Lady Gaga performs on stage at Nokia Theatre L.A. on December 22, 2009. Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images.

Ah, the Grammys. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ annual celebration of the music industry is always in a weird place—less glitzy than the Oscars, less telegenic than the Emmys, less nakedly populist than the American Music Awards. This year’s ceremony, which takes place on Jan. 31, is the culmination of NARAS’s attempt to make the Grammys an “event” again; for the second year in a row, major nominations were announced during a televised special on CBS, one that featured lots of Black Eyed Peas and even an A-Rod cameo.

One thing that makes the Grammys odd is their constant sorta-behindness. The awards show airs right around Super Bowl time, but the eligibility window for this year’s ceremony closed on Aug. 30—a full month earlier than the end of the time period for last year’s show. It would seem kind of odd that music, a medium that’s different than movies and TV because of both the sheer amount of stuff coming out every week and its constant fluidity, would want to honor itself by asking viewers to please remember the fantastic records that came out four-plus months ago, that you might already be sick of.

But then again, some might argue that looking toward the past is just what the Grammys do. After all, the spectre of “legacy” acts winning Grammys over more current artists looms over the awards show’s history: Jethro Tull over Metallica (Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, 1989); Steely Dan over Eminem and Radiohead (Album Of The Year, 2001); Herbie Hancock over Amy Winehouse and Kanye West (Album Of The Year, 2007).

Continue reading »

Eighty-six-year-old Tuli Kupferberg co-founded The Fugs in New York back in 1964, when the city was cooler than any hopeless romantic could ever imagine. A poet, cartoonist, and musician, Tuli, whose wife Sylvia Topp is a freelance copy editor at Vanity Fair, was an influential member of the Beat movement. He was at the forefront of the anti-war movement during the height of the Vietnam war, and even wrote a satirical pamphlet titled “1001 Ways to Beat the Draft.” Kupferberg suffered two strokes, in April and September of 2009, and though he can speak clearly and is recovering, the medical expenses—which are not covered by Medicare—are an immense burden.

So his friends and fellow musicians—among them Lou Reed and Sonic Youth—banded together to organize a benefit for Tuli. This Friday, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, The Fugs and special guests will play to raise money to help with Tuli’s past hospital bills and current care. Buy tickets or donate here.

Martha Wainwright, Kate McGarrigle, and Rufus Wainwright, photographed at the Paul Morissey estate in Montauk, New York, September 2006. Photograph by Mark Seliger.

Kate McGarrigle, a charming and distinctive singer-songwriter, died too young on Monday at the age of 63. She was suffering from a rare cancer that struck her in 2006. She was a lovely person, as I learned during the brief time I spent with her, with a slight streak of madness that enlivened conversations and entertained anyone who met her.

She may have saved one of her very best songs for last. It’s called “Proserpina,” after the Roman goddess of the underworld (known in Greek mythology as Persephone). Seated at the piano, Kate debuted it during a Christmas concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Dec. 9. On stage with her, forming a ragtag chorus, were her son and daughter, the talented singer-songwriters Rufus and Martha Wainwright, her sister and longtime collaborator, Anna McGarrigle, as well as Boy George and more than a dozen other musicians.

“O.K.,” Kate said into the microphone, as she began to play in the simple style that one of her admirers, Nick Cave, once described as “schoolteacher piano.” “This is a Christmas show of Christmas songs, and I realized that Christmas is dark, dark, dark, dark. So I realized why it’s so dark, and this is really why it’s dark.” More piano chords. “It’s a story of Persephone, or Proserpina, as I’ve chosen to do it, and this is a song about her. Proserpina causes winter. I’m not going to explain it, you can look it up later. She runs away with Pluto and goes to the dark world, and her mother gets very angry, because she doesn’t come back. Her mother is the goddess of good stuff, like food. So they make a deal that her mother gets her six months of the year, and her husband, who lives underground, gets her the other six.”

According to myth, springtime returns only when Proserpina is able to leave Hades and go back to her mother, the goddess Ceres.

