The hot season’s big concert tickets in Vancouver

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      Holy sheep shit, what a bounty. Evidently, we’re officially over the days when touring acts would rather hole up in a Bellingham Motel 6 with a toothless crack whore and a six-pack of warm Schlitz than make the trek across the border to Vancouver. From a live-music standpoint, the summer months ahead are going to be busier than Jack White, with a veritable cavalcade of high-profile acts pulling into our fair city.

      Right now, you’re probably too busy planning out that B.C. summer getaway to sort out who’s coming where. Don’t worry, we’ve been there. And we totally understand the panic that sets in when the technology-challenged hippy with the waterfront cabin for rent on Gambier Island doesn’t bother responding to any one of the 10 e-mails you’ve sent asking if his driftwood chalet is still available. The doubly distressing thing being that the only other out-of-town spot you’ve got a line on is Mel’s Econo-Lodge and Garbage Depot in beautiful, downtown Hedley. Relax, because there’s always a third option, namely a three-month staycation in Vancouver with more music than a fully loaded, 160 GB iPod. As crazy as a night in a Bellingham Motel 6 with a toothless crack whore and a six-pack of warm Schlitz might sound, it’s got nothing on the following gigs.

      Iron Maiden
      There’s an old saying in rock ’n’ roll that goes like this: how can we miss you if you won’t go away? The classic-edition Iron Maiden folded its tent in 1993 when singer Bruce Dickinson traded in his microphone for an airline-pilot’s licence, and then gave every indication he was happier flying the friendly skies than shrieking his lungs out for stuck-in-the-’80s bong huffers. As acts from the Eagles to the Stone Temple Toilets have learned, though, there’s a huge market for nostalgia, which explains why Dickinson is now back where he belongs: hanging out with Iron Maiden’s iconic mascot Eddie and making like Nirvana never happened.
      When and Where: June 24 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $89.50/65/35 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: First-class tickets—complete with mile-high club privileges—on Ed Force One.
      Fan Profile: Fifty-somethings who only stopped rocking their mullets when they started looking like Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show; hipsters who were into 3 Inches of Blood long before the Roadrunner years.
      Appropriate Attire: An Eddie-approved Zombie mask and glow-in-the-dark-rib-cage T-shirt.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: A burning desire to run to the hills, especially if you live in a flatter-than-flat wasteland like Richmond.

      TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival
      The numbers are mind-boggling: from late June to early July, over 1,800 musicians will descend on Vancouver for the biggest music festival of the year. That talent will range from the iconic likes of George Benson and Chick Corea, to boundary-busting upstarts like Kid Koala and Buck 65, to crossover artists like Nikki Yanofsky. Yes, there’s a good reason the Seattle Times once noted that our jazz fest is cooler than Chet Baker before he got his teeth punched out.
      When and Where: June 25 to July 4 at various locations.
      Suggested Retail Price: Visit www.coastaljazz.ca for a full breakdown.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A Ken Burns–autographed boxed set of the indispensable 2001 PBS miniseries Jazz.
      Fan Profile: An impossible-to-pigeonhole demographic that includes, but is hardly limited to, aging beatniks, electronica nonpurists, old-school adventurists, forward-thinking fusionists, and people who were actually sad the Olympics ended only because they didn’t get to hear Yanofsky’s “I Believe” 342 times per day.
      Appropriate Attire: A black beret and granny glasses, but only if worn in a knowingly ironic way.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: If you’re lucky, a week-and-a-half stretch where you don’t hear “I Believe” even once.

      Lilith Fair
      Sure the female empowerment fest known as Lilith Fair has ended up being the subject of more than one punch line over the years, but at least most of the jokes have involved either the Indigo Girls or Jewel. Tour founder Sarah McLachlan has tended to get off scot-free, and quite deservedly considering that, from 1997 to 1999, she showed the world that chicks can be just as big a concert draw as musicians with dicks. After a decade-long hiatus, Lilith returns with a lineup that includes the likes of Sheryl Crow, Erykah Badu, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. And yes, at various points in the tour, the Indigo Girls are also on the bill. Cue the jokes.
      When and Where: July 1 at Ambleside Park.
      Suggested Retail Price: $252/151.50/81.50/four-packs $199 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: On-set stills from “The Path of Thorns (Terms)” video shoot, taken, hopefully, before the lights were turned down.
      Fan Profile: Chicks and p-whipped guys who will go to above-and-beyond lengths to get into their pants.
      Appropriate Attire: To scare off anyone who looks like they’re even thinking of asking you to move the blanket you’ve used to stake prime real estate in front of the stage, consult Brody Dalle’s wardrobe in the Distillers days.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Sweet relief that someone moved this show from the original location of Pitt Meadows.

