Mehmet Dede of Drom Reflects on the Defiant Relaunch of A Popular Manhattan Nightspot
In these difficult economic times, while some New York clubs desperately pander to the lowest common denominator with jello wrestling, beer pong and other ways of killing time on the Jersey Shore, the elegant New York East Village nightclub Drom at 85 Avenue A between 5th and 6th St. is relaunching itself as an all-purpose world music emporium on April 1. It should come as no surprise that we’re fans of the club: having rated Drom as Best Manhattan Venue of 2009, we watched them slowly gravitate to being more of a restaurant before rededicating themselves to the live music that made the place such a mecca in its first two years, beginning in 2008. Drom’s Director of Programming and Bookings, Mehmet Dede, who along with global promoter Serdar Ilhan is responsible for the makeover, took some time out of his schedule to speak with us. Here’s the scoop:
Lucid Culture’s Correspondent: It’s no secret that we’re glad to see that Drom is back – we spent a whole lot of time at your place a couple of years ago. What’s behind the decision to make it a fulltime music venue again, other than it’s a lot of fun?
Mehmet Dede: It’s always been a fulltime music venue. About a year after it opened some creative differences arose among owners and the programming became less cohesive – the club lost its soul, in a way. When co-founder and brainchild behind the club, Serdar Ilhan, bought out his partners last summer (with his new partner Ekmel Anda), he not only remodeled the club, but also made necessary programming and management changes to re-brand the venue to fit its motto, “Global Music for a New World.”
LCC: On one hand, what you’re doing makes sense: the Poles want Polish music, the Turks want theirs. Same with the Azeris and the Dominicans and every other great culture in this melting pot of ours. So there should be a consistent market for all of that. Yet no club dedicated to “world music,” that is, music that represents pretty much every culture, has ever managed to stay in business in New York. Are you on to something that nobody else is?
MD: We tend to think of “world music” as music that brings together communities. What I think sets Drom apart is that it is open to sounds from more countries, communities and genres than other clubs: You can hear Russian space-age pop music, an alt country band and traditional Greek music all within the same day, at times here.
LCC: Does the grand reopening involve the sound system, or the decor? Since day one, you’ve been one of the best-sounding rooms in town – I hope that won’t change…
MD: We’ve enhanced the sound system, added new gear to our technical inventory and enlarged the stage area. We’ve also painted the floor, added new artwork to the walls, and new furniture as well. The biggest change is the addition of a big chandelier, which makes you feel like you’re listening to the artist in your living room.
LCC: You and Serdar use the club as home base for your frequent global music festivals, whether in Central Park, at the UN or the Town Hall among other venues. The latest kicks off with a mammoth free concert in Central Park on Friday, June 17 with legendary Turkish songwriter/filmmaker Zulfu Livaneli. Will you continue promoting big events like that one?
MD: Yes. Serdar and I started off as promoters, and over time added producing festivals and running a nightclub to the list. Today, while we continue to produce one-off shows in and around town, we wanted to bring our experience in doing these events to a live music hall.
LCC: Your schedule for April is as eclectic as anybody could want. Palestinian-American songwriter Stephan Said continues his monthly residency; you also have jazz, Turkish music, a terrific classical pianist playing her cd release show, Turku’s hypnotic Silk Road songs on the 16th, and diverse Middle Eastern sounds with Duo Jalal on the 27th, just to name a few events. Anything else that we should know about?
MD: I would add to that list the Beatrockers & Hardknockers event on April 23rd – the ultimate showcase of the beatbox artform. Poum Tchack, a sextet from the South of France, who are elegant and classy, will play on April 30th. Last but not least, new-soul-comer Chris Turner will play at Drom in April.
LCC: Maybe this isn’t your department – or maybe it is – but I noticed that while pretty much every other restaurant out there has raised their prices, Drom’s are lower than they were last year. And the menu is simplified. What’s up with that? Will you still have that mezze [appetizer] plate that I love so much?
