Photo: Crothers/FilmMagic

At 4:20 p.m. yesterday, while moe. doodled on a series of winding tunes, those close to the stage at the Earth Day on the Mall concert in Washington, DC, got a glimpse of some unusual items being frantically unloaded: a giant pair of hands, a massive orange ring. There was no mistaking it — the Flaming Lips‘ gear had finally arrived, just 25 minutes before they were due to hit the stage in front of the gleaming Capitol. While techs scrambled, Coyne vamped by chatting with fans and amping up Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson’s speech, waving his giant hands in the background. Just before set time, he enveloped Jackson in a giant-hand hug, in what had to be the oddest photo opp DC has seen in quite some time.

The Lips’ set began just as the day’s first raindrops arrived, but drizzle didn’t prevent Coyne from climbing inside his giant bubble and tumbling out into the crowd, standing triumphant in a little globe as the day focused everyone’s attention on the real one. Coyne sprayed the crowd with confetti as “Race for the Prize” kicked into gear, which was followed by the (thankfully not literal) “Lightning Strikes the Postman.” The set included the Lips’ bloopy, fabulous cover of Madonna’s “Borderline” — released on vinyl as part of Record Store Day — and ended with two of their best-known tracks: “She Don’t Use Jelly” and “Do You Realize??,” the latter of which has its own political significance in Oklahoma, where it was recently proclaimed the official state rock song. (more…)

Photo: Stephanie Berger

Although you could hear the eerie, creeping and tantalizing sounds being made by Sonic Youth, legendary Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Takehisa Kosugi at the start of their performance at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music Saturday night, you could not see them. The eclectic group of musicians were silhouetted behind a large white canvas while the youthful fit dancers of the Merce Cunningham dance company cavorted, leaped and spun around on the stage in front of them with inhuman precision, grace and control.

“Nearly Ninety” is Cunningham’s newest work — an evening-long performance and celebration of his 90th birthday, which passed last Thursday, on the night of the show’s first performance. Sonic Youth, Jones and Kosugi (a composer associated with the Fluxus movement as well as Cunningham’s longtime music director) composed the work’s experimental score in the same vain that John Cage once used to compose for many of Cunningham’s previous works: sometimes meandering and obscure to sometimes dissonant and fierce. (more…)

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Three separate times during his band’s sold-out show in New York last night, Dave Matthews posed a simple question to the audience: “Who starts a tour at Madison Square Garden?” It was as if it was the first time the Dave Matthews Band had ever played the legendary venue. And from the sound of the first few songs of the show, DMB seemed as if they were genuinely nervous playing in front of 20,000 fans, despite rocking the room numerous times in their career. The group kicked things off with some relatively mellow versions of “Don’t Drink the Water,” the dirgey “Raven” and their new single “Funny The Way It Is” (off the upcoming Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King), a funked-up, time-shifting number that sounds like it’s in need of some more road-testing.

But mid-way through the gig, Dave Matthews and his band — violinist Boyd Tinsley, guitarist Tim Reynolds, drummer Carter Beauford, bassist Stefan Lessard and brass players Jeff Coffin and Rashawn Ross, who have joined the lineup since LeRoi Moore died last year — cranked up the heat. After a breezy run through the lovely “Pig,” Matthews brought on special guest Gregg Allman, who, Matthews said, “happened to be in town tonight.” With Allman on acoustic, the crew ran through a stellar version of “Melissa,” with Reynolds delivering some nimble slide-guitar work. Perhaps inspired by Allman’s guest appearance, DMB finally caught fire. (more…)

Photo: Diaz/WireImage

Green Day played the third and biggest show of their week-long tour of the Bay Area on April 14th, performing the whole of their imminent new album, 21st Century Breakdown, at the Fox Theater in the band’s hometown, Oakland, California. An opulent, newly restored 1920s movie palace, the Fox was the perfect — and perfectly ironic — setting for Green Day’s 18 new songs about flaming youth and social collapse. The band’s two club shows last week were, by all reports, raw, thrilling test runs of the material under combat conditions. The Fox gig — with theatrical lighting and arena-pow sound — brought out the 3D dynamics in the songs and gave singer-guitarist-songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong a stage big enough for him to indulge his inner Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey combined.

