LimeWire Music Blog

It was about 11:45 a.m. on a late-summer work day, as NYC post-rock, post-punk, post-everything quintet Freshkills (one word) gathers in a mid-sized crowd in the bright blare of the recently-refurbished Staten Island Ferry terminal, looking various shades of confused. Sure, some of the band should be at work right now, in fact one is; others wouldn’t be awake for at least another three hours if they had their druthers. No matter.

Roughly a month previous, the band was contacted by the New York City Parks Department, who, along the Department of Sanitation, are overseers of the rehabilitation of Staten Island’s second-most well-known landmark: the Fresh Kills (two words) land fill. In an attempt to raise public awareness for the future of the vast site, which covers over 2000 acres in the relatively desolate southwest part of the burrough, the Parks Department is conducting tours of the site. Inviting the band named after the site, apparently, proved too good to pass up.

Perhaps unbeknownst to the Parks, though, the name alone isn’t the only reason Freshkills were an apt recipient for a goodwill tour. After all, in an age when a lot of “Brooklyn” bands go out of their way to sound like they’re from Kentucky or whatever bullshit midwestern town they crawled in from 2 years ago, Freshkills have done their time in the city and wear that fact very proudly. Students primarily of New York hardcore and east coast punk and post-hardcore, they have knowledge for and respect of where they came from, geographically and sonically.

Plus, considered in a lyrical sense, the band (Zack Lipez, vocals; Jimmy Paradise, drums; Johnny Rauberts and Tim Murray, guitars; Mitchell Jordan, bass) are adept tour guides themselves, providing glimpses into lives most imagine happen late at night in our fair city – if you dare go. Many of their references to Gotham probably fly under the radar of the city’s many newbies, but, again, the group have earned the right to claim the role of insiders. Hell, anyone who can last longer than a week working at New York’s legendarily-skanky Mars Bar – let alone the 6 years Lipez logged – is clearly more up to the task than most bands representing the City.

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Even New York’s most recent residents, though, are probably – hopefully – familiar with the legacy of uber-villain Robert Moses. Most notably known as the force behind such historical NYC atrocities as the Cross Bronx Expressway and the destruction of the original Penn Station, the city’s most famous non-elected public official also had a characteristic vision for Fresh Kills way back in 1948: fill the waterways and turn it into an industrial park. This was in a time before people understood the ecological significance of wetlands, not that that would’ve mattered to Moses. Still, as was often the case, the “master builder’s” plans never made it much past its least appealing iteration, and, before long, it grew into the largest landfill in the world.

It also remains – along with the ferry – the thing most closely associated with the term “Staten Island.” Even most NY lifers haven’t really visited Richmond County much past the ferry terminal. A maligned bourough indeed. It is ironic then that its biggest blight is on the verge of perhaps becoming its biggest attraction. Well, maybe not “verge.” In fact it’s gonna take about 30 years. It’s the city’s biggest park expansion in over a century. The result will be three times the size of Central Park.

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Q: So, how do you think this tour is gonna go?

A: [The band, virtually unanimously] Awk-ward …

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Not so. For starters, the four tour guides – Raj, Michael, Martha and Carrie – are roughly 20 years younger than you’d expect. They all reside in Brooklyn. They look like they go to rock shows, or at least indie-rock shows. They’ve heard the band, and some seem to be fans. They warmly greet us while still inside the ferry terminal, and both groups identify each other instantly.

Idling outside in a bus lane is “short bus”-style Parks Department tour-mobile, helmed by a driver who oozes old school New York (or just old) surliness without even having to say a word. In fact, he doesn’t the whole time. A cosmic counterbalance to the chipper nature of our tour guides, who self-consciously distrbute some olive green “Fresh Kills Park” baseball hats, with the Parks leaf logo embroidered in a sickly orange. “I’m sure you’ll want one of these!” they knowingly exclaimed, while handing out the shwag to a bunch who have collectively probably never worn a baseball hat in their lives. Nonetheless, the band receives these gratefully.

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The Park: “What did you think when you first got the message from us?”

FK: “We thought you were gonna make us change our name.”

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The tour bus leads down a lumpy road through the heart of several Staten Island neighborhoods. St. George, Stapleton, one named Chelsea, strangely enough. Raj points out a barbershop owned by the Wu Tang Clan. It is surprisingly close to the ferry terminal. On the right passes a bar in a strip mall named “Legends Pub.” To which Lipez says, quietly, “That’s where legends drink.”

Along the route, Carrie explains the history behind the landfill and the plans behind turning into what would easily be the biggest park in the 5-boro area. She explains the political maneuverings that lead to former mayor Rudy Guilani’s closing of the site in 2000, its brief reopening in the wake of 9/11, the topography of the site, how far the smell traveled in its prime (well past the mall), etc. The band receives hand outs illustrating wild life that might seen at the park, including, suitably, a bird named a Killdeer.