MD: We have simplified the menu because we have a better idea now of what people eat when they attend a concert at our venue. We are primarily a live music hall: to complement that, we’ve added easy-to-eat main courses, bar food and finger food to the menu. Don’t worry, your fave appetizers will remain on the menu!
LCC: Is there a reason why your place is so pleasant and so many other clubs aren’t? I mean, when I go to Arlene Grocery, the crackhead who does the door acts like she wants to rip my head off. If I want a decent seat anywhere near the stage at City Winery, I have to show up super early. Yet when I come to your place, it’s dark and cozy, everybody’s friendly and relaxed, I can always manage to find a spot somewhere to sit if I’m hungry and I never start to feel like going up and strangling the sound guy. Does one have to be Turkish or Bulgarian to run a club that doesn’t make the customers feel like they’re in a concentration camp?
MD (laughs): Maybe it’s the Turkish hospitality?!
Radio I Ching Hypnotize Pretty Much Everyone Within Earshot
Radio I Ching put on what could easily be the most psychedelic show of the year so far tonight at Otto’s. Drummer and bandleader Dee Pop earned a lifetime’s worth of cred in free jazz circles for his long-running weekly shows at CB’s Gallery and then briefly at Cake Shop, but he’s as solid a straight-ahead swing player as there is. According to their myspace, the band play “esoteric party music and stoner swing,” which after experiencing them and being able to stumble away afterward, makes a lot of sense. His bandmate Andy Haas (who achieved immortality a long time ago with the sax solo on Martha and the Muffins’ Echo Beach) began the show on dijeridoo, laying down a swirling series of loops that became a maze and then a vortex from which nothing could escape, including Don Fiorino’s fiery, metalish blues licks and even a crazed series of tapped progressions: walking into the room while that was going on was as mystifying as it was impossible to resist. Bassist Felice Rosser (well-known as the leader of Faith) ran the show, holding down a steady pulse while the drums went off on a brisk walk to parts unknown, Haas layered one mystifying texture after another and Fiorino switched guitars, often leaving a series of loops running through his pedals, sometimes using an electric tenor guitar with a mini-Firebird body.
They ran the set like a single piece, drums or bass leading the segue into one segment after another. Haas went off on a distantly Middle Eastern tangent on soprano sax at one point, Fiorino following apprehensively. The swirling, pulsing groove continued as the drums went doublespeed, Rosser finally leaping in while all the sax and guitar loops spun on what felt like an axis bold as love as Fiorino contributed hallucinatory, acidically echoing lead lines. Speaking of which, after a couple of detours into slinky soul grooves, including one sung by Rosser (Abbey Lincoln? Nina Simone? It’s hard to remember which at this point), they took a brief, barely recognizable stab at Machine Gun, Rosser nailing the bassline with a casual, backbeat precision as Haas and Fiorino added sustained, atmospheric sheets of sound. There was a single detour into what typically characterizes free jazz, Haas throwing out a glissando for the guitar and then Rosser’s vocalese to echo; otherwise, it was mostly a single, long, one-chord groove. Toward the end, they kicked into a two-chord vamp full of what had become unexpectedly welcome circular phrases and a wicked bass groove from Rosser, one of the few times in their set that it was easy to look up, get reoriented and realize that this was not a dream, the kind you never want to wake up from. Unfortunately, there were plenty of other moments like that, not so pleasant: none of them the fault of the band. Fiorino wished aloud for someone to go out to the bar and tell the dj to turn the music down, a wish no doubt echoed by everyone who’d been enjoying the show.
A Stunning Black Sea Music Summit at the Met
Billed as Strings of the Black Sea, yesterday’s show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art lived up to the boast made by the organizers’ emcee beforehand: it truly was a landmark concert. It was a New York Eastern European music summit, sort of the Black Sea equivalent of those early 60s Rolling Stones Revues with short sets from a nonstop parade of icons like Howlin’ Wolf, Ike & Tina Turner, Otis Redding et al. The emcee wished aloud for a series of full-length concerts by each of the individual performers here next year, a wish that deserves to come true. As with Debo Band at Joe’s Pub on Friday, there was incongruity in seeing most of them rip through one adrenalizing dance number after another in front of a relaxed, comfortably seated crowd in the museum’s sonically superb Rogers Auditorium. But the audience was energized; the ripple of excitement after it was finally over was impossible not to connect with..
