True enough, Bobby boy. The jocks pumping their fists to “Cut Your Hair,” the chick doing the Phish-fan noodle dance to “Stereo,” the countless balding dudes diluting their beers with tears during “Here” — this was definitely new territory for arguably the greatest indie-rock band of all time. Put it this way: Yesterday a guy tweeted that he was working security at the Pavement show. Even if Twitter had existed when the group originally broke up in 1999, there’s no way that would’ve have happened; back then, bouncers were taught to ignore bands like this.

Yet if the scent of nostalgia hung undeniably heavy over Pavement’s first North American reunion show — a relatively intimate warm-up gig before their big Sunday-night slot at Coachella — frontman Stephen Malkmus and his mates seemed stoked to soak it up. Leading the group through a two-hour set packed with college-radio hits (remember those?), the singer pulled faces, flipped his hair and hopped on one leg like a bunny on his birthday. Nastanovich, meanwhile, appeared to have spent his decade away from music perfecting a court-jester routine that was pretty much perfect to begin with.

Pavement spent some considerable time earlier this year rehearsing in Malkmus’s homebase of Portland, but at the Fox — where the audience included Britt Daniel of Spoon and Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox — they still sounded sloppy as hell (in a good way). Drummer Steve West motored “Shady Lane” with Sunday-driver insouciance, while “Rattled by the Rush” had a swampy blues-rock vibe complete with Screaming Trees-style harmonica solo. It’s probably time, too, that we acknowledge the importance of Mark Ibold’s bass: Last night his playing provided a weird muscularity that helped illustrate the difference between Pavement and so many of the tired-ass indie bands they’ve inspired over the years; in “Spit on a Stranger,” especially, you couldn’t not hear how crucial a part he is of the band’s attack.

Evidently enjoying themselves — “Are you happy?” guitarist Scott Kannberg asked at one point, then added “We’re happy” — Pavement did two encores, mostly of stuff from Slanted and Enchanted, their landmark 1992 debut. “I was dressed for success,” Malkmus sang in “Here,” “But success, it never comes.” He resisted changing those words last night, but only because he didn’t have to.

Set list:

“Silence Kit”
“Ell Ess Two”
“Give It a Day”
“Frontwards”
“No Life Singed Her”
“Father to a Sister of Thought”
“Rattled by the Rush”
“Kennel District”
“In the Mouth a Desert”
“Shady Lane”
“Unfair”
“Spit on a Stranger”
“Grounded”
“Two States”
“Range Life”
“Perfume-V”
“Gold Soundz”
“Fight This Generation”
“Summer Babe”
“Cut Your Hair”
“The Hexx”
“Date w/ IKEA”
“Trigger Cut”
“Starlings of the Slipstream”
“Box Elder”
“Here”
“Stereo”
“Zurich Is Stained”
“Loretta’s Scars”
“Conduit for Sale!”

So when the band hit the stage for a sold-out show at downtown Los Angeles’ Club Nokia last night, it felt like a homecoming. While missing founding member Jerry Dammers, the band otherwise featured all original members, save Dammers’ keyboardist replacement and a crack three-piece horn section. And despite the gap in years since the Specials’ last U.S. tour, when the band kicked into “Do the Dog” as its opening number, it was clear nothing had been lost in the interim. From the first note, everyone in the nearly 10-piece band played with a manic intensity that wouldn’t suggest its members were in their fifties. For the majority of the sprawling, 22 song set — drawn from the band’s classic first two albums and assorted singles — most numbers careened full stop into the next with startling, infectious velocity. If only all reunion tours felt so vital and fresh. Right off the bat, it was clear this was the real deal and not a money grab.

“Do the Dog” was an appropriate starter, its opening lines — “All you punks and all you teds/National Front and natty dreads/Mods, rockers, hippies and skinheads/Keep on fighting ’til you’re dead” — sounded like a call to arms for the multiracial tribes assembled, and a prescient reflection on the audience’s behavior. By the fourth song, “Up To You,” the crowd had grown unruly in their excitement — a little too authentic to the spirit of the original punks. “If you spit anymore, I’ll dive down and break your head,” Hall exclaimed with brimming vitriol at the start of the fourth song, “Up To You”; the rough atmosphere continued, however, with fights breaking out sporadically and the stage repeatedly invaded by audience members. Then again, the hectic vibes radiating through the venue proved this was no mere nostalgia trip: it only reflected the continued significance of the music’s relentless riddims and inner-city tension.

Any drama, however, didn’t detract from the incredible chemistry and musical interplay between its nattily attired members: ska is a music built on precision and control, and here the Specials triumphed, moving from stop-on-a-dime uptempo grooves to deeper, dubby textures effortlessly. Drummer John Bradbury thrilled with machine-gun rimshots and hyperactive hi-hat; guitarists Roddy Byers and Lynval Golding added strikingly soulful solos to songs like “Blank Expression”; and bassist Horace Panter’s crisply sinister basslines never faltered. The two frontmen, however, proved a study in crucial contrasts, meanwhile. Toaster Neville Staple was all gleeful dance power, skanking constantly and hyping the crowd with glee; Terry Hall, meanwhile, evoked a bluebeat Johnny Rotten, roiling with nervous energy and sarcasm, gripping the mike stand aggressively and even pulling back from the spotlight at times. Dammer’s absence proved most notable in songs from the band’s second album, 1980’s More Specials: on record, tracks like “Stereotype/Stereotypes, Pt. 2” featured an ironic muzak influence and studio trickery, all of which was dispensed here in lieu of sweaty immediacy.

Seeing the Specials live drove home the artfulness of the band’s songwriting, which could be potentially lost in the performance’s driving power: hearing a crowd sing in unison the choruses to classics like “A Message To You, Rudy” conveyed just how indelible their hooks remain. Instead of seeming dated, the songs’ themes came off timeless — if anything, more relevant today than when they were released in the ‘80s. The nuclear-war paranoia of “Man At C & A” and the economic-doldrums dub dirge “Ghost Town” (which made for a truly affecting encore) to the growing pains of shifting racial attitudes (nearly every song) could be ripped from today’s headlines. “Sorry it took a lifetime to get us back here,” Golding said midway through the set, and the apology felt apt: another 30 years is truly too long to wait for music so trenchant and powerful, no matter when it’s played.

Set list:

“Do The Dog”
“(Dawning Of A) New Era”
“Gangsters”
“It’s Up To You”
“Monkey Man”
“Rat Race”
“Hey, Little Rich Girl”
“Blank Expression”
“Doesn’t Make It Alright”
“Stupid Marriage”
“Concrete Jungle”
“Friday Night, Saturday Morning”
“Stereotype/Stereotypes, Pt. 2″
“Man at C & A”
“A Message To You, Rudy”
“Do Nothing”
“Little Bitch”
“Nite Klub”
“Too Much Too Young”
“You’re Wondering Now”

Encore:
“Ghost Town”
“Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)”

For nearly two hours, Lydon and the reformed PiL reignited loud and brooding songs from across the band’s history, in a show that doubled as a warm-up gig for the band’s Friday performance at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. “What a fucking audience,” Lydon said happily. “The only one spitting is me.”

Lydon twice left a lasting mark on the modern evolution of rock & roll. As Johnny Rotten, he was a punk rock originator, playing frontman and instigator for the tragically short-lived Sex Pistols, and then quickly went about obliterating that movement as a post-punk pioneer at the center of the more experimental Public Image Ltd. And he did both before he even turned 21.

In 2010, Lydon appeared onstage less like a young man who might jump down your throat than immovable object, his provocative vocals rooted not only in rage but experience. He wailed with real pain during “Death Disco,” a song written as his mother was dying, as guitarist Lu Edmonds unraveled intense, ringing riffs like a loaded spring.

There were no Pistols songs played (unlike earlier tours) and none needed, as PiL operated amid swirling dark clouds of noise, emphasizing the brooding, uncompromising tone of PiL’s sound. The group’s early signature song, “Public Image,” was not far removed from the raw, straight-ahead rock of the Pistols, but with a guitar sound that became the template for U2’s the Edge and other players. “Albatross” was all post-punk gloom and slicing riffs, while the deep grooves of “Religion” were provocative and riveting, as Lydon turned toward drummer Bruce Smith and bassist Scott Firth and said: “Turn up the bass! Do you want more bass?”

Fans sang back at the appropriate moments, as if PiL hadn’t been out of action all these years. After a shout-along to “Disappointed,” Lydon announced, “I need to take a piss and I need to catch my breath. You don’t mind if we take our break now, do ya? I’m fucking desperate!” He was back onstage after a few minutes.

Lydon has taken some abuse in recent years for appearing in a butter commercial back in Britain and for joining, and then abandoning, the cast of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, among other TV projects. But he’s never watered down he essential persona, and it was in full bloom amid the affectionate taunting and ranting between songs, his eyes bulging as always.

