Do You Believe in Magic?

Our friend J was to play a show for the CMJ Music Marathon. A city-wide music festival that's billed as the most important platform for the discovery of new music. Five days and nights, over 1300 bands, over 80 venues... Anyway, it used to mean something. Now, we weren't sure. Who are these industry professionals? All but a handful of retail are gone, most of sales, promotion and marketing lost their jobs at the labels and distribution centers. Radio is a joke. Who is left except all the struggling musicians with no clear avenues or support system or industry to speak of really at all.

But despite those truths, the kids were out at the clubs it seemed in full force. J's set was great, even kinda magical with the lighting and the big white piano on the stage.

And the bonus was as with anytime we have reason to be out in the city, we get a nice dinner out on the town. This time at Republic, the restaurant also with unique billing. Its said to be created like no other restaurant in America. Republic offers a non-traditional cuisine that combines a variety of ingredients, spices and cooking methods from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and China. The decor is minimal and communal but for some reason, I love it there. It's very loud and open so you don't notice you're sitting next to people. But the best thing is the food is right on time and mighty fine!

I used to go to Republic when I worked at the Virgin Union Square store for lunch and I used to attend the CMJ Marathon every year for many years. I won't bore you with the memories it brought back being there.

Instead I'll bore you with my story about how scary and ghostlike that stupid bar was. I felt like I was in a dream that if I stepped outside, I might be in another dimension. I couldn't concentrate on what anyone was saying all night.

Doesn't the lighting look like a movie set? Where the hell were we that night? The people didn't even seem real to me. More like extras in the background of a good movie, not the kind they have sitting around on a tv show. They were passable as real but yet they didn't seem to be alive.

Dead movie set extras? I don't know what kind of hoo doo was going on that night but I was spooked and thrilled when P was ready to leave.

We hailed a cab and got the cmj out of there!