Christos Tiktapanidis got the party started, solo on politiki lyra fiddle (also known as a kemence). What he casually introduced to the crowd as slow was fast and what was fast was lightning-fast, a bracing display of fingerboard wizardry, all split-second doublestops, through a crescendoing opening taqsim (improvisation), a stark levantine dance and a happier number that lept from 5/8 to 7/8 time. Beth Bahia Cohen and Ahmet Erdogdular followed with a brief duo set on the Turkish tanbur lute: she bowed hers, holding it upright like a fiddle while he played his guitar-style with a pick. The two doubled each others’ lines effortlessly through another opening taqsim, stately songs from the 18th and 19th centuries, a rapidfire dance by Cohen on kemence and then an inspired, chromatically charged dance number sung by Erdogdular, who’s rightfully earned acclaim as one of Turkey’s foremost exponents of highly ornamented traditional Ottoman singing.
Julian Kytasty brought the lights down with a somber, haunting solo performance on the wide-bodied Ukrainian bandura, a sort of cross between a concert harp and a lute that frequently took on the incisively pinging, staccato tone of a qanun or a cimbalom. He began with a rueful number sung from the point of view of a dying warrior, encouraging his young protege to pick up where he fell. He explained that the blind minstrels who’d traditionally played this repertoire had been brought to extinction in the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. “Singers are never popular with the powers that be,” Kytasty reminded, in a song that “could be straight out of today’s headlines,” a brutally cynical number detailing how truth gets trampled underfoot and thrown into prison while lies are held high for all to see, to be celebrated by the status quo. His dynamically-charged, virtuosic picking took on a flamenco edge on another lament that he managed to fingerpick while simultaneously tapping out a beat on the body of the instrument.
Nikolay Kolev played solo on the Bulgarian gadulka fiddle, an instrument which has grown many additional strings over the last century: his has fourteen, including the resonating, sympathetic ones. He immediately took the intensity to redline, on a couple of wild, hypnotic, rhythmically tricky minor-key dance tunes, a ruthlessly, fluidly efficient romp in the Middle Eastern hijaz mode that began with yet another taqsim and an anthemic tune in 6/8 that vividly and uneasily bridged major and minor without quite being either. The final act paired violinist Nariman Asanov, one of the foremost (and few) Crimean Tatar fiddlers in the US, with ubiquitous and characteristically energetic, witty accordionist Patrick Farrell (who seems to pop up on practically every first-rate Balkan music bill in town, and leads the absolutely hilarious, unique Stagger Back Brass Band). With a singlemindedness that made it seem as if they’d played together for years, they slowly fanned the embers of a violin taqsim over an accordion drone until they were blazing and then romped through a brief series of fiery, minor-key dances, one with a wickedly catchy klezmer feel. Farrell finally got to solo as Asanov held the rhythm down and made the most of it. The entire crew, minus Kytasty (who needed a chair and mysteriously wasn’t provided with one) encored with a simple, memorable Anatolian folk tune, seemingly a tea drinking anthem, Erdogdular’s unamplified vocals soaring over the song’s darkly tinged, chromatic four-bar hook. The next concert in this series is at the Ukrainian National Home on September 25 at 7 PM featuring the North American debut of Ukrainian sensations Tecsoi Banda.
Concert Review: Duo Figer-Khanina at Trinity Church, NYC 2/25/10
Introducing the Duo Figer-Khanina, Trinity Church’s organist said they’d put some warmth into a blustery day – they lived up to that expectation, and more. Violinist Guy Figer and pianist Anna Khanina dedicate themselves to “popularizing rarely played repertoire,” as they put it, which immediately earned them bonus points here. Seeing how they did it proved even more auspicious. This time out they seamlessly tackled two piano-and-violin numbers from the standard repertoire as well as two that deserve to be but aren’t. Schubert’s famous, sprightly Sonatine No. 1 was effortlessly jaunty. In places, notably the twinkling, nocturnal second movement, it was next to impossible to tell who was playing what, testament to the chemistry onstage. By contrast, Khanina roared her way through the more powerful segments of another chamber music standby, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 7, Op. 30 with an almost reckless, percussive attack, a vivid contrast with Figer’s warm, sailing approach.
