I get to the #Offline Festival, Pitchfork’s CMJ-weekend festival that was announced last week, a few minutes before Angelica, who is meeting me there. It is at a venue in Brooklyn called Brooklyn Bowl that is both a live music venue and a bowling alley. I go up to the box office window and give the guy behind the window the name of my friend who told me that he’s on the press list, but he can’t go to the show tonight and he told me that I could go in his place. The guy with the guest list lets me in.

Inside the venue, the band DOM is on stage and they are playing one of the songs off their EP. I like this band. There are not that many people here now and everyone seems disinterested in what’s happening on stage except two dudes near the front who are bobbing their heads. I wonder if they are friends with the band? The lead singer has long stringy hair that hangs over most of his face, a nose ring, and he is wearing a small t-shirt and jeans that are ripped at the knees. He sings with a high, nasal, bratty voice that may or may not be a joking affect. I guess part of the fun of this band is trying to discern the total joke parts from the half-joke parts. DOM is maybe the most anticipated band at CMJ this year and they are often compared to the band Black Kids whose first EP received an 8.4 Best New Music right before CMJ in 2007. That band was an overnight sensation and played several packed and sweaty CMJ shows and then signed a contract with Capitol Records right after CMJ, and they were really popular until their record came out. The record wasn’t very good because major record labels handle indie rock bands about as well as cats fly planes, and then Pitchfork gave their record a 3.3 and the entire review was just this picture:

So Angelica gets there and finds me in the crowd as DOM is playing their last song and then they finish playing and we try to go look at the bowling alley but the security guard won’t let us go into the bowling alley area, so we wander around other parts of the venue for a while. We see the lead singer of DOM on a couch talking to a photographer, and the guitarist and bassist of DOM are sitting together on a couch in a different part of the venue and we watch as this girl goes up to them and starts taking pictures of them and they start talking to her.

The lead singer of DOM is talking to a photographer on a couch closer to the entrance of the venue and I wait near them for like ten minutes, and then the photographer gets a phone call and looks at his phone screen and looks worried and says to the lead singer of DOM that he has to take the call but he’ll be right back. I figure this is my window, and so i walk up to the lead singer of DOM, whose name is Dom, and i say, “Hi, my name is David and I write a blog about music — can I ask you some questions please?”

And he smiles and says, “Sure!” He shakes my hand and taps the space next to him on the couch to indicate that I should sit down, and so I sit down next to him. CMJ weekend is a big weekend for him as the lead singer of an ascendant indie rock band and I wonder how many interviews he has done already and if he is tired of talking to interviewers. I am thinking about how we are the same age, and also I notice that he has a small tattoo of a star on the bridge of his nose (between his eyes, but closer to his left eye) and some tattoos on his hand, and I say, “What Pitchfork score would you have given your record?” He says, “10 out of 10,” and I say, “No, seriously” and he starts saying something about how it’s hard to say because he doesn’t want to name a low score so then people will believe that he actually thinks his record isn’t that good, but he also doesn’t want to go high for some other reason that I didn’t write down. I guess, really, he just doesn’t want to bite the ‘fork that feeds by second-guessing them because his EP got a good enough score. He continues to explain his scoring logic, but I guess he sees that I am no longer writing down what he is saying, partially because he’s speaking too quickly for me to transcribe it all, and then he says, “Okay — 8.2,” and I say, “Best new music?” He goes, emphatically, “Best new music!”

I say, “I saw that you smoked marijuana with Gucci Mane — can you tell me approximately how much you smoked?” He says, “Yeah, we smoked a lot,” and then he tells me about how Gucci Mane gave him some Grey Goose out of his own cup, which must have been quite an honor, and that they had actually talked on the phone before they met.

I go, “I also saw that you smoked blunts — did you smoke Phillies or Dutches?” As I’ve heard in rap songs, these are the two most prominent brands of cigars that are gutted and used to smoke marijuana with, and Dom tells me that he always smokes “Dutch Masters” and I ask, “What flavor?” At the deli I always see that they come in different flavors, and Dom says, “The Gold’n Honey ones.”

We talk a little more and he is very friendly and forthcoming and he grins a lot, he’s happy to be here I think, but he says a lot of stuff to me that sounds rehearsed for interviews and/or that I have already read on the internet, which is disappointing. Maybe I didn’t ask him the right questions. After we speak, I thank him and say goodbye and then Angelica and I go outside the venue to get some food, and then we eat and come back, and then before we go back inside the venue again she says she wants to smoke a cigarette so we sit on a planter outside the venue while she smokes.

As she is smoking, Pitchfork Founder Ryan Schreiber and Pitchfork writer Larry Fitzmaurice come out of the venue. Larry Fitzmaurice has short brown hair and a beard and is wearing a pair of headphones around his neck, along with a brown and orange striped sweater. He looks like he’s about to leave, and then he and Ryan do one of those high-fives where at the end of the high-five, their fingers sort of interlock and they make a snapping noise. I don’t know how else to describe it, but put your palms together while keeping your forearms horizontal in the air and curl your fingers and keep them curled and pull them apart so they make a snapping noise, and that’s like what Ryan Schreiber and Larry Fitzmaurice did as Larry left the #Offline Festival.