      Simon & Garfunkel
      Sometimes you have to wonder what the motivation is. By all accounts, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel get on about as well as the English and the Germans since 1939. And yet, even though neither of them needs the money, they’re back together on tour, no doubt threatening to punch each other out every night over whether “Cuba Si, Nixon No” should be on the set list.
      When and Where: July 3 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $225/149/89/59 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: Confirmation that Garfunkel has a pocket-pool fixation, which would explain why he can’t keep his hands out of his pants on-stage.
      Fan Profile: Boomers who stopped listening to new music in 1970, which explains why they wouldn’t know modern folkies like Fleet Foxes from Fudge Tunnel.
      Appropriate Attire: At the risk of enraging those who paid $225 for the seats right behind you, a dollar-store afro. If Art Garfunkel can walk around looking like a Drysdale sheep before its yearly shearing, why not you?
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Even if you don’t cook, the nagging feeling that you are out of not only parsley and sage, but also rosemary and thyme.

      Rihanna
      Who’s laughing now? Not that long ago, Rihanna was best known—at least to the six people in America who’d never heard “Umbrella”—as the girl Chris Brown turned into a human punching bag. Today, the pride of Barbados is a legitimate superstar who’s headlining hockey rinks around the globe. Brown, on the other hand, was all set to play Washington’s Puyallap Fair this summer until the locals threatened to track him down and show him how a real man uses his fists.
      When and Where: July 4 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $99.75/69.75/39.75/19.75 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A week on the beach at the Hilton Barbados.
      Fan Profile: Umbrella collectors who have every station in their car set to The Beat.
      Appropriate Attire: As tempting—not to mention tasteless—as it is to say boxing gloves, let’s go with rubberware, and not the kind you store your leftovers in.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Hopefully, some sign that Rihanna has learned a few new tricks since she totally stunk out GM Place while opening for Akon in 2007.

      The guys in Tool (left) walked out of the dinner party that MGMT (right) hosted at its mansion, because the latter’s dogs displayed a complete and utter lack of restraint in the leg-humping department.

      Tool
      When alt-rock exploded like an atom bomb 20 years ago, no one was picking Tool as the band most likely to become legitimate icons. The prog-punk metal alchemists were too weird, didn’t have enough hooks, and made videos starring claymation characters that looked like Mr. Bill with advanced leprosy. Tool has thrived by making designed-to-challenge music for people who don’t give a shit about tomorrow’s flavour of the month. Somewhere, Gruntruck fans are wondering where it all went so wrong.
      When and Where: July 9 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $67/52.50/37 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A home makeover inspired by the video for “Stink Fist”.
      Fan Profile: Thinking-man’s prog-metal punks of all ages, 80 percent of whom smell like stale weed and cheap delivery pizza.
      Appropriate Attire: Given singer Maynard James Keenan’s penchant for full-body makeup, think Blue Man Group, accessorized with a tattered cowboy hat and Plumber’s Crack jeans.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Confirmation that, sometimes, you can say “fuck all the rules” and still hit the jackpot.

      Deadmau5
      To those who never quite got the whole electronic music thing in the late ’90s, the big knock on turntablists was that they were mostly faceless. Sure, everyone knew Moby, but, really, could you pick Amon Tobin or Armand Van Helden out of a police lineup? Whether intentionally or not, Joel Zimmerman—aka Deadmau5—takes that idea of the anonymous DJ to the extreme, powering through his glitter-spackled powerhouse anthems while wearing a giant cartoon mouse head. And yes, that’s every bit as awesome as it sounds.
      When and Where: July 10 at the Pacific Coliseum.
      Suggested Retail Price: $98.50/68.50/48.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A lifetime supply of Victor rodent traps, and the P.B. loco gourmet peanut butter you’ll need to bait them.
      Fan Profile: Nu-school prog-house fans who can’t believe that Playtex pacifiers and Canadian Tire glow sticks were once mandatory rave accessories.
      Appropriate Attire: At the risk of stating the obvious, a giant rodent’s head with X-ed out eyes.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Assuming you don’t get the rubber-glove treatment from security, the makings of an excellent E hangover.

