The Times grabs a bite at B&H Dairy with the composers who started Bang on a Can in the East Village 25 years ago. David Lang says the experimental music company, which is preparing for a trio of performances, is “not particularly nostalgic” but fellow composer Michael Gordon remembers the old neighborhood nevertheless: “This area was the hot arts center for the Pyramid Club and punk bands and CBGB. Philip Glass lives two blocks down, and we used to see Allen Ginsberg walking around the neighborhood.”
Ray Lemoine The StoneWhen Hospital Productions closed its record store on East Third Street in December, the East Village’s avant-garde, noise, and experimental music scene continued to shrink (remember the days when Downtown Music Gallery was located on the Bowery? or when the Knitting Factory was on Houston Street?). As it turns out, Hospital’s founder, Dominick Fernow, is headed west, but he’s making a slight return this month, as curator of a two-week series of performances at The Stone on Avenue C.
Mr. Fernow, who will continue to run Hospital Records as a music label specializing in progressive noise, ambient, and metal music, told The Local that he closed his five-year-old record shop because he and Wesley Eisold, his bandmate in Cold Cave, were moving to Hollywood. Becka Diamond, an “it” girl who DJs at Cold Cave shows, also headed west. Despite regular gigs spinning outré music at venues like The Standard’s rooftop club, she left town – for no real reason, she said, save boredom with New York.
“It’s the same scene,” she said. “We just live out here now.”
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