The End of Tonic, Part 3

It's been a few weeks since Tonic's closure, an odd space of time finding new jobs, showing up at job interviews only to have other Tonic employees waiting their turn. The final Pure Fire "Goodbye subTonic party" went down great with a sizable chunk of the downstairs performers showing up. It was the best sound system we ever had at Tonic accompanied by 4 visual people and my parents who had come from a Les Paul show to sit in the middle of a blisteringly loud set with a film of some French guy flying an enormous kite... Another highlight was the 8-bit grooves of Bubbly Fish playing with O blaat.

Yet another highlight of the final days was the all-employee 6-hour jam session of which I'll spare you the mp3s and leave you with the photo... although we did manage to record 5 hours onto CDs! I recommend any group of people who have been laid off to play music together for 6 hours!

The final night's show was a mad rush of work, containing a lot of drunk people who were very unhappy to see Tonic go. Doily and I ducked out before Marc Ribot was arrested, preferring to sleep after finishing work around 7 a.m. One last half-drunk look back at a long club night and the last of Tonic's. The next time I went by Tonic was a week later and all of the tons of detritus from the basement had been neatly piled in a massive dumpster. The End.

Pure Fire got slippery over at APT last week, our first big move from an Eastside basement to a Westside basement. DJ Rupture tore it up alongside the Pure Fire Crew, including new resident DJ $mallchange. Thanks to everyone who came out to support! Next month we'll be hosting Balkan Beatbox, our favorite act from that whole energetic local scene. June 14th, baby. APT has a wicked system in a wicked room. Come early for our open bar from 9 - 10 and save a round or two!

Synthesized

Synapse mag contents lovingly rendered online while Synthesis Mag posts a sweet little Drop the Line mix blending old and new. Meanwhile I patiently wait for my own Xiosynth to be re-sent. Gotta love NYC mail delivery!

The End of Tonic, Part 2

The bathroom graf eulogy.

The End of Tonic, Part 1

In a sad, smoked-out bleary late-night TV session, I watched Food Network chefs make New York skylines out of Rice Krispie bars. One chef was making the Lower East Side skyline because she loves the diversity of the neighborhood. That's why she laid out CBGBs next to The Rivington Hotel, L.E.S.'s first luxury high-rise. Well, the Lower East Side isn't made out of candy and diversity isn't welcome if it can't pay the rent and hire a doorman to clean 24 hours a day.

Tonic is closing. SubTonic has closed. We are all reeling having lost jobs, but most importantly, a very special locale for our family of co-workers and music-makers. I could wax poetic (wait, I am...) but will try to keep it short... As a historically rich center for music, New York City is unlike many large cities in that it has A LOT of musicians. Tonic has always been a place for those weirder-than-most musicians to come home to after tour or to show up and see an old friend who is on tour. While there are numerous music venues downtown, few stand for the musician, paying the cuts Tonic always has to the musician. Few cater to more than rock, singer-songwriters or club DJs. Few are embedded in the community the way Tonic has been.

SubTonic has been closed since February's Matthew Dear show was raided by the Quality of Life Task Force. We had just finished letting people in to a packed party when 12 members of police (undercover and uniformed,) fire, health and buildings stormed downstairs in a flurry of summonses and fines. SubTonic was done. While many will talk about Tonic, I want to spend a minute on SubTonic. Doily has worked there since it opened and I've been, for all intents and purposes, its #1 regular... until I actually started working there...

Where upstairs was often focussed on acoustic groups, SubTonic hosted electronic sounds and for the past 9 years, there really was no better place in New York to see electronic music. From the Polar Bear Club to The Bunker to Barreled to Pure Fire to Phenomenon to... I forget the rest... you just couldn't find a better place to hear underground electronic sounds... our sounds in our space. A space the owners, Melissa and John, were happy to salvage and share with a bunch of crazy musicians who were lucky to get anyone but their friends and roommates to come to their gigs! Sometimes, however, a lot of people came out and a lot of fun was had, dancing (illegally!?) in a basement crammed full of kosher wine barrels full of nutters happy to be done paying rent for another month.

For Doily and I, we lose a haunt, a place where we spent a good part of our first decade in New York. This was where Broklyn Beats was nurtured. We have done the majority of our NYC gigs here, every record release for every record except the first. It was probably time to move on, climb out of the basement, but to what? This week, Sin-e, another LES musician-friendly haunt, closes. I've heard Boogaloo, home to Trouble & Bass's wicked monthly, will also close. CB's has been closed. Surely this isn't the end, but a new beginning. Nonetheless, we'll all miss working together. The majority of Tonic's staff has been there over 7 years together. We can all remember when there was nothing else on the block but Lansky's speakeasy and Lansky's was still open. When everything around the corner on Delancey was mom & pop spots. Well, the yuppies can have it. And for dessert, a CBGB Rice Krispie treat.

There is however, one last week to make a racket and this is our contribution:

SUBTONIC FAREWELL PARTY
Tonic (upstairs) 107 Norfolk
Mon. April 9th, 2007
10 - 4
$5

Pure Fire and Broklyn Beats Records invite you to a SubTonic Farewell Party commemorating all the good times we have had playing in SubTonic. This is an open call for all denizens from SubTonic's illustrious past to come down and play one last time. There will be a sign-up sheet for 5 -10 min. slots for you to plug and play or DJ one last handful of vinyl / bytes...

For all of the years that SubTonic has provided us a wonderful locale for hosting and attending experimental music, it's our turn to say thank you and goodbye! With SubTonic previously closed, this party will be hosted upstairs at Tonic, but SubTonic will be listening! There will be a DJ set-up, extra tables and a mackie mixer provided. Plan to keep it short and sweet. Sign-up will be at the door with the party started at roughly 10 after the early show. Spread the word!

