SAT., NOV. 21: The Black Black, Secret Crush, No Honeymoon, Family Circus

Next show at Pet Rescue brings together old friends and new, in a full night of skewed punk, weirdo pop, shoegaze, psychedelia and a nonstop rhythmic pulse. This show came together with a huge assist from Jon from The Black Black, a longtime Pet Rescue supporter. We’re thrilled to finally bring The Black Black over here, because we’ve seen them around town many, many times, and their excellent post-punk sounds are always on point, always slaying. Family Circus features frequent Pet Rescue assistant PJ and a bunch of people you know you’ve seen in various bands around the NYC DIY circuit — punky, poppy and rambunctious, they’ve recently reunited and we’re very happy to have them as well. Secret Crush have been on our radar for a long time, recommended by so many who have caught their set, and their smart indie-pop sounds are right up our alley. No Honeymoon stepped in at a late hour, and we’re excited they’ve done so — really stoked for their spot-on, noise-drenched shoegaze. It all happens on Saturday the 21st. Doors are at 8:30 p.m., and it’s $5 to get in. RSVP on the Facebook event page.

FRI., OCT. 23: King Pizza Presents Silent Barn Fire Recovery Benefit

Next up at Pet Rescue is something special, where a few strands of DIY culture that mean a lot to us intersect in a pretty interesting way. Our friends and allies at King Pizza Records put have put together an event to benefit Silent Barn, one of the centerpieces of the NYC DIY community. As many of you might have heard, in late September a fire broke out in one of the apartments above the Silent Barn show space. The fire caused interior smoke and water damage and destruction of personal property, but beyond that, the residents of the building were forced to temporarily vacate, and the performance space had to close to the public for about three weeks for renovations. (Silent Barn holds an extended lease on its building, and it rents the upstairs apartments to working artists, who in turn take part in the Barn’s collective mission, so it’s not as though the problems the fire caused landed on SB and a bunch of randos upstairs — everyone in that building is part of the same thing.) By the Barn’s accounts, they’re looking at a loss of several thousand dollars from shows that couldn’t happen and rent that can’t be collected. The Barn says they have insurance and they’re waiting for reimbursement, but problems like those aren’t covered by insurance.

While Bettina from King Pizza gets the credit for being the person who’d approached me about hosting this show under the Pet Rescue roof to benefit Silent Barn, I definitely have feelings about the continuation of SB. Part of it is just personal — during my first year living in NYC, some of the most fun, most insane nights I experienced played out at the old Silent Barn space in Ridgewood. When I was scouting out locations for what is now Pet Rescue, Silent Barn was one of a few key models in my head for the type of space I wanted to create. Part of it is practical: In programming events, Pet Rescue pulls primarily from bands active in the DIY space around NYC, and there are only so many such spaces that operate on a regular schedule — if you like going to shows or performing at a place like Pet Rescue, it’s probably in your best interest that there are places like Silent Barn, who are doing it at far greater scale, in terms of the number and variety of events they can host. And part of it is more utopian: Silent Barn has, in a lot of ways, transcended the DIY model, and theirs is an experiment that I think deserves to be seen through. DIY spaces are supposed to be short-lived, covert, ramshackle organizations, or at least that’s what they usually are. They usually pivot around one or two or three strong personalities, who ultimately move on to other pursuits. DIY spaces are not supposed to last for 10 years. Silent Barn has. There have been other performance spaces in NYC that started out in a very grassroots, woolly, DIY environment, but that have added layers of legitimacy until they became for-profit businesses, effectively the same as any other small club. Silent Barn has aimed for permanence and legitimacy, but what’s interesting to me is they’re not taking an overtly commercial/capitalist route. A night at Silent Barn is probably going to be a cheaper night out than one at most standard rock clubs, and while I’m not super-familiar with how they handle studio rentals, it appears they’re passing value down to their tenants, with the expectation that those tenants create interesting work and remain active parts of the community. I don’t know what you want to call that model. It’s beyond DIY, to my mind, but there’s little else to compare it to. I just think it’s an interesting experiment, and I want to see how far they can take it.

