Cee Em Jay. (CMJ) A festival of music and other things.

Well its officially one week since the beginning of the College Music Journal(CMJ) Festival and it seems like just yesterday when I went to go pick up my badge. So let's go day by day and see what exactly I did and lets see what I remember.

Tuesday. 10 am, I met Emma at the Chambers Street stop in Manhattan and we took the 1 train up to Lincoln center to start what would be a week full of fun and excitement. While on the train there was a homeless man with an eyepatch singing to us. It was a awkward time for us all. If there's one thing you learn while at CMJ, it's that you get a TON of crap. Emma and I were handed our red bag full of CMJ swag and none of it was useful. We sat outside by the fountain in the center of Lincoln center and started to plan our week. A few hours go by, I run back to Pace, take a Spanish test, and then go to my first CMJ panel. It was about merchandising your band/company. It was at that panel that I realized that, I'm a minority. There were TONS of people from all over the united states and they all had funny accents. More time passes and its finally night time. Emma and I had decided to meet up again and go to some shows that night. We met up with Doug, Bethany and Brooke from Pirate and sat down at a restaurant and had a bite to eat. While eating we were the worst of human beings by making fun of every person that walked by in a costume. It was a wonderful time. So after all that, we went to the knitting factory to catch The Format. I'm not a huge fan of The Format but this show made me a bigger fan of them. They put on a good show even if the singer looked completely wasted. After the format played, Emma, Brooke and I went out whet our palates before trying to catch another show. Brooke left us and Emma and I were on our way to Webster hall to catch the rapture. Little did we know at the time that the rapture was not playing at Webster hall and was playing at the Bowery ballroom. So we decided to hoof it through the Halloween traffic and make it down the Bowery ballroom where we were faced with a pretty long line. We also had to pee, real bad, so this line wasn't cutting it for us. While on line we met a group of guys from Virginia. (little did we know that we would see these guys EVERYWHERE!) So we finally got into the rapture show and we had some awesome spots and rocked out real hard. The Rapture was the best show I went to all week by far. After that, Emma and myself met up with Brooke and Justin from Fanatic. Justin was with two very tall men whose names escape me right now, but we met them at St. Marcs place in the city at some crazy Asian place called Bam! That served fast food through a vending machine type thing. That alone was nuts. While there, a "classy" British gentleman in drag started to talk to Emma and Emma managed to make him get the most disgusting thing at Bam!. He was crazy, drunk, and well extremely entertaining. The night ended fairly late, and I got little sleep because Wednesday started so soon.

Wednesday. The Pirate party started the day off in a very elaborate fashion. It was held at arlenes grocery and started at 12ish. There was tons of stuff going on and a ton of good bands playing, Mason Proper and The Matches being the highlights. Pirate also found some crazy tarot card reader who told me id be coming into massive amounts of money. Now its just the waiting game until I get this money. Emma and I were also introduced to FOOSH mints. Now what is a Foosh mint? It is a energy candy, that is equal to 1/2 a No-Doz Pill and 1.5 cans of Red Bull. Needless to say, Emma and I got hooked and were popping these mints the entire rest of the week. Oh we ran into the Virginia boys again and I met one of the coolest girls ever. Jenn from Fanatic, here is your shout out! When the Pirate party was all said and done, it was time to eat. We walked about a block down Stanton to San Loco. A classy Mexican establishment if I must say so myself. We were quite the entourage. It was Emma, Brooke, Jerry and Jesse from Vitriol, Zack from Mason Proper, one guy from some radio station in the middle of nowhere, and somebody else. (I apologize to someone else who ever you are). The story I am about to tell was one of the main highlights of my week. Jesse from Vitriol had a little cup of chipolte sauce, and dared Zack to drink it all for five dollars. Zack being pretty intoxicated from the day obliged to this dare and started to drink the sauce. The facial expressions on this mans face were priceless. I of course being the instigator I am, tried to get Zack to puke but to no avail did he puke. We were laughing so hard that I may have damaged some of my insides, but zack did it and managed to keep it in him. The only thing I could do at that point was wish him good luck for when it passes, because speaking from experience, spicy things do not come out the other end with ease and without pain. After that, I was pretty much stuck to do nothing else. Everywhere I wanted to go was carding and 21+ which stunk big time. Especially because I wanted to see Hello Stranger and Shout Out Out Out Out. So that night ended fairly early for me, which is okay because I needed the sleep.