After the tribal beat and more shredding from Edmonds on a dissonant “Flowers of Romance,” Lydon leered at his fans and advised them, “Let that into your bowels!”

Set List:

“This is Not A Love Song”
“Poptones”
“Length”
“Albatross”
“Death Disco”
“Flowers of Romance”
“Psychopath”
“Warrior”
“USLS 1″
“Disappointed”
“Religion”
“Bags”
“Chant”
“Memories” ”
Public Image”

Encore:
“Sun”
“Rise”
“Open Up”

Despite their mainstream popularity in 1990 with the rap-rock anthem “Epic,” Faith No More’s American success is most accurately measured by the number of bands they inspired — Limp Bizkit, Korn, Linkin Park, Incubus and many others. While MTV turned a cold shoulder to FNM’s experimental 1992 album Angel Dust, the group became bigger than ever in most every other territory, and is still regarded as a major overseas attraction. Since last August, the band that began in 1981 and split in 1998 has toured and played major festivals in Europe, Israel, Mexico, South America, New Zealand, and Australia.

All this activity has clearly sharpened the band’s reflexes: Deep into the set, the group abruptly pulled the plug on “Midlife Crisis” right before the final chorus. The audience sang it without accompaniment, and without missing a beat, the band launched into several introductory bars of Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke,” and then segued back into “Midlife” ’s chorus. Mike Bordin’s experience as Ozzy Osbourne’s rhythmic disciplinarian was evident: No matter how many musical curve balls the others threw, this master drummer kept the beat rock-steady: “Evidence” glided like a jazzy Steely Dan jam; thrashing metal workouts like “Surprise! You’re Dead” and “Cukoo for Caca” set mosh pits in motion, while covers of the Commodores’ “Easy,” the Burt Bacharach/Hal David standard “This Guy’s in Love With You,” and the Chariots of Fire soundtrack theme song all sounded as slick as they should.

American opportunities to see the reformed group remain rare: After its three sold-out dates at San Francisco’s Warfield, the only shows so far confirmed are Coachella and a pair of July appearances in Brooklyn. When Patton and keyboardist Roddy Bottum expressed their enthusiasm for opening acts Pop-o-Pies and Trannyshack’s metal/goth/industrial drag spectacle, the audience responded lukewarmly, and a show of hands revealed that many of the fans gathered that night were from out of town. “We’re trying to do a hometown show for a crowd of fucking tourists,” Patton spat out with a theatrical disgust that began when “Epic” was met with polite applause.

He rallied the crowd through “Just a Man” with hip-hop hand-waving exercises, and conducted the band with crotch-grabbing jerks and backhanded finger flickering that suggested one of Bugs Bunny’s classic routines. Faith No More’s members may now all be middle-aged, but they still keep their tunes loony.

Set List:
“Reunited”
“From Out of Nowhere”
“Land of Sunshine”
“Caffeine”
“Evidence”
“The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”
“Chinese Arithmatic”
“Last Cup of Sorrow”
“Cuckoo for Caca”
“Easy”
“Ashes to Ashes”
“Midlife Crisis”
“Surprise! You’re Dead”
“King for a Day”
“Epic”
“Just a Man”

“Chariots of Fire”
“Stripsearch”
“Digging the Grave”

“This Guy’s in Love with You”
“We Care a Lot”

“Introduce Yourself”

Related Stories:

• Faith No More Roar Back to Life at London Reunion Show
• Faith No More Announce First East Coast Reunion Show

“This is the first time anyone has ever paid to see me perform,” O’Brien informed the delirious sold-out crowd at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon, before getting in his first dig at NBC:
“But people have paid to make me go away.”

With no couch or desk in sight, Conan lorded over the proceedings from the front of the stage, flanked by longtime sidekick Andy Richter and backed by the very band that spent 17 years with him on TV — without leader Max Weinberg.

The show started with the former Tonight Show Band — now the Legally Prohibited Band — ripping through Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” with trombone player Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg taking the lead on vocals.

For the next 90 minutes, Conan mixed live segments of comedy and music with pre-recorded material shown on a screen behind the stage that served to transition from one piece to the next.

The vibe was much more Late Night than Tonight Show, with Conan strolling on stage looking like a paler, redheaded Barry Gibb, complete with full beard, no tie, and the top two buttons undone on his shirt. The content of the show occasionally strayed to places he’s never gone on TV, with a smattering of profanities tossed in to give the show an edgier feel.

After a lengthy standing ovation greeted him, he admitted to missing the nightly adoration from a live audience. “You have no idea how shallow I am,” he cracked.

Conan never mentioned his former employer by name, but did take a few jabs, most notably in a series of video bits featuring Conan as a Dr. Evil-esque “generic network executive.” The most direct acknowledgment of his disappointment over losing the Tonight Show job came in a monologue discussing the “eight levels of grief over losing your talk show,” which included stages such as denial, anger and “36 hours of Red Bull and Halo.”

Though his trademark self-deprecation permeated his performance, like when he joked about having “no ass” while donning the ridiculous purple suit Eddie Murphy wore in his stand-up film Raw, O’Brien exuded defiant confidence throughout the night, bolstered by a crowd that roared with approval of nearly everything he did.

He also used the format to show off his musical chops, strapping on a guitar for his personalized version of “On the Road Again” and an unfinished original called “The Girl Who Looked Like Conrad Bain,” which he claims to have been writing for 18 years.

And for those concerned that Conan’s settlement with NBC would mean the disappearance of some of his most beloved characters and comedy bits, such worries were squashed when the Masturbating Bear made an early appearance. But in a half-joking concession that his use of the bear may be unauthorized, Conan came up with a new plan. So long, Masturbating Bear — hello, Self-Pleasuring Panda.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog drew some of the biggest laughs of the night in a pre-taped bit, introducing himself as “the only dog who hasn’t been banged by Jesse James or Tiger Woods” before launching into a tirade that used clever sound editing to bring it a local touch.

The reintroduction of the “Walker, Texas Ranger Lever” was arguably the most popular segment of the evening. Renamed the “Chuck Norris Rural Policeman Handle,” special guest Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock joined Conan and Andy onstage to give it a pull.

And then there was the night’s signature non sequitur: the huge inflatable creature Conan claims to have purchased from Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell tour.

Other guests included Spoon, which performed “I Summon You,” and comedian and ex-Tonight Show writer Deon Cole, who did a short stand-up set.

At the start of the night, Conan copped to modest expectations for the tour, saying he hoped that attendees left “thinking that was sort of worth it.” But by the time O’Brien was tearing into a reflective “I Will Survive” an hour and a half later, it was clear that the formerly devastated members of Team Coco couldn’t be happier with his transformation from late-night pariah to traveling folk hero.

Related Stories:

• Conan O’Brien Recruits Will Ferrell, Beck for Final Episode “Free Bird”
• “Fallon” ’s ?uestlove Sides With Conan O’Brien in Late-Night Battle
• Rolling Stones Give Conan O’Brien “Satisfaction” as “Tonight” Books Neil Young for Last Show

Singer/producer/tai chi madman James Murphy was coasting on adrenaline all night — plus, as he admitted, his signature tipple of champagne and whiskey. The band did only two songs from their upcoming and even-awesomer-than-everyone-hoped This Is Happening, which comes out on May 18th: “Drunk Girls” (”Drunk boys like to steal from the cupboards / Drunk girls like to file complaints” — true that) and “I Can Change,” which sounds like Brian Eno taking Ecstasy on the beach with Morrissey and Depeche Mode. Drummer Pat Mahoney and bassist Tyler Pope were on fire, while synth wizard Nancy Whang had some choice words for the dudes trying to slamdance into people: “Look at the two people on either side of you. If one of them is not a girl, you are dancing incorrectly.”

LCD Soundsystem revisited club classics like “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” “Yr City’s A Sucker” (”my city’s a freak”), “Someone Great” and the epic “All My Friends,” a song that always turns any room into a boozy Irish wake. But the sentimental highlight was the 2002 single “Losing My Edge,” which Murphy said the band hadn’t played in five years. “I’m 40 now,” he explained. “That means every band I saw had Fishbone opening up.” The band vamped as Murphy ran through his sardonic bitter-hipster rant, updating the lyrics to make fun of bands with Macbooks. The whole crowd chanted along when he yelled the namecheck for Seventies jazz-funk poet Gil-Scott Heron. It was as funny as ever, but also bittersweet, because (as we all now know), around the time Murphy wrote the song, Heron was a prisoner in Rikers Island on cocaine charges. In 2010, not only is Heron a free man — he’s making indie rock records. In other words, the whole freaking world is turning into an LCD Soundsystem song. Which is great news for the drunk girl in all of us.

