CMJ Snapshot: From Online to On Line at Savages Show

Chad Batka for The New York Times Savages onstage at Glasslands Gallery.

Taking note of distinctive scenes at this year's CMJ Music Marathon.

Dan Kaslow had never been to the Glasslands Gallery, the no-frills performance space in an old industrial building at 289 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. But he wanted to hear Savages, a new all-female postpunk group from London, so he made the trek from his home in Maplewood, N.J. He didn't expect what he saw when he arrived shortly after 8 p.m.: a line stretching down the block and around the corner.

“It must have been a buzz event,” said Mr. Kaslow, 61, a marketing consultant, exasperated after waiting for more than an hour to ge t into the club. “I'm here. What am I going to do? Go back to N.J.?”

A bouncer brushed by Mr. Kaslow, moving along the line, his baseball hat askew and his jaw set. “If you are not on the guest list or don't have a ticket, you are not getting in,” he bellowed. The line stirred and rippled as he passed, like some long unhappy beast with a thousand legs. Even those people who had bought expensive passes for the entire festival - supposedly good for entry at any show - were being turned away. Others thought they had made reservations for the show because they had signed up on the club's Web site.

“I R.S.V.P.'d to their Web site - apparently it doesn't mean anything,” said Mike Knoll, a 29-year-old philosophy student who had driven down from his university campus in Albany just to hear one of his favorite groups, Dum Dum Girls, play.

The cause of the excitement was a lineup of six female-heavy bands that had become much discussed during the first day of the CMJ Music Marathon. Put together by Popgun publicity and the music blog Stereogum, the bill not only had Dum Dum Girls as the headliners and Savages as one of the opening acts, but featured Guards, Io Echo, Port St. Willow and Icona Pop, which is a new Swedish electro-pop duo. It was the hottest ticket to have on the second day of the festival, and hundreds of people showed up, many of them thinking they would automatically get in.

Such scenes are not uncommon outside Manhattan clubs and theaters, but Glasslands, which until a couple years ago was an unlicensed bar on a dark industrial street, rarely sees that sort of traffic. In recent years, the club has made the transition from a grimy underground performance space to a grimy (licensed) bar, with a solid reputation for presenting new and original bands. It still retains the rough-hewn feel of its illegal days. (It still sells some beers in aluminum cans and has several toil ets crammed into an odd closet-like space behind the bar, separated by flimsy plywood stalls with no faucet in sight.)

No matter. It was still Eden for those locked out. The music fans outside, many of them in fashionable clothes and carrying iPods, texted furiously and worked connections in an effort to get on the guest list, while every time the door opened a blast of music reminded them what they were missing.

Across the street folks too cool to stand in line were smoking and watching in the anxious crowd. Some threw up their hands and went into 285 Kent, a performance space next door that had a hip-hop show. Others in the line made the calculation that it was better to head over to the Brooklyn Bowl, where another slate of hip indie bands were to play. “It's almost empty over there,” one woman said to her three companions, as they deliberated whether or not to take off.

Others had faith. These tended to be among the better-looking people in the line . Alessandra Santi, 32, a furniture company executive from Italy with striking features, said she had shown up at the club at 6:30 p.m. to buy tickets but was told the event was sold out. Still she stood in line for more than 40 minutes, waiting and hoping enough people would trickle out so she and a friend could plead with the gatekeepers to sell them tickets. “I'm sure we are going to get in,” she said, beaming. “I'm very positive.”