After a less than tolerable opening set of so-kitch-it-hurts 80’s metal from Crown Jewel Defense, the mixed crowd of college kids, metal heads (who all kind of looked like Phil and Terry from Wayne’s World), and standard rock fans were all getting a bit anxious. Said anxiety was erased once Eric Nally, his pigtails, and the rest of Foxy Shazam blasted on stage. They immediately took their energy and poured it over the crowd as Nally screamed, “Clap you stupid white people!” and the band dove into “Welcome to the Church of Rock ‘n Roll”.

To say that Foxy Shazam were simply energetic showmen would be doing them a slight disservice. The amount of energy and enjoyment they bring to the stage is nicotine-addictive. The entire band puts in their all for the visual aspect of the show, from tossing trumpets to carrying keyboards into the crowd. Nally does tricks with a microphone stand that most of us dream of doing on a big stage; he somersaults, his feet channel James Brown, and he launches himself onto every climbable surface he can find. At one point during an extended storytelling sequence in “Holy Touch”, a fan yelled something at Nally and Nally called him out. He made the audience member raise his hand so everyone could see him, and after cursing at him, said, “You know the difference between you and me? You’re looking up at me, and I’m looking down at you!” The crowd went wild and he finished the song with amazing flourish. Their entire set ended—too early in my opinion—with Nally yelling, as he threw down the microphone, “Did you all come yet? Because we gotta go!”

The crowd’s excitement was now at a fevered pitch, and the wait for The Darkness went on much longer than needed. Once the lights dimmed, and Thin Lizzy’s “Boys Are Back in Town” blared through the house speakers, the band jogged out on stage to a deafening roar, standing in front of an outrageous Darkness banner and a slew of amps. Clothed in matching leather pants and a vest emblazoned with an American flag, frontman Justin Hawkins offered a simple, “Hello Chicago-town,” before the band exploded into “Black Shuck” behind him. Thus, the races began.

Despite their lengthy hiatus, the band has not missed a step; the old songs were pitch perfect, and they played nearly all of them. Within the 21-song set, Hawkins cut through each track off of the band’s 2003 debut LP, Permission to Land, and the newer material, including lead single, “Nothings Gonna Stop Us”, were tight and well controlled. The one cover they threw in was the biggest surprise of the night: Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. Let’s just say that few listeners will ever find a more metal version.

The band was energetic, lively, and, most importantly, incredibly grateful for the fans being there. Hawkins continued to thank the crowd for being so supportive and enthusiastic. They danced around on stage and solo’ed the hell out of the venue. At one point, Hawkins jumped onto a security guard’s shoulders and rode him around the floor to the other side of the stage all the while solo’ing over “Love on the Rocks with No Ice”. As outrageous as that was, the perfect ending to the night was Hawkins 15 foot stage dive from the loud speakers into the crowd.

It was the kind of show, and The Darkness are the kind of band, that even something seemingly outdated as guitar solos or stage “antics” became elements once again essential to a good rock show. The Darkness are somewhat starting from scratch after their seven year pause in work, but it won’t be long before they are back on top. This concert solidified their place in rock music for a lot of fans, and is a glaring shining sign that they’re, indeed, back.

Photography by Jeremy D. Larson.

Foxy Shazam Setlist:
Welcome to the Church of Rock ‘n Roll
Killin’ It
Oh Lord
Holy Touch
The Temple
I Like It
The Only Way to My Heart

The Darkness Setlist:
Black Shuck
Growing On Me
The Best of Me
One Way Ticket
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us
Get Your Hands Off My Woman
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Love
Holding My Own
Love is Only a Feeling
Concrete
Friday Night
Everybody’s Having a Good Time
Physical Sex
Is It Just Me?
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
She’s Just a Girl, Eddie
Givin’ Up
Stuck in a Rut
I Believe in a Thing Called Love
Encore:
Bareback
Love on the Rocks With No Ice

UK super producer Burial follows up recent collaborations with Thom Yorke and Massive Attack with a new three-track solo EP, entitled Kindred. Stream it now at Hyperdub’s website.

The EP is now available digitally via Hyperdub. A vinyl release has been delayed due to pressing issues.