Set List:

“Yr City’s a Sucker”
“Us V. Them”
“Drunk Girls”
“Losing My Edge”
“All My Friends”
“I Can Change”
“Tribulations”
“Movement”
“Yeah”

Encore:
“Someone Great”
“Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”
“New York I Love You”

Related Stories:

• James Murphy Opens Up About “Crazy” May LCD Soundsystem LP
• LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy on Scoring His First Soundtrack for Greenberg
• LCD Soundsystem Reveal Cover for May 18th LP This Is Happening

It’s a small bit of irony that Drake’s long-awaited return to the stage, which follows August 2009 surgery to repair a torn ACL, coincides with Wayne’s much-delayed incarceration. The rapper made no mention of his injury, which he sustained in a fall while performing with Lil Wayne in Camden, New Jersey, last July, though his normally high-energy stage show did seem somewhat muted. Backed by a DJ and a four-piece band, Drake worked through a number of cuts from his breakthrough mixtape, So Far Gone, and previewed a verse from “Fireworks,” a dark, synth-heavy diatribe off his forthcoming full-length, Thank Me Later, which the rapper said to expect on June 15th (though, as frequently as the album’s been pushed back, it’s wholly possible he meant June 2011).

Throughout the evening, Drake balanced two seemingly conflicting personas: the über-cocky ladies’ man and the emotionally vulnerable dweeb. One verse he’d exude supreme confidence, the next he’d erode into self-doubt — James Brown giving way to Charlie Brown. Even the set list played up this parallel, Drake following the money-cash-hoes boasts of “Successful” with the weirdly introspective “Fear.” “Now security follow me everywhere, so I never actually am alone/I just always feel alone,” he rhymed over synths that chimed like a chandelier in a gentle breeze.

But if Drake felt most comfortable embracing his inner-Steve Urkel (the MC called “Fear” his “favorite song,” and delivered a stripped-down “Lust For Life” like a beat poet seeking transcendence), the largely female audience preferred when he channeled the far-suaver Stefan Urquelle. On “Best I Ever Had” the singer sounded like a particularly seductive cyborg as he crooned one-liners both PG (”Sweatpants, hair tied, chillin’ with no makeup on/That’s when you’re your prettiest”) and X-rated (”My shirt ain’t got no stripes, but I can make your pussy whistle”). And when Drake asked, “Who’s coming home with me?” during a sensual, heaving “Invented Sex,” virtually every lady — and a few zealous gents — reacted with shrieks and spastic fits unseen since the heyday of The Price Is Right.

Set List:

“Forever”
“Unstoppable”
“Uptown”
“Lust For Life”
“Houstatlantavegas”
“November 18th”
“Fireworks”
“Killers”
“Money to Blow”
“Big Tymers/I’m Still Fly”
“I’m Going In”
“Every Girl/Bedrock”
“Throw It In the Bag”
“Unthinkable” (instrumental)
“A Night Off”
“Successful”
“Fear”
“Say Something”
“Invented Sex”
“Best I Ever Had”
“Over”

Related Stories:

• Drake Tells Fans to Bring “Open Mind” to “Away From Home” Tour
• Drake’s Big Break: Lil Wayne’s Protege Graduates From Degrassi to Hip-Hop
• Drake on Mentor’s Prison Time: “You’ll Miss Everything About Lil Wayne”

At first it’s slightly disconcerting, as a Radiohead fan, to see Thom Yorke flanked onstage by Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea instead of guitarist Jonny Greenwood. But once the opening notes of Yorke’s “The Eraser” start, the disorientation immediately dissipates. Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace began their first proper tour of the U.S. last night with the first of two sold-out shows at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom, treating a packed venue of fans, including Michael Stipe, to a complete performance of Yorke’s 2006 solo album The Eraser, obscure and familiar Radiohead songs, and a few new tracks making their stateside debut.

Although Yorke was the sole author of the evening’s music, Atoms for Peace’s incredible backing band breathed new life into The Eraser. Beck drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist Mauro Refosco replicated and surpassed the album’s complex beats, and producer Nigel Godrich, who fans call the unofficial sixth member of Radiohead, seized the opportunity to show what he really brings to the table, alternately tackling guitar, keyboards and backing vocals. And then, of course, there’s Flea, with his hair dyed teal and a Minutemen T-shirt on, who provided the heartbeat and added a sizable dose of menace to bass-driven tracks like “Harrowdown Hill.”

Look back at Thom Yorke’s history with Radiohead in photos.

Flying Lotus, the tour’s opening act who tells RS he was recruited in a psychic dream, came dangerously close to blowing out the venue’s speakers during his 40-minute set, concluding with a manic take on Radiohead’s “Idioteque.” A half-hour later, Atoms for Peace took the stage, performing a set that didn’t deviate from those Yorke performed at his first Los Angeles shows in October 2009 — Atoms for Peace played The Eraser straight through, from the disjointed piano chords of “The Eraser” to the closer “Cymbal Rush.”

“The Eraser” was enlivened by a cameo by trumpeter Christian Scott, who added a brassy siren’s call to the song’s chorus. On “The Clock,” Refosco busted out a giant didgeridoo to keep time with the song’s ticking pace, and for “Skip Divided,” Flea shed his bass for a melodica blow organ. “Harrowdown Hill” provided the highlight of the first act as Yorke’s desperate plea of “Don’t ask me, ask the ministry” and Flea’s thunderous rhythm completely blanketed the audience in sound.

Atoms for Peace left the stage, and after a brief break, Yorke emerged with a guitar to perform a new song solo. The track, which Radiohead fansite At Ease is calling “Chris Hodge/Let Me Take Control,” (Update: A Radiohead pub tells RS the song is tentatively called “A Walk Down the Staircase”) was a ballad that would be at home on the second side of Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night and similar stylistically to Yorke’s other recent new songs “Lotusflower” and “The Present Tense” (watch it here). “Walk down the staircase, a magnetic pull. Back to the other place, I can not go,” Yorke sang alone onstage, “Let me take control… secrets to be told.” Yorke next gave new song “Daily Mail” its U.S. debut — he’d previously unveiled the song in Cambridge during a February solo show. He followed with perhaps the biggest and most appreciated surprise of the night, a solo performance of Kid A opener “Everything In Its Right Place,” stripped entirely of its studio wizardry and vocal effects, leaving just Yorke and his piano.

Atoms for Peace returned for the last five songs of the night, starting with a pair of tracks previously played when the then-unnamed band debuted in Los Angeles: a completely retooled and mind-blowing rendition of the Hail to the Thief B side “Paperbag Writer” and another relatively new track titled “Judge, Jury & Executioner.”

“Now we’re really gonna fucking freak out,” Yorke told the crowd before Atoms for Peace launched into the evening’s final two songs. The band’s energetic take on “The Hollow Earth” transcended the version found on the 12” single Yorke released last year thanks mostly to percussionist Refosco, who sounded like he’d sprouted four additional arms for the occasion.

The show’s finale, “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses,” has perhaps the most sinister bass line in the Radiohead-related canon, and it was well handled by Flea’s capable hands. In one of the show’s most visually memorable moments — Yorke makes no attempt to usurp Radiohead’s light show — Yorke and Flea faced each other at center stage, staring at one another, Flea on bass, Yorke on guitar, and locked into a unison that carried the song past the point of its climactic conclusion. When the band pushed the song to its limits, like it was literally being pulled apart by horses, it came crashing to a sudden halt as Yorke thanked the audience and Atoms for Peace left the stage.

Atoms For Peace
April 5 – New York, NY @ Roseland Ballroom

“The Eraser”
“Analyse”
“The Clock”
“Black Swan”
“Skip Divided”
“Atoms For Peace”
“And It Rained All Night”
“Harrowdown Hill”
“Cymbal Rush”

“A Walk Down the Staircase” (new song)
“Daily Mail”
“Everything In It’s Right Place”

“Paperbag Writer”
“Judge, Jury & Executioner”
“The Hollow Earth”
“Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”

Related Stories:

• Thom Yorke Confirms Tour With Atoms For Peace Side Project
• Thom Yorke Dances Up a Storm at Official Debut of New Solo Band
• Thom Yorke Opener Flying Lotus Says Gig Arrived in Psychic Dream

Look back at McCartney’s history with the Beatles in photos.

After a kickoff show in Arizona, McCartney chose to bring his 2010 tour to the Hollywood Bowl, site of the Beatles’ legendary 1964 and 1965 appearances. He’d been back to the Bowl once as a solo artist, in 1993, but naturally got ruminative about this latest return Tuesday night, in the first of two shows at the historic venue. “The first time we came here, we were little kids,” he told the crowd. “It looks like that now. Then, we thought we were great big men… You couldn’t hear anything we were singing because of the girls screaming.” If he was fishing for a swell of girlish screams, he got it. “Yeah, like that! But nowadays, we are louder.”

