This band is back on the Market!
Punk outfit Titus Andronicus will make its return to Bushwick’s Market Hotel for a pair of shows on Oct. 7 and 8, marking the act’s first performances at the grungy space since the venue reopened last year — six years after the city closed it for operating without a liquor license. The band cut its chops at the original bare-bones bar before it hit the big time, and the band members say they’re curious to see how the permit-carrying Myrtle Avenue venue compares to its raucous former self.
“I’m eager to see what degree of magic they can capture from my younger days,” said lead singer Patrick Stickles, who lives just across the border from Brooklyn in Queens. “It was a very exciting, sort of a lawless, Wild West situation.”
For many, the venue’s closure signaled the end of the local “do-it-yourself” scene — centered around bands playing in unlicensed venues and producing albums themselves on minimal money and equipment — but Titus Andronicus is out to prove that the spirit is still alive and rocking with its new live album, “S+@dium Rock: Five Nights at the Opera,” which the group recorded during its run of five sold-out shows at Shea Stadium in Williamsburg at the end of July.
The series was modeled after the era when big acts such as Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones would sell out huge arenas for several nights in a row — except instead of playing to an arena full of fans, Titus Andronicus’s residency took place in a small, steamy space (“stadium” is meant to be ironic) with a bunch of punks moshing on a bouncy plywood floor.
“It used to be a lot of bands would be selling out five nights at Madison Square Garden or something like that,” Stickles said. “We were trying to recreate that sort of experience but on a smaller, more manageable scale for our modern environment.”
The album is a blistering Cliffs Notes of more than 10 hours of tunes from Titus Andronicus’s hard-rocking catalogue, recorded at Shea Stadium’s in-house booth for the live album, which is accompanied by a full-length concert film.
And fans can expect a no-holds-barred performance from the band’s members during their back-to-back homecoming shows, said Stickles, holding nothing back in his description of what will go down in October.
“We’re just going to do what we always kind of do,” he said. “Just going to grip it and rip it, just going to put it all on the line, shouting and yelling, hopping up and down — it’s gonna be loud.”
Titus Andronicus at the Market Hotel (1140 Myrtle Ave. at Broadway in Bushwick, www.marke
