Start Your Own F***ing Show Space
compilation of the final shows at Death By Audio
Famous Class
Does your town have a little warehouse, or a house, or a hole-in-the-wall dive bar where local scene kids book bands? Pop-up shows done on the fly whose marketing consists solely of word of mouth, or announcements on social media? If your answer is “No,” you’re probably not looking hard enough. These d.i.y. venues are kinda an insiders secret — an out of the way place that no cops, or narcs, or those looking to capitalize or corporatize know about. My town has had a few noteworthy ones over the years, and the shows I’ve seen at them have always felt special in an artsy kind of way– like all in attendance were characters in a cool little indie film and this was the “party” scene, at the hip hangout.
Where the cool kids hang out, make art, play music work, live — Brooklyn had a famous such place called Death By Audio. Founded in 2005 by Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers, the venue (which was also a recording studio, and effect pedal workshop) hosted 1,800 shows up until its shutdown in late 2014. Start Your Own Fucking Show Space is an epic compilation of that last blow-out month of performances, in chronological order starting with Dirty On Purpose and ending with a blistering bombshell track by Lightning Bolt.
The playlist is a mouth watering collection of killer bands that looks ripped straight from my iPod, but for those of you who aren’t Me, here’s a list of some (but not all) of the musicians who participated in this love letter to DBA: Tyvek, Parquet Courts, Coasting, Pujol, Ty Segall, Screaming Females, Natural Child, Thee Oh Sees, Nots, Metz, Jeff The Brotherhood, and Protomartyr. Every track vibrates with the energy of a hot, sweaty space filled to spilling over with the urgency of a Scene leaving its mark.
I’d never been to Death By Audio, but I’ve been to places like it and I can smell the cheap beer, and imagine the questionable stains on the furniture, and feel the slick skin of bodies pressed in tight. It’s a funky garbage can of ick, but it inspires a high more pure than any drug. It’s the high of shared experience and of community. If you haven’t found a space like this in your own town, start one up, like the compilation’s title demands!
