the writing is on the wall

This Saturday featured arguably the best weather we've had all year, which meant that NYC was out in full force. June and I spent the morning on a mini-food tour of Williamsburg, stopping at Gimme Coffee, Second Stop Cafe, and Sunac with the fruits of our efforts being an egg and cheese sandwich, a coffee, and some watermelon. While June was eating her half of the egg and cheese sandwich, an older italian man stopped and said to me, "Are you just gonna let her eat that like that?" I had gaven her half the sandwich to nibble on at will. Neither June or I answered him but just kind of looked at him and he shook his head at us and moved on with his day. This was our only music-free interaction of the day.

As we continued our walk, we overheard four or five different conversations about the music industry. Getting our second coffee of the day, we overheard a lady saying, "I'm so done with the music industry." I said that I was too, talking about how I just had a project run into some bumps after months of work. She said to me "Months? Some bands are at it for years and then get cut off? And I'm the one who has to do it I run a label!" I didn't ask which label and just sort of waited awkwardly for my coffee which was funny because it was a hand-poured time intensive coffee which ended up tasting rather good even after my mini-lecture from this lady. Ariel Pink was playing on the radio which was also funny for too many reasons to go into here. The barista man said "I hear Ariel Pink sucks live, but who doesn't sound like shit live? I think that bands get too famous to quick now and show the world what they really are which is not really what they record like."

I then met up with Katie and we went to the park where there was a christian gospel music thing happening. These guys had bought a gasoline generator to power their amps and were so excited to be playing music that they couldn't stop playing. They also didn't know what they were doing, so the vocals were all crazy distorted and blown out, while the drummer was playing out of time and the bass player was playing out of key, but man they were happy. It was kind of the antithesis of the music we saw in the parade the other day and also reminded me that most of the music purchased in the US was gospel music and that Wal-Mart was the biggest retailer of music in the US. I really feel like the writing is on the wall for the music industry. Not sure what will happen, but am pretty sure it's not gonna be pretty.

While all of this christian cacophony was going on, there was a woman in modest arabic clothing (featured in my picture) who was swinging her kids on the little swings and shooting them with a super soaker which was just about as long as she was tall. I think that with the weather that we've been having lately, this was the first day that this lady could really play with her kids without nearly passing out from heat exhaustion. Maybe when her kids can take care of themselves, she can help save the music industry?