      New Pornographers
      For a while there in the early ’00s it was considered mondo-cool to be a Canadian indie-rock band, which explained how the members of Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire were able to purchase homes that bands like Alcoholic White Trash and Bunchoffuckinggoofs will never see unless they’re addicted to the Canadian edition of Cribs. On the West Coast, no one benefited more from that than the New Pornographers, who are one of those rare acts that actually deserves the title of supergroup.
      When and Where: July 14 and 15 at the Vogue Theatre.
      Suggested Retail Price: $34.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A ticket stub from when the fledgling Pornographers played Main Street’s Good Jacket clothing store back in 1998.
      Fan Profile: Main Street hipsters who’ll swear to anyone who’ll listen that they were at that Good Jacket show.
      Appropriate Attire: Vintage clothing purchased from the Good Jacket, with bonus cool points if it’s a two-sizes-too-small Cowichan sweater or anything emblazoned with an Expo 86 logo.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Newfound respect for that small faction of Vancouverites who, week after week, make it a point to check out bands they’ve never heard of, even when they’re playing clothing stores.

      Vancouver Folk Music Festival
      An international extravaganza featuring everyone from Tuscon alt-country standard-bearers Calexico to Scottish Celtic fusionists Peatbog Faeries to local spoken-word hero Shane Koyczan drives home the point, yet again, that folk has a radically different meaning than it did 10 years ago.
      When and Where: July 16 to 18 at Jericho Beach Park.
      Suggested Retail Price: Visit the
      festival.bc.ca/ticket-information for a full breakdown.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: All-access passes for the next WOMAD.
      Fan Profile: World travellers, even if the only voyages they can afford to take are sonic ones.
      Appropriate Attire: Femi Kuti flip-flops, mostly because it shows your fellow folkies that you’re not on-site to discover the 21st-century version of Jesus-boots aficionados like Peter, Paul, and Mary.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Plans to renew your passport and then spend your next vacation somewhere more exotic than your rescued-from-a-dumpster couch.

      Fusion Fest
      With a lineup that includes Arrested Development, the Grapes of Wrath, Lee Harvey Osmond, and Punjabi superstar Lehmber Hussainpuri, Fusion Fest is nothing if not all-inclusive. Imagine the world’s most eclectic iPod on random shuffle, and you’ll start to get the idea.
      When and Where: July 17 and 18 at Holland Park in Surrey.
      Suggested Retail Price: Visit fusionfestival.surrey.ca/ for a full breakdown.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A two-for-one coupon for Surrey’s Mom & Dads Smorgasbord. After all, smorgasbord pretty much describes this bill.
      Fan Profile: The faces of new Surrey, which is to say that they don’t own pit bulls, don’t wear mack jackets, and don’t consider a rusted-out ’77 Oldsmobile on cement blocks to be a lawn ornament.
      Appropriate Attire: Anything but a T-shirt silkscreened with “White Rock means never having to say you’re Surrey”.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: A renewed determination to get a piece of the pie in Whalley, even if it means starting out with a fixer-upper Airsteam in the Bear Creek Trailer Park development.

      MGMT
      The first time MGMT played Vancouver, they had trouble filling the Bourbon. Thanks to the wildly successful electro-pop single “Kids” and the hugely adventurous new album Congratulations, the only way you’re going to get to experience MGMT’s sold-out return visit is by locking yourself in the Café Crepe shitter downstairs from the Commodore, pressing your ear to the ceiling, and hoping something seeps through the floor.
      When and Where: July 24 at the Commodore Ballroom.
      Suggested Retail Price: $37.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: The keys to your Williamsburg loft—which had better have a flat of Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys in the fridge.
      Fan Profile: Ever seen the Web site Look At This Fucking Hipster?
      Appropriate Attire: Any ensemble you’ve seen on Look At This Fucking Hipster, with extra points awarded for red-framed glasses, Mandrake the Magician mustaches, and boat shoes worn without socks.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: The realization that you’re not even half as cool as the uncoolest hipster in Williamsburg.