Vinyl Mania & Empire Rink Close!

Doily and I just went to Vinyl Mania about two weeks ago after a job interview up at Wave Hill, former home to Mark Twain among others. Vinyl Mania represented the old school disco and loft DJ. Conveniently located around the corner from the Paradise Garage, the place never lost its place in history. I always made a point of going a few blocks out of my way to check what discounted rap vinyl was floating around. Inside, the vibe was always sweet: a cashier DJing some house track, smiling as I came in, some mangy street cat happy to be sitting inside and a ton of vinyl without proper homes. The last visit scored me Young Jeezy's first LP for cheap, but unfortunately it's my last score. Vinyl Mania closed this week, open since 1978. Read an old interview with the owner Charlie Grappone.

Also closed this week is Empire Roller Rink in the heart of Brooklyn. Empire was where roller disco was born and up until the end, the place continued to be busy. Now it will be yet another storage facility stuffed full of evicted tenants' possesions, bootleg purses, drug and weapon caches and tools and supplies for the entrepeneurial developer.

While I'm on the nostalgia tip, I gotta mention how I met Kool Herc last week, even got to buy him a Corona. If I wasn't so starstruck, I would have asked for a picture. He stopped by Jazzy Jam's new weekly at Tonic. It's bumped Pure Fire into hiatus until Subtonic reopens, but I'm happy to have the Zulu Nation peoples at Tonic. Damn, Kool Herc and his girl dancing on an empty dancefloor to Zulu Nation DJs at Tonic... I had to rub my eyes a few times, pinch myself, hope I would wake up to a city that really did believe in preserving its cultural heritage...

Les Trolls Wander East

While we drink beers on the beach, our pals Les Trolls are making a tour of the Middle East, playing parties in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Check their blog for some great photos and plenty of French words. Can't wait for their upcoming LP! (Have you heard their Broklyn CD?! It's wicked!!!)

Boriken beats

Only months into this blog and I already find myself writing the dreaded vacation entry. Doily convinced me 6 months ago that we needed a break in the sun. In a rush I forgot the laptop's power adapter and was happily computerless for 12 sweet days. I was harbored among beach life, Cormac McCarthy's "Suttree" and family dice games(?!) drinking Medalla lights, full bellies of rice and beans and red snapper.

We were greeted in San Juan on a Friday night by Critical Mass bikers blocking the bridge to old San Juan. Time in San Juan was a macrocosm of our Williamsburg barrio with a lot more tourism. Considering it's 85 degrees everyday, I can see why. My personal aim was to sniff out the reggaeton scene and see how it was poppin'. Judging by rolling systems on the strip in Condado, we were stoked for the nightlife. Condado is like Miami Beach and there's a few dance clubs and casinos which didn't promise much. In Old San Juan we found an old disco, Club Lazer, which had a reggaeton night and The Noise, a converted apartment which, judging by the name, promised more. Trouble was trying to ever find a good party at these places on a Saturday night when tourist dollar is precious (The Noise was $22 that night yet free on Sun.) We opted for Lazer which had a ladies free with metal detector door. We got a few chuckles, but that usually implies there's no other gringos (gallitos) there...

Reggaeton really hit its stride in 2005 and has quickly established a large and limited Latino market. The DJ played a solid thump, dropping a couple interesting new things, but pretty much running through a large majority of the genre's tracks within a couple hours, giving us staples like "Gasolina" and "Contacto." The bar was cheap and strong and the scene was young, guys all Don Omar, Daddy Yankee, white-on-white Yankees caps, sunglasses hanging off chin, doo-rag strings drooping, girls snapping gum drinking Alize specials with requisite nail jobs. The dancefloor in this old Spanish building had an old wooden disco feel to it, but had to compete with 8 TVs above the bar showing both a boxing match and a panned view of a girl in a bikini, occasionally zooming in on body parts...

Stumbling back down the blue-glazed cobblestones, I later found a nice little salsa place called Nuyorican Bar. This is where the hipster gallitos perch! Nonetheless, between the Spanish architecture, the weather and this raw squatter-esque bar, I started to really feel like I was in Barcelona. There was even the trip to the obligatory weekend disco... and it wasn't that bad!

The majority of our trip was chillin' on the beach in Vieques, a smaller island saved from the U.S. Navy's bombing exercises by a fleet of endangered egg-laying sea turtles. Tourism is slowly creeping in (note my white ass burning on the beach!) but the incessant rooster crowing and night-shift sound of the tree frog's "Coqui!" will keep any neurotic light-sleepers from vacationing here.

Back in San Juan for the last couple of days, we took in the old Spanish fort (see photo,) some wicked Puerto Rican food and I finally found a record store. Actually it was a junk store, but after 20 minutes of perusing I realized that the entire back of the store was formally a record store with all records ending at a 2002 date. Somewhere around that time, the music transformed itself from new to junk with carved wooden sailors and antique spoons nudging Silk the Shocker and Biggie to the back room... I also finally found a shop that sold mixtapes. It was a hip hop clothing spot with "50% off all camouflage gear" and a rack of CDs on the counter. I asked the woman if they had any reggaeton mixes and she scoffed no, telling me the artists only make LPs and not mixes. I said this is strange because in New York there's a ton of reggaeton mixtapes. At this point she lost interest, implying that reggaeton wasn't her bag, most likely due to its bawdy club nature. They were playing Mobb Deep at the time and it seemed weird to me to embrace one and not the other, especially considering the wealth of local talent. Maybe the backpackers are just jealous of the youngsters' success, rapping over the same incessant rhythm, pelvises thrusting, accessories drooping...