photos by Amanda Hatfield

Purity Ring at Webster Hall - 1/11/13

Purity Ring brought their North American tour with Young Magic to NYC for two sold Webster Hall shows this past weekend (Friday [1/11] and Saturday [1/12]). Pictures of night 1 are in this post.

Purity Ring's light show, which has been awesome from the beginning, continues to gradually evolve, and they had new elements brought into it at the shows to complement their move up to a larger venue (you may remember it was only about a year and a quarter ago that they were opening for Neon Indian at Webster Hall). In addition to playing the songs from their 2012 debut album, Shrines, they covered Soulja Boy's "Grammy," which you can watch a video of, plus others from the show, below. And like they did at Le Poisson Rouge last year, they brought out Young Magic frontman Isaac Emmanuel to sing his part on "Grandloves."

More pictures of night 1 and those videos below...

Continue reading "Purity Ring played Webster Hall with Young Magic, covered Soulja Boy (night 1 pics, videos)"

The National @ Dark Was the Night (more by Natasha Ryan)

"Attention Late Night with Jimmy Fallon fans: our "Band Bench" Sweepstakes is your chance to get close to your favorite band when they perform on the show!

What is a "Band Bench" you ask? The Band Benches are a special audience seating area set aside for HUGE fans of musical guests appearing on the show. Fans sitting on the Band Benches will be given the exclusive chance to come down to the studio floor and surround the musical guest during their performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon!

To enter the "Band Bench" Sweepstakes, fill out the form...

Video of Yeah Yeah Yeahs on Fallon, below...

Continue reading "sit on the Band Bench @ the Jimmy Fallon show (for Adele, The National & Sharon Jones for instance)"

DOWNLOAD: Riskay - Smell Yo Dick (Gold Brix Remix) (MP3)

the ninth in a series where we asked comedians to tell us what was good this year....

David Cross is absolutely, 100%, the sole reason I got interested in comedy and, like many people, it all started with Mr. Show. As far as stand-up is concerned, from a young age I thought it was the trade of coked-out hockey-haired douche bags wearing bolo ties. Then I saw his stand-up special The Pride is Back, and I got a fresh new perspective on what stand-up should be. From there I was introduced to comedians like Bill Hicks, Patton Oswalt, Janeane Garofalo, Doug Benson, Paul F. Tompkins, and many others. Just becoming a fan of this one comedian led me to be a more proactive seeker of good comedy. I'm not a comedian, but this man has influenced my taste more than anyone. He acts, does voice work, writes, and is one of the greatest stand-up talents of all time. I couldn't be more thrilled that he took the time out to tell us what he was into in 2007. - Klaus

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Top Ten list for Brooklynvegan that has very little to do with music because, let’s be honest, who cares what I think really?

Battlestar Gallactica - Several months ago Patton Oswalt was nice enough to spend some of his Balls of Fury money and sent me the entire first season of BG with a note telling me to watch it because it was one of the best shows on TV. I didn’t believe him. And because I’m not really much of a sci-fi fan it stayed in the shrink-wrap until I got really sick and laid up for about a week. After exhausting my supply of unwatched dvd’s I looked over at the BG set and in my Nyquil haze opened them and popped the pilot in. After about five minutes I was hooked. Great stories, great casting and acting and surprisingly subversive. When I was done with Season One, I got up, and with a fever and pounding headache, crawled down to the video store to BUY Season 2 and 2.5. I highly recommend it. And it is only tangentially “sci-fi” so don’t worry about it being too nerdy.

The God Delusion / Breaking The Spell / Misquoting Jesus - Three very different but all excellent books dealing with religion and its origins, possible causes, effects, history and perversions. Each author approaches their subject with varying degrees of reverence and understanding, from cutting, cynical opinion (The God Delusion) to purely dry, historical fact (Misquoting Jesus). They are all fascinating and enlightening.

Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place - This is a British show that is another in a long, probably never ending line, of smart, funny, innovative comedies. The pretense is that it is an old sci-fi show from the early 80’s that is only now being released. It’s really funny on a number of different levels. Seek it out and see it now before you can’t.

Scuba Diving - I got certified this year and have been on six dives now. It’s probably the closest one can come to the experience of space travel without actually going into space, which would be infinitely harder and more expensive. It’s so fucking beautiful and otherworldly down there. It’s very easy to dive, as well as get licensed. And it's the only place left where we're still safe (so far) from the terrorists!

continued below...

Continue reading "Best of 2007 by David Cross"