      Toby Keith
      Remember that scene in Blue Velvet where a distraught Jeffrey Beaumont looks to the sky and asks “Why are there people like Frank?” Hands up if you’re like that, only you substitute Toby Keith for Frank.
      When and Where: July 25 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $79.75/59.75/39.75/four-packs $129, two-packs $40 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: An evening with the Dixie Chicks, especially that one who’s on record as saying she’ll gladly trade blow jobs for sleep.
      Fan Profile: Intolerant rednecks, inbreds, and right-wing assholes who drive four-by-fours with factory-installed gun racks.
      Appropriate Attire: Red, white, and blue, preferably rendered in stars and stripes—the best part being that, as a Canadian, that colour and design scheme will make you seem almost as ignorant as Toby Keith.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: New insight as to why almost everybody in the world professes to hate America.

      Drake
      Normally, a supporting role in something like Degrassi: The Next Generation pretty much guarantees that you’ll be sitting at the same post-show lunch table as Dustin Nguyen and Tina Yothers. Damn if Aubrey Drake Graham hasn’t bucked the odds. Known to heads across the continent simply as Drake, he’s currently counting Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne as his close Facebook friends. And, unlike you, he actually knows them.
      When and Where: July 27 at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts.
      Suggested Retail Price: $56.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A signed first-pressing copy of Maestro Fresh-Wes’s “Drop the Needle” and an answer to the question “What the hell ever happened to the Rascalz?”
      Fan Profile: Heads who’ve been looking for the next big thing ever since the Game shit the bed.
      Appropriate Attire: A gold diamond-encrusted grille, if, that is, you don’t mind looking every bit as ridiculous as Bonecrusher on Iron Chef America.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Pure, unadulterated pride at the fact that a Canuck is beating the Americans at their own game.

      Backstreet Boys
      Well you can’t blame them for trying. Despite the fact that 99.2 percent of all disposable teen income is being hoovered up by the Jonas Brothers these days, the Backsteet Boys are still out there working long after their audience made like Elvis and left the building.
      When and Where: August 6 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $75/55/39.50/four-packs $99 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: An Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind–style brain scrub, which we’d use to rid ourselves of the three episodes of House of Farters, err, House of Carters that we once made the mistake of sitting through.
      Fan Profile: Developmentally delayed suburban housewives who are unable to accept the fact that not even Kevin Richardson cares about the Backstreet Boys in 2010.
      Appropriate Attire: Suburban soccer-mom chic.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Sad proof that some things are even more intolerable than House of Farters.

      Under the Volcano Festival
      Naomi Klein drops into Vancouver’s most famous—and possibly only—festival that considers working for social change more important than chasing the almighty dollar. As always, the music is as underground as it is challenging, with highlights including Veda Hille, Delhi2Dublin, Declan de Barra, and Lady Ra. They’ll help make this edition of Volcano bittersweet because, after 20 years, organizers have decided to walk into the sunset, heads held high, while they’re still on their game.
      When and Where: August 8 at Cates Park.
      Suggested Retail Price: Suggested donation $10 to $20.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: Two pounds of fair-trade, shade-grown coffee from the Commercial Drive micro-roaster of your choice.
      Fan Profile: Socially conscious, politically active, underground-oriented lefties. Which is to say that if Gordon Campbell, George Bush, and Bill O’Reilly are the three people you’d most like to invite to dinner, it had better be because you’d love to give them total shit in person.
      Appropriate Attire: Now that Che Guevara is totally played out, a chairman Mao T-shirt, bandanna, or baseball cap, but only if the clothing item in question meets the standards set out by companies like American Apparel.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Reconfirmation that change really does begin at home.

      Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival
      There’s a great scene in Ghost World where an all-white, thoroughly obnoxious band billing itself as Blues Hammer takes the stage and rips into a song about picking cotton in the field in the blazing hot sun. Tellingly, Blues Hammer won’t be performing at this year’s Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival. Instead, ace acts like Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Serena Ryder, and Little Miss Higgins will turn Burnaby into a serious house of blues.
      When and Where: August 14 at Deer Lake Park.
      Suggested Retail Price: $50/four-packs $160 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: Three Elvis Platters at Memphis Blues, along with the all-the-bourbon-you-can-drink upgrade.
      Fan Profile: White folks who think Deep Delta Blues is a new boutique paint colour at Sherwin-Williams.
      Appropriate Attire: Sunglasses and a B.B. King T-shirt that reads “I fingered Lucille”.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: The blues, of course, which means it’s time to make sure that Paxil prescription has at least one more refill at Pharmasave.

      Michael Bublé
      Somewhere Frank Sinatra is shaking his head in wonder. Ever since Harry Connick Jr. got the acting bug, the ranks of crooners who don’t require a yearly prostate exam has been a little on the thin side. That Michael Bublé has become a worldwide phenomenon can be partly explained by the fact that the dude has personality to burn. And before you go snorting “Well so did Frank Sinatra”, consider that nobody had to throw a severed horse’s head in someone’s bed to get the pride of Burnaby his big break.
      When and Where: August 20 and 21 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $119/79/49 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: Super-8 footage of Bublé playing BaBalu for bar stars who wouldn’t have known Combustible Edison from a combustion engine.
      Fan Profile: Kerrisdale housewives who will argue till they are blue in the face that Frank Sinatra isn’t dead, and that Bobby Vinton isn’t called the Polish Prince for nothing.
      Appropriate Attire: Ask yourself this: What would the Rat Pack do?
      What You’ll Walk Away With: A major hankering for a Manhattan.

      The Swell Season
      Every now and then a music movie comes along that’s so good that it actually inspires the folks in it to start a full-time project. The Swell Season—featuring carrot-topped Irish musician Glen Hansard and chestnut-haired Czech singer-pianist Markéta Irglová of the chick-flick movie Once—isn’t going to make anyone trade in their Spinal Tap action figurines. But the soft-rock duo has at least managed to make up for the Heights.
      When and Where: August 22 at Malkin Bowl.
      Suggested Retail Price: $45/35 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A get-out-of-jail-free card that’s good for the next Kick a Ginger day.
      Fan Profile: Lovers, as in the aging, goat-meat-grease-fixated perverts made famous by Virginia and Roger Clarvin on Saturday Night Live.
      Appropriate Attire: A Frames baseball cap, just to show you didn’t jump on the bandwagon after your girlfriend dragged you to Once.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: A new appreciation for the wonderful human being you’ve fallen for, assuming you don’t get in a knock-down fight over the fact that said lover insisted on parking for fucking free 17 fucking blocks away in the West End rather than just paying five fucking dollars to leave the fucking car in Stanley fucking Park.

      In the name of all things decent, the police department simply couldn’t let self-proclaimed freak Lady Gaga walk the streets, because, well, look at her.

      Lady Gaga
      And you thought Madonna was overexposed back in the ’80s. Congratulations Joanne Angelina Germanotta—you are now bigger than Jesus.
      When and Where: August 23 and 24 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $175/85/49.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A lifetime supply of Bumble and bumble blonde-bombshell bleach.
      Fan Profile: Freaks, all of whom will be hoisting their flags higher than a modern-day Boy George.
      Appropriate Attire: Your birthday suit and a jar of Scandinavian Delight Lingonberry and Raspberry Jam, because—let’s face it—strutting around starkers smeared in a breakfast topping is the only way you’re going to be able to compete with the look-at-me-look-at-me lunatic onstage.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: An ass redder than a Hamadryas baboon’s, this coming from kicking yourself for sleeping on Lady Gaga’s 2008 gig at Richard’s on Richards.