Legendary singer Whitney Houston has died, according to the Associated Press. She was 48.

Houston’s cause of death is currently unknown, however, the singer had a long history with drug and alcohol abuse. According to TMZ, Houston was found dead at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

A six-time Grammy winner, Houston sold more than 55 million albums in the U.S. and her 1987 album Whitney became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Her most recent LP, I Look to You, was released in August 2009.

In addition to her music career, Houston was an Emmy Award winning actress.

Tonight, The Kills commemorate the 10th anniversary of their musical partnership, as well as the final scheduled date of their Blood Pressures tour with a special performance at New York City’s Terminal 5. The concert will also be streaming live at MTV Hive starting at 10:30 pm ET. Update: A replay of the performance is streaming below.

As previously reported, The Kills will release their next single, “The Last Goodbye”, on Valentine’s Day. The four-track effort also includes covers of The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes”, Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”, and Marilyn Monroe’s “One Silver Dollar”. It will be available digitally and on CD, and a limited edition 10″ vinyl via Domino.

For the first time in some while, I am actually reading a book. It’s Rolling Stone mainstay Will Hermes’ tome entitled Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York City That Changed Music Forever. Essentially, Hermes looks at music in New York’s five boroughs from New Year’s Eve 1973 to New Year’s 1977 and how the musical offerings of everything from salsa and disco to the rise of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith forever changed the world. Pick it up as soon as you’re done re-reading The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Somewhere in Hermes’ book, I got to thinking about music in the here and now and its potential impact on the future. In 30-plus years, how will scholars and critics judge the music of 2010-2012? What profound thoughts or observations might they be able to discern? What bands or artists will emerge as the most influential and long-lasting? Will anything created now have as much power in terms of influence as, say, the Boss did/does?

–

At the most basic level, the end of universally appealing albums will undoubtedly be traced back to this era. It’s an old story for sure, one we’ve all assumed for some time, but it’s starting to take shape now more than ever. Great albums are being created and consumed on a daily basis, but rare is the album that will cross all borders. For further proof, take a look at how nuanced the 2011 best-of lists were for everyone, and I mean from lowly blogger to the biggest mainstream magazine. The top few albums will always share commonality, but looking at the lists of Rolling Stone, SPIN, Pitchfork, Paste, and even our very own holistically will offer little in the way of a seamless, united voice. Even if big-name albums of 2011, like St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy, Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, Bon Iver, or tUnE-yArDs’ – W H O K I L L, are considered masterful efforts, think about how they’ll age. How often have most of us heard them since their release? Better yet, how many people outside of the tight-knit (read: people whose sales account for less than a milli) indie community have even heard these? This is the reality of our day and age: The Internet perpetuates this myth that something is huge because it is in the microscopic corners and electronic spots we frequent.

We live in a world where musical populations are far too scattered and skewed to have one grand, unifying musical experience. Instead of the Great Musical Hope, dozens and dozens of albums will rise to the occasion. Some might postulate that’s a good thing, more representative of the true background of our era. And to a certain extent, that’s probably true; how wonderful will it be when we can etch our time on this Earth with a jukebox full of records? But from some long-dead, quasi-romantic notion, not having that one album feels as if we’ve failed as a generation to come together as one set of ears.

What’s our Sgt. Pepper’s?

Another observation future social scholars will reach (perhaps while riding the hoverboards we’ll at last have perfected) is that this particular span of time is where we truly used the technology we had available for all things musical. From the quality of music to its storage, technology has blazed new musical trails, making this the dawn of a golden age where music and technology are truly one concept, working hand in hand to make listening as fun and efficient as possible. All subsequent integrations, from improved clouds and streaming techniques to mp3 players implanted in our craniums (fingers crossed), will be traced back to this two-year span. That is, as some have already hypothesized, invigorating. These developments mean that from here until the world ends and technology ceases, the greatest, most influential releases of our time will be available the world over.

