Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In the wake of the mainstream success of New York bands like the Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, there arose a new crop of indie musicians hoped to make it in the Big Apple. This time, the center of the scene was no longer Manhattan. It was Brooklyn. So says author Ronen Gavoni, who has written a new book about the indie music scene in Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014. It's titled Us V. Them: The Age of Indie Music and A Decade in New York. In it, he spotlights indie musicians like Nida, Parts and Labor, Weyes Blood, and more musicians who helped make the Brooklyn scene something special. He also writes about how music blogging culture, particularly Pitchfork, helped bring Brooklyn indie music to the attention of lovers everywhere. Ronen will be speaking tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene. The event will include live music. First, he joins me to discuss. Nice to meet you.

Ronen Givony: Thanks for having me, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, what do you remember about the indie music scene in Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014? What venues did you love? What musicians did you see? Give us a call at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can join us on the air. What questions were you most interested in answering when you started working on this book?

Ronen Givony: This era that I think, for a lot of people, is often summed up by bands that you mentioned, the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol. For me, I was someone who got to New York in about mid-2004 or 2005, and a lot of those bands had already happened. The venues and artists that were most exciting were based in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. There were a lot of DIY unlicensed venues existed along the Williamsburg waterfront. I was curious how that came to be, what was behind its rise and fall, and where all that stands today.

Alison Stewart: What was special about that decade, 2004 to 2014?

Ronen Givony: There were several things. The easiest way to put it is that it was the last analog era. We're talking about a time that was a little bit before when the iPhone started; certainly before social media and streaming. People really had no alternative except to create community and culture face-to-face and person-to-person in these small, sweaty rooms. It was really contingent on cheap rents and old industrial buildings that had been converted. Frankly, it being the right time at the right place.

Alison Stewart: You write that 2009 was a year that really solidified Brooklyn scene. Why was 2009 so special?

Ronen Givony: I would say that there were musically a handful of records that came out. That was the year of really big albums by Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, and Dirty Projectors and the xx, when indie music as a whole was really penetrating the mainstream. More locally, that summer, that was when Grizzly Bear played a show on the Williamsburg Waterfront. They were introduced by Chuck Schumer.

It was when Jay Z and Beyonce, who were a couple months off of having performed at the Obama inauguration, came. It was this coronation in a way. We didn't know it at the time, but that was both the pinnacle and the beginning of the end a little bit for this scene.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about the new book Us vs. The Age of Indie Music and A Decade in New York with author Ronen Givoni, and he's speaking tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene at 7:30 PM. Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. You can call or text our number, 212-433-9692. What do you remember about the indie music scene in Brooklyn from 2004 to 2014? What venues did you love? What musicians did you see? We'd love to get you in on this conversation. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. What neighborhood in Brooklyn are we talking about during this time?

Ronen Givony: I would say that the nucleus of this was certainly in Williamsburg. It was on this stretch of Kent Avenue and South 2nd. It was this one building that was actually office space for the Domino Sugar Company. That was taken over in stages. The first venue was called Glasslands. The second one was called Death by Audio, and the third one was called 285kent. More broadly, this stuff was happening in Greenpoint, in Bushwick, in Gowanus, in Red Hook. Williamsburg is used as a shorthand for this, but it was borough-wide that this was happening at the time.

Alison Stewart: Around the 2000s, major labels were facing huge challenges. How did the weakness of record labels influence the indie scene?

Ronen Givony: This was definitely an interval you would call post-Napster and pre-Spotify, when the major labels were essentially staring down the barrel of being endangered. Somewhat surprisingly, this role was filled in by corporate brands such as Red Bull and Scion, which were giving millions of dollars to legitimately underground countercultural music. At the time, it was something that was looked at a little bit askance, I think rightly so. Now, a lot of people are feeling its absence.

Alison Stewart: I'd love for you to read a little bit from your book about what Brooklyn was like. Can you go for it?

