The Other Side of New York

by

Fischerspooner

Edit

The idea behind this CD/DVD dualdisc is that an artist (or pair in this case) would offer a guide to the best of the "bleeding edge" of their city, along with a great mix of tracks. Put out by Time Out magazine (a fixture here in NYC, and elsewhere I presume), I had envisioned this as some sort of edgier Lonely Planet-meets-Back to mine, with a DVD tour to the city in question by the artist. What it turned out to be as a little more disappointing.

You get a twoisided "dualdisc", with a mix CD on one side, and a DVD on the other, as well as an foldout insert that includes a partial map of Manhattan below 59th, parts of Queens (enough to point out PS1), and an equally small part of Brooklyn (mostly Williamsburg, if you couldn't guess) and their attendant subways. On the reverse side from the map is a Time Out style listing of bars, clubs, restaurants, galleries, hotels, shoppping, and "illicit" establishments (including the much-derided Museum of Sex). There are also a handful of picks from Fischer and Spooner listed seperately. The places reviewed are listed (by color and number) on the subway map, and it seems like it would be easy to navigate once you understand the subway system. Also, bear in mind that all of these reviews and trends will be outdated in a couple of months - Time Out NY comes out every week for a reason.

Next up the DVD. This includes many of the same listings as the insert, as well as several videos, which are nice (and a way to justify a DVD I guess). but basically useless for review purposes. Some places in the videos (like Junior's or teany) aren't listed in the insert or on the map. The whole DVD seemed a bit poorly executed, to be honest, and rather disappointing.

Taken together the review bits are nice, and I plan to check some things listed in them out, but I'm not sure that I couldn't have found all this out just by buying the latest copy of Time Out New York or one of its competitors.

Lastly, the music. If you've been wanting Fischerspooner's own Softcore Jukebox, this is it. I would have thought it would be cooler if it had more New York based musicians, but whatever. Overall, I liked it, and would probably have liked it more if I didn't already own some of the tracks on it. No faults here.

I'm always looking for new things to do and see, so I thought that a compilation CD mixed in with a DVD guide to Fischer and Spooners' New York would be very cool. What ended up happening is that the artists (apparently) had very little input into the small guide/review section. This was a cool idea, but Time Out or whomever just didn't take it very far. Buy it if you want the music, but most people could probably have guessed that anyway.