“On the count of three, say fuck Eric Adams,” yelled Luwayne Glass to a crowd of some ten people over the weekend. Glass’ face was hidden by somef of smoke, and a shawl of dreads, as they stood, looming from behind a laptop, on the chilly stage of the Meserole Street club 3 Dollar Bill. Better known as the noise artist — and “gender non-binary straight-edge vegan,” per their Spotify profile — Dreamcrusher, they’ve been putting out records out in Brooklyn under that name since as early as 2015, when their brand of “QUEER NIHILIST REVOLT MUSIK” first got notice from the likes of Pitchfork. Occasionally, Glass would tromp from the stage and yell ferociously in the faces of some of those gathered, words largely obscured by the deliberate hum of post-industrial noise. Dreamcrusher had been billed third on a lineup put together by a group called “Go Rogue Music Productions,” which hosted its second annual “Rogue Fest” over the weekend.
The trio currently running the group are Roni Corcos, Natalie Field and Amy Klein, two of whom were also singing in bands that played the showcase too, something of a smalltime spiritual successor to branded multi-venue runs like CMJ and Northside, both of which also tried to position introducing nothing new bands opening for more experienced scene veterans, and both of which collapsed in acrimony during the last decade. Instead of hundreds of bands, Rogue was bringing just a more manageable twenty or forty, most semi-locally sourced. Field, who otherwise runs booking at the newly-named Ridgewood bar Cassettes, had her chance to play last year, from her perch singing in the “NYC Post-Punk band” group Hot Tea. That year, the Rogue crew included Allison Becker and Jules Moss, neither of whom appear to be running it this year, and involved a lineup of some 40 local acts.
This year, the lineup includeded just around 20, also including Corcos’ band Roni, which has been going on since 2020, and Amy Klein’s band, which goes by AK & the Hallucinations. Klein is something of a vet of the Northern New Jersey guitar scene herself, having served a year-long stint in Patrick Stickles’ more successful punk act Titus Andronicus in the early 2010s. Stickles himself headlined the “Rogue” last year, which took place in July, and which Corcos assured me was “totally sold out.”
“Like 70% of the people I called this year were out of town,” said Corcos about turnout this year.
The group, in addition to playing the festival, are trying to pitch it as one that “Actually Pays Bands”; per their press materials, this involves a payment model that Corcos liked to repeat often when taking the stage between acts. “70% of your tickets go to these people, isn’t that great?” she would say to the crowd of, at most, some thirty people at a time. It was nice to hear, nevertheless. Earnest and DIY in a way that didn’t feel overused quite yet. The idea was infectious, if you were listening. Online, the group did press with Brooklyn Magazine to advertise the festival and convinced a blogger there to call this a “generous payment model and artist-first ethos to address various inequities plaguing the music industry.”
Nevertheless, the festival had also turned out some of the more interesting and mildly adventurous sounds going around this corner of Brooklyn. At Baby’s All Right, Klein had pulled another of her more famous New Jersey connections to headline things, booking Marissa Paternoster, whose old band Screaming Females was a regular headliner in the neighborhood until breaking up mid-tour last year. Lately, as a two-piece called “Noun,” she’s been hitting DIY clubs like the aforementioned Cassettes and now, here, playing a kind of low, staccato punk blues, howling around and generally reverberating with keen intensity, in the largely empty room, in between handling the guitar tech work herself, despite her stature as the 150th greatest guitarist of all time according to Rolling Stone magazine. (between Stooges axeman Ron Asheton and the Chess records session guy Pete Cosey, both deceased.)
Over at 3 Dollar Bill, attracting a crowd of perhaps double the size as Dreamcrusher, was the newish Brooklyn band Comet, a kind of shoegaze band that has been described as both “nu-gaze,” and “nu-grunge,” in this especially rambling interview with the band’s mononymous frontwoman in Office Magazine. (“In limbo. I had lost my job, a modeling contract, a boyfriend and I was totally like what the fuck is going on with my life. 2 months before I said fuck it and moved to NYC,” etc.) On stage, Comet was one of the major revelations of Rogue Fest, marching back and fourth like Iggy Pop or something like that, occasionally holding a guitar, occasionally flexing her knee-length boots. The singing was urgent, guttural, glam-rock; everything purposefully distorted. The crowd held for the same length, give or take a few stragglers in and out, for Shipa Ray, a longtime Brooklyn scenester who Corcos introduced as a longtime personal hero. She alternated between singing from behind a keyboard and howling from behind a microphone and, singing songs from her 2022 album Portrait of a Lady, put out by a local record label.
It was a keen choice to put everyone else at Starr Bar, the DSA-themed spot near the Jefferson Street L station. These bands included Softee, fronted by charismatic Bushwick transplant Nina Grollman, who told Paste Magazine that she left Moorhead, Minnesota with “the hope of becoming an actor.” Now, she sings Robyn-lite neon wave ballads about being intentional, watching “Squid Game,” confronting your romantic feelings for your boss, packed between torch songs about doing molly. The crowd dissipated two sets later — local beanie-wearing rapper Kaniem Rivera led a three piece band in between — into a campfire-like huddle around Cassie Ramone, a notionally more successful Brooklyn figure, of semi-legendary acts from the semi-legendary DIY-era, like Babies (recently semi-reunited) and Vivian Girls, of which she was one. Ramone had just made her return to playing shows in the neighborhood last Halloween, and believe me, reader, I was there. And now she was here, playing her own mangled, jangled indie pop to just about five people, who were sitting sitting criss-cross on the ground listening to her solo oldie “I’m a Freak,” once released as a split in 2013 and now being performed by Ramone herself in a tight two-piece with a backing guitarist, sitting behind her and largely away from the forest of christmas lights that decorated the stage. It was a beautiful, kind of surf-rock song, a gentle meditation about going nowhere.
Photos taken by Michelle Maier.
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