Long gone are the days when MySpace was a dirty a word. At this point, the site is so ubiquitous, everyone has just accepted Tom, Rupert and company like they were television. And it is. The convenience of posting and posturing and virally representing oneself and tracking down lost lovers isn’t a trend, it’s a representation of the way of the world. It’s getting dressed in the morning, only online. I don’t even go to bands’ websites anymore—fuck all that fancy flash and pop up windows—their MySpace backslash has everything that a music journalist could ever need. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the dudes throw the best shows, ever…and that’s not just the open bar (and subsequent bottle of Jack Daniels down the gullet) talking.
The first MySpace secret show I went to was the much ballyhooed and promoted Pharrell and friends, back when his shitty album dropped. Held on the rooftop of a parking garage in Hollywood at sunset (on Sunset Blvd.), Pharrell’s friends included Ludacris, Clipse, Lupe Fiasco, Slim Thug and Snoop. It turned out to be my favorite show for all of last year and as much as the lineup, it was the show’s atmosphere. The structure’s roof could have easily held over a thousand people but the MySpacers kept capacity at around 200, creating an exclusive and spacious air so that everyone easily got as close to the stage as they wanted. That was about a year ago and the MySpace secret show has since expanded to markets outside of LA and focused in on mostly emo acts like Say Anything. Last night was the one-year anniversary and the mark was celebrated with a puzzling bill headlined by Clipse and Cold War Kids.
My Brightest Diamond Nights opened the evening’s affairs after an hour of free booze and the perusal of posters from past shows, but I’ll let Giselle touch on these dudes who are so cock rock that they play guitars with their penises. OK, not really.
Thanks, Brandon. So Diamond Nights is the type of band I love to hate on and make fun of—wait, actually that’s everybody. Nonetheless, it’s especially tempting when you wear extra skinny jeans and your legs look like green beans wrapped in stretchy fabric and you’re a dude and you come on stage all shaggy hair and like roar, whaaa, woooo, we sound like Cheap Trick and hipster wink-wink!! (Nobody actually said this.)
But these guys were great and I was totally won over. Mostly due to the Jack Daniels lead singer Morgan Phalen’s entirely charming stage presence that held up to more than a few hecklers and put them in their place by making fun of them. There is a lot of making fun going on with this Brooklyn-based three-piece on Kemado Records and Phalen kept the audience laughing and intrigued throughout the set. You gotta hand it to a band who pen a song called “The Girl’s Attractive,” a title and chorus just subtle and smart enough to balance out the Aqua Net and classy enough to be featured in a Jaguar commercial. Rawr.
Thanks, G.
It’s been really East Coast in LA for the past few days, last night was raining and damn near brick, so the warehouse that hosted the show was appropriately New York. Tall ceilings with exposed beams were supported by brick walls that might as well have been made out of ice blocks. So after My Brightest Diamond Nights left the stage—much to the relief of the thuggish backpackers shouting obscenities at them—it felt like the Clipse could really turn out something special. Everything felt gutter.
Pusha and Malice are relatively notorious for putting on half-hearted, half-hour shows when everything isn’t on the line, but oppositely, stories of epic concerts have been internuts since their We Got It for Cheap series blew up the blogosphere. Blessedly, last night was the latter. Coming out to “Momma I’m So Sorry,” those Virginia dope boys brought every ounce of energy to every song from their critically cummed on classic Hell Hath No Fury (with the exception of “Nightmares”). Running the three-man weave with just two dudes, Clipse darted across the stage for well over an hour playing every cut in its entirety. And then, it was over.
I was probably too drunk to expand further, and this is rambling on in a real surious way and we haven’t even touched on Cold War Kids. Besides, there’s an encyclopedia of words on Clipse. Cold War Kids aren’t there yet, but since we wrote them up last Sep, their press has been pretty unstoppable. Truth be told, I was disappointed with their debut full-length Robbers & Cowards. Rerecording their two EPs felt thrown together haphazardly and even lazy, while simultaneously stripping the songs of their seeming spontaneity. Jangly guitar stabs from Jonnie Russell and awkward inflections from lead singer Nathan Willett ceased to be spur of the moment charming and turned into heavily planned events that felt forced. Of course, the songs are amazing and when not preempted by Up in Rags and With Our Wallets Full probably give first time listeners that same thrill those two recordings still give me.
CWK has since turned into a touring machine, as if they needed to add an extra day to the week (Merbaday? Slomiday?) to fit in all the shows in Los Angeles alone. Last month they simultaneously played residents in LA and New York. However, unlike the recordings, all those shows haven’t changed the feeling in the air that something is special when they grace the stage. Last night, after a show at the Troubadour, CWK closed MySpace’s secret show with a rock n’roll bang. Stomping fun, it was hard not to scream the lyrics like a giddy 12-year-old at a Dixie Chicks High School Musical concert (or whatever it is the kids are listening to these days). Rumor has it that Tom attended last night—he was at the Pharrell show that was mentioned 18,456 words ago—and with parties like these he May actually deserve all those Top 8 placements.
Leave A Comment!