12 CMJ Picks for 2011
Who are all these new bands? This happens every year during CMJ and sometimes it is just too much work to dig through all the random MP3s to get to the good stuff. Half of the bands playing CMJ won’t be around next year. I tried to pick out a few good ones that probably will—although not all of them are new bands. But if you get the chance to catch any of them live in the next week, you are probably in the right place.
Check out the playlist. It’s funny that YouTube is still the best way to share music playlist with everyone. The first dude up is Active Child. He plays the harp—and it is not what you think. Search the CMJ show schedule here.
YouTube Playlist :: CMJ Picks for 2011
01. Active Child - Hang On
02. Chad Valley - Up and Down
03. Yellow Ostrich - Whale
04. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - FFunny Friends
05. Shonen Knife - Freedom
06. Bleached - Think of You
07. Gauntlet Hair - Out, Don’t
08. Is Tropical - Land of Nod
09. Army Navy - Ode to Janice Melt
10. Guards - Resolution of One
11. Portugal. The Man - So American
12. Metronomy - The Look
TechStars—The Reality TV Series
The ever-expanding tech incubator TechStars now has a reality show on Bloomberg TV. For an elite incubator program, the show surprisingly has all the characters necessary for project-runway-style entrepreneurialism: the super-technical team with personal money problems, the jocks with social skills but a questionable product, the already-funded and overly-confident geeks, and the girl in fashion who clashes with the program.
This isn’t riveting television but the two Davids (Cohen and Tisch) who lead the program are funny. The best thing this show has going is the outside mentors and VCs who respond to iterations of the products. But the show never really unveils the actual products in depth—just five seconds here and there would be nice to avoid an endless cycle of elevator pitches. All that said, I hope it goes into a second season because it brings up the stock of the reality TV genre. Reality TV watchers want to see the lives of crazy people and most entrepreneurs are crazy so this seems like a good product-market fit.
If this kind of thing intrigues you, one or two episodes is worth it. I would go with the first or last one.
TechStars—The Reality TV Series:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
The Clock
In The Clock, Marclay samples thousands of film excerpts indicating the passage of time. Spanning the range of timepieces, from clock towers to wristwatches and from buzzing alarm clocks to the occasional cuckoo, The Clock draws attention to time as a multifaceted protagonist of cinematic narrative.
The Clock by Christian Marclay is on view now at the Paula Cooper Gallery until Saturday with an all-night screening Friday night.
The film is 24 hours and synced with real time. I have not been to the gallery yet, but The Clock seems as unassumingly epic as Warhol’s Empire.