Ronen Givony: Love to. Thank you. "The last place I'd expected to find a counterculture was Michael Bloomberg's Cronut Craze New York. But that's exactly what I found on stage and in the crowd at Union Pool, Galapagos, Southpaw, Northsix, Zebulon, Monkey Town, Secret Project, Robot, Tonic, Roulette, Goodbye Blue Monday, Studio B, Cake Shop, Pianos, Glasslands, Barbés, Death by Audio, Market Hotel, and 285 Kent. In the unlicensed venues of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Ridgewood at Lofts in Gowanus, Studios in Bushwick, Discos in Bed Stuy, and Temples in Fort Greene. At Empire Fulton Ferry Park, among 77 drummers on 7707.

At the Mermaid Parade, the Block Parties, the Pool parties, the North Side Festival, the Siren Festival, and the night Daft Punk brought a pyramid to Coney Island. The only limitation was your own stamina. On a Tuesday night in Williamsburg, you could choose from six or seven shows within a quarter-mile radius. It never took long to find someone you knew, because no matter where they lived, you always ended up along that singular strip of Kent Avenue where it was both a party and an experiment in self-governance every single night.

The rooms were muggy and constantly congested. The sound could be dicey, the bathrooms were unspeakable, and everyone stood or found a seat where they could. We were not there for the amenities. We were there for the bands, the company, the alcohol, a chance to meet an interesting stranger. The atmosphere was part of the allure. Beer was from a can, and booze a plastic bottle.

Compared to Manhattan, the scene in Brooklyn felt more unsupervised and lawless, like the adults had left the kids and gone on vacation. The floor was usually sticky. The bouncers were blase, the smoking band loosely enforced. When the musicians were on stage, the sound would rumble through the walls, out the front door and off the adjacent buildings."

Alison Stewart: That was Ronen Gavoni reading from his book Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (2004-2014). Let's talk to some listeners. Let's talk to Joe from Long Island. Hi, Joe. Thanks for making the time to call All Of It.

Joe: Howdy.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Joe: I was calling to shout out the World Inferno Friendship Society.

Ronen Givony: [laughs]

Joe: They were crushing it in Brooklyn at the time-

Ronen Givony: [laughs]

Joe: -Rip Cloth shows were some of the best I'd ever seen. I grew up on them. I just wanted to get that name out there, and hopefully, more people find their music.

Alison Stewart: Thanks so much. You laughed when you said that name.

Ronen Givony: What Joe is reminding me of is that if you ask 10 people what their five favorite bands in Manhattan were, everyone's going to say the Strokes. Everyone's going to say the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. In Brooklyn, if you ask the same question, you'll probably get between 30 or 40 different bands just because there was such an amazing wealth of stuff going on.

Alison Stewart: We got a Texas says "Galapagos before it was legit and they still served homemade pot brownies."

Ronen Givony: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Brian from Dobbs Ferry. Hi, Brian, thanks for calling all of it.

Brian: Hello. Thank you for having me. I wanted to second World Inferno. That was my youth. Jack Terracloth taught me how to have a misspent youth for sure, so rest in peace to him. I also wanted to mention Japanther, and that time he played the Jeffrey Deitch projects at that swoon opening in the back of a U Haul truck was phenomenal.

Alison Stewart: Brian, thanks for calling in. I did want to acknowledge, and you acknowledge in the book that the scene was very skewed towards white men. You write in a long list, you said Sly and the Family Stone, Death and Bad Brains, Prince, Tracy Chapman, and Meshell Ndegeocello, Living Color, Fishbone, Body Count, and Rage Against the Machine. The roots of rock are overwhelmingly in Black American music. Then why was the age of Indy, the Shins, the National Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Vampire Weekend, at all so white?"

Ronen Givony: How much time do you have?

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Ronen Givony: That exerpt is from a chapter about a band called Dragons of Zinth. They were the little brother band of Teeth on the Radio. It would have been very easy to write a book about these 10 years in Brooklyn and center it on 10 white indie bands. I specifically chose not to do that because I felt that the scene was something different and tried to frame it that way.