Continue reading »

Surfer Blood Astro Coast (Kanine)
Despite what the name suggests, the members of Florida's Surfer Blood do not surf. The group’s debut record, Astro Coast, is sure to invite comparisons to Weezer and late Beach Boys with its balance of scuzzy guitars and honeyed harmonies. But this group of college kids (they recorded Astro Coast in an apartment at Florida Atlantic University) is more than just a Rivers Cuomo ripoff. While Astro Coast may include sunny tunes like “Take It Easy” and “Floating Vibes” (songs that sound exactly like their titles implore), you'll also find harrowing, existential episodes like “Harmonix,” where lead singer John Paul Pitts, swathed in thick reverb and echo, sings, “I won't wait around for the grass to grow back now.” They’re young, and so is their music, but we all could use a little Vitamin D this time of year.
Verdict: Buy it

Continue reading »

Episode 1
Callow mistakes Ryan Seacrest for a houseboy, ordering him, "Bring us a Campari and soda, luv."

Episode 4
At St. Louis tryouts, Callow unveils catchphrase: “You’re slated, luv!”

Episode 7
Callow enthusiatically votes “Yes” for college-wrestler aspirant during Memphis tryouts, but is outvoted by Randy and Kara; camera catches Callow following the dejected contestant across the street to a park fountain, where he disrobes and implores the hunk to “join us for a bathe.”

Episode 9
During Hollywood Round, Callow responds to Randy’s enthusiasm over tattooed-biker contestant by commenting, “Oooh, fancy a bit of rough, do we?”

Continue reading »

Not all assignments are created equal. The work of a reporter-researcher here at Vanity Fair can involve poring over endless corporate proxy reports until blood practically drips from one’s eyeballs, or, occasionally, it can encompass more salubrious tasks, such as probing the deep Web in search of celebrity sex videos. I’m a huge fan of James Wolcott’s book Attack Poodles, so I was thrilled to finally be assigned to fact-check one of his columns. If Wolcott is an ace skewerer of pompous cable-TV pundits, he’s just as good on the subject of celebrity smut. It doesn’t get any better than pageant pin-up Carrie Prejean “presumably strumming herself like a lute to achieve angelic flight.” (For those of you unfamiliar with Renaissance-era musical instruments, a lute looks like a cross between a sitar and a ukulele.)

It was with considerable consternation that I viewed the clips Wolcott describes in his column in the February issue, “Schtuppin’ with the Stars.” “Porn star” may be a passe tag, but the best porn stars and starlets are still goddamned good at what they do. So when Rob Lowe decided to play Johnny Wadd, flash his Brat-wurst, and then proceed to artlessly pump away at a teenage girl, a major train wreck was in the works. Paris Hilton isn’t good at anything other than being Paris Hilton, so it’s not surprising she turned in pallid performances as a sex kitten. Eric Dane may be able pull off Doctor McSteamy on network TV, but he really should have thought twice before recording a kinky hot-tub session with his wife and another woman. For those of you lucky enough to have escaped knowing who these three are, Dane is the Grey’s Anatomy hunk. His wife is Rebecca Gayheart, who broke into the TV business as the “Noxzema Girl,” and the third wheel is former teen beauty queen and budding bikini designer Kari Ann Peniche (reportedly pronounced Pun-ee-chee).

Continue reading »

The Entrance Band: Guy Blakeslee, Derek W. James, and Paz Lenchantin. Photo by Angel Ceballos.

One of my favorite songs from the past year is this endearingly earnest civil-rights anthem by The Entrance Band, a Los Angeles psych-rock band fronted by singer-guitarist Guy Blakeslee. “We Shall Overcome” it ain’t, nor does it bear any resemblance to John Mayer’s insufferable 2006 call to apathy, “Waiting on the World to Change.” Between roller-coaster guitar riffs worthy of the Mothers of Invention, Blakeslee testifies to the power and continued relevance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s meaning and message. “What I’m trying to say in the song is don’t forget him, don’t forget his spirit, don’t forget how much he and the people who worked with him were willing to risk for things that we take for granted now, or that we may not even have yet,” Blakeslee told me over the phone on Friday.

