Met up with Alli at her new place of employment, only to find that the big bad rainstorm we experienced last night had ended her first shift as the bartender in the garden before it even started. Cat and Eileen showed up a bit later, so we stole Alli away to the Radio 4 show at Brownies and commenced getting our drink on.

I got a little drunk but not a lot. It was nice. It was that just before things could go wrong kind of drunk. I stayed away from the whiskey. It usually gets me into trouble.

Anyway, the music. Yes. Here's the thing. I know Radio 4 is the new shit that doesn't stink this week, and I totally got what they were doing, don't get me wrong, like, they sounded like a bunch of dark punky bands from the early 80s, and I like that shit, but in my head, at the show, I couldn't figure out where the fuck they would go from there. I mean, electroclash or electropop or whatever you want to call it has come and gone (or should be gone, anyway), and this is just the other side of the same coin, that everything old is new again, and by old we mean twenty years ago, and since we've already seen the dance music come back, now we've got to see the rock music, and: Here it is! Do you like it?

Yea, I guess I do, but I don't think I will one album from now. So is Radio 4 a real rock band that can grow and evolve, or are they just a band for the moment? Do we need a few rock bands that are just for the moment to kick everyone else in their asses? That audience was rapt last night, man. They were fucking into Radio 4's shit.

It was quite a scene, by the way. I saw a band guy I used to work with at Funny Garbage, and Todd from Tremble, some guy I've known for a decade who used to work in new media and now is enrolled in cooking school and has grown himself an impressive set of sideburns, and even the barback who works Mondays at the Beauty Bar. It was like that, there, last night: random hipster people. And everybody was into it. Except for me, because I can't ever enjoy anything once I start extrapolating, and I almost always start extrapolating.

So maybe they weren't that great. Maybe music should be so good that there's no room in your head to worry about who their influences are, or rather, who they're ripping off. Or maybe I should just forget everything I know everytime I go to a show and just shut up and dance already, because I never even worked in the music industry, so I really shouldn't be this bitter and fucked up about it all.

***

In other culture news, I did what I am dubbing the "Gagosian Strip" of galleries in Chelsea with Dante yesterday afternoon. It starts at 11th and 24th (at the Gagosian) and ends on 10th and 24th, and there's a bunch of beautifully designed galleries to visit.

The Mary Boone gallery, in particular, was breathtaking. As Dante said, "It's like what you dream your New York apartment should look like." Beyond being quiet, serene, and air-conditioned, the gallery featured a beautiful light wood beamed ceiling and great light. The art became irrelevant, particularly because most of it was crap.

But then we hit the Luhring Augustine Gallery and the phenomenal Gregory Crewdson show. If you haven't had a chance to go see it, and you're a fan of the cinema and photography, please take the time to do it. You will not regret the haul to the outer reaches of Chelsea.

Essentially Crewdson creates photographs that look very much like stills from a movie. This particular set of photos was created in a Massachusetts town which he appears to have taken over with cranes, lights and props. They are vibrant and rich and emotional, without ever telling you exactly what's going on. It sort of felt like an X-Files episode, thought I don't really want to reduce it to that. But it's hard not to reference pop culture when one of the pictures featured real-life movie and television actor and, for the most part, creepy guy Dylan Baker.

If you're in New York, do check out this show, and, in the short term, this interview with Crewdson, where he talks about being good at "creating a situation" more than being technically good at creating art, which I completely identify with. I can't even draw a straight line, but I know when needs to be drawn. I'll never make art like Crewdson though.

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