Even Great Britain’s most avid collectors of works from the New York underground – and believe me, there are many, in all likelihood there are more of them here than there are in the states – have frequently confessed to me they have relatively little knowledge of what went on over there in the 2010s – or whether anything interesting went on at all, considering the growing impacts of New York’s now notorious cost of living crisis that really began to de-fang that city’s once-thriving cultural scene in that time, mostly replacing it with a lifeless, corporate miseryscape of what it once was.

As a long-time fan of a particular New York artist whose earlier work tends to be associated with the 2010s New York underground, I tend to bring up that artist as an eternal shield against the claim that New York “died” around the time of the Great Recession.

But I have to admit – other than that artist, who doesn’t even live in New York City any more – and the occasional mate of his I remember the name of from a gig poster I saw while updating the poster collection on his website – I really don’t know of many artists worth thinking about from the New York underground after the 2000s.

“Kléo, that’s because you have to get off your fucking computer and go outside.”

The New York artist Jesse “Cannonball” Statman patiently explains to me, his former publicist:

“As New York became more and more unaffordable for artists to live in, one of the first things to go was any kind of infrastructure for publicizing new underground bands that were worth listening to.

It’s an old story.

There was still a lot of interesting music going on – but you had the death of alternative weeklies like the Village Voice and really anything else that could tell you about what was going on outside the trendiest hipster bubble in North Brooklyn or whatever was selling out Madison Square Garden.

I thought it was hilarious, actually – I remember some publications would do these lists of bands who did the most gigs in a year and things like that.

And usually a bunch of my friends’ bands made the list – but also, it would be like “this band played 100 shows this year” and I was like “so did I and so did like 20 other people I know who aren’t on this list, we just weren’t playing trendy Brooklyn places so you didn’t know about it” – and of course, you didn’t hear about my friends’ cool bands who were playing in trendy Brooklyn places either – even though they did get some good press.

Most people in the UK only ever heard about me because I was coming through their town on tour – when they found out I’d also been written up by The Deli Magazine and The New York Times, they were like “oh, I guess that’s vaguely cool” – well actually, fuck The New York Times, but you get the gist – it’s to say – even when we do have these write-ups in these “important” publications, it’s not like anyone actually reads them to find out about new music any more.

Otherwise, you’d know about all kinds of music you don’t know about now.

The way the New York scene really worked was – if you wanted to find out about it, you had to go outside. You had to be that kid on a skateboard who asked me for my SoundCloud link when I was out buying groceries and he figured I make music because I have long hair.

We’re like a fucking secret society, Kléo. (laughs) I wish there was a way to get more people to know about all the music we were into back then – there was all kinds of cool shit. But no, you’re not gonna find it on some blog.”

“But Jesse – this is a blog. I want to talk about New York underground music from the 2010s on my blog – the blog where I normally talk about your music.”

“So you could put some of the pieces I wrote when I was the music editor for Boog City between 2014 and 2016.”

“Oh. That’s not a bad idea, actually.”

***

As it happens, Jesse “Cannonball” Statman was the music editor for the New York community arts newspaper Boog City between late 2014 and early 2016.

Also known for its bi-annual festivals that combine poetry, music, and theatre, Boog City has an interesting musical history, in that its music editor has almost always been someone who is closely connected with New York’s antifolk scene, and with similar underground scenes that are hardly ever covered in traditional media.

For a while, this position was held by the New York antifolk poet Jonathan Berger, who covered many generations of that scene, including Cannonball’s – Berger famously described a young Cannonball Statman in the pages of Boog City as the sort “who may well conquer the world, if he doesn’t destroy it first.”

While Cannonball has yet to take over the world, he did in fact take over Berger’s long-held position at Boog City in late 2014 – and what followed was a year or so of coverage of that same generation of the antifolk scene, now with Cannonball at the helm – as this generation matured and expanded to cross-pollinate with other vibrant artistic communities in the city and beyond.

Before handing his position over to Mike Rechner (frontman of the legendary New York antifolk band Prewar Yardsale) in 2016 when he got too damn busy with his international tours to keep up with the local scene, Cannonball’s role as music editor and occasional contributor to Boog City was apparently noteworthy enough that international music blogs such as Germany’s Das Klienicum occasionally mentioned it as a factoid when covering Cannonball’s music.

And there may be good reason for this, in fact.

Because Boog City – whether in its poetry section, its music section, its cinema section, or – quite frankly – any of its sections – is one of the few print publications where someone like me can find out about any kind of culture coming out of New York City that I’m actually interested in.

As such – here you’ll find Jesse “Cannonball” Statman’s own contributions to Boog City from 2014-’16, along with a blurb he penned for the debut album of NYC post-punk power trio The Icebergs during that same period. And I hope this can be a good starting point for finding out about all kinds of brilliant and wonderful American music you never knew existed.

And when you’re finished reading it – don’t forget to go outside and get yourself to a god damn gig!

See you soon!
Kléo

Jesse “Cannonball” Statman’s coverage of the NYC music scene for Boog City Press (2014-’16)
1. Review of The Grasping Straws’ self-titled debut album
2. Profile of Stu Richards, formerly known as Chicken Leg
3. Review of Thomas Patrick Maguire’s In The Bag
4. Review of The First Law’s She Traveled With Me
5. Review of Little Cobweb’s Indelible Marks
6. Review of Zack Daniel’s Memoirs of a Scared Teenager
7. Review of Prewar Yardsale’s Black and Blue
8. Review of Yeti’s Pill
9. Profile of Horra
10. Profile of Lauren O’Brien
11. Review of Nancy Paraskevopoulos’ Comfort Muffin

& the blurb he penned for The Icebergs’ Eldorado!