      Vampire Weekend
      For all the band’s supposed indebtedness to the Afrobeat sound that made Paul Simon’s Graceland an international smash in the ’80s, Brooklyn’s Vampire Weekend has also been dubbed the whitest band in America by more than one snarky wag. That did nothing to stop its sounds-of-Soweto-tinted second album, Contra, from debuting at number one on Billboard. Take that, BrooklynVegan readers.
      When and Where: August 27 and 28 at Malkin Bowl.
      Suggested Retail Price: $39.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A week at the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod.
      Fan Profile: Five Point wannabes too clueless to understand that Vampire Weekend doesn’t have half the pseudo-African cachet of Fool’s Gold.
      Appropriate Attire: Dock shoes, pastel prep sweaters, and a yellowed subscription slip to Vice Magazine.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: The notion that somehow you heard it done better on Paul Simon’s Graceland.

      Pavement
      You know that ever-shape-shifting beast that you like to refer to as indie-rock? Without the now-legendary trailblazers known as Pavement, there’s a very good case that you’d currently be listening to bands that take their cues from Limp Bizkit and Korn.
      When and Where: September 7 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
      Suggested Retail Price: $39 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: Framed ticket stubs from the 1995 edition of Lollapalooza, where your parents got to see Pavement—not to mention Hole, Beck, and Sonic Youth—for the price of drinks at the Cascade Room.
      Fan Profile: Former champions of what was once known as college rock, along with kids who consider Pavement to be every bit as retro-cool as the Velvet Underground seemed back in the ’80s.
      Appropriate Attire: A faded Merge Records T-shirt.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: High hopes that Pavement considers staying together once the current cash grab is complete.

      The National
      If Barack Obama had to name his favourite indie rock band, chances are good he’d pick the National. Ten years ago, the now Brooklyn-based band was toiling on the Cincinnati club circuit, working on a sound that gave you a good idea what Joy Division would have sounded like if it’d been force-fed a diet of Bruce Springsteen. Today, the National’s songs get played before presidential victory speeches, namely the one that officially marked the end of the reign of a certain American Idiot.
      When and Where: September 9 and 10 at Malkin Bowl.
      Suggested Retail Price: $32.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: Dinner with President Barack Obama, who is familiar enough with the National that the mere mention of the band’s name should be enough to get past whoever’s in charge of answering the door at the White House.
      Fan Profile: Nonjaded Pitchfork subscribers.
      Appropriate Attire: Black, considering that much of the National’s back catalogue is about as sunny as the idea of early Cure covering early Joy Division.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Newfound respect for the 44th president of the United States of America.

      Jonas Brothers
      You know what the definition of restraint is? It’s making the decision to wear purity rings when you are in, arguably, the biggest band in the world with millions of screaming girls at your disposal. Someone seriously needs to sit the Jonas Brothers down in front of Little Miss Sunshine, if only for Alan Arkin’s speech about how the most important thing any man can do in his life is “fuck a lot of women”.
      When and Where: September 15 at GM Place.
      Suggested Retail Price: $99.50/79.50/59.50/32.50 plus service charges.
      What We’d Trade Our Tickets For: A certified-vintage Bay City Rollers lunch kit and a mint vinyl 45-rpm copy of Shaun Cassidy’s “Da Doo Ron Ron”.
      Fan Profile: Awkard-on-every-level girls who are convinced that their training bras, braces, and scorching acne problem are the only things keeping them from going steady with Nick Jonas.
      Appropriate Attire: Braces, training bras, and a two-inches-thick coating of Clearasil.
      What You’ll Walk Away With: Sincere prayers that your awkward phase ends before Nick Jonas takes up with some fucking skank he only loves because she used to be on some show on the Disney channel.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Shiro K.

      Jun 22, 2010 at 8:55am

      Regarding the Vampire Weekend write up:

      "the Afrobeat sound that made Paul Simon’s Graceland an international smash in the ’80s"

      There was nothing Afro-beat about Graceland. Paul Simon used South African musicians to re-create a South African sound, such as Mbaqanga . Afro-beat is West African and sounds as much like Mbaqanga as reggae sounds like the blues. i realize that hipsters like to drop the term Afro-beat to look credible whenever they talkabout any music to come out of Africa, but whoever wrote this write up is clearly out of their saftery zone when it comes to music.
      Vampire Weekend may utilize motifs from African music (some would say "appropriate"), but they don't touch on Afro-beat.