And longer. The Beatles’ sets in the mid-’60s usually lasted barely a half-hour and consisted of just over a dozen songs. At Tuesday night’s Bowl show, out of 38 songs that were played in full or (in a few cases) in part, no fewer than 22 were Beatles songs — almost twice as many as the screaming girls would have heard (or at least seen) at the Fabs’ own shows back in the day.

The essentials of the set list were familiar to any southern Californians who made the trek to Coachella a year ago, or who caught up with the 2009 tour via a live CD set and DVD that were filmed at last summer’s New York Citi Field shows. But he’s mixed it up enough in the new year to please even frequent flyers. The show now begins — as it did on the “Wings Over America” tour, McCartney’s one concert trek of the 1970s — with “Venus and Mars” and “Rock Show,” though there was just enough of the latter number to get to the line about “rock & roll at the Hollywood Bowl” before the opening medley kicked over to the more familiar “Jet.” Another “Wings Over America”-era number, “Letting Go,” is being reintroduced as a staple for the first time since 1976.

But this tour also features several premieres that have never been part of a McCartney (or Wings, or Beatles) tour before. “This is a song we have not performed on American soil,” he said by way of prefacing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” such a crowd favorite that it’s amazing as dedicated a crowd-pleaser as Macca has never gotten round to it live. John Lennon famously hated the tune, but you had to wonder if even if he might’ve approved of this arrangement, which de-emphasized the piano in favor of an organ part that slyly established the 1968 oldie as an actual ska song.

Also making their tour debuts: the Beatles’ “I’m Looking Through You” and the once prescient, now nostalgic “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five.” The latter brought the tally of songs performed from 1973’s Band on the Run to five making it even better represented than Let It Be and the White Album, each of which contributed four numbers to the show.

As with last year’s shows, McCartney covered two of his fellow Fabs, doing a version of George Harrison’s “Something” that started as a solo ukelele rendition before kicking into a familiar full-band arrangement, and appending a singalong of John Lennon’s non-Beatles “Give Peace a Chance” to the mostly Lennon-penned “A Day in the Life.” His ’80s elegy for Lennon, “Here Today,” described as being “in the form of a conversation I didn’t ever have with him,” further cemented the decidedly Beatles-centric tone of the show. If you hate the Beatles and think Paul didn’t really hit his stride until he hooked up with Denny Laine, be sure to go home early: Once the show gets into its last 14 numbers, only one — the fireworks-laden “Live and Let Die” — is not a late-1960s chestnut.

Is Paul pandering to nostalgia in his old (or at least post-”When I’m 64″) age? Possibly. But for the tiny percentage of attendees who might think that’s a bad thing, there are more than enough signs of ongoing vitality. McCartney’s last two albums, Memory Almost Full and Electric Arguments (the latter released under the name the Fireman), were his two most invigorating works since the early ’90s. Memory is now represented in the set only by the mandolin-driven “Dance Tonight,” and is more of an interlude than a highlight. But Arguments‘ “Highway” and “Sing the Changes” would do a rocker one-third McCartney’s age proud. (As on last year’s tour, the latter number was accompanied by a spacey filmic backdrop that had a computerized visage of President Obama morphing into and out of a 2001-style starfield.)

Moreover, McCartney has had the wisdom to stick with a terrific four-man backing band that — seemingly paradoxically — mostly replicates the original Beatles and Wings arrangements, yet still brings a slight garage-band flair to those duly faithful arrangements.

And Macca himself? He never once avoided any of the night’s repertoire’s hundreds of high notes (except for a slight downward deflection at the end of each chorus of “Two of Us,” which seemed to be an artistic choice, not a vocal mandate). And he doesn’t shy away from his classic Little Richard-influenced howls any more than he does his falsetto. When, more than two and a half hours into your show, you’re able to slate “Helter Skelter” as your penultimate number, you’re making a better argument for the benefits of veganism than the PETA booth out in the lobby ever could.

One other completely superficial note: Macca may be rocking the suspenders look like no one this side of Larry King… But, at 67, still no sign of a gut! We should all be “Letting Go” this much.

After a second night at the Bowl, McCartney is set to play Miami April 3rd, followed by trips to Puerto Rico, Ireland, and the U.K. in April and June. Further U.S. dates are promised but yet to be announced. Expect some real Fab Four-style screaming from fans if he fails to bring what is widely considered his best set list ever back to the States for a full tour.

Visit all of our essential Beatles coverage.

The Hollywood Bowl, March 30, 2010:

“Venus And Mars/Rock Show (excerpt)/Jet”
“All My Loving”
“Letting Go”
“Got To Get You Into My Life”
“Highway”
“Let Me Roll It” (with “Foxy Lady” coda)
“The Long And Winding Road”
“Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five”
“(I Want To) Come Home”
“My Love”
“I’m Looking Through You”
“Two Of Us”
“Blackbird”
“Here Today”
“Dance Tonight”
“Mrs. Vandebilt”
“Eleanor Rigby”
“Something”
“Sing The Changes”
“Band On The Run”
“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”
“Back In The U.S.S.R.”
“I’ve Got A Feeling”
“Paperback Writer”
“A Day In The Life (abbreviated)/Give Peace A Chance (excerpt)”
“Let It Be”
“Live And Let Die”
“Hey Jude”

Encore One:
“Day Tripper”
“Lady Madonna”
“Get Back”

Encore Two:
“Yesterday”
“Helter Skelter”
“Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)/The End”

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There was an elegiac quality to the Who’s performance of Quadrophenia at London’s Royal Albert Hall last night, which marked the 10th anniversary of benefit shows in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust charity. Roger Daltrey, the prime mover behind the benefit, has said that this is the last time the Who will stage their 1973 rock opera (they first toured it in 1996), and Pete Townshend, who is suffering from severe tinnitus, warned that if the show went badly he would have to retire from live performance all together (read more on his condition here). The concert’s wildly enthusiastic reception should at least delay that decision for a while longer.

Looking back to the heady summer of 1964, when warring mods and rockers turned British seaside resorts into battlegrounds, Quadrophenia was steeped in nostalgia from the start, and now the album itself is a period piece from a time when it briefly seemed as if any ambitious band might be expected to turn its hand to a rock opera. These days rock fans get their narrative kicks from hit-packed jukebox musicals rather than dense album-length dramas: not even the Who-loving Green Day are willing to go quite this far.

Last night’s show suggested a few reasons why. For one thing, it is logistically demanding: the six-man band (with Pino Palladino and Zak Starkey replacing the late John Entwistle and Keith Moon) was augmented by a brass section, two string players and two surprise guest vocalists, Eddie Vedder and Kasabian frontman Tom Meighan. For another, it requires nothing less than total conviction. The narrative is so overwrought, even sometimes borderline comical, that any lapse in intensity would have tipped it into Spinal Tap territory.

Daltrey and Townshend may now be bespectacled sexagenarians, but they retain a slashing vigor. The singer still swung his mike cord like a bolas while the guitarist retained his trademark move of raising his arm high above his head before bringing it crashing down on his guitar strings. His playing was virtuosic, moving, on “5:15″ between bluesy licks, shredding solos and savage power chords, but also, more crucially, fueled by an enduring rage. The climactic one-two punch of “The Rock” and “Love Reign O’er Me” was drama worthy of this storied, 19th century venue.

The Who’s star reinforcements held nothing back either. A leonine Vedder conducted a heavweight duet with Daltrey on “The Punk and the Godfather”; Meighan gamely threw himself into the album’s least convincing song, “Bell Boy” by wearing a bellhop’s uniform and ferrying luggage with such am-dram dedication that he seemed to be daring the audience to laugh. The three vocalists, each representing different musical eras, convened in an ad hoc supergroup on “I’ve Had Enough.” Only the poorly acted filmed inserts, broadcast on a screen above the stage, risked making the whole project appear cumbersome. But throughout the night, Quadrophenia’s conceptual excess was anchored by its sheer physical power. Ultimately, none of the album’s ambitious narrative techniques proved quite as eloquent as a single blast from Townshend’s guitar.

Set List

“I Am the Sea”
“The Real Me”
“Quadrophenia”
“Cut My Hair”
“The Punk and the Godfather” (with Eddie Vedder)
“I’m One”
“The Dirty Jobs”
“Helpless Dancer”
“Is It in My Head?”
“I’ve Had Enough” (with Eddie Vedder and Tom Meighan)
“5:15″
“Sea and Sand” (with Eddie Vedder and Tom Meighan)
“Drowned” (Townshend solo)
“Bell Boy” (with Tom Meighan)
“Doctor Jimmy”
“The Rock”
“Love, Reign O’er Me”

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• Relive the Who’s Super Bowl Set in Photos
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• The Who’s Future Uncertain as Townshend’s Tinnitus Returns

Joined by former Oasis lead guitarist Gem Archer and touring keyboardist Jay Darlington (both said to be part of brother Liam’s new band) and percussionist Terry Kirkbride, the elder Gallagher kicked off the night with “(It’s Good) To Be Free,” “Talk Tonight” and “Fade Away,” a trio of Oasis B sides from the mid-1990s that could easily have ended up on any of their acclaimed records from the period.

