Week in Rock: Auld Lang Edition
3 photos
<strong>The Knit Comes to an End</strong><p>Since 1994, the Knitting Factory has been one of the few independent music venues to survive in Manhattan. The TriBeCa location has always been able to draw impressive acts to the multi-staged, all ages club, but with the New Year will come some pretty major changes. Their show on Wednesday wasn't just their final show of the year, but their final show at 74 Leonard Street. The club is now packing up and <a href="http://gothamist.com/2008/06/17/luna_lounge_morphs_into_knitting_fa.php">moving to Williamsburg</a>, a change that came to be due to rising rents in the neighborhoodâone that's no longer as accommodating to a rock club. The move means one of the last remaining mid-sized Manhattan clubs <em>not</em> run by Bowery Presents or Live Nation will be pushed across the East River. As for that final show, Akron/Family (pictured), Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors were the highlights, and the night featured a mix of the type of folksy experimental bands that always made the club stand out. Next year the club will take the space formerly occupied by the Luna Lounge, another Manhattan club once forced off the island due to rising rents. Hopefully the new Knit fares a bit better.</p>Sidenote: Greg from Deerhoof announced that this was the last show <a href="http://gothamist.com/2007/09/27/dirty_projector.php">Dirty Projectors</a> would be playing their <em>Rise Above</em> material from.
<strong>My Morning Jacket Never Ends</strong><p>For anyone who has seen My Morning Jacket perform, there is no argument that once they get into a groove, there are few better live bands in the world. So on New Year's Eve, the jammy fellas from Kentucky played their biggest, and longest local set ever at Madison Square Garden. The band played for nearly 4 hours, with a set consisting of their entire new album, much of their back catalog and a handful of covers. Despite the special occasion, it was a pretty straightforward affair, with the onslaught of music continuing through 1 a.m. It included a guest appearance by <a href="http://gothamist.com/2007/03/13/nicole_atkins_m.php">Nicole Atkins</a> and a fitting stroke of Midnight performance of Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" as the balloons dropped. With this performance, MMJ has established themselves at a legitimate arena act, a role they've seemed destined to fill for some time now. It was a fitting way to kick off their new year.</p>
<strong>All Zunes Die For a Day</strong><p>In one of the most bizarre stories of 2008, getting in under the wire, every single 30 gig Zune <a href="http://www.crn.com/retail/212700425">crashed on New Year's Eve</a>. Reports started coming in around Midnight that some sort of Skynet-esque reset was underway, shutting off every player and rebooting them to a frozen load screen. Microsoft was a bit slow on the response, leading to tons of speculation on tech blogs and forums as to what was up. Turns out, the code in the systems had forgotten to accommodate for a leap year, and the Zunes trying to account for a 366th day went all batty and wigged out. If this sounds like the sort of thing a giant computer company like Microsoft should have accommodated for, you're absolutely correct. This is like computer programming 101 type stuff. Fortunately, the error only affected the system for one day, and everything automatically went back to normal on New Year's Day when the calendar clicked over. Microsoft insists that a similar problem won't occur the next leap year in 2012...maybe assuming everyone will have switched to an iPod by then.</p>