Us v. Them

Pre-orders are now available for "Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (2004-2014)," the newest book from Ronen Givony.  In the tradition of "Just Kids" and "Our Band Could Be Your Life," Ronen Givony’s "Us v. Them" chronicles the generation of young artists who came to Brooklyn in the mid-2000s: a small but seismic scene that coalesced under a billionaire mayor, a series of forever wars, and a music industry in free fall. In tandem with the impresarios and unlicensed venues that lined the Williamsburg waterfront, combining elements of noise and pop, a few became unlikely superstars. Meanwhile, countless flared and vanished, reminders of an unusually fertile moment—the age of indie—that now means little more than a term of marketing. Through reporting, research, and interviews with musicians, industry insiders, and individuals from Pitchfork, Vice, Scion, and the Red Bull Music Academy, "Us v. Them" examines the rise and fall of indie music in a post-Napster landscape, marked by vast disruption in technology, politics, economics, journalism, and patronage. At once a social history and an eyewitness account of an improbable decade, "Us v. Them" gives a critical analysis of what indie music was, is, and will be again in New York City. Pre-order and find more info at the link in bio.

The book’s table of contents, plus excerpts from the introduction: The early aughts were an age of radical uncertainty, disorder, and dread...The country singer Toby Keith urged an old-fashioned ass-whoopin “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” It symbolized the nation’s mood. Annie Leibovitz photographed Bush’s war cabinet for Vanity Fair. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted for criticizing the president. The Capitol cafeteria was serving freedom fries...Republicans and Democrats alike had voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. In under eighteen months, the world had gone from “We are all Americans” to shock and awe, regime change, and preemptive war. … Bohemians had been coming to Brooklyn since the days of Walt Whitman: writers such as Thomas Wolfe, Hart Crane, Carson McCullers, and Richard Wright made it their home. Locals such as Spike Lee, Biggie Smalls, and Jay-Z brought the borough to global consciousness. But it was only in the Bloomberg years that it achieved a critical mass of artists, infrastructure, audiences, and ideas-emerging as a credible alternative to Manhattan, a counterculture all its own. … This book does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of music made in Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014. It pays particular attention to a handful of artists, labels, and venues, but they were by no means the only ones who made it happen; another writer might have chosen an entirely different sample…Research involved more than a hundred hours of interviews over eighteen months. I chose to write about the lives of lesser-known musicians, as I think that their experience was more representative of the scene, and more useful in terms of understanding the era…This book might be intended as an elegy — or a blueprint, because I’d like to think it will happen again. I mostly mean it as an act of tribute to an era when celebrities and senators embraced cerebral indie rock, the underground was international news, and Brooklyn was the epicenter.

Us v. Them is officially out as of today, March 3rd. My heartfelt thanks to those of you who pre-ordered the book and have been sending me pictures. For those of you in NYC, I hope you’ll join me, Nabil Ayers (@nabilayers ), and Dan Friel (@danfrieldanfriel ) for a launch event this Thursday, March 5, at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene. It feels a little strange to be discussing anything except the obvious, but here we are. For the third time in my 40-something years—officially, at least—the U.S. is at war in the Middle East. I can’t say I feel fine. I saw a post on social media the other day. It talked about the fact that in 2016, North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” targeting trans people led to a national outcry, corporate boycotts, and artists canceling their concerts. In 2026, Kansas passes a bill nullifying trans people’s driver’s licenses, and the response is total silence. At the Berlin Film Festival, Wim Wenders said of his fellow filmmakers, “We have to stay out of politics.” It brings to mind George Orwell’s line from “Why I Write”: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” When I was writing ‘Us v. Them,’ I didn’t know how I would end the book, or what would constitute most of the middle, but I always knew what the first scene would be: the protests in New York in August of 2004, which happened only weeks after I moved to town. In certain ways, the book I wrote is less about the music scene in Brooklyn than it is about the early aughts in general. You can’t discuss these years without some mention of the preemptive, disgraceful, and ultimately pointless invasion of Iraq. You can read an excerpt from chapter one, entitled “Shock and Awe,” over on the book’s Substack (link in bio).

