2002-03 Long Island Blackbirds
109 · 2026-04-30 · medium
I've read a few books since, but the one I haven't been able to get out of my head is Us v. Them by Ronen Givony, which the jacket copy sells as a "sweeping and in-depth history" of the second and third substrata of 2000s indie rock. It puts forward the close-to-my-heart presupposition that post-postmodern history started in 2004; Givony also uses the impressionistic John Dos Passos "Camera Eye" technique between chapters, which is always an excellent way to get me onside. It's a little aggressive with the wokeness (I'd argue that retconning that era as pale-male "indie sleaze" is going on more now than it ever did back then), but the scene-stealing hero of the book is a then-teenage girl named Natalie Mering. In 2004, Weyes Blood was a scenester dropout who couldn't afford a second pair of shoes; in 2026, she's hanging out with Olivia Rodrigo and getting daily spins on The Oceanic. Natalie recalls attending a cacophonous and sparsely-attended all-ages noise-rock show in the basement of Philadelphia's First Unitarian Church. She talks about how Wolf Eyes transported her up and out of her body, how their music made her want to make her own, and she vowed to start then and there. I dropped my Kindle on the floor. I was at that show! I yelled. I was there! I was at that show too! The thin black rectangle, which during Zero Season hadn't even been invented, could not have cared less. This made me think about how the world really works. I thought about how our broken social scenes are so much like the universe at large, all those millions of criss-crossing orbits and invisible lines. Richard Kelly had it right: you can argue about God's will and free choice all you want, but intention energy beams are fucking real. Anyway, basketball. Back when I was wrapping up at Drexel, I took Amtrak or NJ Transit up to New York to watch the Rangers miss the Stanley Cup playoffs, and sometimes on weekends I'd duck in on college hoop games. I had no idea at the time that my ultimate fate would be wrapped up in that last part. One Saturday in February 2003, I stumbled upon the Brooklyn Paramount: opened in 1928 with a ten-story neon sign and a mighty Wurlitzer organ, purchased by Long Island University in 1962 after the scene died. A basketball court was installed in the orchestra pit. Rows of bleacher seats were placed on what used to be the stage, the outline of the organ riser still visible below. The inaugural year of The Mid-Majority was the final year for that configuration; the basketball teams now play in an arena that looks like a cardboard shoebox, and they switched from Blackbirds to Sharks in 2019. After my first game at the old Paramount – LIU v. CCSU if I recall right – I took the crosstown G train up to Northsix. I don't exactly recall what the name of the (defunct) headlining band that night was, but if they'd have managed to stick it out a few more years they'd likely have placed a song in an Xbox ad. I can admit that I did like them better than the opening act I'd walked in on: a special new band called The Hold Steady. Northsix is called Williamsburg Music Hall now, and the Paramount was recently reopened as a slightly less corporate version of what Irving Hall was. This is all dead-end history, digital files in cold cloud storage, thick books with more old-guy indie buzz than actual sales. Nobody under the age of 30 gives a shit about any of this. Yes, we were there, sure, we were at that show, but what did we do with the experience? We didn't have the same heart-fire that Natalie Mering did, not enough inspiration and motivation to leave much of a mark. Craig Finn had it right: something might happen, but nothing will be never-ending.
