It was another night out on the Bowery for me, this time to see an uplifting, electronic act out of Los Angeles known as Active Child. It is the moniker for musician and harpist Pat Grossi. This was a very spontaneous go of things for me, having only listened to his album, You Are All I See, just this week and liking what I heard enough to go see his live performance on a whim.

First opener, Superhumanoids, is also an LA-based electronica outfit. Their music emerges on the relaxing side with some light synthpop beats, making for a pleasant, down-key listening experience. The four piece’s instrumentation included guitar, drums, synths and bass, and their latest release is the Urgency EP. I’ll be keeping tabs on them.

Balam Acab, up second, is a one man show. Playing what could best be described as a sort of dark ambience, he and his hoodie reminisced of a DJ from the underworld. Focused intently on his music, he took few pauses. I’m not much of an ambient music guy, but I always find these sort of acts a pleasant surprise when I’m out at a show. I could have done with less chipmunk voices.

Active Child live is definitely a special performance. Before this night, I had never seen a harpist perform live, and what an experience it was to see the instrument used so effectively as part of a band (a drummer and alternating bass/synth player accompanied our singer). It’s an easy and obvious comparison, but the whole set gives off a certain angelic vibe, as if the musical content and his operatic voice didn’t already lead your imagination there. This is especially evident in the significant prop use: heavy amounts of fog, alabaster statues with floor lighting and plain lights illuminating our singer.

Though his music was flawless, there were problems with this display. The statues were way too prominent. Being placed in the front of the stage, my view of the performers was disrupted despite being first row. These kind of displays belong in the back, not right in my field of vision. Also Mr. Grossi chose to harp off to the side, an inappropriate location for the frontman of the band; the entire audience was all focused on his corner of the stage. All visual elements of a concert need to be carefully considered or they detract from the overall performance, as seen here.

So your favorite band came into town for a show, you didn’t notice, and now it’s sold out. Whatever are you to do? Having faced this situation myriad times in the past year of concert-going, I’ve come up with a pretty good system for getting into any show I want to see.

Step 1: Take preemptive measures, stay up to date on upcoming shows

Okay, so a good policy if you are interested in the live music scene is to get set up with automated notifications on when your bands are in town and tickets go on sale. I like last.fm, which is a social media platform for music geeks. Once its plugin acquires your music library, it can be set up to generate an RSS feed of upcoming concerts in your area. Additionally, last.fm’s event pages offer another platform to buy or sell tickets, which I’ve successfully used. And hey, if you do join last.fm, friend me!

For those who don’t want a social media presence, Songkick has an identical function to last, sending you a daily email with concerts tailored to your interests. As both of these are crowdsourced, smaller venues and bands with less fanfare can go unnoticed, for that I recommend finding a good music blog for your area. Living near NYC, Brooklyn Vegan offers me that service, giving a daily digest of most concerts in the city and letting you keep a bead on what’s happening in the music scene here. Additionally, by following music news, you can often get info from these sources about special shows quicker.

You should also consider joining your favorite bands fan clubs. These days following on facebook or twitter is usually sufficient, and from them at the least you can get knowledge of tour dates and special shows, but the real draw is that for bigger bands there are often special fan only presales, which can often let you avoid the pain in the ass secondary market.

By knowing the ticket sales date, you won’t have to worry about getting caught flat footed for shows, but for when that fails..

Step 2: Consider Craigslist

So you set up your concert notifications but still couldn’t get tickets; this still can happen quite often due to high demand and ticket speculators. Craigslist is where I first turn as both a seller and buyer. To the unenlightened, it has an unsavory reputation, but it is the best location for honest people trying to drop tickets to shows. Do your searches for ticket by owner, and make sure you keep your searches around face value. This weeds out the scalpers, a judge of character and a little bit of trust gets you the rest of the way if you find someone looking to unload a couple tickets. I have never been scammed in several purchases on craigslist. As I mentioned earlier, you can also make note of your desire to attend a show on the event page for last.fm.

I do not recommend Stubhub, the site exists as an enabler for the people who make a business out of screwing you over. Don’t patronize it ever.

Step 3: Buy Your Ticket at Doors

This is probably one of the bigger secrets in the live music scene. Did you know that for almost every show, the venue will release some extra tickets at doors? This includes sold out shows! For this approach, you have to have faith, and the extra time to arrive early. Fifteen minutes is usually sufficient except mega hyped concerts. I have yet to attempt this for large venues yet, but I’d assume for anything without assigned seating the same principle stands. I’ve confirmed this now at the last three sold out shows I’ve attended. You can also meet other people selling tickets at doors sometimes. Of course, pay no heed to the sketchsters hawking tickets, it’s only other people in line whom you should trust. Both times I’ve done this, I’ve never even had to go to the box office, having met people on line who had extras.