But the real treats were the obscure material. 20th century Polish violinist/composer Grazyna Bacewicz’ Sonata No. 4 was a delectable discovery, opening rigorously with jarring, modernist tonalities arranged in traditional, often contrapuntal classical architecture. The obdurate quasi-waltz of a second movement recalled Messiaen in its obstinate refusal to offer any kind of resolution; Bacewicz’ fellow Eastern European Leos Janacek came to mind later on, particularly in the otherworldly anthem that takes shape in the final movement (which built to a stubborn catchiness that would have been perfectly at home in a mid-80s rock anthem by Peter Gabriel). The duo closed with post-Romantic Russian composer Joseph Achron’s marvelous Hebrew Melody, a vividly plaintive, Chopinesque tune that grew cinematic with Figer’s swirling, nebulous flights up to a spine-tingling candenza downward, then ending all starlit and haunting. What an unexpected treat to catch them here, especially as Trinity is phasing out their concert series. They’ll be on European tour next month with the Arcos Chamber Orchestra, returning with a New York concert on May 21 at the Yamaha Concert Salon.
Concert Review: Hazmat Modine at City Winery, NYC 9/18/09
The New York Gypsy Festival‘s decision to scatter shows throughout the year, beginning in the spring, was an ambitious choice but ultimately a successful one. Although the past ten days or so were especially gypsy, with the Gypsy Tabor Festival out in Brooklyn and a whole bunch of similar bands playing the rock clubs, there was a full and enthusiastic house at City Winery Friday night for Hazmat Modine and Hungarian sensations Little Cow. The Hazmats opened and pandemonium reigned, no great surprise: there are few other acts in town who bring as much intensity and pure unadulterated fun to the stage. Frontman/harmonica player Wade Schuman wasn’t as completely gonzo as he can get, but the band was. This is a wild, extroverted crew: Pete Smith and Michael Gomez on electric guitars, Pam Fleming (back from the disabled list) on trumpet, Reut Regev on trombone and other horns, Steve Elson on tenor sax and other reeds, Rich Huntley on drums, Joseph Daley on tuba and Erik Della Penna of Kill Henry Sugar guesting on vocals on a couple of numbers.
The set list was characteristically eclectic. The blues standard Something You Got, an uncharacteristically major-key tune for this band, was elevated to the level of an ecstatic New Orleans second-line march. Irving Berlin’s tongue-in-cheek Walking Stick became a racewalk and got the crowd in front of the stage twirling just as crowds of the thirties must have done in the old vaudeville theatres. Gomez used it as a launching pad for a particularly ferocious, offhandedly raging solo, Fleming further cementing her reputation as the Human Crescendo – in this case, it was the flying lead-in to her solo, out of one by Schuman, that was the high point, but it sent the intensity level to redline in a split second as Huntley led the charge with a relentless volley of rimshots.
A new one sounded like a hypnotic early twenties delta blues number as R.L. Burnside might have done it, casually careening with more blazing fretwork from Gomez. Best song of the night was a surprisingly low-key and extremely effective Schuman instrumental, Grade A Grey Day, with Fleming bringing in the cumulo-nimbus and Elson on sax fluttering through them. After that, they flipped the script with another original that started out with Little Feat exuberance, building joyously to a 60s soul vamp with the horns blazing. They closed with Bahamut, the surreal, calypso-inflected title track to their most recent album, a somewhat surprising choice considering the long, mysterious spoken-word passage in the middle of the song. And when Schuman got there, no surprise, the dancers took a break. But they all got back into it when the song picked up again, Smith fanning the flames with a potently percussive, chord-chopping solo.
