CMJ Day 1
By Erik Myers and Trent Wahlfeldt
Our plane ride was uneventful.
There were no screaming babies and even though Trent was wedged in the middle seat between Erik and some woman, he appeared to be comfortable. He watched almost the entire in-flight movie, A Night At The Museum: Battle of The Smithsonian, but the pilot literally cut into the climax of the film to announce the descent toward LaGuardia.
The two of us were on our way to the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival, a five-day New York City gathering of music directors and college promoters and lots of other important people to discuss the music industry, hobnob with one another and watch as many performances as we could (there’s about 1,000 or so over the course of the five days.)
It’s the best conference ever created. After only one day, we know in our hearts we will look back at it fondly when we have real jobs and are attending this.
Hopefully we won’t ever have to resort to that, as the CMJ Marathon presents a great opportunity to get to know promoters and maybe seek out job opportunities. Our good friend and former KCSU music director Steve Hendrickson wound up with a job at Team Clermont, though that took some additional outside effort. We look forward to meeting up with him on Wednesday and subsequently following him around like children.
While the prospect of post-grad work is always swimming around in the back of our heads, we’re here to learn and meet friendly people. Right after pulling into LaGuardia, we met up with Jessi, the music director at the University of Colorado’s radio station, KBCU. She was very friendly, so we’ve decided to set aside our relentless Buff-Hate for the sake of friendship.
We rode the N into Manhattan, checked into our hotel and shot down to the Judson Church at New York University to register. We got sweet orange lanyards and a grabbag full of things. There was also a room where promoters were giving away free things, so we scooped a ton of free magazines and some energy drinks. Trent would spend the rest of the evening carrying both of our bags in his backpack. They were very heavy. Erik felt bad but pretended not to hear Trent when he complained about the heaviness of his backpack.
We had missed all of the day’s panels by then, but Trent wisely RSVP’d to many different promoter parties, so all was well. We skirted over to the EMI Building where we finally met Erin, a college promoter who had sent us plenty of awesome CDs, like Florence and the Machine and (???). We talked with her about the city and her job at EMI while dining/wining pizza and beer. This was followed by an acoustic performance from pop-rockers The Almost right there in the building. It was very cool. We felt, for a moment, important. We made plans to meet with Erin later and left.
We met up with Jessi and caught the L into Brooklyn for The Music Hall of Williamsburg. It was time for some music. We caught Nathaniel Ratcliff & The Wheel, a fine Denver folk band that enjoys swelling instrumentation and loud-quiet-loud melodies. They even have the cellist from Bela Karoli playing with them! Jessi was a big fan, and now me and Trent are too.
We chatted with Jessi for a while, comparing and contrasting our stations and talking about the burgeoning Colorado scene. By our estimations, there are about four Colorado bands playing at this year’s music festival. That’s more than Delaware, we’re pretty sure.
We hung around the Hall for The Antlers, the synth-symphonic trio whose Hospice album rocked the #1 spot on our charts. After viewing the live show, it’s tough to decide whether we like the album or the live performance better. The lighting really makes the show, sliding together with the audio perfectly. Best song easily was “Sylvia”, ad The Antlers weren’t afraid to drop it right away. If you like the song, listening to it live is a whole new experience.
We wandered around town, met with a few promoters (we plan to meet with Steve tomorrow), and then dropped back into our hotel for some much-needed sleep.