About 20 minutes later, the bus pulls into a post-apocalyptic-looking gate into the facility. The bus will make two stops: one at the North Hill and one at the South, via a series of winding dirt roads with fairly high grades. It is a sunny late-summer day, and the band – typically averse to sunlight – soon finds themselves standing bemusedly, majestically on a round hilltop about 200 feet in elevation. 195 feet of it is pure trash.

And it’s slowly sinking. At its, well, peak, the North Hill was taller than the Statue of Liberty. In the 20 years since its closing, it has lost 20 feet of height through the decomposition of its contents. The resulting methane gas is collected by a series of standpipes slowly peeking their way through the surface of the weedy terrain. This is later sold to National Grid to the tune of roughly $12 million / year, or about 5% of the yearly budget to reclaim Fresh Kills. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is no evidence of trash. Or wildlife.

From the vantage point atop the bald, featureless mound, one can see the control tower of Newark Airport to the west, downtown Manhattan to the north, and the parachute jump at Coney Island to the east. Also the east, the “capping” activities are still taking place on the site’s last exposed mound, in the final stages of the “tarp” phase and halfway through the topsoil phase. First, the trash is covered with whatever cheap fill soil the park can get its hands on. It is then covered with an impermeable plastic tarp, to protect the elements and the refuse from one another, slowing the decay of the hill’s contents, and preventing discarded refrigerators from re-emerging, zombie-like, through the surface. Don’t laugh, this has actually happened in previous dump-reclamation projects. Add prime soil, about 2 ½ feet in depth, suitable for growing. Voila, the makings of a park.

Rumors and ideas abound regarding both the past and the future park: there’s going to be sculpture garden, Jimmy Hoffa is buried here, there will live music venue, the NJTransit Light Rail from Bayonne will soon run here. Some bright fellow already used part of the park to cultivate marijuana, and got away with it for a good while. People were – are – afraid to open any of the refrigerators dumped here. As for the trash, that heads south now, Virginia, South Carolina, whoever will take it for cheap.

“So, basically, we’re building another park for the richest borough in New York City.” Lipez points this out, and our guides made no real attempt to deny this. Alas, this was the only evidence of the band’s usual witheringly sharp snap social assessments. Maybe it was the daylight, or the lack of microphones and instruments. Maybe it’s because anyone can get behind a park, no matter where it is.

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So, yes, the park still needs a couple of years – or decades – to realistically be called such, but standing atop the two man-made crests, it was easy to see why the Parks Department is eager to share their vision, even in this embryonic stage.

The band, however, is ready for their close up. Their most recent LP, self-titled, finds the band cultivating a heavy, hypnotic quality (The trance D-minor drone of “I Quit Smoking”), with unusual chord voicings (the confrontational “My House”), alternately pulsing and ominous (live standout “Revelations”). Lipez, already a compelling frontman and lyricist, has never been in finer voice, equally cool and crass, detached and desperate. Freshkills really do sound like a band that couldn’t have come from anywhere else. Recorded by post-hardcore vet Alex Newport (At the Drive In, Mars Volta, Two Gallants), they’ve managed to make their introduce traditional songwriting elements into their material without sacrificing any of their dissonance or dark sarcasm. It’s not exactly daylight music, unless it’s the light of the breaking dawn after a particularly debauched evening you may not want to remember.

And they are is characteristically coy about their decision to use the name, or where their variation – without the space between words – came from. Maybe it was one of those spur decisions no one really thought was a big deal at the time. Maybe they didn’t think they were gonna be around that long. Instead, it’s been 4 years, 3 bass players, 2 LPs. And they’re much closer to the beginning of their career than the end.

After a return trip filled with discussion on New York bands, restaurants and destinations, the tour ends with one last exchange of promotional items: the band offering very sleek new stickers and the Parks Department countering with coffee mugs. “We consulted with a branding manager. They said we should try to minimize the impact of the word ‘Kills.’” And there, on the mug, the city’s most ambitious parks project in a century is revealed to be one word.

Freshkills.

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To see Fresh Kills, the Parks Department conducts tours of the impending park on Saturdays, 10am and 1pm. The tours are free, but reservations are required. Go to nyc.gov/parks to learn more.

To see Freshkills, they are playing roughly 76 showcases throughout the CMJ Festival, including an early (7.30) performance Tuesday with …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead at Generation Records (210 Thompson, NYC). Visit fresh-kills.com or myspace.com/freshkills to learn more.

To see photos of Freshkills in Fresh Kills, check out JackieRoman.com.