Winter WonderLARK & the Santa Speedo Sprint

This past Saturday was Winter WonderLARK & the Santa Speedo Sprint. The events were a great success and a good time was had by all!


Over $13,000 was raised for the Albany Damien Center by the Santa Speedo Sprint. Good work Albany Society for the Advancement of Philanthropy!

Winter WonderLARK...Coupon below!!!!

Scroll down for a Winter WonderLARK coupon!!!!
Winter WonderLARK is this Saturday and we are super excited! There are a number of great events that are happening that day including:

* The 4th Annual Santa Speedo Sprint (2:00 PM Lark & Madison)
Registration begins at Noon at Lark Tavern & Oh Bar
* Art Bazaar at Trinity Church- 235 Lark St (12:30 PM)
* "History of the Carols, a Dramatization" at Trinity Church
o Performances at 1 & 3 PM
o Free, donations accepted to benefit the Organ Fund
* Gingerbread Funshop at the Upstate Artists Guild- 247 Lark St.

If you missed the First Friday artist's reception for Jessyka this past week you have another chance to come in see her beautiful cherry blossom and tree scape paintings! The Lark Street BID office will be open from 12-3. Be sure to stop by!!!

And don't forget all the great shopping up and down Lark Street!

To help you keep up your energy, you can use this coupon for breakfast at Cafe 217 or treat yourself to a drink after a long day of shopping!

Lost Cell Phone

Did you lose your cell phone at the Halloween Party at the Washington Park Lake House? If so, contact the BID at 434.3861 or bid@larkstreet.org.

Zombies!

Albany is going to see an influx of zombies this month. WAMC's performing arts center, The Linda, is going to be holding their second Zombie Film Feast and this year is slated to be bigger and more brain-filled than last year!

The festival starts Friday, October 23 and goes through Sunday, October 25. This year there will eleven movies showing throughout the weekend, including the area premier of I Sell the Dead with Dominic Monaghan (Lord Of The Rings, Lost) and classics such as Brain Dead and the original Dawn of the Dead from 1978.

Along with the movies, The Linda is also going to be hosting The Game Crazy Zombie Slayer Video Game Vault in the actual bank vault at The Linda. Each day video gamers will have the opportunity to play the latest Zombie slayer games featuring Left 4 Dead. Over the three days, gamers will compete for the top three slots and a fourth wildcard spot culminating in a final four big screen Zombie slay-off.

Saturday is going to be a big day for the zombies! At 5pm a horde of zombies will be walking from the Lark Street BID office to the Linda parking lot where a Thriller dance-off will be held followed by a brain eating competition. Later that night will be the Zombie Prom, featuring music by Zombie Bomb and 104.9 The Edge and the crowning of the Zombie Prom king and queen. The Zombie Prom is a 21 and older with ID event, with a portion of the proceeds going towards the Hellions of Troy roller derby team.

The schedule and information about all of the events that weekend can be found at http://www.wamcarts.org/zombie/index.html, including tickets for the movies and prom, and brain eating competition registration.

Countdown to LarkFEST

We are just days away and we have finally reached the last artist on our countdown- Moby!

While listening to filmmaker David Lynch speak at the BAFTA Awards in February 2008, Moby had an epiphany. Lynch’s message – creativity for its own sake is a beautiful, wonderful thing – was a simple one, but it hit Moby with the force of the Zen master’s cane. “At that moment, I decided to just make records that were more personal,” says Moby, “maybe more experimental, and a little more challenging, maybe not as easy to like, but things that I found to be artistically and creatively more satisfying. That was the idea behind making the new album.”



The album resulting from this epiphany, Wait For Me (released on June 30, 2009 via Mute), is a radical departure from Moby’s recent albums – last year’s paean to the dance floor, Last Night, 2005’s flirtation with modern rock, Hotel, the shimmering ambience of 2002’s 18, and the zeitgeist-defining melancholy electronica of 1999’s Play. Liberated from the pressures of trying to please himself at the same time as the radio programmers, journalists and his label’s marketing department, in making Wait For Me Moby decided to forego the expensive studios, state-of-the-art equipment, big name guest artists, and phalanxes of graphic designers and image consultants that have characterized some of his previous albums. “There’s something so relaxing about doing everything yourself, and not trying to second-guess the market,” Moby says. “I don’t know if anyone’s going to like this record, I don’t know if it’s going to sell anything, but it’s nice to try to do things for the right reasons and not give a second thought to radio play or sales – just make a record because you want to make a record.”

