A two-alarm fire broke out at Roseland tonight around 10:30 (originating on the mezzanine level) and was contained a little over an hour later; the latest report at the moment says six firefighters suffered minor injuries, but thankfully that's the extent of it. There was no show happening, thank god -- the next gigs scheduled are the Dropkick Murphys Thursday and Friday. More on this as events warrant -- in the meantime, let's thank @balzerdesigns for the best photo Twitter has to offer at the moment:

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​Longtime SOTC readers will recall our undying obsession with the Janelle Monáe live experience -- as bewitching as her critic-beloved 2010 full-length debut, The ArchAndroid, might have been, you haven't truly "gotten" her until you've seen her onstage, howling and pogoing and (climactically) stage-diving, just as she did Sunday night during her Grammy-telecast performance with Bruno Mars and the magnificently be-monocled B.o.B. Now Bruno and Janelle are banding together for a joint tour, dubbed Hooligans in Wondaland, that will apparently start in NYC, with a May 4 date at Roseland. Tix should be on sale late next week; in the meantime, relive that Grammy moment below, and appreciate anew the fact that, as our Grammy live-bloggers rightfully noted, Janelle bodies it.

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Rivers Cuomo, still a sex symbol. Pics by C.S. Muncy, more below.

​Weezer
Roseland
Saturday, December 18

Better Than: Doing Make Believe in its entirety

It's Saturday night, so Rivers Cuomo is makin' Louise. "Hop on board the Weezer Time Machine!" he bellows, to an absurdly packed Roseland crowd here on the second night of the Memories Tour Driven by State Farm (featuring some sort of photo booth and samples of a disturbingly aquamarine-toilet-water-colored Vitamin Water flavor, neither of which I want anything to do with), comprising back-to-back full readings of the band's self-titled 1994 debut "Blue Album" (Friday night) and 1996's reviled-then-deified follow-up, Pinkerton (tonight). But first, a suite of career-spanning songs Rivers and the boys seem to enjoy playing way more.

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Katy Perry, making bad jokes about big guitars. Photos by Lauren Duffy.

​Katy Perry
Roseland Ballroom
Monday, November 8

Better Than: Pretty much anything else you could do on a Monday night in NYC, give or take the Odd Future show.

Last night, brazenly over-sexed singer Katy Perry--just back from her European tour and a recent wedding--took on Roseland Ballroom for a concert to promote the newly released Windows 7 phone. The Candy Land-themed stage glitz was enough to get the teenagers in the audience riled up before the show even began, soliciting shrill screams from the girls and wildly inappropriate catcalls from boys who were probably too young to be out on a weeknight anyway. The theme for tonight was bubble-gum pink--dancers in fluffy tutus, back-up singers donning cotton candy wigs, with Perry's arrival marked by a gigantic cake rolled onto stage. The thing exploded, of course, shooting a million pounds of confetti into the air and revealing the starlet squeezed into a purple dress, covered in cupcakes.

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Not My Chemical Romance

​'Tis the season for super-goofy, radio-station-helmed holiday shows that corral together often wildly disparate acts in the name of yuletide cheer and forced promotion, and while Z100's Jingle Ball is the mother of them all (could a preview of the Dream/Kardashian musical be in the cards this year?), look out for RXP's corker of a Roseland Ballroom show, uniting two of New Jersey's finest young(er) musical exports for what promises to engender one of the most awkward backstage handshakes of all time.

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Clearly reaching for Daft Punk-ian heights. Pics by Chris, more below.

​Deadmau5/Erol Alkan/Afrojack
Roseland Ballroom
Friday, October 29

In the 1920s, the Roseland Ballroom was known as "the home of refined dancing," playing host to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. These days, Deadmau5, a dude in a giant, lit-up mouse head, plays techno for a few thousand E'd up teenagers. My, how things can change in 90 years.

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​The concept: Weezer spend two nights in each city, two sets per night, the second set both times consisting of "greatest hits" (I'm quoting here, not scare-quoting) and tunes from their new Hurley, which is evidently not disastrous, and begins with the song "Memories," as in "Memories/Make me want to go back there," which explains the first set: Their self-titled "Blue Album" debut in its entirety on night #1, and the once-maligned, now-deified Pinkerton on night #2. Yes, it's "THE MEMORIES TOUR" DRIVEN BY STATE FARM®, and it will be arriving here, appropriately, just before Christmas:

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It makes total sense to her, probably. Photo by Palika.

​Honestly, I'm not quite sure where to begin with last night's Paper magazine event at the Roseland Ballroom, featuring Rye Rye and Ke$ha -- before I get into how immeasurably pissed off I get about having to substitute the "s" in Ke$ha with a dollar sign, I figure I should begin with some positives.

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Take it from a man who would know--this might take awhile.

Erykah Badu does many things well--otherwordly r&b; superlative hat-wearing; even reenacting JFK's assassination in the nude. She's a never less than incendiary live performer. But one thing Badu is not good at is showing up on time. To anything. Ever. As our own Rob Harvilla put it once: "You need to see Erykah Badu live as soon as possible. It's ludicrous. Just prepare to wait awhile." A whole new mob of fans learned this to their chagrin last night at Roseland, where the lady did her normal thing, and kept her fans waiting...and waiting...and waiting. With the advent of Twitter, however, the irate fan never suffers alone. Want to know the mood in Roseland last night, pre Badu's inevitable redemption? Read on for dispatch after dispatch from the void. Or better yet, print this out, and save it as reading material for the next time you're going to see her:

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Thom does "Everything in Its Right Place" Monday night

Thom Yorke/Atoms for Peace
Roseland
Tuesday, April 6

Let's talk about Flea. He looks, at least initially, ridiculous. Thom Yorke solo is a dense, dour affair, taking the electro iciness of Radiohead's "Idioteque" and turning it even darker, colder, and further inward, and in Atoms for Peace he has assembled the least joyful funk band of all time -- Nigel Godrich on keys, Joey Waronker on drums, Mauro Refosco on various exotic percussion -- to fully explore the sumptuous sourness of his 2006 solo record The Eraser, which both ain't bad and ain't no picnic. Except now Flea is up there, wearing a shirt for once, bouncing wildly about as if he's grooving to "Hump de Bump" or "Sir Psycho Sexy" or whatever. It's hilarious, and initially the worst thing about this show, until you slowly realize it's quite the opposite.

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