Looking up 5th Ave on the way to the Empire State.

I arrived in New York yesterday afternoon after an almost 8-hour flight from Gatwick. Zoom Airlines was a nice cheap option (particularly since I wasn’t paying for the flight), but the Boeing 767 we crossed the Atlantic in was not new. It made funny noises and had ashtrays in the arm rests.

I followed the instructions and took the subway to Williamsburg, where I’m staying with a guy called Mike Faccioli. He has a small apartment on S. 4th St. just the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge from Manhattan. Nice guy. He lived in NZ for some years about a decade or so back, and knows some of the same music people there that I know, which is how the offer to crash on his couch came about.

This is Mike, whose apartment I’m taking up space in.

Mike and his girlfriend Xina know a lot of music people here in New York, which is how we came to be backstage with Bad Religion before the gig at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. We connected with a friend of theirs, John Malone — really good guy who manages a bar here — and had a drink or three before going to the gig and hanging out with the band.

I’d heard of them, but I didn’t really know their stuff. I had no idea how well known they were. They’d packed the venue out and everyone (but me) knew all the songs. These guys are now in their post-30s (like me) and were about the friendliest punk band I’d ever seen in performance. The banter was pretty Dad-ish, which is kind of cool.

One shot that I took on my phone that came out. It’s the crowd.

It ended up being quite a late night for me. We ended up going to a bar called BOA (Bar on A St.) after the concert and the after-gig-drink where I got chatting with the proprietor, Bob. The music system had crashed and one of the customers had rushed home to get his laptop. We ended up listening to some Miles Davis, and we got to speaking about jazz.

Bob had some live recordings he’d made in the bar featuring Art Blakey’s daughter, Evelyn - a singer.

She lived nearby, but died last month. He’s offered me the recordings and I might see if there’s anything that can be done with them. There’s a video of her here. Apparently she was pretty obscure in America, but loved in Japan.

We didn’t get in till after 2am, which was 7am by my body clock.

This morning, I was up and at the CMJ Music Marathon by 10am for registration. A lot of the things that I thought I was going to be doing today aren’t actually on until tomorrow, so there’s been a bit of schedule shuffling for me. It worked out well. I walked quite a bit of Manhattan and did the tourist thing. Here’s the view from the top of the Empire State building.

New York. It’s a long way down.

It was nice to go have a look, though actually, I didn’t spend all that much time up there. It takes so long to get to the top, what with the airport-style security check in, and the hour-long walk up 5th Ave to get there (though that was kind of my own fault). I didn’t have a great deal of time because I’d left some stuff back at the NYU venue on Lafayette.

EJ Barnes, Liam Finn and Mike McClung (from NZ On Air).

I also caught a few showcase gigs this afternoon, met Liam Finn and EJ Barnes (Jimmy’s daughter, who sings with Liam), hung out with the NZ On Air/NZ Music Commission guys, and made lots of interesting contacts with music industry people over here.

There are a few really interesting new online music services that I’ll be writing about on my New Music Strategies blog. But there are also a couple of real charlatans in the field. I’ll be issuing warnings too.

My feet are killing me, so I’ve come back to the apartment for a bit of a rest, but I’ve promised a couple of my students that I would not miss their favourite bands, Modern Life is War and Lifetime. They’re on from 8pm tonight, so I’m going to have to get moving to get back into the city centre in time.

Of course, this only scratches the surface of what I’ve done since arriving in NY. It’s just so busy, I’ve met so many interesting people and been to some really interesting places (there’s a great pizza place near the corner of 5th and Broadway — try the spinach pizza) and taken quite a few photos — though I foolishly left the camera behind when we went to the Bad Religion gig last night.

Won’t make that mistake again.