Indeed, this DiY approach pervades all of Wait For Me, from the recording process to the album cover. “A friend of mine shot the photos,” Moby says. “I did the art work. I made the record in my bedroom, and mixed it with a crazy punk rocker who got lost on the way to the studio every night.”

That “crazy punk rocker” is the legendary Ken Thomas, who has worked with everyone from The Buzzcocks, Wire, Boyd Rice, and Chris & Cosey to Sigur Ros and M83. Working with Thomas and Wait For Me’s DiY approach hearkens back to Moby’s punk roots as a member of the early 80s hardcore band Vatican Commandos. And while the music contained on Wait For Me is the sweeping, emotionally expansive music Moby has become known for, some of the songs bear the influence of Moby’s punk days, albeit in odd ways. “Mistake” is an homage to the emotional post-punk of Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen, while the title track’s depiction of quiet despair was inspired by Black Flag’s Damaged album.
Sonically, though, Wait For Me takes inspiration from a kinder, gentler era long before punk, before the dawn of rock ’n’ roll even. “I wanted to make a record that was beautiful and warm and open and inviting, and also a little more idiosyncratic and personal,” Moby says. “The way it’s recorded and mixed, it’s not supposed to be a bombast. A lot of my issues with modern records is they, from start to finish, are just in your face, they’re loud and brash and demanding. Sometimes that can be great, but when every instrument is mixed as loud as it can go and when vocals are constantly in your face and everything’s bright and there’s no subtlety, I don’t want to invite records like that into my house. They sound great when you’re in a rental car listening to Top 40 radio, but the records that I find myself more drawn to are very minimally recorded old blues records, records that are quite austere and simple. So I did want this record to have that austere quality.”

While Wait For Me does have a certain Spartan feel to it, it is also a warm, intimate and conversational record. “Instead of trying to make something that is commercially palatable or that the market will respect,” Moby says, “I wanted to make something that a 26 year-old woman, in her apartment, depressed can relate to.”

In order to try to achieve this one-on-one connection with the listener, Moby drowned Wait For Me in reverb and made judicious use of stereo panning. “The things that inspired me were the background vocals on ‘In the Ghetto’, the Elvis song, Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane, and ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ by The Flamingos,” Moby says. “And also eBay because through eBay I was able to buy a lot of old crappy equipment that served my needs perfectly: old reverbs, old delays, old amplifiers, old synthesizers, things that were technically imperfect but felt right to me.”

You can hear the ghosts in these old machines, and when combined with the cavernous reverb, long sustained guitar chords, warm strings, and the occasional torch song, Wait For Me may bring to mind the album’s catalyst – David Lynch and his work with composer Angelo Badalamenti. Lynch, in fact, has directed the video for “Shot In The Back Of The Head”, a song that also conjures up Phil Spector with its crashing waves of sound. It is indeed fitting that Lynch provided the inspiration for Moby’s creative rebirth on Wait For Me as samples of Lynch’s Twin Peaks appeared on the record that kick-started Moby’s career, the Top 10 1991 rave hit “Go”.

But instead of aspiring to climb the charts or appeal to a market segment, Wait For Me is aimed at connecting with the listener on an individual basis. “In the past, record companies and musicians didn’t deal with listeners as individuals, they dealt with them as a mass because they’re selling millions of records,” Moby says. “I think a lot of people lost sight of that relationship. Not to sound crazy and new age, but I think there’s something really humbling for the musician about someone taking a record home and listening to it. I think a lot of really successful musicians assume they’ll always have an audience, and that breeds an air of complacency and arrogance.”

With the quiet and graceful but occasionally unsettling music of Wait For Me, Moby has taken a large step toward avoiding that trap.

Countdown to LarkFEST

Four days to LarkFEST and next up on our countdown is Bell X1.