Thursday. Thursday was COLLEGE DAY. A day with good intent but no real, substance. The day started at 9 with breakfast, and loud noise. Emma and I were not having the loud noise so we went to Duane reade so she could get vitamin water then we attended some panels went to the Music Directors summit which was just a bunch of people sitting on a panel spewing bullshit from their mouths. Some good ideas came out of it though regarding storing and keeping CD's in the station. Apparently I was very cynical according to Emma. Then Emma and I got some lunch, I picked up the charger for my camera and then Heather met up with us. Heather was on a panel and hogged all the spotlight and everyone in the audience felt like they could relate with her because of our small but strong station. It was cute and heather made us look AWESOME. Then I had to run back to pace and take a midterm that took all of a half hour but was stuck in the class room for 2.5. (I got a 90 on the midterm by the way) I then met up with Emma and we were on our way to some sweet shows. I got to see Action Action at the Bowery Poetry Club. While there I saw two guys from Men Women and Children which was pretty sweet. During the show apparently Emma and Heather were being bought drinks from some Asian guy who made a ton of money and had the hots for them. Emma and I left heather with her friend and the drunk guy and we went home.

Friday. Friday was try to catch up on sleep day. The first thing I did was go with Heather and Emma at around 4ish to Mo Pitkins on Ave A for the Fanatic showcase where I met up with jenn again and we had a wonderful time chit chatting it up. After the Fanatic showcase Heather, Emma and I wandered around while waiting for a call from Brooke about what we were doing that night. We ended up losing heather to her cellphone so Emma and I went to starbucks for a little while and talked to the people waiting on line who needed to use the little boys and girls room. It was during this time I came up with the bright idea to make my threadless t shirt into a bandanna. It was pretty sick, I looked like the karate kid. So later we ended up going to Veselka's. It was a cute polish place and we met up with Brooke, Doug, bethany, and abby. It was fun, then Emma and I, revisited the bowery ball room to see Annuals and Mew. Both put on solid shows although I think the druggies liked Mew a bit more because I think that's the only way you could understand what was going on, on the screen behind mew. Many a exciting picture was taken that night and as soon as I get all the pictures uploaded to iphoto and then I web, you will see them all! Friday came and went, most of it was a blur that led into Saturday.

Saturday. The day I was looking forward to the most was the shortest of all the days. In short, it was the AAM party in Brooklyn at NorthSix. I wanted to see Dan Sartain, he wasn't there. I was sad. I stayed for a soy dog with mustard, then left. That was the extent of my Saturday. Hurrah.

I figure ill leave the end of this whole long blog post to shoutouts.

Emma - thank you so much for letting me tag along and meeting everybody and showing me the ins and outs of CMJ life. It was a blast. <3

Heather - I think you were the one to keep me the most sane, and special. You laughed at all my lame jokes like "man flares" and things of that sort.

Brooke - Im not racist. We had our moments during mew making fun of the lead singer. it was a good time. Now we can be best friends forever.

Doug - you probably wont remember any of the moments we had together because you are too popular. But thats okay. Ill remember them for us. ;)

Justin - You are nuts. Ill leave it at that. We think on the same brain wave at times and its perfect.

Jenn - Oh the tension ;)

Jesse - That was a $5 bill well spent.

And if i forgot anybody else, just yell at me.

Well I hope you enjoyed my recap of CMJ. it was definately a experience.

Catch you all on the flipside.
Jimi

PS. Thursday is WPUB and Music For America's benefit concert held in the student union of Pace University. Its free admission and cool bands are playing. You should show up.