Scenes from outside Monster Island, from the Brooklyn Vegan archives. An excerpt from the book’s chapter on Oneida: Also in 2004, Erik Zajaceskowski and his friend Karl LaRocca signed a lease for a two-story, 15,000-square-foot factory at 270 Kent Avenue. They named it Monster Island. It housed a screenprinter (Kayrock), a gallery (Live With Animals), an all-purpose art space (Secret Project Robot), and a music venue (Monster Island Basement). Along with Erik’s partner, Rachel Nelson, they organized installations, group shows, and annual acoustic block parties, in every part of the building and on the sidewalk. It was also where Oneida and their friends in Pterodactyl, Company, and Ex-Models were invited to create a rehearsal space and studio they called the Ocropolis. “It was Erik, Rachel, and Kayrock’s way of helping us be part of the Monster Island community,” says [Hanoi] Jane. John [Colpitts] says, “People chipped in labor for free studio time. It took months, but was kind of like a community barn raising.”

Selections from the archived Brooklyn Vegan post collecting photos from inside Boredoms’ “77 Boadrum,” on 7/7/07. An excerpt from the book: Meanwhile—between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, at Empire Fulton Ferry Park—a different sort of gathering and spectacle took place. At 7:07 P.M., for seventy-seven minutes, on Saturday, July 7th, an orchestra of seventy-seven drummers and kits was arranged in a spiral, like a serpent: one big organism, one giant instrument. The ensemble comprised members of Oneida, Lightning Bolt, No-Neck Blues Band, Sightings, White Magic, Excepter, Aa, and other pillars of the American underground. At the center of the spiral were the Boredoms, the fabled noise band from Osaka, Japan. Formed in 1986, the group consisted of three percussionists; a battery of mixers, organs, and synths; and the dreadlocked vocalist, sorcerer, and seer known as EYE. He used a custom-made contraption with seven tuned guitar necks, played with a satanic trident. “The 77 boa-drum,” he wrote, “will coil like a snake and transform to become a giant dragon!” It instantly became the stuff of modern lore.

Ronen Givony on what’s changed: Artists haven’t lost the talent or the hunger— they’ve lost the system that supported discovery. No critics. No patronage. No clear path. #usvthem #ronengivony #wordlessmusic #oamusicpodcast #artist

Scenes from the original Silent Barn in Ridgewood, from the Brooklyn Vegan archives. An excerpt from the book: [Joe Ahearn’s @joewithfriends ] first month [living at Silent Barn] was January of 2008. In time, his roommates were a game designer, Kunal Gupta; an artist, Nat Roe; and a musician, G. Lucas Crane, who played in the band Woods. Joe says, “That’s when you saw the final transformation from Matt Mehlan and Skeletons [who had left in 2006] to a show space that people were living in the middle of.” “We were having trouble because we had to change the configuration of the furniture in the living room on nights that we had a show,” Joe continues. “If we didn’t have a show, we were supposed to put the furniture back in resident mode or whatever. I remember us having a meeting where all of us were like, Well, it’s really hard for us to keep track of when there is or isn’t a show. So the practical thing is for us to make sure that there’s always a show, every single night, and then we’ll never have to worry about moving all the furniture back. At that point, the people that were living there were crazy enough in that specific way where all of us were like, ‘Oh, totally. We should have a show every night. Our rule was basically: we wanted to be the venue that always said yes. We wanted to invite strangers to our home. We wanted to perform for them, and make food for them. The fact that it was happening in our home was key.”

I was looking forward to this conversation with Ronen Givony. After reading his new book Us v. Them about the indie music scene that transformed Brooklyn in the aughts, I have to say - the book is amazing, and I recommend it to everyone here. Link in bio

For his contribution to Death by Audio’s farewell exhibit, artist and muralist Nick Kuszyk (@rrobots ) paid tribute to the building’s next tenant. @Vice construction crews had been passing through the space while working in the floors above DBA before they were scheduled to vacate, flooding the venue and several bedrooms by cutting through an active pipe. Soon after the exhibition opened, a crew member was found covering Kuszyk’s work with white paint, though the spirit of the piece was restored soon after. Shane Smith, who was reported to have a net worth of $1.5 billion in Vice’s heyday, resigned from his position as CEO in March 2018. Four months prior to the announcement, a New York Times investigation detailed multiple legal settlements involving allegations of sexual harassment or defamation against Vice employees, along with accounts from over two dozen women on the sexual misconduct they endured or witnessed while working at the media company.