Photos: Inside Green Day’s Hometown Throwdown

After only eight full rehearsals of the opera and those two club dates, the six-piece Green Day — Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool with guitarist Jason White, keyboardist Jason Freese and guitarist Jeff Matika — had the Quadrophenia-like hang of 21st Century Breakdown’s classic rock melodies and lifetime-punk drive down solid. “I”m not fuckin’ around,” Armstrong crowed in “Horseshoes and Handgrenades,” and there was no insecurity in the way he acted out the burning rage in “Christian’s Inferno” (standing on a monitor speaker, arms outstretched like a human V-for-victory sign) and hissed the threatening vocal bridge in “East Jesus Nowhere” like hell in eyeliner. (more…)

Photo: Michael Jurick

In 1990, a teenage upholsterer and would-be priest named John “Doc” Gillis landed his first musical gig drumming for the Detroit cow-punk band Goober and the Peas. Twenty years later, Jack White III was back behind the kit last night at New York’s Bowery Ballroom with his newest band the Dead Weather, a black-clad squad featuring singer Alison Mosshart of the Kills, Raconteurs bassist “Little Jack” Lawrence and Queens of the Stone Age guitarist-keyboardist Dean Fertita. As the band’s first official show (Dead Weather debuted at a private Nashville gig in early March), it was a big bill for a small room: The 600 capacity club sold out in minutes, and was packed shoulder to shoulder despite the fact that the Dead Weather’s debut album Horehound doesn’t come out until June (read about it in our Spring Album Preview).

(Get a first look at the Dead Weather onstage in photos from last night’s gig.)

If last night’s tunes (”60 Feet Tall,” “Bone House,” “Rocking Horse”) were any indication, Horehound is bad-news music: a collection of overdriven dirges replete with Zeppelin-esque lurch, chainsaw guitar riffs, static-lacquered vocals and low-frequency buzzes. White is enjoyably loud and loose as a drummer (surprise), and the fact that he’s toured extensively with Fertita and Lawrence in the Raconteurs couldn’t be more obvious. Recently formed bands don’t play with this kind of spite and swagger. They also aren’t usually afforded lead vocalists as brazen as Mosshart. A perfect hair-tossing, chain-smoking, stage-prowling analogue to White, Mosshart didn’t so much sing lyrics as spit them out like accusations. (more…)

The Moore Theatre in downtown Seattle is a sit-down venue, but you’d never know it judging from Franz Ferdinand’s performance there Monday night. The Scottish quartet’s 85-minute set had a road-tight feel, despite the show being the kickoff of the group’s U.S. tour, and the audience reacted in kind, standing throughout the set.

Playing in front of a back wall of white video/light-show panels, the group walked on and with zero fuss kicked into “Do You Want To,” the hit from 2005’s You Could Have It So Much Better, Franz’s second album. Singer-guitarist Alex Kapranos — simple and stylish in blue slacks and a black button-down with small white dots and plaid lining visible on his rolled-up sleeves — was wiry but contained, moving plenty but always in control, not unlike Franz’s music itself. (more…)

Photo: Davis/Getty

Attending Dead shows is like riding a bike: you never forget how to do it, you try to remember enjoying the ride, but you also hope not to crash and burn (always a possibility). So, as a veteran bicyclist Deadhead (somewhere around 170 shows, though none since Jerry Garcia’s 1995 passing), it was interesting to look out at the sold-out crowd gathered for the opening of the Dead’s reunion tour at the Greensboro Coliseum on Easter Sunday and see how the novices took in the scene.

Photos: The Dead’s Tour Opener

They were hardly a majority, but they stood out — sometimes by their age, more often by their ears (a delayed recognition of songs, only passing attention to the jams that are the Dead’s raison d’etre). They’d sing along heartily to “He’s Gone,” which inevitably evoked the late great Garcia, whom they may never have spent time in an arena with; but when it came time to the ensuing blues groove, on which erstwhile Allman Brother and Gov’t Mule Warren Haynes proved himself far more than just Jerry’s stand-in, they’d be back to chatting and basking in the smells and colors.

