With each passing year, Northside Festival ups the ante, taking over more northern Brooklyn venues and gaining more and more international recognition. Now in its 8th year, the festival added their Innovation track a few years back, which seems like a smart move considering that the tech industry conference economy...
A generally daunting experience, CMJ Music Marathon hosts an extremely wide range of bands over the course of 5 days in NYC. To those who attempt to tackle this festival, the lineup can seem overwhelming.
One advantage to being a 10-year CMJ veteran is that you not only know to have a strategy; you can put it all in perspective. And it's good to have a basis for comparison, too. From year to year to year, CMJ has progressed, in both good ways and bad. While my first few years felt completely daunting, the past few have felt manageable. There weren't so many bands that both my CMJ partner-in-crime Devorah and I were initially excited about, but that's the thrill of CMJ: discovering new gems. Last year was all about not getting into the right shows and being frustrated with CMJ in general. We went into this year cautiously, but it ended up being much easier to gain entry to shows and all of the venues seemed a bit more relaxed (with the exception of the Ghostface Killah show in Williamsburg on the last night, in which the whole block had to be closed due to overcrowding).
Below are our picks for our favorite bands, of which there were happily a large amount.
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Every year, CMJ Music Marathon lives up to its nerve-wracking name by offering showgoers an array of shows at a huge number of venues across New York City. But unlike some events that follow a similar model, CMJ is still a great place to begin scouting out up-and-coming bands before they make it big. With enough room to stretch their wings and enough competition to want to work hard, bands playing CMJ are forced to put on put on some of their best shows in some of the tiniest spaces. In our complete CMJ guide, we highlight an array of shows, mostly in the pop and electronic realms, and provide easy listening stations for the best ones so you can decide within seconds if a show is right for you.
SEE ALL 27 FESTIVAL PICKS