“As a collection, it's a statement of intent,” Bell X1 frontman/songwriter Paul Noonan says of his band's new Yep Roc release Blue Lights on the Runway. "For me it's hard to separate the songs from how they were made and the wild and frothy sea of change that the band were trying to hold steady through. I think we pushed ourselves creatively and tried to go places we hadn't been"



Blue Lights on Runway, Bell X1's fourth studio effort, marks a quantum creative leap for the Dublin combo, which has already earned an enviable reputation for its artfully constructed song and playfully introspective lyrics. On the new album, the band —singer Paul Noonan, guitarist Dave Geraghty and bassist Dominic Phillips—delivers a compelling set of melodically infectious, emotionally resonant new tunes whose colorful lyrics are informed by a quirky assortment of offbeat observations and unconventional personal experiences. Such memorable numbers as "Light Catches Your Face," "How Your Heart Is Wired," “The Great Defector,” "Blow Ins," "One String Harp" and the self-referentially witty "A Better Band" boast indelible melodic hooks and inventive arrangements, while deftly blending organic and electronic textures.

Blue Lights on the Runway (which the band co-produced with Phil Hayes) substantially reinvents Bell X1's sound, thanks in large part to the group's distinctive use of an arsenal of synthesizers and samplers, which the band uses to build distinctive soundscapes that brilliantly complement the tunes.

"I think the beats and synths are the core of the drama of the record, the theatre of it," Noonan says, adding, "The original premise was to come up with songs that could stand up and make sense if delivered with a single voice and instrument, and then dress them in beats and noises from boxes. We stuck to that approach in some cases, but in some of the songs the 'dressing' felt a little gratuitous, so we left them be. So the album ended up as a bit of a mongrel, and I think it's the better for it."

Blue Lights on the Runway is the first Bell X1 album to receive a simultaneous worldwide release and is Bell X1's first new release since its international breakthrough Flock. That album debuted at Number One in Ireland, where it was certified Platinum five times over. Despite reaching North America nearly three years after its U.K. release, Flock also won Bell X1 a large American fan base, where the band toured extensively and received a flood of critical acclaim.

In a four-star album review, Paste magazine called Bell X1 "one of Ireland's great bands," while tastemaker website Very Short List called Flock an "early front-runner for best record of 2008" and the New York Daily News predicted that Bell X1 is "ready to explode worldwide." The group also performed on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

The new album was recorded in such diverse locales as a drafty 400-year-old Irish castle, in a disused factory and in Dominic Phillips' garage studio. Noonan asserts, "We allowed ourselves to be a little looser in terms of emphasizing feel over precision. We stumbled upon some special moments that way, like the endings of “How Your Heart is Wired” and “Amelia.” It's very satisfying when you leave the tape rolling and capture something that clicks, something that you'd never be able to do again."

While the past few years have seen Bell X1 making major artistic and career strides, the group has been honing its sound since its formation in 1999, and its members have been making music together since the early '90s. Having met at school in Ireland's North County Kildare, Noonan, Geraghty and Phillips first recorded as members of Juniper, whose lead singer was Damien Rice. After Rice departed to launch his solo career, Noonan, Geraghty, Phillips and Crosby regrouped and rechristened themselves Bell X1, borrowing the name of the first plane to break the sound barrier. (Blue Lights on the Runway is the first project the band has undertaken since the amicable departure of cofounding member Brian Crosby, who exited in October 2008 to concentrate on his interest in film-soundtrack composition and production)

Bell X1 debuted with 2000's Neither Am I, produced by Crowded House member Nick Seymour. That disc became a modest cult hit in Ireland, where the band's tireless touring efforts won it a reputation as a powerful live act. The sophomore effort Music in Mouth followed in 2003, and established Bell X1 as both a major attraction and a critical favorite in its homeland, while winning the group increasing popularity in Europe.

Upon its release in late 2005, Flock (produced by studio vet Roger Bechirian, of Elvis Costello/Squeeze/Undertones fame) became a smash, establishing Bell X1 as one of Ireland's best-selling recording acts and most popular live bands. After receiving its belated U.S. release in 2008, Flock won Bell X1 a substantial audience in America, where the band toured no less than four times, and managed to survive unscathed after their tour bus caught fire in Medford, Massachusetts. The group's stateside profile was further enhanced when its songs were featured in such popular TV shows as The O.C., Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill.

The success of Flock led to Bell X1 setting up its own label, BellyUp Records, giving the band complete control over its musical output. The new imprint's initial release was the hugely successful live CD/DVD package Tour De Flock, which debuted at Number Four on the Irish charts, the highest-ever debut for a self-released title.

