After The Jump Fest returns to Brooklyn August 28th-August 30th

Just in time for the tail end of summer is After The Jump Fest starting the night of August 28th and lasting through that weekend. Having personally met some of the organizers, they rock hard. And it's all to benefit the teaching of music to the young'uns. From their press kit:

"After the Jump is the joint effort of 22 New York City music bloggers, writers, djs and
photographers- a coalition whose websites attract over 1.5 million viewers per week and
have won such awards as VH1 Honors, Billboard and NME Best Music Blog. Founded in
2007 with the goal of helping new artists gain exposure while raising money for struggling
school music programs, After the Jump has hosted over 50,000 attendees with media
coverage in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Village Voice, The Guardian
(UK), Spin Magazine, New York Magazine, and many others. The group has planned
and staged concerts in association with the massive South by Southwest Music Festival in
Austin, TX and the CMJ Music Marathon in NYC as well organizing the huge, multi level New
Year's Eve events for The Knitting Factory in 07' and 08'. In addition to these amazing
satellite events, After the Jump's yearly New York Summer music festival completed it's
second year this past June with 36 bands playing on 4 stages in a massive block party that
drew a crowd of over 2,000."

"After the Jump productions is proud to support two New York City based music charities, Education through Music and DonorsChoose.org. • Education through Music was founded to promote the integration of music into the curricula of disadvantaged schools in order to enhance students’ academic performance and general development. Many schools, especially those serving children in low-income communities, provide no music instruction or rely solely on short-term programs that do not serve every student. ETM created a comprehensive program that incorporates music into the education of every child, including those with special needs. ETM forms long-term partnerships with inner-city elementary schools that lack the resources to develop schoolwide music programs. (www.etmonline.org) • DonorsChoose.org connects students in need with the resources that our public schools often lack. On the website, teachers submit project proposals for materials or an experience their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals (known as Citizen Philanthropists at DonorsChoose.org) choose projects to fund. Any individual can search such proposals by areas of interest, learn about classroom needs, and choose to fund the project they find most compelling. In completing a project, donors receive student thank-you notes, classroom photos, and a Teacher Impact Letter. (www.donorschoose.org)"

Talk about grassroots! They need your donations and sponsorship if you're interested in you know, the well being and health of children. If not that's cool, you can still check out a serious amount of performances throughout the weekend. There will be enough non-prescription horn-rimmed glasses for you to either geek out with or smash "accidentally."

Considering it's not Labor Day weekend but I mistakenly took it for Labor Day weekend up until last month, you schedule should be free.

You can check out Littlefield in Gowanus on Yelp here.

Do it for the kids.

Fuse TV covers Bonnaroo to look legit (even though they ain't no more)

Bonnaroo, the festival that smells of something fierce, is going on right now in my birth-state of Tennessee. Home smelly home. It like many festivals has grown from a jam heavy collection of bands like The String Cheese Incident to a more diverse lineup of indie, rock, and rap.

While Phish is still around, they'll be joined by the likes of Snoop Dogg this year, and Fuse has all your coverage since you're probably reading this from the comfort of home. Fuse used to be a great alternative to MTV and VH1 years ago but with the changing technology has become a shell of it's former self really in providing quality music programming. Sure they still play videos sometimes, but there's not much effort in it. Their Bonnarroo coverage last year was pretty good, and I'm assuming this year will be pretty polished as well. Fuse is no longer alternative though, either on TV or online. They don't seem to dig deep to find great music programming; instead, the need from corporate parents and the need to connect with an ever shifting audience kind of puts them under W-GAP (who gives a poop). Take a look at their TV lineup: it's full of paid programming, Loaded half hours that are hit or miss, and repeats of over-saturated bands.

Backstage Passport was pretty sweet but oh so brief. Maybe I'm just biased because I like a lot of punk music.

Anywho, TV-boredom not withstanding, they are going all out for the best of Bonnaroo this Saturday, so if you're staying in, you might want to flip to Fuse at 9pm for updates, performances, etc. etc. Online Fuse will be doing the same. Best of usually being of course the biggest bands (I'll recind that if they show smaller performances that rock), but as I said, last year's coverage had some really nice performances. Good music is good music. Fuse just isn't an avenue for it most of the time. Below is their "cool" promo video: