Sirenfest

First, before I even start yammering, if you haven't read the post below this one, read it now. Kenny and Thomas and the rest of the madmen in St. Louis have an insane week of Stack Sessions and interviews lined up for you guys, including some NY rock combo called Sonic Youth. Checkitout!

I'm writing to tell you about some stuff I've got planned for the blog next weekend. Now, as some of you might know, I'm originally from NYC, and I'm in NYC for the summer. Obviously, that means I lead the typical NYC lifestyle, cosmos with my three sex crazed girl friends at night, hanging around with my partner in a digi-folk duo during the day. It also means a shitload of free shows. I always mean to write them up for the blog, but then Samantha Ronson calls me to get me to come out to Bungalow and hang with Woody Allen and Soon-Yi, or Grandmaster Flash and I have to go fight a giant Stay-Puft marshmallow man, you know, the hectic NYC life gets in the way.

UNTIL NOW! OR RATHER, NEXT WEEKEND! Next weekend, while every blogger in the world heads to Chicago to clog bandwidth while covering Pitchfork, Pitchfork's younger, slightly lamer cousin, Village Voice's Sirenfest, comes to Coney Island here in my home borough of Brooklyn. And I hereby pledge to blog Sirenfest, and not only to blog Sirenfest, but to provide a live blow-by-blow account on my twitter, which can be found here. So next Saturday, on the off chance that you might not be heading to Pitchfork, checkitout! Here's the schedule:

Main Stage:
1 PM - Tiny Masters of Today
2 PM - Micachu and The Shapes
3 PM - Japandroids
4 PM - Frightened Rabbit
5 PM - Grand Duchy
6 PM - The Raveonettes
7:30 PM - Built To Spill

Stillwell Stage:
1:30 PM - The Blue Van
2:30 PM - Bear Hands
3:30 PM - Thee Oh Sees
4:30 PM - Future Of The Left
5:30 PM - A Place To Bury Strangers
6:30 PM - Monotonix
8:00 PM - Spank Rock

So why, the bored, demanding reader asks, should I care? There are Degrassi reruns on, after all. First of all, you will have an entertaining play-by-play of a cranky guy who loves rock but hates festivals, and finds Siren to be especially miserable. Look, I find myself going to Siren every year since, Christ, sophomore year of high school, but it's a poorly designed festival: people crammed, death trap like, into two city blocks, where the asphalt makes the heat insanely unbearable, and it's either hot or raining. But on the other hand, it's a weird, miserable tradition, linked to my adolescence, and it's at Coney Island, a bizarre place full of corn dogs and log flumes and the beach and my childhood. Plus, rock music, which we all agree is awesome. So tune in, and I promise you a barrage of tweets concerning nonstop whining, weird comments about my teenage years, and uh, I guess music. What's not to like?

But then there's the second thing, which is what's really exciting. Aware that in this internet age, the fickle reader, their minds addled by video games and the YouTube, insipidly demands to have a say in the making of their own soporific entertainment-cud, I offer YOU (yes, YOU), THE READER, the chance to dictate my schedule. What bands do I see? It's up to YOU (yes, YOU). Leave comments to this post saying, "Dylan, you have to see or do blank", and if it is a reasonable request, I will try my utmost. So do me a favor and help me shape my schedule. I wasn't planning to get there before 2 at the earliest to see Micachu and The Shapes, but maybe it's absolutely necessary for me to go see Tiny Masters of Today or The Blue Van. Probably the firmest part of my schedule is that I have my heart set on seeing the one-two punch of Thee Oh Sees and Future Of The Left, but I'll try and catch a little Japandroids, and I am tempted by Frightened Rabbit: if you can give me an impassioned speech (think some Lincoln-Douglas type shit), I might be so moved. And then the headliners: do I go with the conventional choice of Raveonettes and Built To Spill, or do I dare to go see Monotonix rip the fucking stage up and then grind up on hipster booty during Spank Rock's set? I'm really up in the air on that one, so be sure to put in your two cents. It'll be like YOU'RE ACTUALLY THERE! Except you're not. I'm there.