And what of the headliner, Little Cow? There were technical difficulties, no fault of the band or the club. And by a quarter to one in the morning, an hour and a half past their stage time, it was sadly time to call it a night – a strategy that paid off the following day throughout a successful, marathon sixteen-hour attempt to help some New York friends pack up and become ex-New Yorkers. Watch this space the next time Little Cow comes to town: they’re reputedly amazing in concert.
Live Nation’s Club Passport Is a Scam
[by Lucid Culture’s chief cook and bottle washer]
When I was a kid, my family went through a hiking phase. I must have been about nine when they first became obsessed with it. By the time I was twelve, I’d been to the top of most of the smaller mountains in New England. One of the first was a humble little peak in New Hampshire called Red Hill. It barely qualifies as a mountain, but assuming it hasn’t been bulldozed for McMansions, it’s probably as good a place as any to show a fourth grader how much fun it is to set out for the summit hoping there’s water somewhere along the way. The day I was there, so was the fire warden, who had a peculiar sense of humor. He gave me a ticket which read, “This is a free ticket from the top of Red Hill. It’s not good for anything. It’s just free.” Same deal with the Live Nation Club Passport – except that it’s a scam that’s probably illegal. With a passport like this, you might as well stay home. And call the Department of Consumer Fraud at your State Attorney General’s office while you’re at it.
For the first time in music history, here’s a ticket that won’t get you into the show you just paid for. “Introducing the Live Nation Club Passport, – see unlimited club shows for remainder of 2009 for just $50, all-in, no fees, limited time offer.”
Yeah right. See below.
As the fine print says, purchase of this ticket DOES NOT GUARANTEE YOU ENTRY.
Now wait a minute – that’s what a ticket is, isn’t it? A voucher that proves you purchased a seat or a space at a show, that proves you’re not trying to sneak in?
No. This ticket costs you $50 but it won’t get you in anywhere. It’s a glorified CMJ pass, except that the bands at CMJ are way better, which is pretty depressing. What Live Nation is trying to do is A) get your personal info so they can spam you about a million overpriced shows you’d never want to see and B) fulfill the task known in club circles as “papering the house.” See, no club owner wants to look foolish when nobody shows up and the band plays to an empty house. Now combine the depression with overpriced concert tickets and the picture becomes clear – other than shows at small, reasonably priced clubs and a few jam band gigs, people simply aren’t going out anymore in numbers like they used to. So to avoid looking foolish and getting bad press, wannabe-monopoly concert promoters Live Nation and their soon-to-be-sister firm TicketBastard are dumping cheap tickets by the truckload for shows that are selling badly. To take one recent example, wish you’d seen AC/DC in Foxboro, MA? You could have. For free. Once you get out of the small clubs, it’s amazing to watch the corporate rock world imploding before your eyes.
But the Live Nation Club Passport is a complete ripoff. First of all, you can’t even use it as a ticket, which if for some reason you couldn’t attend an event, you could sell or give to a friend. The Club Passport is non-transferable and requires that you show photo ID when attempting to enter a venue. Secondly, you have to attempt to reserve admission to the show you want to see before 4 PM the day of the show – when you will learn whether your reservation has been accepted OR REJECTED. See, Live Nation reserves the right not to let you in because they think there are a few more full-price ticket buyers out there. Of course, the Live Nation website encourages you to show up at the venue right before showtime and then try to get in.
But what if they still won’t let you in? Isn’t that fraud?
If you read the fine print, you’ll see plenty of other nasty nickel-and-dime rules. For example, what if you’re a diehard fan who wants to see a band at the club in your hometown and then at a Live Nation venue in an adjacent state? No way. They’ll only accept your Club Passport in your home state.