Alison Stewart: How do you think the lack of diversity limited the kind of exposure that people had?

Ronen Givony: There were a lot of blind spots. There was a liberal provincialism where those people may not have thought that they were excluding anybody. You could easily make the case that a first-time person would go to Death by Audio or 285 Kent and maybe not see a ton of people that look like them. That was a big function of where the music scene in general was at the time. There was a lot less diversity. There were a lot less artists of color. I pointedly ended the book with an artist who represented something different from that strain.

Alison Stewart: This says, "I was one of the two original percussionists and background vocalists in Park Slope for the band Chicha Libre. We played at the amazing venue Barbés every Monday night from about 2005 through 2009. Exciting period in that scene. This one says [unintelligible 00:11:51].

You write a little bit about politics in the book. How do we see the influence of politics, given this period of 2004 to 2014?

Ronen Givony: The book just came out on Tuesday. This is one of the unintended ironies of it. You can't really think about this era in America and in art and culture without talking about what was going on at the government level. This is a generation came out of a decade of peace and prosperity. Within 18 months, you had September 11th, you had the invasion of Iraq, you had the establishment of the homeland security apparatus. All of that was expressed in different ways in music during the next 10 years.

You could have made the case that maybe thee couls have been more of it. I wrote about a band called Parts and Labor that had a record called Mapmaker that came out at the nadir of the war in Iraq.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Gabriella in Washington Heights. Hi, Gabriella, thank you so much for making the time to call All Of It.

Gabriella: I love this conversation. It's making me nostalgic. I love Galapagos. I love Barbés. I met my husband around 2008, and he lived in Greenpoint. I'm a little older than him. I'm a Gen Xer. When I used to visit him. The vibe of Greenpoint reminded me of the East Village in the '90s.

The other thing that came up was I remember when we went to see this Grizzly Bear concert on the park near Williamsburg Greenpoint. I remember Beyoncé was there, which was this great crossover. I also remember those Grizzly Bear haircuts that all the men had that were like Cedar. Everybody is like it's just like all the [unintelligible 00:14:07] of time.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Sue from Brooklyn. Gabriella, you have a point you want to make?

Gabriella: I love your show. I moved to Williamsburg in 1989 and lived there for 20 years. I was there when Bloomberg rezoned. This book sounds great, but I feel like there's something that hasn't been said enough about how Bloomberg ripped the guts out of that neighborhood. It was full of musicians and full of artists. It continued a lttle bit. Hos gook goes after the rezoning. Vasically, Williamsburg is nothing now. It's a shell.

What he did transformed culture in New York. I moved here 50 years ago, and New York was a place where you could afford to live. Part of that was part of Williamsburg for the 20 years we lived there, and people who moved in before us. That's all just been so destroyed.

Alison Stewart: You brought me to my last question. Thank you so much. I'm going to dive in. That was going to be my last question. Why doesn't it exist anymore, the scene?

Ronen Givony: As the caller pointed out, this book always had two things I wanted to start with. One was the Republican Convention in 2004 here in New York. The second was in 2005 when Bloomberg and the city rezoned Williamsburg and Greenpoint. That was the beginning of how all these glass condos went up, and everybody being priced out. That is the perception of the Bloomberg era now, much more so than the artists and the musicians, is that the High Line and Hudson Yards are the version of New York that has been stamped from that Bloomberg era.

That is why I wanted to write this, because it was happening alongside all of that. You might even say that it was an unintended accelerant of some of that gentrification. It was absolutely a before-and-after thing, as you say.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York. It's by Ronen Gavoni. Is that right?

Ronen Givony: Givony.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. Givony. Thank you so much. You have an event tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene at 7:30 PM. Who will the music be by?

Ronen Givony: From Dan Friel of the band Parts and Labor, who I wrote about. I'll be in conversation with fellow author Nabil Ayers, the president of the Beggars Group, US.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for joining us.

Ronen Givony: Thanks for having me.