The Best in New York City Music Venues
In the end, it's the music that matters most, of course. Heck, we've even gone to the awful Hammerstein Ballroom to see a favorite band. But when we're just in the mood for a night out to some live music, or have been put in charge of amusing out-of-town guests, there are certain venues which we return to again and again. Below are a few of the best: iconic New York City spaces that have great sound, an interesting scene, and reliably solid booking... live-music venues at which we'd show up even if we have no idea who's playing that night.
The Bowery Ballroom / The Mercury Lounge
The original one-two punch of the peerless promoters at Bowery Presents, these two great venues are hands-down our favorite rock and roll (with a fiercely indie bent) venues in all of Manhattan. The Bowery Ballroom, the larger of the two, gets every well-known indie band that comes through (or lives in) New York City. Just about every night there's a good show here. The intimate Mercury Lounge is a little more local, a little more underground in its music, but the quality of the bands is nearly always high. The sound at both is crisp and loud and bright: the best in town. The scene at the bar is hip and lively. A standing-room general admission ticket to either is almost always under $20, and often under $15. And though many shows sell out, they're not greedy at Bowery Presents, so it never feels uncomfortably packed. Their Brooklyn outpost, the Music Hall of Williamsburg, is also first-rate.
Village Vanguard
We've heard it time and again, from jazz aficionados from all over the world: I don't care what else I do in New York, as long as you take me to the Village Vanguard. Since 1935, when the legendary Max Gordon first opened the doors to this West Village club, the Vanguard has seen all the great ones grace its below-street-level stage, from Thelonius Monk to Miles Davis, Hank Mobley to Bill Evans's Trio. Yes, it's a cramped room, oddly-shaped and more than a little worn around the edges. But the ghosts... the ghosts at the Vanguard are palpable, and priceless.
Joe's Pub / Le Poisson Rouge
For sheer variety of sounds, chatter, and other goings-on, it never hurts to see what's happening at the Public Theater's Joe's Pub, or the scruffier, newish Le Poisson Rouge. Joe's Pub--sit at a table; stand at the bar: drink, eat, listen--has surprised and delighted us for years with their eclectic bookings. A Joe's Pub must see the next time they come around: Loser's Lounge, a loose collective of musicians and singers who pick an artist?The Talking Heads, say, or Fleetwood Mac, or Queen, or Burt Bacharach--and cover a chunk of their canon. Le Poisson Rouge, on a rowdy stretch of Bleecker Street, makes up for its negatives--just a few seats, poor sightlines, at times overcrowded--with a refreshingly experimental lineup of acts, including underground hip hop artists, cultish rock bands doing acoustic sets, and some of the best "contemporary classical" composers and performers around.
Pianos / Arlene's Grocery / Cake Shop
In Manhattan, in the early aught years, hipster ground zero was on the Lower East Side, and, more specifically, on the stages (and at the bars... and spilling out into the streets...) of these three live-music clubs, Pianos, Arlene's Grocery, and Cake Shop, all within a few blocks of each other. And though the area may have lost a little hipster heat of late, there's still always something--a band, a scene, an outfit you've never imagined anyone would actually wear--worth checking out at all of these places, especially since there's often no cover charge.
Cafe Carlyle and Bemelmans Bar
Finally, for a decidedly more upscale experience, get dressed to the nines (or, you know? the fives or sixes) and head on up to the Upper East Side's tony Carlyle, home to two of New York City's premiere big band / cabaret venues, the elegant Cafe Carlyle, and the (slightly) more casual Bemelmans Bar. Expect to pay upwards of $100 a seat at the Cafe Carlyle (and then double that for food and drinks); and the cover at Bemelmens isn't cheap, either, but you won't find a better place for a certain type of sophisticated, romantic, quintessentially New York City night on the town.
Posted at 07:12PM Jan 13, 2010 by Scott in Events |