Gallagher was in high spirits, bantering with the crowd throughout the night and suggesting, “If you want to commit a burglary in Crouch End, tonight would be the night to do it,” prior to introducing the Crouch End Choir. The chorus was outmatched on their first song, “Cast No Shadow,” by the Oasis faithful who bellowed out the lyrics to the classic cut from What’s the Story Morning Glory?

“Half the World Away,” another early B side followed, before Wired Strings, an eight-piece all-female orchestra, took their seats behind the band. They proved a brilliant complement to the acoustic arrangement on “Don’t Go Away,” a cut from Be Here Now. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is exactly the same set I played two years ago,” Gallagher announced, referring to his 2007 appearance at the Teenage Cancer Trust benefit that was later released as the live album The Dreams We Have As Children.

Although he did stray from his previous set, he didn’t answer the calls for new material saying, “I don’t play new songs for charity.” After solid takes of “The Importance of Being Idle” from 2006’s Don’t Believe the Truth and “Listen Up,” Gallagher ended the repeated requests for new tunes by telling the audience, “Although the new stuff is brilliant, now is not the time or place.” Instead he treated them to a modified version of “Wonderwall” — slightly geared down for his voice — and “Slide Away,” which featured a searing solo by Archer. In between the two classics he brought out “Rocking Chair,” a rarely played B side from the WTSMG? days.

Gallagher closed the set with “Whatever,” a standalone single released after the band’s debut album Definitely Maybe, and Wired Strings’ contributions proved as strong as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who played strings on the original. As the crowd sang the familiar chorus, “Whatever you do/whatever you say/yeah, I know it’s all right,” the band departed the stage, leaving Wired Strings to finish the song and soak up the applause. The faithful continued singing until Noel and Co. reappeared for an encore that began with “The Masterplan.” Gallagher then returned to the first two Oasis albums for “Married With Children” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” as the lights went up the Hall.

Gallagher plays again tonight at the Royal Albert Hall and Stone Roses bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield is rumored to appear.

Set List:

1. “(It’s Good) To Be Free”
2. “Talk Tonight”
3. “Fade Away”
4. “Cast No Shadow”
5. “Half the World Away”
6. “Don’t Go Away”
7. “The Importance of Being Idle”
8. “Listen Up”
9. “Sad Song”
10. “Wonderwall”
11. “Rocking Chair”
12. “Slide Away”
13. “Digsy’s Diner”
14. “Whatever”

ENCORE:

15. “The Masterplan”
16. “Married with Children”
17. “Don’t Look Back in Anger”

Watch Warren Haynes rock an acoustic set and get the lowdown on this year’s Allman Brothers’ run.

The Allmans opened with a dig at their usual home this time of year: New York skyline shots on the screen behind the band during the first-album medley of “Don’t Want You No More” and “Ain’t My Cross to Bear” included one of the Beacon Theatre with a red circle and a slash through it. (The venue has been taken over by a Cirque de Soleil production.) The audience booed accordingly. There have been troubles uptown too: The Allmans cancelled their March 22-27nd shows at United Palace because of an “unforeseen family matter,” according to a statement issued last week. The run ends on March 20th.

But the group was, from the start on March 12th, at peakin’-Beacon strength. Gregg Allman’s voice — precociously fierce and weathered in 1969, genuinely raw and vulnerable for the last couple of decades — carried “Ain’t My Cross to Bear” with scarred authority, against guitarist Derek Trucks’ snake-crawl lines of slide guitar and bursts of fuzzy sustain. Trucks and guitarist Warren Haynes hung together, spitting licks as the rhythm section built up to the segue into “You Don’t Love Me,” and ended the song by trading choruses like gunfire — an effect as familiar as the version on 1971’s At Fillmore East but fresh and stunning on impact.

Grab all of Rolling Stone’s essential guitar coverage.

In the Allmans, Trucks and Haynes — who have done their own lifetimes of playing — bring distinct personal energy and invention to the roles established by founding guitarists Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. You hear tradition, not recitation. In “Midnight Rider,” Trucks played a slide break that sounded more like the buzzing glide of a sarod. There has been a collective effect, too, on nerve and dynamics. The heart of the first set was a connected excursion through jet-black turbulence slashed with guitar lightning: Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell,” Allman and Haynes singing the chorus in keening harmonies; an instrumental cross, in 6/8 time, between “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and John Coltrane’s “Afro Blue”; and Dr. John’s “Walk on Gilded Splinters,” propelled by drummers Jaimoe and Butch Trucks, bassist Oteil Burbridge and percussionst Marc Quiñones like a New Orleans graveyard march, detoured through central Africa.

For the second set, Trucks’ wife Susan Tedeschi stepped up — and out — on vocals and guitar for a couple of numbers, including Delaney and Bonnie’s “Coming Home,” and the Allmans marked the fortieth anniversary of their second album, Idlewild South, with “Revival” and “Leave My Blues at Home.” But the real ascension and deep blues came in a “Mountain Jam” that dropped, from elegant hovering guitars and jubilant drumming, to a mean electric-Mississippi roll through Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning,” then eased into a spell of Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone From the Sun” — Trucks and Haynes’ guitars rendering the melody with liquid yearning — before jumping back into the cocky delight of the Donovan hook from “There Is a Mountain.”

It was music at once absolutely familiar and vigorously new, with an impulse and telepathy bonded with muscle and experience and charged by a belief that the best work is not yet done. It was still raining and gusting hard outside after the show was over. But spring, at last, was here.

Check out our huge collection of Who photos.

The night — which was a benefit concert for numerous organizations including Music Unites — began with a children’s choir and the house band performing “Overture” and “Tommy Can You Hear Me.” They were followed by Living Colour, who did an absolutely killer funk-metal “Eminence Front.” It was a hard act to top, but Robyn Hitchcock’s acoustic “Substitute” and the Smithereens’ fierce one-two punch of “The Seeker” and “Sparks” came pretty close with an incredibly frantic energy. Bettye LaVette slowed things down with a beautiful torch ballad rendition of “Love Reign O’er Me” that was definitely the vocal highlight of the night.

Mose Allison, looking pretty spry for 82, was the only performer who did an original. He played “Young Man Blues” (which was a staple of the Who’s set list in the 1960s and ’70s) and its recent sequel “Old Man Blues.” Beatles cover band Fab Faux stepped one inch outside of their comfort zone by playing “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Every note and harmony from the Tommy finale was hit with stunning precision. The Gaslight Anthem tore into “Baba O’Riley” Pearl Jam style, while Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould dipped deep into the Who’s catalog for a frenzied cover of “Can’t Reach You” from The Who Sell Out. The night ended with all the performers jamming on a sloppy but fun “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” featuring an unprecedented two primal screams — one by Willie Nile and another by Nicole Atkins, who nailed it better than Daltrey has in quite some time.

Check out our huge collection of Who photos.

The night — which was a benefit concert for numerous organizations including Music Unites — began with a children’s choir and the house band performing “Overture” and “Tommy Can You Hear Me.” They were followed by Living Colour, who did an absolutely killer funk-metal “Eminence Front.” It was a hard act to top, but Robyn Hitchcock’s acoustic “Substitute” and the Smithereens’ fierce one-two punch of “The Seeker” and “Sparks” came pretty close with an incredibly frantic energy. Bettye LaVette slowed things down with a beautiful torch ballad rendition of “Love Reign O’er Me” that was definitely the vocal highlight of the night.

Mose Allison, looking pretty spry for 82, was the only performer who did an original. He played “Young Man Blues” (which was a staple of the Who’s set list in the 1960s and ’70s) and its recent sequel “Old Man Blues.” Beatles cover band Fab Faux stepped one inch outside of their comfort zone by playing “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Every note and harmony from the Tommy finale was hit with stunning precision. The Gaslight Anthem tore into “Baba O’Riley” Pearl Jam style, while Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould dipped deep into the Who’s catalog for a frenzied cover of “Can’t Reach You” from The Who Sell Out. The night ended with all the performers jamming on a sloppy but fun “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” featuring an unprecedented two primal screams — one by Willie Nile and another by Nicole Atkins, who nailed it better than Daltrey has in quite some time.

