Shows You Should NOT Attend This Fall

As you probably noticed, there are a ton of awesome shows coming up this month and later in the fall. Here's what you should avoid:

Sept. 9 - Boredoms @ Terminal 5
The Boredoms are probably the greatest noise rock band ever. Terminal 5 will make them inaudible. Skip it!

Sept. 17 - Horrors @ Bowery Ballroom
Unless you go to hear Crocodiles, who are good but not great, skip this show. I heard the Horrors open for someone or other recently, and they were miserable. Just boring, wanna-be-goth-but-have-no-idea-what-that-means generic rock band. Skip it!

Sept. 18 - Trail of Dead, Secret Machines @ Webster Hall
Don't skip these bands, skip this show and catch them the next day at Music Hall of Williamsburg, which is smaller and has immeasurably better acoustics. Unless you really want to see Youth Brigade on Sept. 19, in which case, this is the best you can do.

Sept. 24 - Japandroids @ Mercury Lounge
I loved Japandroids until I saw them live. If you like this band, buy their record and avoid their show at all costs!

Sept. 25 - Yo La Tengo @ Roseland Ballroom
Roseland Ballroom is a creepy, corporate place that's still somehow dirty and has absolutely miserable acoustics. The show is almsot $30, and as great as Yo La Tengo is, you can see them under better circumstances for less money if you're patient. It's not like they're likely to break up - they've been a band for close to thirty years now. Skip it!

Oct. 4-7 - Sufjan Stevens @ Bowery Ballroom, Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sufjan is good, but these "small venue" shows (at 500-cap. venues, small is always a relative term) are way overhyped. Anyway, you can't get tickets even if you want to (they've basically made scalping impossible), but at least feel better about not getting tix, because it's just not worth all this buzz.

Nov. 11 - Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. @ Terminal 5
If you go to this, you will just cry and/or put your fist through a wall out of frustration, because you will not be able to hear anything of two of the greatest indie bands in American history. Terminal 5 may have the worst acoustics of any venue building in human history. It's defeaningly loud yet paradoxically inaudible. You'd have better luck hearing the bands inside a giant jet engine. Skip it!

Venue Review: Roseland Ballroom

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Overview
Location: Midtown, Manhattan
Address: 239 W 52nd St (between Broadway and 8th)
Size: Large (cap. 3,000+)
Directions: 1 to 50th, walk two blocks north and half a block west; or C or E to 50th, walk two blocks north and half a block east; or B, D or E to 7th Ave, walk one block south and a block and a half west
Website: roselandballroom.com

Acoustics: D
Booking: N/A
Helpfulness to bands: N/A
Atmosphere: D

Acoustics - Though miles better than the nearby Terminal 5, Roseland's acoustics are still a huge mess. Roseland wasn't built as a music venue, it was built as, well, a ballroom and later adapted to be a boxing arena. Just because someone hung some huge speakers from the ceiling doesn't make it a concert hall - the sound is miserably muddy and made more so by sheer volume. Of course, sheer volume is part of some music and as such, My Bloody Valentine, who played Roseland in September, sounded better here than most bands who come through the spot. But unless the band you want to see has calculated their use of volume to create distortion and overtones as part of their craft (and that's rare), the blasting speakers will just turn everything to sludge.

Booking - I've never booked a show this big, so I really don't know anything about it.

Helpfulness - Again, I haven't a clue.

Atmosphere - Roseland gives off a creepy corporate vibe, made worse by the knowledge that it's a boxing venue and that it's just up the road from Times Square. The massive crowds are herded through like so many sheep and it's obviously not the kind of venue that cares in the slightest about the artistic merit of the bands who play there. It's about ticket sales and moving people in and out quickly after getting as much money off them as possible. There are lots of venues like this in every city, and sometimes they are the only way to see a band you like, but just be forewarned that the atmosphere is at best generic and at worst, oppressive.

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