TV On The Radio In The Newsletter

Stay bloodthirsty, babes.

Vans rebuilt iconic LES watering hole Max Fish inside a Soho event space a few weeks back, then invited a bunch of fashion week types and medium-to-old heads to come celebrate. After announcing their first tour in years, TV On The Radio showed up as the night’s surprise guest.

Happy to report: they still got it!

Not going to claim stolen valor as a Fish regular, but I have enjoyed more than my fair share of Buds under the watchful eye of a melting Julio Iglesias.

In any case, hearing these soulful, jagged songs again was a testament to TVOTR’s power as a musical force and artistic presence, one that felt ubiquitous for most of my twenties.

(Someone dropped the phrase silverback millennial the other day and it has held me in a gorilla grip ever since…)

More than several grays ago, I interviewed guitarist Kyp Malone for The FADER while he performed sporadic, stripped-down solo gigs on the eve of the band’s megawatt major label debut, Return To Cookie Mountain.

Ghostface graced the cover circa Fishscale, alongside full-page ads for The Andy Milonakis Show and some long-forgotten Verizon flip phone I definitely owned.

Beautiful photos by Jason Nocito throughout.

I think I got a couple bars off too!

At the time, Kyp and co were still the guys you’d see at the bar, or bump into at any number of laundromats in the greater Williamsburg area. But we all knew moments like this GOATed Letterman performance were on the horizon.

They were that good.

Here are some thoughts on the ever-constricting ouroboros that is “nostalgia” from Dan Ozzi, re: Indie Sleaze vs Emo Nite.

Nostalgia is one of the most reliably popular ways to fill the boxes. It’s also one of the laziest. Essentially, the only real goal is to instill in someone a single, reflexive thought: “I remember this.” That person then shares it with a friend and asks, “Hey remember this?” The friends says, “Wow I do remember this yeah” and shares it with their other friend who might also remember it and so on. Everyone gets a hit of dopamine and no one has to learn any new information. No major revelations, no personal reflection, just pure, uncut remembering.

Fair enough — though I strongly believe that not all looking back should be painted with that brush.

There’s value in shared experience!

Especially as our worlds get more and more hyperfragmented and niche, where people say community when they mean cliques, and culture when they mean consumers.

(I know this is rich while discussing a sneaker activation cosplaying as a skater dive in one of the country’s most expensive neighborhoods, but let me cook.)

My favorite part of the TVOTR show was its class reunion vibe, an opportunity to reconnect with old friends whose lives / families / etc tend to preclude any midweek pop outs, save for a chance to see these guys again…

Sometimes it’s just nice to be reminded of why you care in the first place.

julie, my anti-aircraft friend — supercharged, dissonant DGC-core. IN! MY! VEINS!

Woody Jackson Cow Art — go deep with Schnipper on Ben & Jerry’s fav bovines.

Bomb, Hate Fed Love — there is a poster for this Bill Laswell produced band (that I never heard of) posted alongside Blood Sugar Sex Magik and all the other ‘90s tchotchkes in Sandra Bullock’s Demolition Man office. Love that the surviving members put the CD longbox art up for download.

Jessica 2010, “Posted” — this is deeply fried (fav comment: “watching in 144p for better experience”) but shot of dude doing pull ups on a streetlight goes hard.

Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50 — don’t need me to tell you about this man or his always-relevant (and tragically tiny-fonted) book but anyone yelling “the commas MATTER!” is my type of guy.

Mura Masa, Curve 1 — a “dance album” that emphasizes the intentionally fun first part of the phrase as much as the take-this-serious second is rare indeed…

Playlists updated!