The newbies could be forgiven their sensory overload, though. The energy of the occasion howled “Welcome Back!” with a wonderful insistence. (more…)

Photo: Oliver J. Lopena for RollingStone.com

Death Cab for Cutie kicked off their U.S. tour last night with a stop at Philadelphia’s Tower Theater, a converted movie house with acoustics ready-made for frontman Ben Gibbard’s supernaturally clean and earnest whisper. Gibbard, recently engaged to fellow indie icon Zooey Deschanel, took the stage after solid performances from opening acts Cold War Kids and Ra Ra Riot and delivered an intimate solo rendition of “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” to a quiet, seated crowd. The rest of the band emerged and hit their stride with “The New Year,” a cut off of 2003’s Transatlanticism that ended the coffeehouse vibe. Bassist Nick Harmer’s thick grooves and drummer Jason McGerr’s pulsing rhythms pushed the band through “Crooked Teeth” and “Company Calls,” with Gibbard a perpetual motion device, rapidly swaying along as he and the band built up speed.

The set list drew from the band’s entire catalog — at least one song was played from each of the band’s six studio albums. Death Cab dug deep for “President of What,” a track from the recently remastered Something about Airplanes, and introduced a few cuts from their latest Open Door EP, including the jaunty “Little Bribes” and the Plans-esque “My Mirror Speaks.” (more…)

Photo: Medina/WireImage

Fall Out Boy got political at their Mesa, Arizona “Believers Never Die, Part Deux” tour opener Friday night, taking the stage in dress suits and black eyes — and in frontman Patrick Stump’s case, a grey Donald Trump-like wig — as a commentary on the current state of corporate America.

Video screens framing Andy Hurley’s elevated drum kit aired footage of riot police and the conservatively dressed bandmembers walking through a backstage area. Hurley appeared onstage first, fervently pounding away on his kit as two men dressed in police riot gear banged on drums for opener “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes.”

Before the second song, “Thriller,” bassist Pete Wentz welcomed the crowed at the grassy Mesa Amphitheatre to the “corporate retreat,” saying his plan was to teach the masses how to get rich and buy a yacht. “But most importantly, you gotta learn how to thrill them first,” said Wentz, whose wife Ashlee Simpson-Wentz was dancing side-stage. (more…)

Photo: Mazur/MPL/WireImage

Just after 11 p.m. on Saturday, April 4th, Paul McCartney finally uttered the phrase that the 6,000 people in New York’s Radio City Music Hall had been desperate to hear for more than three hours. “At this point,” McCartney said, “we’d would like to introduce to you — someone you know, ladies and gentlemen, Billy Shears!” When Ringo Starr bounded onstage — to sing “With a Little Help From My Friends” with McCartney and his band — the crowd finally witnessed the closest thing to a Beatles reunion in 2009.

(Check out photos of Paul and Ringo onstage together and more shots from the benefit.)

The much-anticipated coming together of McCartney and Starr was part of “Change Begins Within,” a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation’s drive to bring meditation to troubled public schools. With his modern-Eraserhead hairdo and helium voice, the idiosyncratic director was the evening’s master of ceremonies. As Yoko Ono, Bill O’Reilly, John McEnroe, Jennifer Aniston, Martin Scorsese and other famous types watched from the audience, celebrities you’d expect (Mike Love of the Beach Boys) and wouldn’t (Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern) gave testimonials to the power of meditating. (more…)

Photo: Flanigan/FilmMagic

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off their Working on a Dream tour last night at San Jose, California’s HP Pavilion. The set clocked in at two hours and 40 minutes according to Bruce fansite Backstreets, who also provided the night’s set list (see below), and noted its similarity to the set the band rocked at their second Asbury Park rehearsal gig (Rolling Stone was at Springsteen’s first rehearsal). For the story inside the Bruce rehearsals, grab the new issue (on newsstands now!), and check out our interviews with Steven Van Zandt and Max Weinberg’s drummer son Jay, Springsteen’s “secret weapon” online. Get a look at the opening-night photos here and the songs after the jump:

• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Bring Their “Dream” To California (more…)

Photo: Miller/FilmMagic

“Welcome to the first night of our tour, which is fucking terrifying,” said alt-country siren Neko Case, the orange-flecked acoustic guitar in her hands a match for her fiery locks. She and her five bandmates, including a female backup singer with whom she traded potty-mouth banter, kicked off their 34-date U.S. tour last night at Stubb’s in Austin not with a song from their critically lauded new album, Middle Cyclone, but with “Maybe Sparrow” from 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It was likely a nod to opener Shearwater, a majestic local rock band fronted by part-time ornithologist Jonathan Meiburg, whom Case said her group had a “music crush” on.

