This week Peter Bjorn and John put on a surprise show at the First Unitarian Church in Philly before officially kicking off a new North American tour the next day. I already had tickets to see The National play on the same night so I had to skip it.

But I’m sure PB&J did not disappoint, The National set was great, and YouTube has video from both bands.

Videos after the jump … Read the rest of this entry »

The National are well on their way to mainstream rock star status.

Back in June, the Brooklyn based indie rockers played to a small crowd of 300 at Johnny Brenda’s, a small bar venue in Philly. Monday night they packed the house at the 1,000 person capacity Fillmore at the TLA in Philly. The show kicked off the US leg of a new world tour that runs through the end of the year.

They opened up the set with the slow build up of Start a War. By the end of the song, everyone in the band was ripping on something furiously including singer Matt Berninger who was bashing a cymbal on the drum kit with his back to the crowd. It took Berninger a few songs to warm up to the crowd. He was suffering from a nagging cough that had him cringing away from the mic between songs.

But even if Berninger was in a Robitussin haze, it didn’t draw down his energy during songs. He jumped around in fits, eyes closed, squeezing out every lyric with his entire body. The crowd ate it up and cheered him on throughout their set of the band’s songs from their latest album, Boxer, and some from their previous, mostly Alligator. The band sounded great, anchored firmly by the understated but driving drumming of Bryan Devendorf.

The sight to be seen though was Padma Newsome, who is touring with the band on violin and keyboards. He looks a little bit like Gary Oldman playing the role of crazed indie rocker. Every time Newsome picked up the violin he played it as if he was just dosed with a large amount of amphetamines. I found myself staring at him for fear that I would miss seeing him spontaneously combust.

Check out some tracks by The National, and the rest of their tour schedule:
Fake Empire

Squalor Victoria

Murder Me Rachael

Rufus Wainwright and Neko Case will play a free lunchtime concert at WXPN’s World Cafe Live in Philly on Friday 8/17.

The show is hosted as part of XPN’s Free at Noon weekly series. Reservations for free spots to this one ran out pretty quickly on the web site. There’s no telling how the throngs of Ruf-ies will react to the the first-come, first-served entrance setup for the show. If enough fans are mowed down in the melee perhaps you could sneak in without a reservation. But I doubt it.

Rufus and Neko are playing an outdoor show together at the Mann Center in Philly later on the same day. The steep ticket cost completely killed my interest. But it’s sure to be a decent summer evening show if you like either act.

I’m not a fan of Rufus, or any of the Wainwrights really. But they seem to draw out Neko Case and that’s what counts to me. Neko stopped at the Trocadero in Philly in April 2006 with Martha Wainwright, Rufus’s sister, opening in support of the then-new Fox Confessor Brings the Flood album. Martha was a total yawner, while Neko got the crowd excited and played an energetic set. I’m expecting much the same next Friday.

I’ve been preparing for the impending robot apocalypse for a long, long time. But I never expected the robots first move would be to take over music. That was until I saw this video of Jeremy Boyle’s duet, a self-playing guitar and drum set.

Boyle, Joan of Arc techno-rawker and experimental artist, rigged up pneumatic controls to a regular electric guitar and drum kit. The instruments are programmed to play along with each other without the presence of musicians mucking up the process. All the tubes make the guitar look like some kind of evil robot brain on extended life support. The sound is a little sparse in the demonstration videos. The fancy robot apparently hasn’t learned anything like Hot For Teacher yet but the concept is still impressive.

Jeremy Boyle is scheduled to play the chapel room of the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia on Friday August 31st. It’s not clear from the site if the robot band will be on hand for the show. And I’m not quite sure if I want it to be. Something like this is either going to blow my mind live… or it will just plain blow.

Damn you, Ticketmaster!!  Damn you, and your $9.40 PER TICKET “convenience” fee!

I was logged on at 11.59a, reading and waiting for the 12p release of Ryan Adams tickets.  I had them.  Two of them.  And then came the screen with that damn fee.  I faltered.  Stupid stupid girl!  I faltered.  I checked the venue website to see what their handling fee was.  In the meantime, my minute expired and I lost my tickets. No problem, I thought, it’s only 12.05p.  I returned to the start page to take another pair and just that fast:

“There are no events that match your request.”

Are you f@#$ing kidding me?!?!

Apparently not.  I mean, okay… I expected the show to sell out, but 6 minutes?!?!

I blame Ticketmaster, of course.  First of all, there’s nothing convenient about paying $20 extra for two stinking concert tickets.  Second of all, let’s not even get me started on the “pre-order for advance tickets” scam (as alluded to in this post).  Because the fine print was that it was for shows *in the fall* which is kind of easy to overlook when you’re psyched about the show that’s happening in LESS THAN A MONTH!  And finally, Ticketmaster just is an evil evil empire that conspires to keep people away from the shows they really want to go to.

Really, I know it was my own damn fault.  I’m a cheap-ass bastard, and now I’m paying an even bigger price.  Argh!

So, I just made my bi-monthly login to myspace and found out that one of my “friends” Ryan Adams (*swoon*) will be hitting the road at the end of June in support of his new album Easy Tiger. Although I haven’t heard anything yet, I’ve read good things about the album in Harp. And I’ve been wanting to see Ryan live since I first heard Heartbreaker a few years ago. (Yeah, yeah, I’m generally a little behind the curve on some of these things.)

The Philly show is scheduled for Thursday June 28th at the TLA, which seems like just the right venue to me, since its small but not too small, has a couple of bars, some seating, and healthy area for bopping about. But Ticketbastards tells me that tix are gonna run $35 a pop. Okay… it’s no Barbra Streisand price… but that’s a little steeper than I’m used to. I’m also kinda cheap, so maybe the price is just right. Either way, I’m going.

And, Ryan tells me (through Myspace, of course) that I can get advance access to tix by pre-ordering the album at iTunes. Since I’m going to be driving tomorrow at noon when the tix go on sale, I’m thinking this might be the way to go. Otherwise, I’ll go through a sweaty-palmed paranoia all day wondering if it will or won’t sell out before my appointed envoy gets through to purchase tickets on my behalf.