Music is inherently an art form meant as a community event. By its nature, it is a shared experience, and somewhere along the line, most venues have forgotten this. Live music is treated in the same way as going to a theater to view a movie – come in, sit down, shut up. The lights dim for show, the credits roll, the lights come back on and everyone leaves. This works for a summer blockbuster, but it shouldn’t for a concert performance. There is supposed to be some give-and-take between the audience and the performer, and the maybe even the audience and the venue owners.
The Silent Barn isn’t the only place to tap into this idea. At the Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg, wall space is literally given over to the community to play with – large collaborations of paintbrush and spray can provide the backdrop to live music performances. At a recent show, a group of performance artists hosted an event there to promote a documentary of their trip from England to Mongolia in a beaten up jalopy. They built, among other things, a “kiss the dictator” booth complete with Fidel Castro costumes (for guys and girls), a rodeo saddle made out of cold cuts and a plastic udder protruding from a giant wooden yak filled with White Russians. Glasslands is officially a club (with a liquor license and all), but the owners and promoters like Todd try their best to underscore that fact. With bands playing and people mingling with their Solo cups full of yak juice, the vibe is closer to a demented house party than any bar or music venue in Manhattan.
The Glasslands’ liquor license aside, one might think that a DIY show would be fraught with peril when considering legal questions, or perhaps more specifically the attitude of the NYPD. There is definitely the sense, strolling through the Silent Barn, that it could all come crashing down at any minute. Underground music and underground clubs certainly aren’t two concepts new to New York – people have been doing the same thing since the era of Prohibition, and even when a place that could loosely be defined as “DIY” or “underground” becomes mainstream – like CBGB’s – it still could fold at any moment. Todd knows that his little live music wet dream won’t last forever; his philosophy is to keep moving one step ahead of the police cars and eviction notices.
“I don’t have any problem with the NYPD,” he said defensively. His biggest defense slogan is that all clubs are in some way illegal – usually in terms of capacity. The ones that get busted are more a show of force by the police or fire departments than anything else – Todd cited an example of Webster Hall, one of the biggest clubs in the city, getting shut down for capacity just because the fire department wanted to get on the front page of the Post.
Still, his DIY shows – less established and less likely to plead their case in front of a judge or a community board – are more susceptible to attack. In its infancy, the Silent Barn was almost shut down thanks to rival club owners calling in fake complaints for fighting or teenage drinking to the Brooklyn police. Todd has managed to dodge that threat – crediting the city’s inundated 411 system for being to busy to care – but some other attack that dooms the Barn in the future is only inevitable.
It’s a shame, because the Knitting Factory, or worse, places like Crobar will exist forever – perpetual meat factories where human cattle are herded in to slurp down their $15 Bacardi and diets, all to be kicked out promptly at 4:00am. DIY shows like the Silent Barn and Glasslands are incredibly not for their garish appearance or even the cheap drinks. Their appeal lies in an attitude that defies the nightlife business. It isn’t a business for Todd; it’s a community event. Money is asked for purely to keep the rusty machine running, he’s not out to start VIP rooms for Paris Hilton or P Diddy. Once the show starts Todd is just another face in the crowd, munching on a stale slice of pizza and sipping his can of Bud – a symbol of the accessibility of the scene. The bands follow suit – the same one that began the Friday night playing for the crowd ended up being a part of it – the drummer and guitarist both sipping plastic cups of whiskey, the singer resting on a couch gossiping with her friends well past 4:00am. What starts out as five roommates in a warehouse apartment in Ridgewood not knowing what to do with themselves soon becomes their friends inviting friends-of-friends, until half of Williamsburg is sitting in the living room, like one giant sleep over – and that’s Todd’s goal. A community acting itself out.