Now Ryan Schreiber is standing 15 feet in front of me and he is talking to three people. He looks in my direction and I wave at him and he smiles because, I guess, he recognizes me from the time I briefly interviewed him at a Pitchfork office party. He is smoking either a Parliament or a Parliament Light and he’s wearing gray Converse sneakers. The girl that was taking pictures of the guitarist and bassist in DOM that I mentioned earlier comes out with the guitarist in Dom, and the guitarist looks pretty drunk, and they walk away from the venue together. Ryan Schreiber takes out a second cigarette and lights it.

Ryan Schreiber keeps turning to the side and looking at me as Angelica and I are talking, and then the people that Ryan Schreiber are talking to go back inside the venue and he stays outside to finish his cigarette, and then he comes up to me! He says, “What up, Shapiro?” David Shapiro is the name I used for a post I wrote yesterday on The Awl. Ryan is smiling and I am smiling, and he gives me a sidearm high-five that turns into a handshake and I say, “Hey, how’s it going?!” 

He tells me it’s going very well, and I introduce him to Angelica and then he says, “Wait — did that thing with Tom Wolfe really happen? He sang you a Paramore song?” And I say, “Yep! Weird right?” And he’s like, “That’s crazy! Ah! That’s so nuts!!” He puts his arms to his sides and jumps up and down and says, “That is so crazy!” I am honored that he read that thing I wrote, I must be smiling in a way that I have read (describing the feeling you get after eating a really fresh bagel from this one bagel place in Minneapolis) as “that squinty-eyed weak smile look generally only associated with sex.”

We talk for another minute and I ask what he’s been up to, and he tells me that he saw Porcelain Raft at the venue Shea Stadium the other night. He says he really likes that band, and I ask him what he’s doing for CMJ and he says that he’ll pretty much just be here because the pitchfork #OFFLINE festival runs at this venue for a few nights during CMJ.

I tell him that I talked to Dom from DOM but I didn’t really get a good interview because I guess I didn’t ask him the right questions, and I say that DOM sounded really good tonight, like so good that it is hard to believe that they are an impoverished indie band because their recordings and shows sound unusually crisp and professional to have been made by some disaffected 22-year-olds…

And he tells me that there is a rumor that DOM is on EMI, which is a major record label that would have the money to finance their really professional recordings and shows, and I ask him why he thinks that and he says that they retweeted someone who said that there is a rumor that they are on EMI. It seems like the truth could go either way. Ryan notes that the DOM guitarist was really shredding on stage tonight and he demonstrates how the guitarist was shredding with an air guitar, and as he is playing his air guitar he looks up and closes his eyes and bites his lip. I tell him that i just saw the guitarist leave with a photographer. Then, to explain their expensive-sounding production, he says, “Well they’re from Massachusetts, maybe they’re just rich kids,” and he laughs when he says “rich kids” because he is mostly kidding.

I say, jokingly, “So what’s going on in your personal life?” Angelica giggles, and Ryan laughs and says that not much is going on in his personal life, and he asks what’s going on in mine and I tell him some personal stuff that would be best not to print here.

Another guy who is very tall and wearing glasses comes out of the venue and stands next to Ryan Schreiber as we are talking. When our conversation reaches a lull, Ryan looks at the tall guy and he introduces himself, he puts his hand out for me to shake and says, “I’m Mark Richardson, it’s good to meet you,” and I am in heaven because Mark Richardson is one of the other Pitchfork editors. We shake hands and I say, “I’m David,” then he introduces himself to Angelica and we talk about the show for a minute, and then I say, “How long are you [In New York]?” Mark Richardson lives in Chicago and I’m guessing that he’s visiting for the #Offline Festival, and he says, “Just the weekend — are you gonna be here?” I tell him that I am actually visiting elizabeth at her Artists’ Colony over the weekend, so I won’t be here, but the lineup looks very good and I am sorry to miss it.

We talk about the festival again for a minute and I ask ryan why he announced it like a week before it happened. He said that he was planning it for about two months but he didn’t want to announce it before he had everything in order for it. I ask him if he has read Cometbus, which is this punk ‘zine from the ’80s and ’90s that someone gave me a compilation book of recently and I am reading the book now, and he looks like he isn’t familiar with it but Mark looks like he knows it and says that someone recently mentioned it in connection with this blog. Ryan says, “speaking of ‘zines,” that his friends’ ‘zines in Minneapolis in the ’90s were what inspired him to start Pitchfork. He says that when he started Pitchfork in 1995, the internet was sort of a novelty, and that when he wanted to contact record labels, he actually had to call the Minneapolis Public Library to get their phone numbers because contact information wasn’t available on the internet yet.

I ask him if he wants to contribute a piece to my ‘zine, and he says, “When did you come up with that?” I say, “Like 45 minutes ago when I was reading the Cometbus book on the subway,” and he laughs and says, “That’s pretty much how you work, right?” I say, “Sometimes,” because I feel like when you get an idea that is really fresh to you and you want to act on it, you are really driven to act on it and then you get it done, but then after a while if you haven’t done anything about your idea, the impetus fades, so I try to do the things I think would be worthwhile things to do as soon as I think of them so I can get them done. Ryan starts laughing and says, “Would it be weird?” I say, “Not to me!” He smiles and says that he’ll consider it, and i don’t know if he actually will consider it but i am glad i asked because, as my Mom says, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, David!”

Ryan lights his third and final cigarette and we talk more about Cometbus and how Aaron Cometbus, the zine’s author, went on tour with Green Day in 1990 before they became a really popular band. Ryan Schreiber says that he really likes this blog and I make the “squinty-eyed weak smile look generally only associated with sex” again.

Eventually he says that he should get back inside and then we say goodbye and he walks back inside. Ah!