But as soon as Case gave that love she took it away, with a ferocious rendition of “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” wherein she sang, “I’m a man man man, man man man eater/But still you’re surprised prised prised when I eat ya.” Talk about a case study in a Case song. The insatiable animal fetish. The long-distance vocal runs. The subtle outro trills. No wonder her prey was duped. (Read our recent Neko Case feature, Neko Case’s Animal Instincts .) (more…)

Photo: Bedder/Getty

“It’s just like playing a three-hour show,” said the Dead’s Bob Weir, backstage at New York’s Angel Orensanz theater, “but it’s broken up by cab rides.” Weir wasn’t joking. To unofficially kick off their spring reunion tour, the Dead had grand plans to play a free concert in a large outdoor venue in New York City, possibly Battery Park. When both the weather and city paperwork scotched that idea, the band did the next best thing. On March 30th, the Dead played three free, back-to-back shows in the city like Prince did in L.A. Saturday night; the roughly 4,100 free tickets were distributed to fans by Internet lottery. (Check out photos of all three gigs.)

And what a long, intermittently strange day it was, beginning with Weir, bassist Phil Lesh and touring guitarist Warren Haynes playing “Friend of the Devil” on The View. (The band is longtime friends with co-host Whoopi Goldberg.) At 5 p.m. the men did a rare acoustic-trio set at the intimate Angel Orensanz, a former synagogue on the Lower East Side. The show focused on American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead classics like “Dire Wolf,” “Cumberland Blues” and “Casey Jones,” but the highlight was a largely instrumental, 20-minute version of “Bird Song,” the three men weaving guitar lines in and around each other. (more…)

Photo: Dowling/Getty

Ever since he gave up the glyph and shaved off those “slave” sideburns, Prince has focused on a higher class of gimmick, making all his newfangled publicity stunts revolve around his unchallenged brilliance as a live performer. There was the Super Bowl halftime blowout, the free-CD-with-every-ticket tour gambit, the residencies in everything from Vegas nightclubs to London arenas… Had the high-heeled dynamo left any novelty-concert ideas untouched? Why, yes: Saturday, on the eve of the release of a new three-CD set, Prince pulled off an ambitiously trifurcated one-night stand, playing three no-repeat shows, backed by three completely different bands, in three different venues within downtown Los Angeles’ glitzy L.A. Live complex. You could call it his “Have Suitcase, Will Travel… 50 Feet” mini-tour.

It’s impossible to imagine any other performer who could pull off three such wildly different sets with such virtuosic aplomb. But it was an evening fated to end in disgruntlement and glory. Prince complained at great length about the sound system at each of the three shows, which might suggest one drawback to so many hit-and-runs in one night — the lack of a proper sound check at each stop. A vocal minority of fans found reasons to grouse, too. Prince’s new single is called “Chocolate Box,” and as with the fabled box of sweets, you never knew exactly what you were gonna get for your $77 at each show. Some fans complained about the utter predictability of the set list at the first and biggest gig, while, conversely, others groused about the utter unrecognizability of the obscurities that dominated the two club show that followed. But if each set was predestined to piss off somebody who’d hoped to hear a different subset of the artist’s talent than the one they got, the fortunate few who scored tickets to all three shows surely came away certain that Prince’s breadth exceeds even the size of his balls. (more…)

Photo: Joshua J. Sarner

Despite a plea from a fan in the crowd, Jeff Tweedy refused to play “Handshake Drugs” during a solo acoustic concert in upstate New York Saturday night. “It’s inappropriate for the environment,” he said from the stage. He had a point: the Wilco leader was onstage at Beacon High School for a benefit for Clearwater, the environmental organization that Pete Seeger founded 40 years ago to help clean up the Hudson River.

And if playing a high school auditorium didn’t keep Tweedy from singing about drugs, he might have thought twice after watching 19 fourth-graders from a local elementary school sing songs about the environment with Seeger. The folk legend opened the show solo, playing acoustic guitar and leading the crowd through a sing-along of “Over the Rainbow” before performing with the kids. Seeger, who will celebrate his 90th birthday May 3rd during a benefit concert for Clearwater at Madison Square Garden, arrived and left the stage to standing ovations. (more…)