Make good use of this information, and you will control your own destiny when it comes to enjoying live music.

Hope ya’ll had a good time on Cinco de Mayo, or ‘drunk-white-people-wearing-sombreros day’. I spent mine, following the derby, enjoying some indie at Mercury Lounge. This was the closing set of Frankie Rose’s tour around the country with the recently renamed DIIV, who I am a rabid fan of. I found out about this show a couple months ago via DIIV’s guitarist, Andrew Bailey. I became a fan of her to make sure I wasn’t going to see an act with a headliner I didn’t dig.

First opener was Black Marble, who are two Brooklyn guys playing some dark sounding synth and guitar combo. Their sound is droning and depressing in the best way possible, but I’d like to see a drummer instead of programming for live shows. I’m also not sure how much the synth guy actually does during the live show; watching him it seems all he did was set the wheel turning each song. They have an EP, Weight Against the Door, and not much more unrecorded, giving us about twenty five minutes of music. The little we got here was reasonably promising though.

Second opener, Spectrals, is a surf pop group from across the Atlantic finishing off a two month residency in New York. I count myself pretty fortunate to catch a quality English group in this mix. Employing no electronics, I almost thought them slightly out of place in the lineup, but their unique flavor prevailed. They have one album, Bad Penny.

DIIV, who used to be Dive, just continued doing their thing that is gathering fans to them like moths to flame. I wrote a profile on them back in March in greater detail. The TLDR on that is that they play this washed out psych-surf rock and jump around like maniacs; it’s a totally hypnotic act and has to be seen to be believed. It was pretty cool for me being with a crowd of people who mostly knew who DIIV was. Their debut LP, Oshin, comes out in July and the singles that have been coming out lately are far more energetic than their previous recordings.

Lastly, we had Frankie Rose play. Cute and quirky, it’s hard not to immediately have a crush on her. Her composition was a five-piece, herself guitaring, a drummer and second guitarist, and two other gals on bass, keys and backing vocals; they were probably my favorite addition to the act. ‘Gospel/Grace‘ and its layered singing was done just beautifully. It’s too bad her set was criminally short, clocking in at a cool thirty minutes, which left me feeling like I was seeing another opener. What we got was good, but you’re telling me that with two full albums, there’s no more material? We didn’t even get an encore. What a joke. I was not the only one leaving with grumbles.

A spontaneous invite led me to St. Lucia’s gig at Santos Party House this evening. The lineup for this event (put on by Neon Gold Records and Pop Shop) featured opening sets by Xylos and HAIM, followed with a dj set after our headliner by Goldroom for a seamless segue into club mode.

This was actually my first time attending a gig at Santos. A note for all party-goers, security here is tighter than Fort Knox, with an indepth laser-scan of your id AND a full frisking. No complaints about the interior though. Reasonably spacious and lots of colorful lights, I dig the club overall.

Our first act was Xylos, a local indie pop act with some delicious synthbeats, which is usually a recipe for an instant like for me. Their music is on the upbeat side, with a similar sound to Chairlift, but more dancey. What was refreshing was seeing a keyboardist whose job it was to punch the keys and not primarily focus on programming. It took most of their set for the crowd to warm up, but the grooving got going. I take partial credit for dancing my way up to stage to use it as a coat check; I turned around and suddenly people were getting into it. Xylos was deservedly happy, it’s not every set as first opener you get such a positive crowd reaction. They have an album out, self titled.

HAIM is a three-sister (plus a bro drummer) rock act out of LA. They reminded me of Warpaint, though far sassier and less reserved, with a sound definitely veering off into upbeat blues rock territory. It’s sort of fascinating to watch them mix things up, each of the girls took lead singing roles at different points, and they finished their set with everyone drumming. I always appreciate a band that is an ensemble cast. They have a three song EP, Forever, their only stuff at the moment; this set left me looking forward to more.

Headliner, St Lucia, has been making some waves lately. They were the only opener announced for The Shins I didn’t know (Chairlift and Real Estate covered the other two dates), so I sort of figured they’d be a band of my liking. Here I am a few days later seeing them headline. The indie gods are definitely looking on me favorably. St. Lucia definitely put 110% into this performance, with a music video being filmed. I wonder if my mustache will get a feature in it. Anyway, if you’ve never listened, St. Lucia is some authentic dance music with a worldbeat influence, a close approximation could be Naked & Famous. Alas, they are also short on recorded material, with only a self titled EP at the moment.

I didn’t linger for Goldroom‘s dj set, though his own material is quite diggable. Overall, it was a very pleasing show. My favorites usually involve dancing, and to see everyone having a good time to a somewhat anonymous collection of bands is a bonus.