Silent Barn is a music space and living quarters that is based in an unpleasant area of Ridgewood, Queens that smells like garbage and has a lot of weird businesses that you only see in places where society has failed and brutality is the only rule of law. It’s the kind of place where people park on the sidewalk.

When you finally get inside Silent Barn it’s big and dirty and full of neat shit.  It’s like an artier version of Don Pedro’s. The person in the above photo is Taraka, guitarist and keyboardist for Prince Rama.  Everyone grabbed on to her crystal necklace for this photo.

Inside Silent Barn there is this cute little corner in which they have a zine library, a laser disc library, a Sega Genesis set up with Sonic turned on, and a big PA.  It was mighty cozy.

This wacky stoner is Cop Magnet. He wasn’t performing but he was around. He had a giant cube of purple nurple which he was smoking nonstop.  This guy is a high bitch’s dreamboat. He raps about weed and bitches and makes remixes which he calls “jams.”

This is Prince Rama, occasionally called Prince Rama of Ayhodha.  These are the Larson sisters, Taraka and Nimai. Nimai is the one drumming in the foreground and she can drum like an automated drum machine that gained the ability to love to drum.  As far as interesting modern drumming goes I think she might be second only to Teenage Souls.  Taraka’s in the background and I’m not really sure what she’s up to.

This is Mike Collins. His contribution to the band is that he repacks their shared suitcase during the sets. Haw haw haw! Naw, he has some keyboards and stuff in there.  The band is a whole lot of complex rhythms, echoed indiscernible singing and beautiful synth shit.  It’s like a musical Aurora Borealis.  People were really into it and there was a row of dancing dudes who were really into it.  It was like the inverse of the crowd for White Car last Tuesday.

This is another cozy corner of Silent Barn,  Mount Couchmore. You can get a good sit on up here. I hate when you go to see music and there’s no place to sit. It sends a message and that message is,”Pay, come to see what you came to see and get out so we can leave.”  Silent Barn is a lot like Don Pedro’s but they’ve got murals and outdated media instead of sex, drugs and billiards.

As usual, Total Slacker tore it up and down.  I realized during this show that they don’t have any songs without “Whoa whoa whoa” in them.  It seems like I wasn’t the only one who observed this and during the course of the evening everyone began greeting each other with the “awhoa whoa whoa whoa” from Psychic Mesa.

Then everyone had a pigpile on top of the guitar and were tearing at and slapping at it with their claws and bodies. Proto-punk/noise/experimental/industrial band, The Monks used to have people do this. I think it’s cool if the band is good enough to make it work.

A Total Slacker  show starts off restrained and ends untamed.  Here’s Tucker breaking other people’s equipment for the sake of feedback.  He recently fell off the bass drum and hit his head real bad.

Someone pulled out a Vision fishboard and we were skating all over.  Someone asked if I was shredding and I told them I was shredding so hard I was blending. At this point We’d all gone through many a 40.

“Hello fashionable women, don’t pay attention to me, just keep on teaching one another to skateboard with a beer in each hand for ballast/balance.  I’ll just be over here watchin’.”

Aw man, such a good time.

Then the guys from Blissed Out and Total Slacker drove over to Market Hotel where more booze was drunk and odd acoustic versions of Psychic Mesa were performed.  Also, there was some good teasing about the people in attendance who are self conscious about their wikipedia pages and their jobs at American Apparel. This guy with the banana crowns is in Blissed Out. Their shirt is the Wu Tang logo but I don’t know anything about their music.  All in all it was a great evening. Good bands, good dudes, good space, good teasing.

I leave you with the first entry into a new interview series I am doing called “Why Are You Doing This?”  This one is with the members of Prince Rama.

See you in the pit!

- Toilet Cobra