Blue Lights on the Runway showcases the remarkable creative chemistry that Bell X1 has nurtured over the course of its eventful existence. According to Noonan, "Spending so much time making music together, we've developed an intuition, and when we're writing we can communicate musically, without having to stop to explain where we're going."

Indeed, Blue Lights on the Runway makes it clear that Bell X1 is just getting started. "The vibe we seem to be getting from everybody right now is 'Go forth and conquer,'" Noonan states. "And that's precisely what we intend to do."

Countdown to LarkFEST

Five more days to LarkFEST!!!

First off a note of warning: Matt and Kim aren’t a typical band and this isn’t going to read like your average biography. For example, although Matt and Kim know they met while taking classes at Pratt Institute in New York, Kim’s not sure what year she graduated, let alone when they decided to start playing music as a two-piece. What they do know is that when Matt and Kim started out approximately four years ago, they had no idea how to play their respective instruments—a fact that makes the band’s success story almost as unique as their distinctive brand of synth-and-drums dance punk.



After being forced to play their first show by a friend months after picking up their instruments, keyboardist/vocalist Matt Johnson and drummer/vocalist Kim Schifino played their first show as Matthew and Kimberly in October of 2004—and after slightly altering their name they spent the next year playing every chance they could get in their home base of Brooklyn. Along the way they also released an EP called To/From and started touring the United States non-stop, burning CDs in the van on the way to their self-booked shows and seemingly playing every art space and basement in the country.

In 2006 the band released their self-titled debut—which was instantly embraced by critics and fans alike—and stayed on the road, performing at high profile events such as The Siren Music Festival and Lollapalooza. Okay, so now that the timeline is out of the way, let’s talk about the new album. For starters, Grand was recorded at Matt’s parents’ house in Vermont that Kim describes as “being near nothing and surrounded by three cow pastures.” Or as Matt says, “I had a friend from New York come up once and he was like ‘How did you even find out about college?’” In other words, it’s pretty desolate.

However, Matt’s childhood bedroom—which was still covered with skateboarding posters and show flyers—ultimately turned out to be the ideal environment to record Grand. “While our album is different from our things in the past, it’s what I would have always done if we had the time and means to do it, which we did this time around,” Matt explains, adding that the band sporadically spent nine months on their new record as opposed to the nine days in which they recorded their debut. After the tracks were laid to tape the band returned to Brooklyn where Matt spent his summer sweating, stressing out and mixing Grand in the duo’s apartment.” “I would never record our whole album ourselves again,” he adds, “but it came out exactly how I wanted it to.”

The result is an album that takes the band’s musicianship and songwriting to the next level and also serves as a glowing representation of how far Matt and Kim have come since their debut. From the anthemic opener “Daylight” to the harmony-rich, atmospheric ballad “Turn This Boat Around” and demented pop of “I Wanna,” Grand is quite literally the sound of the collective discovering their voice. “All of the songs on the last album we wrote the first year we learned how to play our instruments,” Matt acknowledges, “but this one is much more diverse and instead of thinking about the songs we thought of the album as a whole, too.”

Then there are the band’s legendary live shows, which look more like dance parties than traditional concerts and blur the line between musician and listener. “I really believe that a band should be honest when they play,” Matt explains. “Kim and I are generally just excited to play; I mean I cannot believe that I can make a living off playing music, which is what I get to do now; it’s just so incredible,” he continues. “We’re excited just to be able to play and we show it, as dorky as that can look.”

Lyrically, the band’s writing process is just as idiosyncratic, with Kim writing random lines of text and Matt going through them and putting them together until they start to mean something to the duo. Understandably the band’s debut admittedly tended to be about “figuring your life out,” but this time around the duo have experienced enough to feel comfortable writing about different topics and have expanded their vision into something that’s metaphor-rich and a little harder to nail down with one or two sentences on tracks like “Lessons Learned.”

In fact, that last statement can be applied not only to Grand as a whole, but to Matt and Kim as a unit—and, amazingly, it seems like they’re still just getting started. “Even though we eat rice and beans a lot and live in an eight-foot wide apartment, we’re doing what we want to do,” Matt summarizes. “It’s like when you’re watching a movie, you don’t want to just see people being content—you need a struggle to make it exciting and fun,” he adds. “If you can just enjoy all the little things, that’s ultimately what makes for a satisfying experience.”