It was a rare moment even for the Tibet House Benefit Concert, an annual event that raises money to preserve the country’s threatened culture. The benefit, now in its 20th year, has hosted unlikely collaborations like Moby and David Bowie performing “Heroes” in 2003 and Ray Davies and Debbie Harry trading verses on “Lola” in 2007. This year marked the 60th anniversary of the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, and the show kicked off with several Tibetan monks performing a haunting chant in front of a large painting of the region’s sprawling Potala Palace.

The setup was sparse: most performers shared the same drums and amps, and the Patti Smith Group acted as house band. Early in the night, composer Phillip Glass introduced Irish singer Pierce Turner, who sat at the grand piano and performed the soaring, Bowie-reminiscent “Yogi with a Broken Heart.” Regina Spektor later played an apocalyptic set including the bone-chilling “Laughing,” which featured gloomy strings. The 30-year-old Bronx singer joked about finally making it to the legendary hall. “I’ve always wanted to play Carnegie Hall,” she said. “And now I have lipstick on my nose.”

Gogol Bordello followed with an acoustic set of revved-up Eastern European punk. Soon, Smith was onstage, looking like a road-tested gypsy. In a baggy white shirt, black vest and work boots, she kicked off with a joyous sing-along of the O’Jays classic “Love Train,” and proclaimed, “Come on everybody! Join hands!” Between songs, someone shouted “Happy birthday.” Smith, who turned 63 more than two months ago, replied, “As the Mad Hatter would say, it’s my un-birthday.”

Smith closed with the epically building “Gloria,” busting out spastic dance moves as the crowd belted the chorus. Afterward, Smith thanked all of the veterans of the cause, then she introduced Pop as “One of our sacred veterans, soon to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

Pop’s three-song set will likely go down in Carnegie Hall history. During “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” he completely defiled the place. He strutted across the stage in tight black jeans, ass crack fully visible, and then dove into the crowd (nobody caught him). As the song later descended into chaos, he smashed his mike stand into the iconic, wood-floored stage repeatedly, trying to make a dent. He gave up and hurled the stand at the grand piano.

Five decades of Raw Power: Iggy Pop and the Stooges in photos.

At the afterparty, Spektor admitted, “I never thought I’d really get to play. I’m used to listening to things from the nosebleed seats. Just being there on that stage is a mind trip.” Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye was still glowing from the special night. “I got to play ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ with Iggy!” he said. “I’ve been waiting 40 years to play that.” Later, Bordello’s Eugene Hutz added, “It was an atom-smashing experience.”

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John Mayer the musician has been carefully cultivating John Mayer the brand over the last 10 years. He’s merged his acoustic singer-songwriter persona with his blues-virtuoso alter-ego, developed the logos on his tour T-shirts and spat out streams of 140-character tweets that broadcast his most off-the-cuff musings. But though he clearly knows how to get results on his own terms, sometimes the terms aren’t his to define — and as his recent Playboy misadventure demonstrated, even Mayer can hit a painfully wrong note. But at a pair of packed shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden late last week, Mayer proved sometimes he’s able to just let his music do the talking.

John Mayer Uncensored: photos of his most outrageous moments.

“You’re looking at the clean me,” Mayer announced midway through Thursday night’s set. Then he launched into a solo acoustic medley of “My Stupid Mouth,” “Daughters” and “3X5″ that was immediately followed by a groovy cover of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” on electric guitar. It was an impressive display of his sharp guitar playing, appealing sing-alongs and personable wit, and the audience responded generously. Mayer was clearly grateful for the crowd’s warmth. “It means the world to me you’re here,” he said on Friday. “I mean it from the bottom of my dumb heart.”

Mayer was less concerned with sending messages via his song selection than picking tracks that showed off his evolution as an artist: the acoustic (”Why Georgia”), the bluesy (”Crossroads”), the groovy (”Vultures”), the heartbroken (”Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”) and the hopeful (”Perfectly Lonely”). Mayer also acknowledged his inspirations with covers of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” which he cleverly slipped into the Mac-flavored “Half of My Heart.”

Though his winter arena tour comes with hi-tech production — a massive lighting rig, mesh curtain and a giant projection screen — Mayer switched the set up each night, keeping the focus on the music. On Thursday, he honored a fan chant with an impromptu version of his love letter to the city, Room for Squares‘ “City Love,” and pulled in lyrics from Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” during “Gravity.” On Friday he exuded a more relaxed energy, breaking out a sultry take on “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and a buoyant “Good Love Is on the Way.”

Go inside Mayer’s recent RS cover shoot.

On both nights, Mayer seemed to savor the audience’s reaction to the line “It’s a long night in New York City” from “Who Says.” And perhaps feeling safe in his adopted hometown, Mayer got vulnerable during Friday’s show-closing “Gravity,” and debuted new lyrics that seem inspired by his Playboy fallout. He explained his new theory, that “lovelessness leads to loneliness, which leads to sadness, which leads to anger, which leads to hate” and spoke of imperfect batting averages. Then he sang:

“When you got hurt/it made you beautiful/the cracks around your heart/they let the light shine through./When you got hurt/in pieces on the floor/put them back together/even better than before”

The moment over, he finished the show in expected Mayer fashion: with an explosive solo that had him jamming on his knees with his guitar on the floor, moving forward, in the best way he knows how.

Set Lists:

Thursday, February 25th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Crossroads”
“Vultures”
“No Such Thing”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”
“Assassin”
“My Stupid Mouth” -> “Daughters” -> “3×5″ (medley)
“Ain’t No Sunshine”
“Waiting on the World to Change”
“Bigger Than My Body”
“Why Georgia”
“City Love” (tease)
“Gravity”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Friends, Lovers or Nothing”

Friday, February 26th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Good Love is On the Way”
“Vultures”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)”
“Comfortable”
“Free Fallin’”
“Waiting On The World To Change (w/ Michael Franti)”
“Assassin”
“Crossroads”
“Belief”
“Half of My Heart”
“Why Georgia”
“No Such Thing”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Gravity”

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As the final notes of “Cocaine” rang through Madison Square Garden last night, Jeff Beck quietly walked onto the stage next to Eric Clapton, sarcastically saluted his fellow guitar legend and launched into a jaw-dropping cover of Elmore James’ “Shake Your Money Maker.” For the next 40 minutes the former Yardbirds guitarists traded licks on songs by everyone from Willie Dixon to Sly Stone to Henry Mancini as the sold-out crowd reached a state of air guitar nirvana never before witnessed by man. At the end of the night they bowed to each other, as if they had just completed a karate match.

Forty years ago these two men — who are currently sharing the cover of Rolling Stone — were widely regarded as the two greatest guitarists of their time. After brief back-to-back stints in the Yardbirds (Beck replaced Clapton) they went on to the Jeff Beck Group and Cream, laying the groundwork for Led Zeppelin and all blues rock that followed. Since the early 1970s, however, the two men took radically different paths as Clapton made highly commercial rock and pop while Beck churned out highly un-commercial jazz-fusion and other instrumental projects. Beck went far off the pop grid, but his reputation survived fully intact and when he announced a co-headlining show with Clapton in Japan last year it created a frenzy that lead to a brief international tour.

Check out all of Rolling Stone’s guitar coverage and join the debate: who’s the best of all time?

Beck took the stage first, opening with “Eternity’s Breath” by the 1970s jazz-fusion group the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It’s hard to keep the attention of massive arena with a 40-minute instrumental set of largely unknown songs, but Beck pulled it off — aided by his killer band and a large string section. Some members of the crowd screamed for anything remotely familiar, like Beck’s famous cover of “People Get Ready,” but most sat quietly in awe as Beck’s guitar soared on songs like “Corpus Christy Carol” and the Puccini aria “Nessun Dorma.” The only song familiar to a classic rock audience was the Beatles “A Day In The Life,” which earned Beck a Grammy a few weeks ago.

After a brief break, Clapton opened with a brief acoustic set that mixed blues standards (”Driftin’ Blues,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out”) with Clapton originals like 1983’s “I’ve Got A Rock And Roll Heart.” He plugged in for a five-song set highlighted by the Derek and the Dominoes chestnut “Tell The Truth” and his famous cover of “I Shot The Sheriff.” The Bob Marley cover and J.J. Cale’s “Cocaine” were the only nod to his arsenal of radio hits, leaving tunes like “Wonderful Tonight,” “Tears In Heaven” and even “Layla” and “Sunshine Of Your Love” behind. Every basketball arena in this country has seen those songs about 87 times and he wisely realized enough’s enough.

The show reached a whole other level when Beck came out, as both guitarists were clearly playing at the absolute top of their game. An unexpected “Moon River” was particularly otherwordly, as Beck played the vocal melody on his guitar before Clapton stepped up to the mic and did his best Andy Williams. Cream’s “Outside Woman Blues” rocked significantly harder than when Cream themselves played it at MSG five yeas ago, and Sly Stone’s “I Want To Take You Higher” had the two guitarists trading solos back and forth so quickly it was often hard to tell who was playing what. It ended with Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” a song that hasn’t had much oomph for Clapton since his Cream days — but with Beck playing about three feet away from him it sounded fresh again.

