Be Your Own Pet Smacks Around Mercury Lounge
There’s usually not much mystery to a Be Your Own Pet show. You get about a half-hour of nonstop, rapid-fire post-adolescent punk, with lots of shouting and shimmying from Jemina Pearl. There are far worse ways to spend an early evening in February. This Wednesday, however, things went down a bit different. About halfway through the set, some older creep started talking back to the charismatic young front woman between songs. It seemed all in good fun, with the tiny singer (jokingly?) bragging about how she’s been kicked out of bars in Nashville for fisticuffs. The dude then gets up on stage, makes some sort of kissy move towards her, and promptly gets smacked across the face HARD as the rest of the band jumped in to take him down. So yea, it Got Awkward real fast. The band brushed themselves off, shook hands with the pervy perp to call a truce with the intruder, and continued on with the rest of their set. Interesting night, to say the least. (pic via Ryan Dombal's flickr)
Jay-Z "Bleeds it Out" with Linkin Park
Despite the feverish hatertude Linkin Park gets for being a remaining relic of the forgettable rap-rock period in our nation's history, there are few bands left in 2008 that could inspire the obsessive passion these guys summoned last night at Madison Square Garden. The place was LOUD as the band tore through a two-hour set of all their past hits (which is quite a few more than a casual fan would expect them to have), and capped it off with an encore starring HOVA himself. Jay-Z showed no shame as he treated the multi-platinum act as his backing band, tearing through a couple tracks from the mash-up album they put out together. A great surprise for the dedicated fans in attendance. Coheed and Cambria opened the show, playing an impressive set of hard hitting, proggy jams. They closed it out with the epic “Welcome Home,” a song any Rock Band veteran can appreciate.
Radiohead Double Dip at All Points West
The much anticipated All Points West festival announced it's initial lineup yesterday, and Radiohead has been tabbed to headline two of the three nights at Liberty State Park. This will be the first concert at this park since the band was there last in 2001, and the first true multi-day festival the tri-state area has ever really hosted for this type of crowd. So far, the lineup seems small and perhaps a bit underwhelming, but fans should expect additions leading up to the weekend in August. Regarding price, Radiohead insisted that fans pay what they want to attend the fest. Just kidding. Single day festival tix will be $89, and go on sale next Friday. Surely everyone will blame third night headliner Jack Johnson for that.