In a startingly mean-spirited review (seriously, did Blakeslee steal this dude’s girlfriend or something?), Pitchfork’s Stephen M. Deusner complained that “M.L.K.” has “all the gravity of a grade-school book report,” but I would argue that the song’s simplicity is its chief virtue. The world of underground rock has enough songs whose lyrics are buried under so many layers of protective irony that no one knows what the hell they’re about. And when it comes to writing rock lyrics, an eighth-grade book report is a much better model than, say, a graduate-school thesis. (Then again, Deusner may be more right than he knows: Blakeslee says that, when he was in the eighth grade, he wrote a 20-page paper about the relative merits of Dr. King’s non-violence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” militance.)

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we asked the band’s management if they’d let us share the MP3 with you, our dear readers. Click through for a free download, tour dates, and more from my interview.

Continue reading »

We all know that Holly Golightly loves Jack White like a little brother. Though the singer may be famous for her call-and-response with Jack and Meg White, she has a solo career of her own with her band, Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs. “Forget It,” the first single off her forthcoming record, Medicine County (March 30, Transdreamer Records), is the kind of decades-old sound that you would find on the soundtrack for a Tarantino film: milky keyboards written in a standard key, crisp snare drums, and her whisky-soaked voice that sounds like it’s being played from a dusted-off record.

Cornetist Graham Haynes leads Bitches Brew Revisited

The sixth annual New York Winter Jazz Festival took place this weekend in Greenwich Village and illustrated just why the City is aptly known as the Jazz capital of the world. The festival organizers curated a program of artists from around the planet that displayed the breadth of talent working in the jazz circuit today. The temperature on the streets may have been 20 degrees, but inside the venues were hot and blistering with phenomenal music.

The fest’s performances ran the gamut of styles and moods. The program featured the live electronic trip-hop of Mark Giuliana Beat Music at the club Kenny’s Castaways, and the classic vocal style of Sachal Vasandani at Sullivan Hall. The controversial, hammer-fisted Eric Lewis clobbered the piano and took on his critics by ending his performance with a pronouncement that he is unafraid to express himself in any way he desires—namely by doing away with the stool and covering current pop music. Marco Benevento, who played both in his popular trio and with the gloriously chaotic Bitches Brew Revisited, proved he can successfully apply his unique brand of slick, funky, punk jazz to multiple formats. The Nicholas Payton SeXXXtet performed a set blending soulful vocals and Payton’s virtuoso trumpet. Lionel Loueke offered a combination of African singing, a la Ladysmith Black Mambazo and articulate guitar playing. When my evening ended, at three a.m., I was exhausted and felt privileged to have been there.

Here is a slideshow of how it all went down.   

Continue reading »

Since NBC announced that Conan O’Brien would be bumped to a midnight slot, NBC C.E.O. Jeff Zucker looked like he was admitting the greatest blunder in his television career. Or was he?  It took six years, but Zucker, former President of the Harvard Crimson (class of '86) may have just pulled off the ultimate prank against former Harvard Lampoon President Conan O'Brien ('85).  It’s a prank that included uprooting Conan and his staff from New York to Los Angeles, spending hundreds of millions of G.E. and Universal shareholders’ dollars, all just to yank the rug out from under O’Brien. Was it really worth the effort?   Yes, when you remember that Conan started it.
 
In the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted that my editor at VF.com is himself a 2003 Harvard Lampoon alum.

Zucker and O’Brien first encountered each other at Harvard in the 1980s, during a heated period of the Crimson/Lampoon rivalry,when O’Brien hijacked a shipment of Crimson issues they day before they could be delivered.  As O’Brien once told Business Week, “My first meeting with Jeff Zucker was in handcuffs, with a Cambridge police officer reading me my rights.” After graduating, both men worked for NBC, where Conan rose from Saturday Night Live writer to host of Late Night to The Tonight Show.  The Crimson’s Zucker had an equally spectacular rise from Olympics researcher to [Editor’s note:  Ben, I cut Zucker’s bio, you’re drifting a bit here – Ed.].
Continue reading »

Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash and former tennis champion Boris Becker play in the amFAR & Pokerstars Celebrity Charity poker tournament in Nassau, Bahamas. Photo by Michael Kovac.