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Yoko turned to the BAM crowd with a coquettish grin. “I knew what I was doing,” she cracked. Then she leaped into the white-noise boogie of “Don’t Worry, Kyoko” from 1969’s Live Peace in Toronto with rusted shrieks and air-raid-siren whoops as Sean and Clapton played twin grinding slide guitars over a steady thundering rhythm section: original Plastic Ono bassist Klaus Voorman and drummer Jim Keltner, who played on John and Ono’s 1972 album Sometime in New York City.

Check out photos from the Plastic Ono Band show.

Coming two days before her 77th birthday, “We Are Plastic Ono Band” was a two-set revue of Ono’s musical life, with the first half focused on her new album, Between My Head and the Sky. The second part featured friends and disciples performing songs from her previous records, as far apart in temper and touch as “Mulberry” – a wordless memoir of Ono’s World War II childhood in Japan, in raw ecstatic yelps to the free-guitar discord of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon – to Bette Midler’s canny rearrangement of “Yes I’m Your Angel” from Double Fantasy into a saucy sister of “Makin’ Whoopee.” You could almost hear the clinking of martini glasses amid the brass and penthouse-party piano.

The connective momentum in Ono’s art is her declarative instruction and participatory assurance, from the early-Sixties action works shown in a biographical film at the start of the night – Cut Piece; the ceiling painting with a microscopic “Yes” at the center – to recent songs in the first set like the victory mantra “Rising” and “Higa Noboru,” a ballad from the current album. “I write/I light/My message/On an invisible wall/Of prison cell hell,” she sang in the latter, in a tender but direct voice to Sean’s firm piano work. And inside the extreme confrontation of records like 1970’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and 1971’s Fly was always a love of surging rhythm. At BAM, her new Plastic Ono Band – led by Sean, now 34, and including drummer Yuko Araki and Yuka Honda on keyboards – updated the railroad racket of Ono’s 1972 single “Mind Train” with percolating dancefloor electronics. Ono shimmeyed to the beat as she wailed.

Performance artist Justin Bond turned “What a Bastard the World Is” from 1973’s Approximately Infinite Universe into a blur of gender: a man dressed like a 1920s ingenue, singing a song of feminist outrage, in a hard deep tenor dotted with girl-ish flutter. Paul Simon and his son Harper, made a short poignant medley of “Silverhorse” from 1981’s Season of Glass, the album Ono made after John Lennon’s death, and his “Hold On,” from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band record. Played like a pair of traditional English folk ballads, with familial harmonies and two acoustic guitars, the songs captured, without melodrama, the weight of Ono’s loss and her faith in unbroken connection.

The three-song set with Sean, Clapton, Voorman and Keltner was hardly as ragged as that ‘69 Live Peace show. But it was good rough fun – Voorman was beaming all through “Yer Blues,” the only Beatles song of the night – and Clapton soloed in the Approximately Infinite Universe blues “Death of Samantha” with sharp tortuous cries, like the song was an old Mississippi Delta lament.

The evening ended with Ono and Sean leading a full-cast singalong to “Give Peace a Chance.” But the audience gave its own encore too: a spontaneous rendition, for Ono, of “Happy Birthday.” Her “Yes” piece had come to life.

It was a sweltering 97 degrees last night when Spoon took the stage at Stubb’s in Austin for round one of SpoonX3, an All Tomorrow’s Parties-type fest with Spoon as both headliner and opening-band curator back-to-back-to-back nights. It was a mere 67 degrees in Portland, where frontman Britt Daniel spends half his time, but after last night yielded such a massive, adoring crowd, he’s likely not regretting sweating through some new tunes headed for the band’s upcoming seventh album, slated for release on Merge next spring.

First came opening sets by Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, an Austin big band combining the funk of the J.B.’s and the strut of the Blues Brothers, and Quasi, a Portland trio featuring former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss and ex-husband Sam Coomes. Then Spoon emerged with an unpopular opener: “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case,” a slow-building, ambivalent number from the band’s most recent album, the wildly popular Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. But the group quickly redeemed itself with “Don’t You Evah,” a cover by the band the Natural History, and then with “Got Nuffin,” the brilliant new single released June 30th.

“Got Nuffin” epitomizes classic Spoon. A propulsive, hypnotic drumbeat accented by spiky keyboard and jagged guitar in a combination that recalled the best of the ’80s alternative scene gave way to Daniel singing, “I’ve got nothing to lose but darkness and shadows.” The band went on to traverse its catalog, highlighting songs from the albums Gimme Fiction, Kill the Moonlight and Girls Can Tell, interspersing new songs throughout. Among them was a stabbing track about waking up in a supermarket, with the refrain “Are you quite certain enough?” called “Is Love Forever?” and “Written in Reverse,” wherein a hiccuping beat gave way to Daniel howling at the moon and beckoning somebody to call the hearse. As if on cue, a pasty-faced young girl on the verge of collapse was ushered out of the killer heat by paramedics.

(Read Beck’s entry on our 100 Greatest Guitarists here.)

Beck kept his onstage patter to a simple “merci” and an introduction of his bandmates near the end of the 90-minute show. Otherwise, all communicating with his audience was done through his fingers. From the moment the group opened with “Beck’s Bolero,” the man of the hour slid into the high registers, eliciting squeals and screams from his instrument. As the evening moved on, he sprayed clusters of growling low notes into the hall on the reggae scorcher “Behind the Veil,” took the Beatles’ “A Day In the Life” to strange and wonderful places and wound down with the lonesome “Where Were You”. The night ended with a rollicking version of “Peter Gunn Theme.”

Earlier in the day, Beck had received the first Tribute award from the Festival’s Guitar Show. During a question-and-answer session following the presentation, he fielded a question about the spontaneity of his technique. “It’s a form of musical Tourette’s, I think,” he said, to general laughter. “It’s an involuntary spasm. Probably, it’s a form of insanity.” But with every howling note so exquisitely placed, we’re talking crazy like a fox.

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Frontman Damon Albarn took the stage in his unofficial uniform — a black-and-yellow Fred Perry polo and loose-fitting jeans — prompting the ocean of fans into rapturous cheering. Before their 2009 reunion, it had been seven long years since the four original members of Blur performed together (Graham Coxon left in 2002 citing internal conflict and alcoholism). While Albarn had busied himself with Gorillaz and assorted projects, fans continually clamored for more Blur — the band is, after all, an Anglo-Saxon institution as inherently English as tea. And without much acknowledgment to the crowd, Coxon, the long-missed axe-wielder, came out onstage and started the night with the decidedly old school “She’s So High,” the Manchester-influenced opening track for 1991’s debut Leisure and the band’s first hit single.

It wasn’t until the second song — no, not “Song 2″ — that the masses maniacally leaped in the air in unison. “Girls & Boys,” the global synth-pop hit from 1994’s Parklife, sounded charged and immediate. It was becoming obvious that Hyde Park’s sound system was not overwhelmingly loud, so the band and crowd would have to compensate with their own respective energy. Albarn, the charmer, ran into the photojournalist pit and then ran over to the fans, prompting screams and zombie-like reaches.

This was the only way to make an unending audience feel somewhat intimate. “The last two weeks have been extraordinary,” the frontman told the fans, seeming sincerely appreciative, “but we’re here now,” and went straight in to “Tracy Jacks” allowing the song finish the thought for him. Last week Blur closed Glastonbury with a set list quite similar to the Hyde Park gigs.

Unusually, it wasn’t until the seventh song that Blur ventured over into material from their more experimental, less Britpoppy latter-phase. The echoey riff for “Beetlebum,” from 1997’s self-titled lo-fi-flavored album, elastically bounced around the park. Then, they performed “Out of Time,” the only song that night from 2003’s underrated and mostly Coxon-free Think Tank. “Tender,” an epic highlight, followed with an inspiring gospel-like sing-along, loud and anthemic like a 50,000 person backing choir had been hired for the gig. And while the two stage-side video screens mostly focused on Albarm and Coxon throughout the night — after all, this was ostensibly their reunion — drummer Dave Rowntree and bassist Alex James, both who never left the band, held down the rhythm section. James’ beefy and precise bass was the perfect compliment to Coxon’s sometimes frenetic and unhurried guitar playing.

The overall chemistry of the band was, ironically high and poignantly epic at the 1994 ballad “To The End.” “And it looks like we might have made it,” Albarn crooned to his bandmates, “Yes it looks like we’ve made it to the end.” Let’s hope that that’s not the case. America next?

