@heidivanderlee/Instagram

Last night Public Assembly hosted the afterparty for the premiere of Hit So Hard, a documentary about former Hole drummer Patty Schemel; the marquee act for the evening, a group called the Trinity Jam, consisted of Schemel, bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, and guitarist Eric Erlandson—the three people who backed up Courtney Love in Hole during most of the Live Through This aftermath. (Last night's event was one of a few recent ones paying homage to the band's history; a week ago Thursday, Erlandson and Auf der Maur promoted Erlandson's alt-rock memoir, Letters To Kurt, with a performance at the Union Square Barnes & Noble.) As it turned out, Courtney happened to be in New York CIty yesterday, and she popped up onstage for two songs: The beauty-queen-nightmare chronicle "Miss World" and "Over The Edge," a cover of the 1983 track by the Portland punk legends the Wipers. Video below.

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At this weekend's Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, Q-Tip brought out a few guests (Black Thought, Busta Rhymes), and among them was Kanye West, who performed a couple of his own tracks, assisted Q-Tip on "Award Tour," and took a flying leap into the crowd. The camera weaving in and out of the lower-right corner of the above shot is proof that the event was pretty well-documented, but the above clip has a nice chunk of the cameo. (Good thing that those rumors of Q-Tip not performing at the fest didn't pan out, eh?)

Willie Davis

4Knots Music Festival: Dan Deacon, Yeasayer (DJ sets)
Saturday, June 16
4Knots Indoor Lounge

Better than: Going home and passing out.

In my coverage of the 4Knots main stage, my "critical bias," as named at the bottom of these write-ups, has been fairly obvious—almost so obvious that it's been kind of difficult to state it in the clever, self-deprecating manner that the format requires. So, again, I'll foreground that bias and note that I'm getting paid to write this by the dudes who hosted the whole shindig. But I'll also add a biases into the equation. Like, for instance, the fact that by the time Yeasayer began spinning records I had consumed too many drinks, complimentary or otherwise, to remember much about their DJ set besides some sort of Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth mashup. And I missed entirely the work of BRAHMS, Punches and Finger on the Pulse. Plus I was kind of tired (the curse of arriving on time).

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@covermesongs/yFrog

Hell of a segue there.

As if the crossover appeal of Adele's inescapable "Rolling In The Deep" hadn't been well-documented enough, last night's Patti Smith show at Castle Clinton reportedly had a cover of the thundering breakup anthem. I am not the sort of person who often goes "whoa" at things—being on the Internet for as long as I have, plus just being tired—but, well, this is sort of unexpected. According to one attendee, Smith "forgot the words but it was kind of adorable"; another reported that she called it the song of the summer, which, well, I'd argue that it was also the song of the winter and spring too, but yeah, it probably will take the "summer jam" title when all's said and done. (Sorry, everybody.) Kind of can't believe that nobody's posted video of this event yet, so consider this post as a call for someone to come through. [HT: @clr]

Money, honey.

The "Hallmark holiday for music nerds" festivities of Record Store Day are a little less than 36 hours past, and as predicted, the speculators and collectors were out in full force on Saturday. And some of them are already seeing returns on their waiting-in-line investments! eBay's search engine turns up quite a few completed listings with "RSD" in their title, with surely more lurking under misspellings like "RDS" or dispensing with the branding altogether. The spendiest item so far? The limited-to-500-copies Ed Banger Bee Sides box set, a five-disc set of one-sided etched 7-inches that has a Justice demo and four other tracks that went for £497 (which comes out to about $810.36 on our side of the pond--and that's before shipping).

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Twitpic via @oakroomny

Lady Gaga superfans would be advised to just generally stake out the Oak Room on Wednesday nights during months that the fame monster is not on tour--after guesting during pal Brian Newman's residency there back in September, she reprised the cameo last night, surprising an unsuspecting audience with an ocean of fake tan and covers of both "Someone To Watch Over Me" and "Orange Colored Sky." Someone got it on YouTube, naturally:

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In retrospect, this one was not unforeseeable, given that last night's lineup at the Bell House was headlined by Bert Jansch, a not infrequent Neil Young tour partner and buddy, and supported by the Pegi Young Band, which of course is fronted by Young's wife. Brooklyn Vegan even touted the rumor in advance. Still, pretty exciting that Young came out and did the whole set with his wife's band. Video below, though honestly, we're not even sure which one's Neil (the guy on the left, right? They all look the same!):

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This is pretty much what it was like

So Jeff Mangum played a bunch of Neutral Milk Hotel songs in a Bushwick loft on Saturday night, for a crowd of around 75 people, you not among them. The show was partly set up by Ba Da Bing Records guru Ben Goldberg, who has a lot of explaining to do, so we thought we'd reach out and (politely!) inquire about his guest-list machinations, why he tried to keep everyone from documenting it (only a partial success), and how life-altering an experience it was, exactly. Here are his thoughts/apologies.

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We feel bad for Jeff Mangum, who probably has some trouble leaving the house in this city without people acting a little strange. So we respect and applaud his decision to return to the stage in secrecy, as he did on Saturday night, when he played ten Neutral Milk Hotel songs to a delighted audience of 75 people at The Schoolhouse. Among them was a bootlegger, of course, who captured the second half of the below setlist, according to Pitchfork:

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The real star of this week's Village Voice. Don't miss 1:00 to 1:20--capturing it on camera changed my life. Also, his dancers are amazing.

Andrew Hieb is a 12-year-old Juggalo from Rock Springs, Wyoming, a town with a population of "approximately 20,000," according to the city clerk's office. His favorite subject is math--at the end of this past school year, he'd finished the curriculum for kids two years his senior. He wears glasses, pauses to think before he speaks, and invokes Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch--except that his hair is twisted into menacing mall braids and he uses words like "ass" and "fuck."

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