The concert etiquette crisis continues. This is a new one: An audience member at Germany’s Hurricane Festival over the weekend was shooting Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong with a water gun throughout the performance. The frontman halted “Jesus Of Suburbia” to shout at the perpetrator.
A few days after Memorial Day, the synth-powered Montreal indie-poppers TOPS came back strong with “Chlorine,” the lead single from their new album Bury The Key. Those TOPS types have another tune for us today, a hard-charging number called “Falling On My Sword.” Informed by band member David Carriere’s love of hardcore, this one has more aggressive guitar action than your average TOPS song, but it doesn’t go racing out of the sonic universe they’ve worked so hard to establish over the years.
Joy Orbison and Overmono love to collaborate. The UK electronic acts have previously joined forces on songs like “Blind Date” and “Bromley,” and now they’re back with another called “Lippy,” which features Montreal rapper Skiifall.
Music festivals ain’t what they used to be. Nearly a decade on from the bursting of the festival bubble, a few of the world’s grand-scale mega-fests continue to program incredible experiences. Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, which the Stereogum staff attended together this month, is very much among them. But financially, it’s getting harder to pull off a quality fest at scale. It’s why Pitchfork Music Festival, one of the best events of its kind, ceased to exist this year. The big ones that persist are mostly bleak. A quick survey of the posters for the biggest corporate fests in North America — stuff like Lollapalooza and its distant relatives Osheaga, Boston Calling, and Governors Ball — offers personality-devoid walls of text appealing to a common denominator so low it may actually be in the earth’s core. For people who actually care about music, large swaths of the festival scene are cooked.
It’s not a bad year for LCD Soundsystem, who have co-headlining shows with Pulp this fall and were recently covered by Dave Grohl at a surprise show. Last night (June 22) in London, James Murphy and co. pleased fans by playing “45:33” for the first time in 14 years during their residency at the O2 Academy Brixton.
Yesterday (June 22), Sting returned to Liverpool for the first time since 1979 with a headlining performance at On The Waterfront. However, the former Police frontman had to begin his set at Pier Head by acknowledging a horrific incident: A member of the opening band the Christians collapsed mid-performance from cardiac arrest.
Earlier this month Bonnaroo was canceled due to severe weather, which was the third cancelation in five years. The four-day music festival only had one successful day, and therefore was only offering 75% refunds. Backlash prompted them to then offer 100% refunds, and now it looks like they’re considering changing when Bonnaroo happens.
Jay-Z doesn’t give very many interviews these days, nor does he make a ton of live appearances with his wife Beyoncé. But I guess something’s in the air: At Fanatics Fest in New York City on Friday, kid sports journalist Elijah Bloom got to asked Jay-Z who his favorite collaborator was. “Beyoncé,” the doting husband responded. “She’s the best. She’s amazing. She’s an incredible songwriter and an incredible performer.” To drive his point home, he came onstage with Bey during her third Paris show of the Cowboy Carter Tour tonight, their first time sharing the stage in seven years. Together, the couple did their songs “Crazy In Love” and “Drunk In Love,” and, naturally, Jay did “N***** In Paris.” (He’s gonna rap to three songs and three songs only.)
It’s been a tumultuous time for Zak Starkey, whose firing, re-hiring, and subsequent re-firing from the Who has been causing quite a stir in elder rock circles. The drummer and son of Ringo Starr has evidently had a lot of unclear back-and-forth with the Who’s lead singer Roger Daltrey, but we haven’t heard much from his bandmates about the whole ordeal — that is, until very recently, when the band’s guitarist and primary songwriter Pete Townshend remarked on it in a new interview with iNews. It sounds like he’s just as confused as the rest of us.
It appears that Morgan Wallen, whose recent triple-LP I’m The Problem is now the #1 album in the country for the fifth week in a row, tries to give himself the star treatment whenever he can. That includes making some conspicuous exits as well as some high-profile entrances. He likes to do sports-style walk-ons at his concerts, like last summer’s Kansas City show where Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes escorted him onstage. Last night at his second show at Houston’s NRG Stadium, Morgan got escorted onstage by onetime Astros pitcher Roger Clemens and Drake. Three controversial figures!