La Roux’s Elly Jackson has a hairdo to kill for. It’s a striking red coif that’s a mix between Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust Era and that famous Poindexter cut David Johansen used to rock. It’s quite magnificent actually, and on this day, she tamed it a little bit by donning a fitted Fedora hat. Vocally, she’s kind of like a modern day Cyndi Lauper, and she’s backed by an arsenal of speaker-rattling, floor-shaking, ‘80s electro-pop beats.
A Black Keys show brings out a different kind of concert goer. Try on this (true) gem of a story for size: Whilst jockeying to get a good vantage spot to take in the set by the Ohio duo, I ran into a friendly hippie-type lady in her early 50s and we struck up a cool conversation. She talked about how she was a Social Services professor from Baltimore, and how she’d been able to sneak in and out of different V.I.P. sections the entire day because the security staff let her go wherever she wanted. “I don’t know why they do that,” she said, “maybe it’s one of the advantages of being a little older.” But her best quote was this: “Last year at Bonnaroo, some guy died in his tent and no one really noticed because there was so much going on,” – then she paused and continued – “I guess he was going to die anyway.”
The Silversun Pickups have been called many things: the next Smashing Pumpkins, LA garage rockers, the leaders of a neo-grunge rock movement, etc – whatever tag you give them, know this: these Silver Lake dwellers rock really, really hard. Matt Pinfield, the famous rock savant, came out and introduced them as one of his favorite new bands, and when the group finally came out, they didn’t waste any time in getting down to business.
A trio of sexy Spanish girls was waiting in rapt anticipation to see their fave rock band, the Arctic Monkeys hit the stage. It wasn’t so much that they were ready to dance their cute behinds off, they were interested in seeing one thing: lead singer Alex Turner’s face. When the Sheffield, UK rockers emerged from backstage, the girls erupted in pure glee and simultaneously lit up cigarettes to calm their sexy nerves. The one who seemed the giddiest looked ready to fall out when Turner said in his thick English accent, “We are the Arctic Monkeys – How is everyone doing today?” Thankfully, she held it all together and screamed and shrieked like a wild banshee instead.
Like fine wine hermetically sealed in temperature-controlled underground vaults, the artiste known as Kamaal the Abstract (or Q-Tip) just continues to get better with time. And anyone who ever doubts his relevancy in today’s music pantheon had to be present at All Points West this weekend to see the Queens, NY native completely rip up the set.
It’s supposed to be the middle of summer on the East Coast, but if you were at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park on the opening day of All Points West, you’d swear you were on a monsoon-stricken tropical island.
