2010

Widespread Panic @ Radio City Music Hall, July 23

Widespread Panic met a bit of a harsh reality in performing at the storied Radio City Music Hall for the first time since July 21, 2007. In stark contrast to their last visit – which was packed with excited folks bouncing off the rafters – the band played to spotty attendance and a largely unenthusiastic crowd. Probably a third of the first mezzanine contained vacant seats and it just got progressively worse as you went up from there. As a result, the energy of the performance ebbed and flowed.

[All photos by Adam Kaufman]

The band played tight throughout the night, but with three new songs that the crowd met with stillness and curiosity as opposed to open arms, the excitement lacked significantly at times. The first set opened with a Heroes > Pleas > Imitation Leather Shoes segment that allowed the band to find both their chops and the lay of the land, but it really wasn’t until the John Bell-led Airplane – a bittersweet crowd-pleaser, as it’s a quintessential song of the late Michael Houser – that the crowd warmed, particularly for the funky JoJo Hermann-led clavinet section.

Beyond Airplane, the band kept it textbook for the remainder of the first set, but the Protein Drink/Sewing Machine closer finished the stanza on a high note. Sewing Machine also got the JoJo treatment, providing a theme for the evening, anytime JoJo’s sound got out front in the mix, the band shined. Otherwise, they felt a bit uninspired, which you can’t fault them for, as the NYC crowd brought their “B” game on this night.

READ ON for more of Ryan’s thoughts on last night’s show…

Words and Images: Benji Feldheim

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010 Day Three

Set three Civil War era cannons to rapid fire and hold the trigger for an hour.

That would be akin the fury produced by Lightning Bolt on the third and final day of the 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival. The Rhode Island duo of frenetic drummer Brian Chippendale, who also yells into a telephone receiver mic sewn into a mask, and Brian Gibson, whose fingers dance up and down a three-string bass set through a bevy of echo and distortion, create a sound that is primal as a caveman trying to fight off a primordial beast with a bone.

But there’s a lot more thought put into what these two produce. Often performing on the floor surrounded by an undulating crowd ebbing and weaving to their attack, Lightning Bolt crafts each noise-screed carefully. During the band’s last stomp on the Aluminum Stage, Chippendale could be seen trading nods with Gibson about points of entry in the song and stopped at the right time.

• Pitchfork Festival: Day One, Day Two

Once Lighting Bolt ended, it was time to head to the woodsy shaded Balance stage for the rest of Surfer Blood. The Florida quartet’s calmer yet even more carefully sculpted rock held a deep contrast to Lightning Bolt, but Surfer Blood fits a distinct sub-theme of the fest: simple, energetic and melodic rock.

READ ON for more on the final day of the P4K Fest…

Lawsuits and rock music have gone hand in hand since the genre started in the mid ’50s. The most recent big lawsuit in the music world comes courtesy of the

MGMT continues to make the rounds on the Late Night TV circuit as the psych-poppers visit The Late Show with Craig Ferguson this evening. This marks MGMT’s second appearance on