Realistically speaking, people everywhere are doing the same thing as Live Nation and TicketBastard: realizing they can’t afford the concert they stupidly shelled all that money for, they’re unloading their tickets on craigslist, facebook, the bulletin board at your local laundromat…pretty much everywhere. And you may want to see “Andrew Bird, the Mars Volta, Dragonforce, All Time Low, Common, Pitbull, Trey Songz, Psychedelic Furs, and many others,” as Live Nation’s site advertises, but a check of available Club Passport shows at New York’s Irving Plaza and Gramercy Theatre revealed that those aren’t available. Can anybody say “bait and switch?” Still, if you’d like to see once-popular 90s ska-punk band Bowling For Soup, actress Juliette Lewis – who’s also apparently a singer – or the Sam Roberts Band – oh boy, can’t wait! – and don’t mind paying $50 for the privilege, the Club Passport is probably right up your alley. In fact, if you added Craig Owens of screamo band Choidos to the list, your Club Passport would almost pay for itself. Assuming, of course, that you weren’t denied admission to those shows – and you know that the day Craig Owens of Choidos sells out a club will be a cold day in hell.
Comments from consumers and law enforcement are invited, just use the comments button below.
Willie Nile Fall Tour Dates
Willie Nile is on the road again this fall – in the US and Europe – with his band pushing his characteristically excellent new cd House Of A Thousand Guitars, very favorably reviewed here. Here’s a free download of “Give Me Tomorrow” from the cd.
Upcoming Shows:
Saturday September 12th, McCabes, Santa Monica, CA (Los Angeles Record Release Party), 8pm, $20, 3101 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 310-828-4497
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Friday September 18th, the Record Collector, Bordentown, NJ 7:30 pm, $20 Willie (accompanied by Frankie Lee on percussion), 609-324-0880
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Thursday September 24th, Joe’s Pub, NYC IS SOLD OUT
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Friday October 2nd, Paradiso, Amsterdam 9 pm, Willie and the band at the legendary Paradiso. Weteringschams 6-8, 020-626-4521
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Saturday October 3rd, Grottingen Netherlands, Willie & band play the Take Root Festival.
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Sunday October 4th, Den Bosch, Neatherlands, 3pm, Willie & band play the W2, Boschdijkstraat 100, Den Bosch, 5211 VD
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Friday October 9th, Fitzgerald’s, Chicago, IL Area, 8pm, Willie along with the Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra, 6615 Roosevelt Rd, Berwyn, IL 708-788-2118
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Saturday October 10th, Wilberts, Cleveland, OH (Cleveland Record Release Party) 8pm, Willie along with the Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra, Wilberts, 812 Huron Road East, Cleveland, OH, 216-902-4663
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Sunday October 18th, University Of Stony Brook, Long Island, NY, 2pm, $20. Willie plays the Sunday Street Acoustic Concert Series, Stony Brook University, Nicolls Road, Stony Brook, NY
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Thursday October 22nd, Hard Rock Café, NYC, part of a benefit show, details TK. Artists include that everyone should attend. Willie, Gary US Bonds, Joe D’Urso and many former Sopranos (the tv kind not the singer kind).
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Friday October 23rd, the Turning Point, Piermont, NY, 9pm, 468 Piermont Avenue, Piermont, NY, 845-359-1089
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Sunday October 25th, Tin Angel, Philadelphia, PA (Philadelphia Record Release Party) 7pm, 20 South 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Willie (accompanied by Frankie Lee on percussion) with special guest Ben Arnold
Two Generations of New Wave Collide on Tour
New wave legends the B-52’s are on the road again promoting their latest album Funplex. Opening on the first leg of the tour are up-and-coming Boston new wave throwbacks the New Collisions, driven by frontwoman Sarah Guild’s chirpy, devious lyrics backed by playfully oscillating vintage 80s synth, snarling guitar and an infectious dance beat.
Upcoming shows include Saturday August 1 at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis, MA; Sunday, August 2 at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset, MA and Saturday, August 8 at the Filene Center At Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA, August 12 at Innsbrook Pavillion in Glen Allen, VA; August 16 at Sunrise Theatre in Ft. Pierce, FL; and August 20 at DTE Energy Music Theatre in Clarkson, MI. In between they’re squeezing in a show opening for Blondie on August 10 at the Community Theatre in Morristown, NJ.
Watch this space for additional dates.
Lucid Culture 