2013-05-25T17:39:28-04:00 Brian Walter and Jonah Sprung http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=brian-walter-and-jonah-sprung Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Brian Walter and Jonah Sprung Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.685033 2010-08-17T11:56:27-04:00 2011-05-25T17:25:21-04:00

Brian Walter and Jonah Sprung http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-walter-and-jonah-sprung/

"Yeah, man, there's a lot of competition tonight--Jay-Z, Rihanna, Grizzly Bear--but it looks like he's is still drawing a big crowd," we overheard the bouncer remark out front of S.O.B.'s on Thursday night. We were waiting to see Francis and the Lights, an up-and-coming band who play a kind of minimalist funk which immediately brings to mind Prince and Michael Jackson, to those of us with no real music knowledge at least. The band has a very cultivated, reserved aesthetic that stands in stark contrast to their 80's influenced sound. They are also somewhat of an anomaly in that they have all the usual trappings of an indie artist without the derivative, trend following-sound, and have at least a foot in the door of actual pop music (Francis has production credits for the recent Drake single Karaoke). Something about this lack of a 'scene' makes them still feel like a secret, even though they apparently have pretty large fan-base.


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Brian Walter and Jonah Sprung http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-walter-and-jonah-sprung/

Today's indie music scene is in many ways a dangerous place. What can from the outside seem like a utopian community of DIY artists and innovator friendly venues is in often actually a cut-throat business. Take Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, for example, a twenty-seven year old Brooklyn-based musician who plays a kind of beautifully broken folk-rock. In 2008 he was riding a wave of blogosphere hype, heralded as the 'next big thing' by sources all across the interwebs. This led to the release of two albums and a national tour. Two years and one bad review later, he is singing to a near-empty Knitting Factory, a gig he didn't even try to promote because, in his own words, "I don't give a fuck."]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.663141 2010-07-28T22:49:27-04:00 2011-05-25T17:10:24-04:00

Brian Walter and Jonah Sprung http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-walter-and-jonah-sprung/

On Monday night, fresh off a hard weekend spent stereotyping ourselves on the Jersey Shore, we headed back into Brooklyn to see the Athens favorite Quiet Hooves along with an assortment of other acts. The transition was a painful one, and our spirits were flagging as we walked from the subway to our destination venue, Death By Audio. Entering the dingy basement by the industrial Williamsburg waterfront did little to lift them; there were about five people inside, two of whom were likely candidates for parents of the band, and the show space was so small that we had to hide behind a stack of amplifiers to avoid making awkward eye contact with the performers. We had been worried about arriving half an hour late, but were clearly at least an hour too early.
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Brian Walter and Jonah Sprung http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-walter-and-jonah-sprung/

It takes us Jerseyans about two hours to get to Coney Island, the site of the annual Siren Music Festival. Saturday's journey gave us ample time to think about our relationship with Matt & Kim, this year's headliner. We had first seen Matt & Kim four years ago in a warehouse in Bushwick, where their simple keyboard and drum pop took just moments to turn a crowd of expressionless head-bobbers into a dance mob so excited that they had to be calmed down for fear of the floor breaking. They played with a sense of unbridled joy that neither of us had ever encountered. After that night, we chased them all over the city in search of that same high.

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