enjoyed his set. His name was Eric.

Joseph von Stengel came down from Oneonta, NY with his partner Hope to do projections for our set. Really fun having them there and to have him onboard with the visuals as it seemed to add a lot to the overall ambiance. Was pitch black other than his moving pictures. Joe got some good video footage of a couple of tunes. We hope to share it with y’all at some point.

The show was a lot of fun, and the best crowd yet for a NYC show for us. We did get a few new people who came out, or just happened to be there. A couple of Hasidic Jews seemed to really like it, and they spoke to us briefly after the show. Nice guys. Cool that they dug it. Steve brought a couple of friends out. Cam also had a friend from High School there. It was a fun show, and it was a nice way to end our stay in the city that never sleeps. And as we loaded out, some go-go dancers started doing their thang to help fire up the dance party. It was, uh, pretty epic.

After the show, we decided to hit up a French fry place that Steve had told us about called Pomme Frites. They only serve fries. We tried to go by verbal directions that were a little sketchy, and then decided to look it up on our handy dandy direction giver. We got there just in time to get some amazing Belgian-style fries. They offer at least 28 different dipping sauces. They were super good, a bit extravagant, but mighty mighty tasty.

We drove Marty back to her hotel and got to see Times Square all lit up like Vegas. All the flashing lights made Eric very happy. We then headed on out of the city and used our friendly direction giver to avoid paying any tolls, so the trip out of Manhattan was a little convoluted and windy, but cheap. We slept about 45 minutes outside of the city in a parking area in the hills.

reporting for all of us finn rigginses,
lisa the simps

Note: check out Joseph von Stengel’s work at www.culturerecycling.com

Note: the Ghost Ghost spent two whole nights parked on the street in Brooklyn, we were somewhat surprised and mostly glad that it didn’t leave the city looking like this: