Blogs

No Doubt/Paramore
Jones Beach Theater
Saturday, June 27

"I always thought I'd be a mom" is not the most obvious applause line at a rock concert. But when Gwen Stefani cooed just that in the middle of the conflicted 2000 power ballad "Simple Kind of Life," the thousands of girls-- teens with teens, teens with moms, twentysomethings without moms-- that filled up the Jones Beach Theater on Saturday roared in approval. Much of the gut acknowledgment was thanks to simple tabloid recognition--people know Stefani has delivered a couple kids since "Simple Kind of Life." But her life doesn't seem to be less complicated. After becoming a bare-midriffed tomboy-feminist icon with mainstream pleas like "Just a Girl," Gwen got the husband and the family while becoming even more famous and touring the earth as a solo artist over the last five years or so. She had it up to here, then she went ahead and did something about it.

via dennischang's photostream

Dinosaur Jr.
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Thursday, June 25

Dinosaur Jr. did bring up Michael Jackson from the stage last night, frontman/guitar wizard J. Mascis muttering something about Farah Fawcett and MJ and, later, when Lou Barlow took requests: "What are we gonna play? 'Billie Jean,' perhaps." They did not, thankfully, covers of Michael Jackson at this stage falling definitively into the too soon category, along with pedophilia jokes and plastic surgery jokes and Mark Sanford jokes and the Funk Flex ticket giveaways that kept interrupting HOT97's tribute on the radio last night. The audience responded with respectful silence, mostly, silence being a relative term when you're at a Dino Jr. show, and feedback is a screaming constant, even between songs.

via brianwferry's photostream

Little Joy
Bowery Ballroom
Tuesday, June 23

Introducing Little Joy's final number at the Bowery Ballroom last night, multi-instrumentalist Binki Shapiro invited up some "very special New York friends." They turned out to be Regina Spektor and the Strokes' Fab Moretti, a sometime Little Joy bass player currently sitting out the band's current tour in order to record with his main outfit. Both sang the chorus to the band's most joyous song, "Brand New Start." Spektor looked like a shy NYU grad student pulled onstage, despite having headlined a massive Beacon Theatre show earlier in the month for which Little Joy opened. Moretti was less reserved, draping his Fonzie jacket over singer Rordrigo Amarante and signaling flames over Amarante, mock Hendrix-at-Monterey.

Mr. Johansen, holding court in South Carolina. CREDIT

New York Dolls/Black Joe Lewis
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Monday, June 22

The New York Dolls -- the two original dudes with the good fortune to still be alive, plus three sonically and sartorially like-minded newer recruits to replace those original members who were much less fortunate -- will take no offense if you prefer the thrillingly brash, iconic garage-punk version of "Trash" that appeared on their 1973 self-titled debut to the slowed-down, hammed-up ska remake that graces this spring's Cause I Sez So, their second reunion album, which vacillates between the thrilling garage-punk that made them famous and stranger, more disquieting flights of fancy like, say, doing a ska remake of one of their most famous songs. Tonight they mash both versions together into one unwieldy but energetic beast, our two survivors --cuddly guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and lithe, lascivious Lou Reed/Gumby hybrid frontman David Johansen -- prancing nonchalantly about, the guitars roaring quasi-melodically as usual, and this whole thing continues, against all odds and to their infinite credit, to not feel like a travesty.

Phoenix
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Thursday, June 18

For some, this Phoenix show is probably over before it even really starts, as the five guys in the band emerge from the Music Hall of Williamsburg's blue-lit backstage shortly after midnight and launch right into "Lisztomania," their loose-limbed monster summer jam turned YouTubed token of Williamsburg self-regard. It's clean and soaring and a bit businesslike, really, and now the song's ended already, and we're relieved of our own personal fear that some pack of kids were going to clear space in the middle of the floor and start doing coordinated Brat Pack dances. Not so--although a pleasant-seeming girl will later twice gain the stage to dance sensibly in front of first the drummer and then Thomas Mars, the front man, before being dragged off by an increasingly exasperated bouncer. But she seemed sweet, basically.

via EAR FARM's photostream

Jonathan Richman
Bowery Ballroom
June 18

"Blame me, don't blame them", said Jonathan Richman about a third of the way into his close to two-hour set last night, "I did it." Sweat was beginning to prickle the crowd, and the rare funk of grown-ups could no longer be ignored. Jonathan enthusiastically confessed that he'd had the air conditioning turned off in the name of ambiance, something that means a lot to him. "I got a plan when it gets too hot, though, I got a secret plan." Immediately playing an extended version (with reprise!) of the eternal party starter "I Was Dancing in The Lesbian Bar" did not seem like that good of a plan.

"The first time I fucked my wife I had an open sore on my cock."

via [ello]'s photostream

Yikes--Kevin Smith, doing work

"Silent Bob Speaks"
Carnegie Hall
June 17

The expression "like an open book" should be updated to reflect the startlingly full disclosures Kevin Smith has been offering his fans over the past few years through his online diary, Twitter account, SModcast, bestselling memoir and, most recently, his live "Silent Bob Speaks" performance, which played to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall last night. But whereas most cases of celebrity over-sharing come off as mindless exhibitionism, Smith's divulgences seem generous--a gift to the sizable portion of his audience that takes a near-scholarly interest in Smith's day-to-day activities, from the directorial (he's currently shooting A Couple of Dicks with Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis) to the lavatorial.

Major Lazer
S.O.B.'s
Saturday, June 13

At 2AM, as you wait, making listless small talk, for the belated arrival of a band that may or may not even really exist, it suddenly becomes very easy to believe that someone is fucking with you--cosmically, or maybe even out-and-out personally. Major Lazer, the ontologically vague dancehall pastiche project by--depending on who you believe--a one-armed Jamaican commando zombie or the human DJ duo of Diplo and Switch, is taking a long time to manifest itself, whatever it is. We are long past a scheduled 1AM start time and, short of a brief and confused bout of emo shouting by Brooklyn's lil'est toaster, Ricky Blaze, the stage is graced only by a floor-to-ceiling video of an unspecified country's Carnaval, year and date unknown.

Allen Toussaint
MetroTech Center
Thursday, June 11

It is 12:15 p.m., ominous and overcast, and the emcee is stalling by announcing that he's stalling, complaining about the Mets, complaining about his pants. New Orleans r&b legend Allen Toussaint will be out shortly. A crowd of quiet, seemingly disinterested folks in lunchtime mode loiter about in the MetroTech square/park/commons, lounging in green patio chairs, dreading the imminent threat of rain and/or the end of their lunch hour. It is uncertain if this show has brought them here. Tough room. But Allen saunters out, slides into his piano seat, commands his 80 percent smooth/20 percent funky backing band, and plays it. "There's a party going on right now," he sings, and over the next hour and a half this will seem less and less delusional.

Surreptitiously taken with an Apple product.

Sonic Youth
Soho Apple Store
Tuesday, June 9

"It's so quiet," says Kim Gordon, and it instantly gets even quieter, everyone instinctively inhaling with anticipation, because Kim's not one for banter unless she's thought of something profound.

"One would think it's a temple to technology."

And as the tittering laughter subsides, we're off to "Anti-Orgasm," in all its full-blown, full-volume electric mayhem. I am sitting +/- seven feet from Thurston Moore's amp, a thrilling and transcendent experience that will hopefully grant me some sort of psychic power to compensate for my hearing loss. The vast majority of us are seated, in fact, in what is indeed a temple to technology, in a space more commonly given over to Mac OS X Leopard Workshops. Our opening act: "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" commercials. We're past the point, I think, of sassing Sonic Youth over shit like this. Not that they ever cared.