In addition to the venue, Death by Audio was also home to the effects-pedal company of the same name (@deathbyaudioeffects ), rehearsal space for DBA co-founder and longest-running tenant Oliver Ackermann’s band A Place to Bury Strangers (@aptbs ), and living quarters for 10+ people. In their final weeks at the space, DBA opened up their common areas to the public for Death by Art, an exhibition featuring over 70 artists organized by residents Mark Kleback (@kleebatron ) and Joe Ahearn (@joewithfriends ). Thanks to Mark for sharing these photos and videos. Featured artists in order: 1. Death by Art table sign: “someone’s friend” Jamie 2. Heather Bickford (@heatherlau_ren ) 3. Chris Uphues (@chrisuphues ) 4. Oliver Ackermann (@aptbs ) 5. Preston Spurlock (actually_preston_spurlock) 6. Roopa Vasudevan (@rouxpz ) 7. Debbie Allen (@debbieallen ) 8. Aaron Taylor Kuffner (@gamelatron )

Poster by Lure Design from the inaugural Wordless Music concert with @GlennKotche , @NelsCline , @Elliott_Sharp , and pianist Jenny Lin (who performed music of Ligeti and Shostakovich) at Good-Shepherd Faith Church on West 66th Street, September 18, 2006. An excerpt from the book: The concerts were didactic in nature. There was an arrangement of “The Rite of Spring” before Deerhoof; The Mountain Goats requested Schubert; The Books had the composer Timo Andres playing Ives. I was led by the belief that anyone who liked Stereolab would also like Stravinsky, that there were connections to be revealed between seemingly dissimilar sounds. Whatever kind of music I was into at the time—polyphony, post-rock, ambient, minimalism—I offered it in concert, trusting the audience to make the inference. There were no lectures, no formality: only music. The word “impresario” had yet to enter my vocabulary, but that’s what I became. I called the series Wordless Music: a name intended to suggest a continuity between contemporary and classical. Lots of people got confused and called it Worldless; they still do.

Scenes from the McCarren Park Pool Parties as captured by Edwina Hay (@arenotphotos ). An excerpt from the book on Noémie Lafrance and the history of McCarren Park Pool: She called the Brooklyn parks commissioner, Julius Spiegel. “He was a very nice man. Mr. Spiegel. His office was in Prospect Park. Very classical, circular office. I enjoy that kind of thing. It was an adventure, right? I’m this little girl, like, ‘I want to do a show in the pool.’ They’re looking at me, laughing a little bit. And they say, ‘No, you can’t.’ This is the thing you have to understand: when I go to a site and deal with the Department of Transportation or the Department of Buildings and they look at you, like, ‘You can’t do this,’ I’d say, ‘You don’t understand. I want to do this.’ There’s this conversation that starts to occur. The pushy me is saying, ‘What’s the problem? How can we resolve this?’ This was really my skill. My negotiating skills are what made these things possible. They said in ‘The New York Times’ that I wouldn’t take no for an answer, which is true, but it was also this kind of flexibility I had. ‘Okay, so what’s the problem?’ I would ask. And they’d say, ‘Well, the space is in derelict condition. It’s gonna need a lot to fix it up. We think this is going to cost half a million dollars.’ They were looking at me, thinking, ‘And you don’t have half a million dollars.’ I explained that we were going to raise money, and I needed to know: ‘What exactly needs to be done? Give me the list.’ They actually drew up a list of all the things that needed to be fixed. I didn’t think it added up to a half a million dollars.” Eventually, they arrived at a sum of $250,000. And that was how she ended up collaborating with Clear Channel, the world’s biggest event promoter and radio conglomerate, soon to be rebranded as Live Nation. Photos: @TheBreeders , July 13, 2008. Liars @liarsliarsliars ), July 20, 2008. Ebony Bones (@msebonybones ), August 24, 2008. @MattAndKim with the @RudeMechanicalOrchestra , July 13, 2008. King Khan and The Shrines (@kingkhanandtheshrinesofficial ), August 3, 2008.