Dear Diary: Ghost Wave in New York, October 2013

Dear Diary is a new feature we are launching today where we get bands/musicians currently on tour to give us a glimpse into their adventures and discoveries. First up is Matt from Ghost Wave who has been in America for CMJ and Culture Collide Festival....

20th October 2013 - New York City
Hello to everyone in NZ, hope it's all going well back home. We have been here in New York for a few days and are going to be here a little while longer. We arrived in LA just over a week ago and played three shows at the Culture Collide Festival where met some sweet people and saw a jamming DJ set by Primal Scream. The set was really rock n roll based from memory....they played everyone from the Velvet Underground to Hawkwind to Aerosmith, Buddy Holly, Elvis and these guys...

We met some dudes from an LA label called Lollipop Records/Burger Records and they were cool people...worth checking out their stuff, it's kinda 60s/70s psych.

Here's an episode of Burger Records regular YouTube show Burger TV...

We played two shows in NYC at CMJ including the New Zealand showcase...our new tambourine player has been a hit and I think everyone is feeling pretty good about things. In terms bands we saw, highlights include a great band from Queens called The Beets and TEEN....

'Doing As I Do' from The Beets 2011 album Let the Poison Out...

'Carolina' from Teen's new EP of the same name....

Not sure what comes next but yeah, we're going to come home and finish a couple of records and hopefully head back once we've got a bit more to do. The music scene is way different in the states and it has its good points but I'm definitely missing NZ's sleepy pace where you can do what you like in your own time.

Here's a couple shots of our time away...

Fiji Customs officers checking our LP didn't contain any dangerous substances.  They're pretty lax in Fiji... one of the officers kept on joking that I was carrying a machine gun or drugs and then he high fived me... so yeah pretty different to the states.

Us waiting for the bus in LA...we were headed down to Santa Monica / Venice Beach.

Most of the band outside a bar in New York on our last night, we were all a bit sad and drunk to be leaving. Eammon our drummer is missing from the photo but he may have been taking the shot.