Set list:

“She’s So High”
“Girls & Boys”
“Tracy Jacks”
“There’s No Other Way”
“Jubilee”
“Badhead”
“Beetlebum”
“Out of Time”
“Trimm Trabb”
“Coffee & TV” (introduced by Coxon humbly announcing, “Hi. I’m singing this next song”)
“Tender”
“Country House”
“Oily Water”
“Chemical World”
“Sunday Sunday”
“Parklife”
“End Of A Century”
“To The End”
“This Is A Low”
–
“Popscence”
“Advert”
“Song 2″
–
“Death Of A Party”
“For Tomorrow”
“Universal”

The two biggest stars of the show — winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert — embraced what endeared them to millions of fans throughout Season Eight. “Glambert” was out in full force, with tight pants, his otherworldly wail and a tribute to the original rock androgyne, David Bowie. Wrapped in a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans, Allen kept it simple and real, embracing the stripped-down soul sound that elevated him from dark horse to worthy champion. (Get all of Rolling Stone’s Adam Lambert coverage — photos, video and more — here.)

An adorable montage of Allen’s baby pictures, plus David Cook’s new video and a few airborne beach balls, kept the audience entertained as Idol No. 10 Michael Sarver prepared to take the stage. Backed by a small band with a big sound, the full-voiced Texan kicked off the show in high spirits with Gavin DeGraw’s “I’m in Love with a Girl,” which he dedicated to his wife, Tiffany. Megan Joy took the stage for two numbers — and lots of shimmying — reprising one of her best Idol performances, “Put Your Records On.” Piano man Scott MacIntyre left his pink pants at home but his rendition of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” — and his gentle mocking of Ryan Seacrest’s attempt to high-five him at the auditions — drew some of the loudest applause of the night.

Sure, the Idols can sing … but can they dance? As Rolling Stone reported from the Idol tour rehearsals, choreographer JaQuel Knight was putting the Top 10 through a workout, and Lil Rounds confessed pre-show that she was nervous about nailing the complicated choreography for Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” but her moves — and stylish cat suit — did the R&B diva justice. Luckily, the pulsating psychedelic patterns that backlit the stage weren’t enough to throw Rounds off her game. Throwing a bone to the older folks in the audience, Anoop Desai started off his set with a pitch-perfect “Always on My Mind,” the Willie Nelson crooner that wowed the judges during Grand Ole Opry week. But New Jack Anoop emerged — gyrations and all — with “My Prerogative,” the Bobby Brown track that got him through the Wild Card round and into the Top 13.

The Idol groove continued with a charismatic Matt Giraud, who got the crowd moving with his piano-pounding version of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle,” then paid tribute to another soul great with an outstanding “Georgia on My Mind,” giving his elastic voice the full workout, from raspy growl to falsetto.

Following a group medley that ran the gamut from Billy Joel (MacIntyre and Giraud on dueling pianos) to a taste of rap from Rounds and Desai, Allison Iraheta took the series’ fairly tame group number “So What” and made it just as tough as Pink’s version. With wind in her pink and purple hair, guitar strapped across her torso and a voice like a pack of cigarettes, the youngest Idol showed off her rock moves like a true rock goddess in the making.

Amid a sea of glow sticks and handmade T-shirts floated the hokiest sign of the night: “I’m okey dokey with Danny Gokey.” The only Idol to perform a Michael Jackson song on tour, Gokey punctuated his “P.Y.T.” with funky spins. (Adam Lambert discusses getting the Michael Jackson news here.) Dressed in his Sunday best, the church music director waxed philosophic about following your dreams, closing his set with two crowd-pleasing Rascal Flatts ballads.

In true Robert Plant style, Lambert made his arrival known, punctuating his three-octave howl on “Whole Lotta Love” with pelvic thrusts and microphone straddling, then quickly switched gears for the haunting “Mad World,” showing off his crystalline falsetto against a moody backdrop of smoke and twinkling lights. After reprising “Slow Ride,” his energetic duet with “little sister” Iraheta, Lambert closed his set with a medley of Bowie songs, then sunk down into the stage to the loudest cheers of the night.

Marked by explosive bursts of noise and color, the countdown culminated in Season Eight champion Allen, who eschewed theatrics for a straightforward set of Idol favorites, from the soulful, percussive “Heartless” to his stirring piano-and-vocals interpretation of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Calling for a sea of cell phones and lighters, Allen finished his set with a plaintive rendition of “Hey Jude,” bringing the rest of the Idols back on stage to close out the show with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” … perhaps a tribute to former band member Randy “the Emperor” Jackson?

Set List:

Michael Sarver: “I’m in Love with a Girl” (Gavin Degraw); “Closer” (Ne-Yo)
Megan Joy: “Put Your Records On” (Corrine Baily Rae); “Tears Dry on Their Own” (Amy Winehouse)
Scott MacIntyre: “Bend and Break” (Keane); “A Thousand Miles” (Vanessa Carlton)
Lil Rounds: “Be Without You” (Mary J Blige); “No One” (Alicia Keys); “Single Ladies” (Beyoncé)
Anoop Desai: “Always on My Mind” (Willie Nelson); “Mad” (Ne-Yo); “My Prerogative” (Bobby Brown)
Matt Giraud: “Hard to Handle” (The Black Crowes); “Georgia On My Mind” (Ray Charles); “I Found You” (The Fray)
Group Medley
Allison Iraheta: “So What” (Pink); “Cry Baby” (Janis Joplin); “Barracuda” (Heart)
Danny Gokey: “P.Y.T.” (Michael Jackson); “Maria Maria” (Santana); “What Hurts the Most,” “My Wish” (Rascal Flatts)
Adam Lambert: “Whole Lotta Love” (Led Zeppelin); “Starlight” (Muse); “Mad World” (Tears for Fears/Gary Jules), “Slow Ride” with Allison Iraheta (Foghat), “Life on Mars,” “Fame, “Let’s Dance” (David Bowie)
Kris Allen: “Heartless” (Kanye West); “No Boundaries” (Idol coronation song); “Bright Lights” (Matchbox 20); “Ain’t No Sunshine” (Bill Withers); “Hey Jude” (The Beatles)
Encore: “Don’t Stop Believing” (Journey)

The stage at Seattle’s Key Arena appeared to be comparatively bare in contrast to the banner-draped stages of the American Idiot tours. But when the lights went out, and “Song of the Century” crackled over the speakers as if being beamed in from outer space, the black backdrop suddenly lit up to become a city landscape under a starry sky, and the subsequent “21st Century Breakdown” unleashed the first of the arena-sized explosions, flame pots, fireworks and strobe lighting that dazzled the audience throughout the entire show.

But the band’s obvious need to connect emotionally with their audience means they have an uncanny ability to make even a packed arena have the intimacy of a club gig. With the core trio of Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool fleshed out by two additional guitarists, Jason White and Jeff Matika, and keyboardist Jason Freese, Armstrong was free to run around the stage and down a catwalk that extended into the audience with abandon, beseeching the crowd to wave, chant and sing. And by the time the band launched into “American Idiot,” Armstrong was confident enough to not even bother cuing the crowd, leaving them to sing the entire first verse on their own.

Green Day didn’t bring back their cover of Operation Ivy’s “Knowledge,” where they’d pull up audience members to play the instruments, but there was still plenty of crowd interaction. Armstrong was gentle with a clearly nervous young boy who’d been pulled onstage to “freak out and dance” during “East Jesus Nowhere,” and gamely accepted a full-on smooch on the lips from a delighted male fan chosen to sing a few verses of “Longview.” Most surprising, Armstrong found a young man in the pit who was able to play guitar through the entire nine-minute “Jesus of Suburbia” medley. “That was fucking amazing!” Armstrong said afterwards. “Tre, take him backstage and suck his dick!” Cut to Cool leaping from behind his drums, taking the young man by the band, and the two skipping together offstage.

For all the cryptic footage flashed on the rear screen (gasmasks, tanks, falling TVs), the show’s overall mood was upbeat and celebratory; amidst the hijinks of “Hitchin’ A Ride” and “King For A Day” (with its usual segues into “Shout” and “Stand By Me”) there was seemingly no room for 21st Century’s darker songs, like “Christian’s Inferno,” “Peacemaker” or “Restless Heart Syndrome.” The show was ultimately about Green Day reconnecting with the faithful, something they accomplished with effortless aplomb.

Set List:

“Song of the Century”
“21st Century Breakdown”
“Know Your Enemy”
“East Jesus Nowhere”
“Holiday”
“Static Age”
“Before the Lobotomy”
“Are We the Waiting”
“St. Jimmy”
“Geek Stink Breath”
“Hitchin’ A Ride”
“Brain stew”
“Jaded”
“Longview”
“Basket Case”
“She”
“King for a Day
(with “Shout,” “Stand By Me”)
“21 Guns”
“American Eulogy”

Encore:
“American Idiot”
“Jesus of Suburbia”
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
“Minority”
“Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”