The Stone...

Last night got weird.  But in a good way.  I saw a band called Genes and Machines whose guitarist Lacy knows at a venue called The Stone in the E. Village at 2nd Street and Avenue C.  The Stone is a hole in the wall not-for-profit experimental music performance space tucked away in a non-descript building on a non-descript corner in Alphabet City.  Until they raise the gate, and you can see the name of the place in gold lettering on the front door, there's no indication that this is even the place you're looking for.  Lucky for me, I knew this going into it and as I was passing a woman on the street, I overheard her asking someone where The Stone was and he pointed it out to her just as I was walking up to it.  Looking down at the door, there it was right at waist-level, gold lettering indicating "The Stone."  That same woman asked me if we were in the right place as I pushed open the door.

It was a very narrow long room inside with rows of folding chairs filling up the back half of the room.  Lacy was not there yet so I found a seat near the front but fairly soon got crammed in with other spectators such that I couldn't save her a seat and wound up enjoying the show by myself.  The show.  They came out all dressed in funky outfits, all of them an homage to the fact that we are now in the year of the snake.  The singer stripped out of a zipped jumper to reveal a snakeskin jacket, under which he was shirtless, and green sparkly pants.  Their percussionist had the most outrageous cobra hat on his head.  Lacy's friend Adrian played guitar, they had two kit drummers, one with lots of electronic drums, another female singer who played a keyboard (my exact keyboard, the M Audio Axiom 49) and bass alternately, and the first singer with the snakeskin jacket played also my same keyboard plus a weird looking painted ergonomic computer keyboard strapped to his belt which appeared to be controlling his laptop.

This set up and their outfits alone led me to believe this was going to be out on the edge.  I was immediately enthralled by the palate of sounds they wove in all of their songs but as the night went on I was equally impressed by the array of musical styles they touched on throughout the night: punk rock, jazz, noise rock, even a song or two that sounded like surf rock.  If that wasn't enough fun, they had a dancer improvising in a very tight space for a couple of the songs.  This light and lithe dancer was also almost completely naked and painted head to toe in a bright orange snake skin like pattern.  At one point she even danced around the crowd, picking random people to come and dance with her.

The band is called Genes and Machines and are well worth checking out.  If not for their theatrics alone, the music is something else.  To top the coolness of the night off, Lacy informed me post-show that the curator was none other than Vernon Reid from the band Living Color.  How cool is that?!

Afterward, we walked the East Village in search of wine and food for me, even passing inadvertently by the venue for next week's album release party.  Drom.  It's hidden under a sushi bar...well not so much hidden.  There is a sign above it.  I took one look at it, though, and all I saw was a sushi bar.

The show is getting closer and closer every day and we're now planning a rehearsal in Philly on Wednesday night.  That will put us coming straight back to NYC to load in because, we realized, it makes no sense to try and unload the equipment anywhere else first (like my apartment or hers) because we'd just be loading it back up in mere hours.  As such, it looks like we're going to spend a morning in Philly and perhaps get to sleep in after a late night rehearsal.  Meanwhile, I'm busy practicing the parts I didn't play in Philly and also, somehow, trying to keep up with voice auditions and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking about my next tracks that I'll be sending to the licensing agency.  Crazy life.  I hope to see you guys out at the show next week if you're in town and can make it.  Here's the event invite on Facebook.