Slash may be most famous for his drunken days with Guns N’ Roses, but the guitar God has another vice: poker. The top-hatted guitarist was at the Atlantis in the Bahamas over the weekend for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. But it wasn’t a boozy Vegas weekend with the boys—Slash brought his wife and two sons along for the ride. Slash and a group of celebrities—among them Nelly, Montel Williams, and Adrian Grenier—didn’t take any cash home, either. All their winnings went to The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Slash agreed to chat with VF Daily as long as there were NO questions about Axl Rose, NO questions about Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, or sobriety, and ABSOLUTELY NO questions about Guns N’ Roses most recent album Chinese Democracy. So, we talked about poker, his debut forthcoming debut solo album, Slash & Friends, and Joan Rivers.

Sue Carswell: How do your earnings stack up next to the high rollers who have reeled in over $10 million?

Slash: (Laughs) I think my earnings are about $5,000. I play casually in Vegas every so often. I’m a big Texas hold ‘em fan.

Continue reading »

Vampire Weekend Contra (XL)
Vampire Weekend’s whole Ivy-League-pedigree, world-music, boat-shoes thing has earned them their fair share of haters. But what exactly is there to abhor? It can’t be the frenetic keyboards, the M.I.A. sample, or the irrepressible beats. The disaffected crowd full of microphone envy will tell you the well-coiffed twerps and their happy-go-lucky afro-pop belong in M.F.A. programs. If you’re part of the camp that thinks they’re twerps, you probably hide when the sun comes out. If you have no qualms with someone singing about a diplomat’s son or Uptown Manhattan, you’ll like Vampire Weekend’s infectious sophomore record, Contra, and you secretly know they would be in graduate school if they didn’t construct flawless pop songs that end up invading your most-played list on iTunes.
Verdict: Buy it

Continue reading »

If only Conan O’Brien could be this hilarious when he isn’t being stabbed in the back by his network overlords!

RELATED: Conan O’Brien, Captain Midnight

If you like it then should you put a ring on it? That Beyoncéan question drives Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage. I may be in a teensy minority of people to pick up Committed without having read Eat, Pray, Love, her enormously successful 2006 memoir. Unfortunately for Gilbert, she’s getting some critical knuckle raps on this go-round, essentially for not matching the schtick of the first book. But the attraction of Committed isn't dependent on its predecessor.
 
In Eat, Pray, Love, Gilbert writes about how she recovered from a painful divorce by traveling around the world and indulging in the titular trinity. Then she declares, “I’ll never get married again!” And then she sold millions of books. Alas, Felipe, the Brazilian man she fell in love with in the course of her soul-searching, isn’t a U.S. citizen, and—here’s where Committed begins—for reasons she insists are mostly pragmatic, they must marry, but they must also be “at peace” with it.
Continue reading »

Today, on what would have been Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday, is a good day to order one of the best new children’s books I have seen in a long time: Shake, Rattle & Turn That Noise Down! (Knopf), by the cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty. It’s the true story of how the nine-year-old Stamaty’s mind was utterly blown by hearing Elvis’s “Hound Dog” on the radio for the first time in 1956, forever transforming his life.

I’m a longtime Stamaty fan. In the late 1970s, my own young mind was utterly blown by his work—specifically, his groundbreaking Village Voice comic strip MacDoodle St.. Dense with words, narratives, gags, crowded cityscapes (like Where’s Waldo? but funkier), and all-around loopiness, the strip proved endlessly re-readable while also capturing the anarchic-but-joyous scuzziness of New York City in that period. Later on in life, as a writer and magazine editor, I got to know Mark personally. One day, I asked him to contribute some kind of rock-related ’toon to a site I’d started to promote my book The Rock Snob’s Dictionary. (I’d already roped in another hero, Mad magazine’s Al Jaffee.)

Continue reading »