VIDEO: Friendship Quest Fest Keeps the DIY in NYC
Posted: by The Editor
New York City is not the easiest city to make DIY music in, so it’s extra-heartening to see when people in New York try to keep the flame of DIY music alive. Enter Friendship Quest Booking, run by Max Narotzky, who also makes music as Ultra Deluxe. I first met Max at a Friendship Quest-booked show to go see the Columbus, Ohio punk band Wasp Factory play. It was in a basement in a house in Bushwick and I was thrilled to experience such DIY rock vibes in the über expensive heaven slash hell that is Brooklyn. And I had such a fun time at the Wasp Factory show that I asked Max if I could shoot a future Friendship Quest show and interview them for the Alternative.
Hence this mini-doc of Friendship Quest Fest, which happened in October of last year in the basement (love a basement) of Hart Bar in Brooklyn, and featured nine bands, both touring and local, including a band that came all the way from Leipzig Germany! It’s almost FORTY MINUTES of footage from the show, including a chat with Max about their punk house roots, multi-genre “weird music” booking strategy, and tips for how to get into a DIY scene yourself while also giving back to your community.
There are performances by Vi Viana of Gutless (Florida), Awful Din (Brooklyn, New York), Pocket Gum (New Jersey), Kerosene Heights (North Carolina), H.C. Behrendtsen (all the way from Germany), Gre/ay (Pennsylvania), California Cousins (Rochester, New York), Ultra Deluxe (Brooklyn, New York), and Fear Not Ourselves Alone (Queens, New York). Watch the video, enjoy the show, support your local scene, yadda yadda, you know the vibes!
Here are linktrees and Bandcamp links for all the featured acts:
Video directed and edited by me, Molly Mary O’Brien. Thanks 2 Chris Wade for additional camera work.
Molly O’Brien | @missmollymary
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