Patrick Stump, Om'Mas Keith
Joe's Pub
Sunday, April 10

Better than: Watching his YouTube medleys at home with your cat.

His band Fall Out Boy's on hiatus, so lead singer Patrick Stump has gone solo, releasing an EP (Truant Wave) that puts aside his band's punk leanings and adds funk and soul elements to its pop backbone. Stump took the stage at Joe's Pub on Sunday night in a tux, white moon boots and fingerless leather gloves; a quick glance at the alabaster-skinned singer might bring to mind Justin Timberlake comparisons, except Stump's stage antics were so impeccably choreographed and his voice so genuinely able that the crowd gleaned his vibe immediately.

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​Yesterday, it was announced that Jay-Z would be joining U2 on the band's five-date tour of Australia come November. It makes sense: in addition to commingling at the top of the Forbes 2010 Music Earners List, Jay-Z and U2 have performed together before--more than once, in fact. (Never forget the Brandenburg Gate atrocity of 2009.) Bono, for his part, has long since found his way into rap's highest circles; consider, if you dare, this photo of him dripping sweat all over Swizz Beatz. But it's Jay's penchant for collaborating with rock's most excruciating artists that's the depressingly familiar piece of news here. Think this is the first time Jay's lent his impeccable brand to rockers who have no business borrowing it? From Linkin Park to Chris Martin to Lenny Kravitz to "the Grizzly Bear" and beyond, Jay's been making debatable rock-related decisions like this one for what seems like forever now. You doubt it? Doubt no more:

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Courtney Love isn't entirely feeling this whole performing live thing anymore. The recent incarnation of Hole played three shows at SXSW--the first of which, the Spin 25th anniversary performance was pretty bad-ass, haters be damned--but her Holeness was miserable. "In Austin, I hated every minute of it," she says in this oddly compelling video interview. "I had a little implosion down there, a little bit of a nervous breakdown." Not out of character, but perhaps doing what Love described as "the worst show I've ever played" in front of Larry Flynt homie Woody Harrelson and his puff-brother Matthew McConaughey, will do that to do you. Truth be told, the far-worse opener of that second Hole show--which was better than Love made it sound--was a very skinny, very awkward Patrick Stump, who in his solo live debut, managed to unplug his guitar in the middle of a song and abort the performance after only three songs. Even the footage is uncomfortable to watch.

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You may have thought, when you saw Fall Out Boy's Lil Wayne-featuring "American Suitehearts" remix floating around the internet, something like: Lil Wayne will be rapping. Maybe you thought: That rap-rock track from Timbaland's last solo record, also featuring Fall Out Boy, was totally abysmal. But that would be severely underestimating the man who wrote "Hot Revolver," easily the strangest, most complicated, unfathomable rock song by a rapper, ever. Which is to say that although Wayne cannot save "America's Suitehearts," not really, he can in fact raise his voice in garbled, horse, throat-scraping polyphony right around the 2:11 mark, an android Cookie Monster reaching for the stars high and bright above, the tail end of his outcry flickering, sputtering, like fireworks even now disintegrating across the night sky.

Every week, Sharon Steel watches the Real World Brooklyn so nobody else has to. Last week, Chet acted like a boob instead of touching one. This week, everybody's favorite MTV Morminator interviews Pete Wentz.

Pete Wentz and Orville Redenbacher

A disturbing, self-motivational movement has swept up The Real World: Brooklyn roommates and made them want to, like, do stuff other than drink their faces off and fuck each other. Episode Five revolved around three boys, their silly pranks, heavy emotional burdens, and an Epic Fail dream or two. Scott, a/k/a Zach Morris, would like his roommates to stop behaving as if they're in a close-knit high school clique, and instead compliment his abs more regularly. Idiot King the Bard put his music on hold out of respect for a very sad anniversary. And Chetubular the Morminator takes the lead as our terribly precocious ingénue, truly putting Carrie Bradshaw to shame this week. Watch out, Whitney Port, you cow-eyed vixen, you! Oh, sugar, we're so going down. I'll explain this and much more in our weekly recap, so throw on some classic Fall Out Boy and click on this shit.

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Jersey hardcore punks Lifetime had an immortal run in the mid/late '90s; their template, as much or more as anyone else's, was the final late-stage emo adaptation that set the table for the dudes who would almost make money playing similar music--the Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World--and then finally for those who actually did make money: Fall Out Boy, Paramore, All-American Rejects, etc. Lifetime were not around to take part.

The band broke up in 1997 after a particularly great show, right around the time their third record, Jersey's Best Dancers, came out. 2005 reunion shows birthed a 2006 reformation. In a turn I'd like to call baffling but which actually made tremendous amounts of sense, Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz was the guy to come in and offer a record deal. After issuing a defensive statement ("Pete and Decaydance are giving us an opportunity to the make the record we want to make while still staying in control of our music and our lives...") Lifetime accepted the offer, and recorded 2007's Lifetime, an actually pretty solid quasi-hardcore record that disappeared straight into the ether, probably because it was on Decaydance, a label that had very little to say to the people who'd loved Lifetime in the first place.

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Photos also by Ryan Dombal

Fall Out Boy
Nokia Theater
Tuesday, December 16

"You motherfuckers don't know what Twilight is?!" That's Pete Wentz joshing with the audience after his reference to the famed "vampire romance novel" was met with shrugs. He sounded surprised. Maybe he shouldn't be. "Sugar, We're Going Down" broke three years ago, and there's a big gap between freshmen and juniors--between Twilight and Anything But Twilight. Right now, Fall Out Boy are trying to bridge that gap: the same one that swallowed Blink-182, and twisted Green Day into Hall of Fame devotees. They just might pull it off.

The four friends from Chicago's upper crust were celebrating their new LP, Folie à Deux, which is about as self-consciously absurd as its title. It features a string interlude, Elvis Costello, and an immense power ballad with its own career-spanning reprise (all mercifully absent from the gig, btw). But Folie à Deux doesn't court Grammys as much as it fucks with convention to suit its own snottiness. Wentz is a dad now, but he'll still make a Bush/ShoeGate parody and post it on his blog.

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Just to prove I wasn't lying, behold this raw, evocative footage of the FOB dudes leading a lovely a capella version of "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy" at Washington Square Park Monday afternoon, right before they wussed out on their planned "secret" concert there for cop-related reasons. You'd think news of a trip to the pokey would make for splendid new-album promo, but evidently not. Anyway, this video I think nicely defines the Fall Out Boy dynamic: Pat does the yeoman's work of actually performing, Pete looks pretty and aloof, the other two guys just stand there and look like roadies.

Pete Wentz fights authority, but, well, you know. Pic by Jesse Reed, more below.

From up close -- or rather, from a slight distance across Washington Square Park on a dreary but unseasonably warm Monday afternoon -- the Fall Out Boy dudes all look like down-on-their-luck alt-rockers kicked out of Weezer for dressing too homely. (This is true even of Pete Wentz, who looks like he tried to cheer himself up after getting kicked out of Weezer by getting a haircut and buying expensive sunglasses.) Unfortunately, making juvenile attacks on their appearance is the only thing any of us get to do today: FOB was scheduled to play a "secret" show here at 3:30 sharp -- they had a guy tuning up multiple acoustic guitars laid out on a picnic table and everything, as a small scrum of excitable young folks milled about nervously and stared at him -- but this plan was evidently squashed by the authorities, who also milled around nervously/authoritatively.

Fuckin' cops.

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