Of course, on the other hand, that also means that your cousin Jimmy’s three-song shoegaze EP will be available globally from here to eternity. Back in the day, terrible artists faded way either for good or to be reworked and reintegrated by later generations. How else would one explain one hit wonders like Europe disappearing and the recent rise of synth as a musical mainstay (especially among the female population)? With the sum of all music creations perpetually available, we’ve lost that Darwinian dynamic, leaving us with the makings of a pool of albums and songs overloaded with influences and constant, stifling reminders of what’s already out there for consumption. As the music available for listening piles up, certain creations rise to the top out of sheer necessity (and from the demand of a public looking for whatever’s simultaneously good and most easily located). Access will prove stifling to the hunger of the human spirit to work for its muse, leaving us to wade through a creative safe zone.

Imagine iTunes’ scope by the year 2040.

Being in a musical wasteland is actually something we may be looking forward to with bright-eyed enthusiasm. Case in point: SPIN’s recently unveiled SPINReviews. The industry leader has taken music criticism and boiled it down to the most essential tweets, with special, long-form analysis saved for the truly important albums. This is not a defense of music criticism, of a lowly critic wailing its slow, painful demise and resurrection as a hackneyed shell of its former glory. If anything, boiling true criticism down to its most succinct is what we should be doing to keep up with the ever-shrinking attention spans and changing aesthetics of our audience. Instead, what is most troubling are the emotions attached to many of these reviews. Scan through any of the tweets, and you’re bound to find self-referential, borderline masturbatory displays of wordsmith-ing that range from the snarky and cynical to the down right vicious and cruel.

Music criticism should never soften its blows or be afraid to offend so long as it’s contextually appropriate and without bias or pretense toward the artist. The issue at hand is that the public at-large seems pleased with these reviews, overjoyed in their destructive tendencies and lack of true merit and worth, regardless of length or format. This is the patient zero, as it were, of our decaying relationship with music. Music, the changer of lives and editor of emotions, is having its inherent value reduced to random sets of emotion, usually the kind on the negative end of the spectrum. This goes beyond changing the process of music consumption; this is about changing a core set of values within ourselves.

Music is the one colony in the Universe where emotion can be explored with complete freedom. More and more, reviews strip away the emotion for either pure vitriol or meaningless posturing. Their creation and absorption by the public is a clear sign that many wish to live in a world where criticism and thoughtful analysis are nothing more than performance art, something that is done to perpetuate the critic and some ill-perceived worldview. We’re risking to lose the biggest puzzle piece of this entire human-music relationship: ourselves.

What would Huey and co. have to say about the heart of rock and roll now?

Shell-shocked, you’re now undoubtedly turning to me or God for answers. At this moment, if we were together, I’d put my hand on yours and whisper to you: “Let this whole fucking rotten ship sink to the bottom of the ocean.” I don’t mean to be cynical, but there’s no clear sign that anything will change — which is sort of the point. Technology will further develop, we’ll keeping making more and more music, and we’ll only find more ways to detach ourselves. But if you wanted a happy ending, a dose of sugar with your medicine, here it is: Just stop and think. If any of what I’ve postulated scares or worries you, you’re on the right track. If you thought I was overblown and overwrought, ask yourself what led you to that conclusion (and why you have to hurt my feelings). If you read this and felt nothing either way, then is it not possible you’ve already succumbed to nihilism fever?

Nothing is written in stone because who even does that anymore, so we’ve got time to examine and re-examine this whole situation. That, beyond any other solution, is what will save us from what’s looking like the onset of a musical purgatory. Otherwise, when our children or grandchildren try to capture this moment in time’s musical worth and output, they’ll be better off writing an obituary than a book.

Photo by Brad Bretz

Maybe this is what Justin Vernon was referencing when explaining why Bon Iver won’t be performing at the Grammys. As the Associated Press reports, this year’s ceremonies will include a special electronic music segment featuring Foo Fighters, Lil Wayne, Deadmau5, Chris Brown, and David Guetta, “all performing in a tent space amid 1,000 fans.”

According to the AP, Foo Fighters and Deadmau5 will come together for a live remix of the former’s song “Rope.” Weezy, Brown, and Guetta will then follow with their own joint performance.

Other scheduled performers at this year’s Grammys include Adele, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Paul McCartney, Coldplay, Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj among others. Tune in Sunday, February 12th at 8:00pm ET to see it all unfold.

Below, you can listen to Deadmau5′s remix of “Rope”.