A rakish guy with ratty bleached hair lifts his t-shirt over his chest and runs the tip of his index finger slowly around his nipple. “Too much information,” he deadpans. “Too much stimulation.” Behind him, a similarly starved guitarist belts his strings on a stage that can be found, in Brooklyn's Williamsburg, through a quiet pizza bar, down a dark hall and past an unmarked door. 

This is where the 2013 CMJ Music Marathon begins.

That's not to suggest this waif's nipple rubbing is the linear origin of the New York City music conference, which takes place in many venues across lower Manhattan and northern Brooklyn every year. The real start to the industry festival occurs some 11 hours prior with this year's first conference panels, inside NYU's Helen & Martin Kimmel Centre, across from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.

High above a city that has opened the gate on its summer humidity and filled itself with pumpkins and fake cobwebs in anticipation of Halloween, a group of music journalists debates the state of music writing in a digital age. Amongst them are Spin's senior editor David Marchese, Buzzfeed's Matthew Perpetua and Billboard's editorial director Bill Werde. Most on the panel recognise a pressure to create click-bait content and the increasing practice (in the US – let's hope) of granting publicists approval of interview-based features; all state their desire to protect the integrity of journalism. The debate doesn't reach the point of confronting the practice with the ideals, though Marchese at least promotes writer-initiated features and cites his own as some of his most widely read work. No one mentions the end of Spin's print publication late last year, and let's not. MySpace's editorial director Jospeh Patel does mention that Kendrick Lamar is now charging for press interviews. There are audible gasps in the audience.

Ghost Wave.

As the afternoon fades, the showcases begin. New Zealand's Ghost Wave, a band mentioned many times in the lead up to the festival, hold an audience of around 50 (good for an arvo set, it turns out) captive in Pianos NYC on the Lower East Side. Beforehand, Florida's Beach Day play distorted surf-pop, ending with the nifty Boys. Ghost Wave, a group of five who look as if they spend most their time down the skate bowl and sound as if they spend most of that time listening to The War On Drugs, sip on Tecate cans, mope around and play slacker psych, all impressively. It has, in the least, been too long since a band has dedicated a male member to the tambourine.

Pianos.

Out in the street, a teenage girl wrestles another to the ground by her hair as their friends shout in a circle around them and a truck driver honks his horn, wanting them to move off the intersection. SoHo's happy hour set smile and point as the girls savage each other.

A short ride on the L train and an ill-informed diversion to a folk showcase later, that bleached weirdo appears at Cameo Gallery, on North 6th in Williamsburg, with his band Big Ups. Named by Brooklyn's street press, L Magazine, as a “must-see” band earlier this year, they're opening the Oh My Rockness showcase, which will later feature Kirin J Callinan and New York buzz band Hunters. “So much yelling,” the weirdo – Joe Galarraga to someone – speaks into the mic between medicated stares and, true, quite a bit of yelling but also a lot of rhythmic mumbling at the tiny, whooping crowd. With a mathy take on Butthole Surfers (if I may), the band cracks the night wide open. The nipple appears; there's a song about rashes, some bowlegged dancing. If anyone knows what heavy rock needs, it's these young jerks.

Big Ups.

Over in the Music Hall Of Williamsburg, the True Panther Sounds showcase gets underway with Lil Jabba, the Brooklyn-based producer reportedly born in Australia and educated in Baltimore. His set is outstanding and far too early in the 8.30pm slot (a man in the audience is charging his phone from a power deck at the front of the stage, and that's all the action), running from militaristic dancehall beats to trigger-happy, cowbell-backed bangers. Back at Cameo, Connecticut's Ovlov continue the Oh My Rockness showcase with capital I indie whining and an adherence to hetero-rock structures that makes them kinfolk to The Men.

Back on the L, a group of teen upstarts step dance and flip from the handrails before holding a hat out to collect exactly nothing from their fellow passengers. Inside the Bowery Ballroom, Brooklyn sister band TEEN are working their way through a fairly tired set of easy-listening '70s pop with a few glam Moog sounds backing the melodies. The room is surprisingly sparse, considering the band's stature here and frontwoman Kristina Lieberson's former life in Here We Go Magic. Perhaps it's that the group made their full-length debut in 2012 and are no longer ripe for a CMJ crowd; perhaps the clean, psych-lite zeitgeist has already become a poltergeist. But, despite my initial reading of the atmosphere as lacklustre a third of the way into the 10pm set, each song raises enthusiastic applause from those around. And we move on…

Over near Pianos, at Arlene's Grocery, LA's The Lonely Wild play a set of brooding, harmony-heavy anthems that allow them a foot in both the folk-collective-revival and country-noir camps and an arse firmly pointed at 2006. A skip over to Pianos finds Montreal's How Sad packing them in upstairs. The room is so crowded it's only possible to see the head of the band's standing drummer as he bounces on the spot, adding a smart backing to ragged new-wave pop that relocates Talking Heads to a kitchen party. (The chequered cloth backdrop helps, too.) Downstairs, following a frustrated and frustrating set from New Jersey's Saint Rich, playing overwrought indie-soul (though they've all apparently come down with a virus, possibly caught at TopMan), Melbourne's Courtney Barnett, backed by Royston Vasie's rhythm section, causes a late rush of bodies to the band room and begins with foot-dragging 2012 single Lance Jr. Conversations die off quickly; it's clear Barnett's recent US press is being backed up amply by her live show. As she winds down, I make my way back along the East Village gutters piled with rubbish bags and drunks to the L stop. It's now 3am; I've been up for 21 hours and running around CMJ for 18.

This is day one of the five-day festival.

Editor's correction: The quote regarding Kendrick Lamar charging for interviews was originally misattributed. The comment was made by MySpace's editorial director Joseph Patel.

THEMUSIC LIVE FROM #CMJ 2013

Day One

Courtney Barnett lands in NYC
Kendrick Lamar charges for interviews
BuzzFeed, Spin & Billboard go head-to-head on 'click bait'
Reviewed: Courtney Barnett, Big Ups, Ghost Wave, Beach Day, TEEN and more

DAY TWO

Savages set an angry tone for CMJ's buzz bands
Smoke rises from Kirin J Callinan's stage

Tweets about "#CMJ"