Kate Nash, Idolator and Infiltrating the hipsters

Tonight may be as close as I’ll ever get to full-on hipsterdom in this life. I’m in New York to speak tomorrow morning at the Folio conference—the same group that so graciously awarded Paste with an award for best Entertainment magazine at a swank ceremony that my compadre, Paste’s ad sales manager Bill Elek, and I got shut out of since we didn’t buy tickets early enough. Apparently it’s not one of those deals that scalpers have really discovered. Between two tickets, we just saved Paste $500 and probably saved ourselves dry cleaning bills since it was an “evening attire” affair. Still, it was a nice day at the Folio conference followed by a fun night out on the town.

We were joined by former Paste intern Katie Heimer and headed down to Williamsburg to see Kate Nash’s very first show in the U.S. Tomorrow night she’ll play at Joe’s Pub, the official venue of the entire music industry. But tonight, the Brooklynites have her to themselves, except for a couple of Southerners who just happened to be in town. Kate is one of our upcoming 4 to Watch artists thanks to several songs that have various staff members involuntarily bobbing their heads lately. I’ve dug what I’ve heard, but I was all prepared for another profane angel along the lines of Lily Allen, scat singing lines like “You’re full of shit” and “I’ve fucked it all up” in that charming accent that makes the worst kiss off sound a little quaint. Early on she didn’t veer from script (in fact those were actually two of the first choruses). Relationship ditties that sounded completely irrelevant to a married 35-year-old guy, but wonderful ditties despite the subject matter. But then she sang “Bird” and I melted. She’s completely unassuming on stage; she’d just played a couple of fun, even funny, but fairly empty songs, and I was enjoying it. But her ballads completely disarmed me. She finished with the epic “Little Red” (with the sweet and earnest line, “Cause your smile is beautiful and makes me happy”) and completely made me a fan.

From there we headed back to Manhattan to The Knitting Factory, the venue that holds one of my dearest memories, where Beck was playing our first New York party with ?uestlove DJing. Tonight was Idolator’s one-year party, and we came to toast a funny (if incredibly snarky) blog about music. They’ve had some harsh words for us, but they’ve had harsh words for all of the bigger music magazine, so it’s only fair, I guess. It’s probably a good thing that magazines who wield the critical axe month after month on album releases get a little taste of their own medicine. Blogs review magazines review albums review life. The band was called My Teenage Stride, a very competent power-pop band that I dug, Katie thought was just OK and Bill hated.

We finished with a slice of pizza (since Blue Chili, my favorite Asian place in the City That Never Sleeps, was closed), and declarations of superlatives. I was proclaiming my most specific favorites: live acts (in ascending order, Patty Griffin, U2, Midnight Oil, The Frames and Arcade Fire), song (“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen), performance of that song (by Jeff Buckley), worst performance of that song by otherwise awesome artist (Rufus Wainwright), favorite Wainwright albums (Want One, then Poses), etc.

Then back to the hotel to finish my presentation, blog and maybe get a few hours of sleep. Goodnight. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go buy a white belt and some aviator sunglasses. Or is that so early 2006? I’m such a bad hipster.