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Live From The Barrage

44 by Justin Foley_Archive
LFTB with a big ol' piece in the New York Times.The Fucking New York Times wrote:It was Friday night again, and the men trickled in ” Brian, Ryan, Pat and Tommy ” and joined their friend John at a bar lined with ashtrays, shot glasses and bottles of Irish whiskey.There were microphones in front of each bar stool. œWe re on the air, guys, John said, and so began another episode of œLive From the Barrage, an online radio show and podcast featuring five guys from Queens.That s barrage, as in a bar-in-a-garage that belongs to John Houlihan, 41, who even with a wife, children and a full-time job, would never give up his Friday nights with the fellas.Four years ago, Mr. Houlihan, an operating engineer at Lincoln Center, decided to turn his colorful Friday night hangouts into public broadcasts, something of an on-air happy hour from a wood-frame garage set back from 170th Street, just off Northern Boulevard in Flushing.The hosts are all around 40 and know one another mostly from the neighborhood and from playing together in rock and punk bands. œBarrage could just as well describe the onslaught of acerbic wit and wiseguy Queens attitude that is the show s content, a funny, improvised session that bounces around familiar topics, from music to the New York Mets.There really is no theme beyond œit s Friday night and we re in Queens, which is the show s slogan, minus an off-color adjective. It is streamed live from 8 to 11 p.m. and can also be downloaded as a podcast.The garage was adorned with no small amount of Mets memorabilia, stretching back decades. Flanking a bench were shelves of old records and a neon sign from the Trash Bar, a now-shuttered bar in Williamsburg. Fishing rods were hanging overhead.The space was a repository of œall the garbage the guys wives won t let them keep, said Mr. Houlihan, who salvaged the bar top from a nearby tavern called Michael s Lounge when it closed years ago.There was also a homemade card table, the setting for Mr. Houlihan s long-running Friday night poker game, which starts after the podcast and attracts a new shift of slightly more scruffy local characters who answer to names like Wasabi, Chooch, Fudd and Mikie Big Time.The talk show s live audience is only about 100 people on a good night, said Mr. Houlihan, who does not know ” or seem to care ” how many listeners download the show afterward.But the show manages to punch above its weight when it comes to landing guests. They include Marc Maron, a podcaster and comedian who himself famously achieved a podcast coup by getting President Obama to fly out to his garage in California for an on-air interview last year.In October, the Barrage hosts did a nearly hourlong interview with Mr. Maron after one of them, Tommy Rockstar, 40, approached Mr. Maron at an event in Brooklyn and charmed him into calling in.Other guests have included musicians such as Billy Bragg, Mike Watt of the Minutemen, Daxx Nielsen of Cheap Trick and Steve Albini, a well-known recording engineer. The guest on a recent Friday was C. J. Ramone of the Ramones.The Barrage hosts have also attracted famous names to promote them publicly, including Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys, the singer Huey Lewis and the hip-hop artist Biz Markie.During a recent program, beers were opened and cigarettes were lit as the opening theme was played, an irreverent mash-up of audio bites from previous shows.Wearing a Mets hat, Mr. Houlihan worked a laptop and a sound mixer and ran the proceedings as the group began an hour of their typical rapid free-association banter on topics that included shoveling snow and the death of the character actor Abe Vigoda.But the topics were mere bumpers off which the conversation ricocheted, fueled by the familiarity of the five friends and facilitated by their common interests, lexicon and temperament. Such was their chemistry that an offhand remark might get whipped around the infield and churned into humor, but always flavored with the cynicism of the jaded staff at an independent record store.The second hour was filled by an interview with Steve Tozzi, who directed œRiot on the Dance Floor, a documentary film about City Gardens, a renowned punk rock club in Trenton.As usual, Patrick Walsh, 41, served as something of a dark-humor sidekick to Mr. Houlihan. Brian Musikoff, 43, supplied the indie rock knowledge, and Ryan Collison, 42, a film audio engineer and high school friend of Mr. Houlihan, held a round-robin trivia game.Tommy Rockstar, whose real name is Tom Mikulik, stood behind the bar to direct conversational traffic and then gave a quirky news roundup. He played bass in a punk band called Latex Generation and, perhaps more important, managed to get every original member of Guns N Roses to autograph his arm, and he promptly converted the signatures into tattoos.Mr. Houlihan s garage has no heat, bathroom or running water, and on this recent freezing Friday night, everyone could see their breath. But as the show progressed, the empty beer bottles accumulated on the bar and the place seemed to warm up.Mr. Houlihan tried installing a wood-burning stove once, but got rid of it after it erupted in flames during a show, causing chaos on the air.Now, he said, œif it goes below 20 degrees, we call off the show. Salut, LFTB!= Justin
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