So to that end, here comes another one courtesy of King Pizza Records, thee cassette/vinyl label every aficionado of garage rock, psych rock, powerpop and punk  needs to know right now. We’re happy to welcome back the excellent psych-punk sonic barrage of Sun Voyager, the irrepressible garage-pop stylings of The Rizzos, and the delightfully sleazy, struttin’ rock’n’roll of Greasy Hearts. Also, for the first time at Pet Rescue, we’ve got the garagey psych/blooz of New Jersey’s Heavy Flow. Plus, there’ll be a bake sale! Honestly. Bake sale, too. Doors are at 8:30 p.m. It’s $5 to get in, and all proceeds benefit Silent Barn’s fire recovery efforts. RSVP on the Facebook event page.

The poster for this show (top of post) was created by Rachel Adler.

SAT., OCT. 10: Hard Nips, Crazy Pills, The Village Bicycle, Dumb Wolves

We’ve got a great night coming up this weekend, specifically on Saturday, Oct. 10, thanks to a big assist from our friends in Bitchin’ Bookings. Over the course of four bands’ sets, we’ll be roving through sonic fields of punk, garage rock, indie-pop, thwak, shimmer and jangle. Headlining the show is Crazy Pills, whom we’re very happy to welcome back to PR, and you’ll relish their super-tight, high-energy, insanely catchy set. Give it up for Hard Nips — first time at Pet Rescue, but we’ve been fans for a long time — a band that consistently toes the line between sheer joy and confrontation. All the way from Cleveland, OH, we’ve got The Village Bicycle, bringing a lush, vocal-harmony-rich dream-pop vibe. And opening up the night, we have Dumb Wolves, a hooky, garagey and delightfully no-frills combo featuring musicians you very well might know from other bands (members of Pill, I’m Turning Into, My Teenage Stride). Doors at 8:30! It’s $5 a pop to get in! RSVP on the Facebook event page.

See that awesome flyer? It was created by artist and designer Kaitlin Rae O’Connor, the mind behind the multimedia project Neon Bodega Cats. This is the first in a series of flyers we’ll be commissioning from local/regional artists, which will be exhibited in a group show at Pet Rescue in early 2016. Yeah, newness!!

FRI., JUNE 12: The Hearts Bleed Radio/Pet Rescue Official Northside Festival Showcase

Our friends from the Hearts Bleed Radio blog have, for the second year in a row, organized an official Northside Festival showcase here at Pet Rescue, featuring Warn the Duke, The Planes, Vomitface, Dentist and The Rizzos. It’s going to involve a lot of friends, a lot of guitars, a lot of tunes and some serious good times. Because this is an official Northside show, admission is free if you have a Northside badge or artist’s wristband. Otherwise, it’s $7 a head. Doors are at 8 p.m. — don’t be late! RSVP on the Facebook event page.

SAT., APR. 25: My Teenage Stride, Expert Alterations, Summer Saints and The Bad New Ones

For those of you (/us) who really love terrific guitar-pop, take note of this one, because it’s a particularly stacked bill. Pet Rescue is very pleased to welcome back My Teenage Stride, a great personal favorite of ours, a band rightly granted something like celebrity status among some indiepop circles. We’re also excited to welcome, from Baltimore, Expert Alterations, recent signees to Slumberland Records and recipients of some amount of well-deserved buzz from their appearances at a few choice Popfests on from the strength of a nervy, urgent recent self-titled cassette. Expect ace garagey pop from Summer Saints and The Bad New Ones, too. DJ Paul Bruno spins records between and after bands. (Tip of the hat to DJ PB for hipping us to Expert Alterations, having featured a track of theirs on the Serious Rockers cassette comp, via his Unblinking Ear Records.) And making a rare appearance at this show — kind of a stealth appearance — is the long-rumored room on the other side of that sliding glass door, the studio adjacent to Pet Rescue, the proprietors of which have offered to open up the door and give the crowd some extra space. Yeah! Come on and pick up a few earworms; there’s a Facebook page for the event, of course.

FRI., APR. 10: Heavy Birds, Dagger Shores, ¡Vamanos! and The Royal They

The raison d’être of the next show at Pet Rescue is the release of the debut cassette EP by Dagger Shores, the surf-psych-punk project brought to us by Derek from Sunset Guns and Stephen from The Big Parade. If you’ve come to Pet Rescue more than a couple times, you’ll likely recognize these guys, and this time they’ll be appearing in a format most of us haven’t seen yet. Dagger Shores made a splash back in March when they played a quick surprise set at Square Zeros‘ ZeroFest at Silent Barn, but this show is their official first live show ever. Likewise, the link to their Soundcloud page has been passed around by some folks in the know since they recorded their EP back in the fall of 2014 as part of Hearts Bleed Radio‘s 4-Track Challenge (the challenge was to write and record an EP’s worth of material on a cassette four-track in one month’s time), but now we’ll have a physical artifact to match it. An analog artifact, no less. But there are plenty of other reasons to mark this show. Opening up, we have the garagey and melodic The Royal They. Somewhere in there, we have ¡Vamanos!, a great garage-punk duo Team Pet Rescue has really been digging lately. Closing out the night, we have the ace psych/drone/fuzz-rock outfit Heavy Birds, whom some of you might remember playing an otherworldly late-night set at Pet Rescue over a year ago. Friday, April 10 is the night. There’s a Facebook event page. Come get weird with us. If you’re already weird, come and be an exemplar of weird.

Photos from ZeroFest: Thanks, Pretext

Pet Rescue hosted Night #3 of SquareZeros‘ second ZeroFest back on March 7, featuring performances by No Ice, Best Behavior (pictured at left), Big Huge, Sunset Guns and The Space Merchants. Whether or not everyone in those bands, and their friends and fans, were our buds beforehand, they certainly are now. Experiences like these are bonding experiences. Pretext was there, and they handed out disposable cameras to people in the crowd. The results are both remarkable and entirely representative. Check them all out by following this link.

SAT., MAR. 28: Journalism, Big Quiet, Scupper and Hamish Kilgour

Wow, it’s been a LONG time since we’ve updated the Pet Rescue blog. But it’s not for lack of activity — the whole fall was one long blaze of glory, it seemed, with some of the best shows we’ve ever hosted, so many really awesome nights. (We have some photos to share…) And now, following a winter recess, we’re back in the thick of it. Saturday, March 28 is a special night: It’s the album release show for Big Quiet’s long-awaited debut full-length, which will be available in digital and shiny cassette formats! We’ll also be celebrating the birthday of BQ’s singer and lead guitarist, Marisa. It’s an exceptional bill beyond that: We have the post-punk twin-guitar attack of Journalism, scuffed-up guitar-pop from Scupper and the one and only Hamish Kilgour (The Clean, The Mad Scene), a name recognizable to just about anyone who has spent some time exploring New Zealand’s indie legacy. Hamish plays solo and he plays FIRST. Take note! As with everything in 21st century life, there’s a Facebook event page.

FRI., JUNE 13: Northside Festival Comes to Pet Rescue

Pet Rescue has teamed up once again with our friends at the blog/music booking entity Hearts Bleed Radio for an official Northside Festival showcase! HBR brings along Shark?, The Planes, My Teenage Stride and The Teen Age, plus DJ Food A.K.A. selecting tunes between and after bands. As with almost all official Northside Festival shows, admission is free for badge-holders. RSVP on Facebook.

SAT., MAY 24

Pet Rescue’s spring 2014 series of shows is drawing to a close! We’ve hosted terrific performances this spring from Dead Stars, Food Will Win the War, The Brooklyn What, Heavy Birds, Sunset Guns, Orca Age, The Planes, Strange Kids and many more. Here’s one more before we switch over to a more relaxed summer schedule! Dig Shelter Dogs, The Seconds and Saint Cobra (possibly one more TBA), with DJ Daniel Ka$$hu (Dialogue from a Silent Film, Shelter Dogs) between and after bands. RSVP on Facebook.