We've got three pairs of tickets to give away to the My Brightest Diamond Show at the Museum of Fine Arts on November 18 at 7:30 pm. Tickets go to the first three people who leave comments here on this post. You gotta be willing to swing by Phoenix HQ (near Fenway park), by Friday, November 16 at 4 pm to claim them.

Start putting out heartland-ish rock and you're bound to attract an audience partially made up of drunken brodudes. That’s the lesson to take from former D Generation frontman-turned-roots-rocker Jesse Malin’s show last night at TT’s, during which it was hard to tell if the group in the center of the room yelling out over a few of the singer's acoustic numbers and his occasionally verbose song introductions were disciples or haters. Not that Malin, who often seems like he’s imagining himself playing to bigger venues, seemed to care. He was off in his own world for much of the affair. My friend who came along put it best when she said afterwards: “It’s hard to imagine him off the stage.”

It was thanks to this detachment that last night turned out to be pretty enjoyable, despite the vibe emanating from a portion of the crowd. Malin and his crew (which included Dresden Doll Brian Viglione, lipstick-less and looking like he was enjoying himself immensely on drums) stuck mostly to his excellent first record, The Fine Art of Self Destruction (my review! of the album here) and his more radio-ready, recent release, Glitter in the Gutter. From the former: the slow-building “Brooklyn” thrilled whenever it picked up and Viglione sprung into action, his long black hair shooting about wildly. From the latter: the touching tribute to Malin's deceased mom, "Broken Radio" -- a duet with Bruce Springsteen on the album -- sounded just fine without the boss. And you gotta love a guy who’ll do a stripped-down, keyboard-accompanied “Bastards of Young” cover and amble around the stage like he’s karoake-ing to his favorite song.

Unfortunately, it was a short while after Viglione’s other half, Amanda Palmer, showed up to TT's that the performance stalled for me. It wasn’t her puffy, dyed hair obstructing my view that was the problem. Rather, it was Malin’s sudden self-indulgent turn, telling us about how he ran into Yoko Ono on the street in New York and then turning it into an opportunity to comment on the Sixties in general. “They really tried hard,” I think he said of that era at one point.

sure would've been nice if I took some pictures, huh?

We’ve got 4 pairs of tickets to give away to see the Sea & Cake on Sunday night at the Museum of Fine Arts. They’ll go to the first four people who post a comment on this post saying they’re interested. Hitch: you gotta be willing to swing by Phoenix headquarters (near Fenway) by 6 pm this evening to pick ‘em up.

Tickets for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s dual Boston shows in November went on sale this morning at 10 A.M., and at about 10:01 A.M., they were sold out.

Normally, I wouldn’t be shocked and appalled, but when I’m one of the huddled, sleep-deprived masses who pulls himself out of bed 10 minutes early to pay my economic tribute to The Boss, you think the gods would smile on me a bit.

I talked myself into the success of this plan a few weeks ago, pretending that Boston was too far north to attract any E Street Band fans, that two shows at the TD Banknorth Garden were more than enough to house the few Springsteen aficionados in the New England area, that MY Internet connection was that much faster than everyone else’s.

Turns out I’m just another of the disillusioned losers who has been slayed by Ticketmaster yet again.  My only hope is that scalping will be made legal in the next one-and-a-half months, allowing me a safe, secure route into The Boss’s lair.  Otherwise, a night spent in a paddywagon would be the icing on the cake of my ticket-less life.

And to think, all I wanted to do was rock.  Something tells me Bruce would understand.

Maybe it was the fact that they were coming after the personality-free Robbers on High Street, maybe I was in need of a good kick in the ass...whatever it was the Red Walls, a band whose records I’ve never been particularly enamored with, damn near blew me away Tuesday night at TT’s. Extremely quick rundown follows:

Cast:

Logan Baren (singer/guitarist) - The consummate rocker: tight pants, horrible shirt, little guy complex, maybe. He was ferocious and fun to watch, little guys always are. When July 4th was brought up, he just as quickly dismissed it with a few indecipherable words in a faux-British accent, a sneer, and a considerable wail of the guitar. Fucking perfect.

Justin Baren (pretty boy bassist — they do exist!) — Suit, big healthy head of hair combed to one side, axe raised a lot, also miniscule. He put on like 4 different accents throughout, none of them convincing, none of them meant to be.

Andrew Langer (guitar, vocals) - Hopelessly uncool, John Cusack lookalike. Whenever he would sing he’d raise his eyebrows a lot and bounce awkwardly up and down.

Ben Greeno (drums) - largely forgettable (it’s a sad plight)

Highlight: Every so often the brothers, Logan and Justin would share a mic, planting their bodies and faces at such an angle that the two would be near-kissing. Normally the thrill of the homoerotic tease is exhilarating enough for any audience. But an incestuous homoerotic tease, well that’s just scandalous.

Lowpoint: Robbers on High Street set: if robots could sing and play guitar...

I would show you the pictures I took with my phone, but they're balls.

I for a second thought the very talented local singer/songwriter Jeffrey Simmons was that lanky Inman Square man who stands in a suit under an umbrella, rain or shine, quietly hawking his self-made publication, Geograflight (sp?), from the sidewalk. It's the MySpace photos he has posted of himself that did it. In them, Simmons, another tallish skinny marink, is dressed dapper (admittedly, though, he's snazzier than Geograflight man who looks like a funeral attendant in that dire suit of his) in a blazer. Like Geograflight man, he is standing under an umbrella on what appears to be a rainless day. And again, like Geograflight man, he is daintily holding this umbrella.

I was wrong, of course. They are not the same person. But all of this got me thinking about the difference between a man who wears an umbrella on a dry day and a man who poses for a photograph under an umbrella in that kind of weather. This is what I came up with.

The man wearing the umbrella is most likely wearing it for any one of these reasons or combinations thereof:

1. he wears it for protection from the sun  2. he wears it as an accessory, he enjoys the way it looks on him. 3. he’s extremely neurotic and always worries that he will be caught in the rain without some covering.  

The man posing with the umbrella does it for any one of these reasons or combinations thereof:

1. an accessory. 2. a way to convey that he is a tragic sort of figure who is always expecting rain. 3. a way to convey that some kind of tragedy is approaching.

Camera Obscura, the Essex Green
January 27 at the Paradise, Boston
All photos (c) Kelly Davidson