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Had to get a little bit of Tom's Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior wallpaper in there too.

So the Vivian Girls, who are now getting their turn on the hype-machine-massacre internet blog-fuck electric chair, have now been forced to make a public apology for being less than totally reverent towards other people who also play music on the planet Earth. Let's be super clear: These are a handful of 21- or 22-year-old girls being asked to apologize for being "young" and for having "a stupid sense of humor." For which crimes we might as well shut the whole internet down and go back to annoying our friends in conversations remarkably similar to those the Vivian Girls had in the videos they're now being crucified for.

"We are going to be more careful in future interviews" is the new Dylan '65 interview, except terrible. Congratulations.

So the Vivian Girls, that Brooklyn trio whose 2008 debut record is pretty much the equivalent of putting on warm laundry, recently sat down on, variously, a couch, a bathtub, a cheerleader pyramid, and what appears to be a different couch for a series of interviews about hybrid cars, Project Runway, George W. Bush, one of their dads, who "won teacher of the year in New Jersey," Pitchfork, Vincent Gallo, and Applebees. Words were spoken--about the suburbs, about artists who use metronomes, about "normal people," who "go to the bar after work with their co-workers."

Anyone who's interviewed people who get interviewed for a living know the frustrations of these conversations. What inspired you to create this record? "Hallucinogens and Sam Cooke." Why lean wit it first and then rock wit it? Why not rock wit it first? "Because in the dance you lean first, then you rock wit it." People don't actually talk this way--in fact, the most surreal aspect of interviewing someone is that it is like no conversation that exists anywhere else in real life.

Totally almost worth it, slogging through another miserable episode of the single most overrated pop-culture entity in American history, just to get to the last 30 seconds here, wherein Lil Wayne actually deigns to play the kelly-green guitar strapped to his back, a hilariously dainty fingertapping display that's easily the funniest thing this goddamn show has offered us since Sprockets. And you thought Madonna tried to play guitar every once in a while for visual effect. But this, of course, was fantastic, and should thus be a mandatory part of any TV performance for a half-year at least, whether it involve My Morning Jacket, Miley Cyrus, Nas, the London Philharmonic, whoever. This is our generation's version of the Bo Diddley beat. Let its influence spread far and wide.

The very essence of rock. Pics by Chris Owyoung, more below.

Deerhunter
Le Poisson Rouge
Tuesday, September 9

The Internet had conditioned me to expect totally wacky shit from Bradford Cox tonight. Would he stagger out in a dress and harangue us with vile oaths? Burst into tears mid-song in some sort of Cat Power homage? Pull out a laptop and accidently leak his band's next album? A bit disappointing, then, at first, that he's merely a very gaunt (elbows so sharp they probably don't let him on airplanes), very goofy (he does a great impression of Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder) dude. Yeah, he treated us to a "drum solo," and there was a terrible death-metal interlude, but that was during the encore, after a quite enjoyable hour of Gawky White Guys With Guitars Revue.

The thing about Isaac Hayes that we'll struggle mightily to replace, if we ever manage it at all, is his mastery of the pre-song monologue. (He died Sunday, in Memphis, at 65.) "I Stand Accused" is a desperate love song that moans on for over ten minutes, but within 1:30 it's already broken your heart: "You and John are real tight, aren't you?" Isaac asks, addressing his unrequited beloved, casually and somberly. And then: "Oh, is that an engagement ring? Oohhhhawwwww. Congratulations." This dude is top-5 all time based entirely on the way he says "congratulations." It's devastating. Not that R. Kelly or Ne-Yo or whoever don't have their charms, but this sort of thing nowadays is played entirely for laughs: Isaac rambles on here for nearly five minutes before he even bursts into song, and the tension never breaks, the smirk never comes. And when he finally does let 'er rip? You realize just what we've lost.

Below is "Simultaneous." We're not likely to replace that, either.

Spencer (above) and Dan prog out. Pics by Rebecca Smeyne

Wolf Parade
Terminal 5
Thursday, July 31

The notion that Wolf Parade, a defiantly prog-ish concern powered by carnival keyboards and strained, intermittently melodic yelping, could fill a 3,000-capacity shed with crowd-surfing, fist-pumping minions is bewildering to some people—particularly to the five guys in Wolf Parade themselves. Spencer Krug (the carnival keyboard guy) just stared in profound bewilderment as one surfer had a spastic, joyous freakout during the slow, knotty, meditative "Fine Young Cannibals"; after the slightly louder, faster, thrashier coda inspired some tentative moshpit action, he quietly admonished us, Ian MacKaye-style. "Be nice to each other," he said. "That song wasn't even that fast."

This is labeled "The Oshiterati," hahahahaha.

Let's not mince words here: Stage Dumps compiles live photos of popular musicians rocking out so intensely that they appear to be soiling themselves. These photos are accompanied by puns on the band's/musician's name or body of work, e.g. "Blown Iver," "Fartattack and Vine," "In on the Smell Maker," "Porta-John Darnielle," "Greetings from Assbury Park." I'd like to offer my profound gratitude to Christopher R. Weingarten, he of Paper Thin Walls, for alerting me to this; "this guy is going to get a $250,000 book deal," he notes, with admiration.

The happy couple, in happier times. CRED

A magnificent Radar article on the bizarre and tragic love affair between Throbbing Gristle mastermind/all-purpose provocateur Genesis P-Orridge and Jacqueline Breyer (a/k/a Lady Jaye), who died last October.

Honorable Voice associate Jonathan Cunningham, toiling for New Times Broward-Palm Beach, notes N.O.R.E.'s gala appearance in a BangBros porn flick. I'm too scared to click on that actually.

Brooklyn Vegan posts a photo of Ra Ra Riot cellist Alexandra Lawn; commentators are seized with brutal spasms of lust and/or rage. Representative samples:

i'd bone it, pipe it, hit it, stripe it,

clip it,
whack it,
flip it,
smack it,

club it,
poke it,
rub it,
smoke it,

flail it,
lick it,
nail it,
stick it

most importantly, i'd tenderly caress it and whisper joni mitchell songs into it and feed it peach sorbet.

As I read comments on this site, I often find myself gleefully envisioning concentration camps and gas chambers brimming with all the vapid, sexist, racist, illiterate, materialistic, shallow, moronic assholes who post here. Is this wrong? No, it's not.

So we've come to the final weekend on Broadway for Passing Strange, the robust coming-of-age rock musical masterminded by wily rock-soul-funk-folk-weirdo Stew. A brief but eminently respectable run, it had: To wildly generalize, it's basically The Hold Steady: The Musical, given Stew's half-sung, half-carnival barked delivery and half-celebratory, half-rueful tales of youthful indiscretion. (Often in Amsterdam.) "Keys" was a monster.

A bummer if you missed this, but Spike Lee is apparently filming the production tomorrow, so look for some Netflix- or Tribeca Film Fest-worthy fanfare somewheres down the road. And don't feel too bad for Stew, who is taking the proverbial long view about it all:

I learned a thousand or so things about all aspects of my craft, and life, from being up here. But the most important thing I learned, for the purposes of understanding how I feel right now, is that I am NOT a Broadway baby. I was born to do many things but I was not born to be here. So I am indeed going to be happy to have my life back. Heidi and I have many projects that require our attention and we are excited and eager to get to them. And I want to spend real time with my loved ones, both here and in Berlin where I live. And I want to book a gig at some really out of the way dive in some deep, dark corner of New York Town and make a hellishly melodic, soulful noise all night long.