ON THURSDAY NIGHT at the 9:30 Club, young and (mostly) old alike turned out to soak in the feel-good vibes of legendary experimental pysch-noise band Butthole Surfers.

While it's safe to say that the entirety of the audience was there for the performance on stage, only a band like the Butthole Surfers has the ability to bring out an audience that's just as entertaining — which is why I'll review the fans and not the Buttholes.

Continue Reading "The In Crowd: Reviewing the Butthole Surfers' Audience" »

ONE WOULD EXPECT a certain amount of chaos from something called the F Yeah Tour, which staggered into the Black Cat on Wednesday night.

Inspired by the Los Angeles art and music festival of the same name, the tour was headlined by 2007 blog superstar Dan Deacon, featured similarly hyperactive bands such as Matt & Kim, Monotonix and The Death Set, and will likely have reviewers such as myself trying to think of lots of different ways to say "spastic."

There was definitely no shortage of fist pumping, jumping, shimmying and shouting. Visibility was harder to come by. That's because the majority of the acts didn't bother using the stage, instead choosing to set up shop right in front of it, or sometimes directly in the middle of the audience. It made for an evening of massive audience participation and if you didn't happen to be right in the middle of things to see what was going on, no need for concern. (With a good percentage of the audience wielding cameras and cell phones, a quick search of Flickr or YouTube ought to fill in the blanks.)

Continue Reading "Live Review: F Yeah Tour" »

"THIS SONG IS dedicated to the daughters of the revolution," pealed Cyndi Lauper during the encore of the True Colors Tour, which arrived at D.A.R. Constitution Hall on Saturday night.

She ripped into a husky a capella rendition of her bittersweet single "Same Old Story," in honor of the three women who have come closest to sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office: Eleanor Roosevelt, Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton: "Friends tell me you've been around / Big fish in a big ol' town / Gobbled up all in one fell swoop."

That gesture, paired with the lyrical implications of power and struggle, provided a sobering capstone to a four-hour celebration. Although the glass ceiling was not the evening's primary concern, it was referenced often enough to sharpen the focus.

The second year of Lauper's festival brought music, humor and a clear anti-discriminatory agenda to an affectionate, multigenerational crowd. The cross-section of demographics in attendance was asked — vociferously at times — to demand more equitable voting rights in their communities. This meant pleas for more accessible registration and more digestible paperwork. Lauper also trumpeted the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights lobbying group that receives money for each ticket sold on the tour.

Not that the concert was entirely about message.

Continue Reading "Live Review: True Colors Tour" »

TOURING BEHIND ITS supposed industry-revolutionizing album, "In Rainbows," Radiohead played one of the first shows of its U.S. tour on Sunday at Nissan Pavilion.

But instead of a dollop of arena-rock experimentation on a balmy spring evening, fans were treated to a downpour of rain, which was overheard being described as "vengeful" and "deliberate."

The band's decision to play the purportedly environmentally friendly Nissan Pavilion over the more-convenient, Metro-accessible options was ballyhooed across D.C. Internet message boards and blogs upon the show's announcement.

No doubt Radiohead would shed a trail of recycled tears if the band calculated how much gas was guzzled on the long, slow haul to Bristow, Va.

Continue Reading "No Rainbows, Just Rain: Radiohead" »

"I'M A FUTURE FALL OUT STANDING / In the present race I phantom," Jeff Tweedy crooned to a packed-to-the-gills house at 9:30 Club last night.

Phantoms of the past, present and future pervaded a show that chronicled a band's evolution and a singer's checkered emotional past. When Tweedy invited the audience to sing along to the deceptively jaunty "Hummingbird," it felt like an enormous group hug. To wit: "His goal in life was to be an echo / The type of sound that floats around and then back down."

Not that the Chicago-based group has fallen on hard times. Far from it. But on the artistic front, 2007 proved to be a tumultuous year for Tweedy and Co.

Continue Reading "Late Greats: Wilco Live at 9:30 Club" »