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Ringing in the New on the Cheap

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At Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you can hear live music on New Year’s Eve without paying a cover charge. There’s a special kind of pride in keeping the costs at dive-bar level on New Year’s Eve, when prices quadruple at seemingly every place that has a beer tap.

Yes, you can pay $699 for a V.I.P. table at Lady GaGa’s show at Webster Hall, and it very well might be worth every penny. But for $689 less you can see the Figgs, one of the best power-pop bands of the 1990s — and still mighty strong, thank you — at the Trash Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on a bill with Sub Rosa, Heap, D.T.O. and the ’Mericans.

Fittingly, Williamsburg overflows with affordable music. At Union Pool you can dance the night away Gypsy-style with Veveritse Brass Band, and the $10 cover includes a “bubble toast” at midnight; don’t count on Dom Prignon, though.

Zebulon offers the Afro-funk of the Superpowers. Pete’s Candy Store, which doesn’t charge a cover, has the mellow Benjamin Cartel, Brando Skirts and the Crimea, as well as French wine for $6 a glass. Monkey Town, a restaurant and performance space, offers the raw-voiced powerhouse Shilpa Ray, the raucous Wild Yaks and Lone Wolf & Cub, a group with the irresistible lineup of drums, vocals and trapeze.

For Brooklyn lovers who think the words “Williamsburg” and “New Year’s Eve” foretell a kind of night-life torture, there are plenty of bargains in other neighborhoods. In Park Slope the cozy Barbès is presenting “a very Brazilian New Year’s Eve” with Nation Beat. At the Bell House, a new club in Gowanus, you can dance to 1960s soul and R&B and take in the neo-burlesque of the World Famous Pontani Sisters.

In the East Village the entertainment ranges from highbrow singer- songwriters to retro country bands. At the Stone, a tiny but vital shrine to experimental music, Joan as Police Woman plays two sets of her moody, entrancing songs. The fare is a bit more lively at Banjo Jim’s, with the self-described “high-octane honky- tonk” of Sean Kershaw and the New Jack Ramblers.

And looking at the calendar for the Lit Lounge, you’d never guess that everywhere else it’s the most expensive night of the year: the cover is $6, same as ever. The attractions include Henny C, Soundscapes, French Horn Rebellion, Aloke and Action Painters.

At the Living Room on the Lower East Side, the evening of “Auld Twang Syne” — bluegrass and old-timey country and blues — features Fresh Baked, the Second Fiddles, the Friddles, Blue Harvest and the Birdhive Boys, and includes Champagne at midnight. And for those who prefer a little more participation, the nearby Cake Shop will have karaoke well into the night.

How about “Money (That’s What I Want)”?

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