While J. Freedom spent the weekend with about 50,000 of his closest friends at Nissan "Never Again" Pavilion, I kept it much more low-key. As always. There are probably more people in Kanye's stage crew than were at the pair of shows I attended.

First up was the Urban Verbs Saturday night at Comet Ping Pong. Needless to say, this was a lot better than the last show I saw there. The Verbs were one of D.C.'s great new wave hopes in the late-70s/early-80s but never quite caught on and disbanded after a couple of albums. So what were they doing playing a show in the back room of an upscale pizza joint in 2008? Half the reason was to prepare for a "proper" reunion show May 24 at the 9:30 Club and the other half is that the band members just felt like playing a show again. In this time of inescapable, high-profile reunions that are 99% about getting as much money as possible it was refreshing to see something on a much smaller scale.

Of course, noble intentions would mean nothing if the show were terrible. But it wasn't. It was actually pretty great. For a group that hadn't regularly played together in nearly three decades and was working in a new rhythm section, there were shockingly few missteps to be heard. Singer Roddy Frantz was in fine voice with his highly dramatic vocals, which along with Robin Rose's mind-altering synth work put the group's sound much more on the art-rock side of the new wave dial - think Pere Ubu and Public Image instead of the Cars or Ultravox. (Note to Self: Cross "make Ultravox reference on Post Rock" off Bucket List.) The songs creep up on you more than they immediately grab you, although "Subways" and "The Good Life" showed that the group was plenty capable of writing a catchy chorus. Still, watching the band play it was easy to get the sense of why they became cult favorites in the years after their breakup and also why they were relegated to that status in the first place. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

The monsoon-like conditions outside and the plentiful sports offerings on TV made it very enticing to stay in on Sunday night, but something was pulling me to the Red & the Black to see the Old Haunts. It was that same "if I don't go to this, there will be nobody there" feeling that I sometimes get. And that feeling was accurate, as the band played a great show for about a dozen folks. I thought that drummer Tobi Vail would be able to draw about 20 people on her own - she was in Bikini Kill, is a DIY punk legend and has plenty of connections to D.C. - but apparently the combination of rainy, Sunday and Red & Black kept people away. (My D.C. Show Attendance Calculator determined that if it was a clear night and the show as at the Black Cat there would have been 34 people there.) The small crowd did include a mini-collection of old-school punk heroes, though: Ian Svenonius (Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up), Erin Smith (Bratmobile) and Christina Billotte (Autoclave, Slant 6) were all in the house.

As for the Old Haunts performance, it was gritty garage-punk done to perfection. Singer/guitarist Craig Extine is clearly influenced by Dead Moon's Fred Cole but he also gave off a serious Jack White vibe, both with his piercing wail and the way he manhandled his guitar, which just seemed light and tiny in his hands. As discussed below, the band's sound is as Pacific Northwest as it gets. That means loud, a bit foreboding and no-frills. The trio setup results in a very welcome economy of sound - every bass note, drum fill and riff is crucial. There's no hiding behind any superfluous instruments or computer-aided sounds. But what sets the Old Haunts apart from other bands that can make a nice, Northwestern racket is that the group writes great pop songs. Extine's voice and the band's general raggedness might obscure this fact but tunes like "Volatile" and "Hurricane Eyes" - both standouts from the recent "Poisonous Times" - are as much jangle pop as garage rock. The songwriting doesn't take a backseat to the sound and you end up with a refreshing blast of primal rock-and-roll.

You can't even call it a coincidence anymore. It's a fact -- the weather gods of the D.C. area react in strong and violent ways when Radiohead comes to town. No meteorological training is necessary to predict massive storms when the band visits.

By all accounts (including J. Freedom's in tomorrow's paper), last night's show at Nissan Pavilion was fantastic. But for some ticket holders, those accounts are all they have to go by: Rain, flooding, traffic, filled parking lots and the general hell that is getting to and from Nissan Pavilion caused plenty of people to miss the show.

And they totally played "Fake Plastic Trees," too. Sorry.

At least this show actually happened. A pair of August 2001 shows at Bull Run Park in Centreville, Va., were canceled due to flooding. The band got its set in at the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert, but that concert will be remembered for a concertgoer getting struck by lightning.

In fact, the only time in the last decade an area Radiohead show went out without a hitch was in 2003 on the "Hail to the Thief" tour when the band attempted to appease the gods by bringing Stephen Malkmus along as opening act/peace offering.

Do you have a horror story about last night? Shoot an e-mail to style (at) washpost dot com with "Radiohead" in the subject line and speak of your ordeal. Include your name and telephone number and you just might see your name in tomorrow's newspaper. And not in the local crime section, for once! And if you actually saw the show, feel free to share your stories here in the comments section.

The Old Haunts: Better than Radiohead.

To refer to an album as stunningly solid may seem like a backhanded compliment but it works perfectly for "Poisonous Times" by the Old Haunts. On its third full-length album the Olympia, Wash., trio takes a tried-and-true sound - punky garage rock in the vein of Dead Moon and the Wipers - and makes it sound as exciting and vibrant as possible. There's something intrinsically Northwest about the band's sound, which frontman Craig Extine talked about in advance of the band's show Sunday night at the Red & the Black. He also talked about the band's goals, message and why you should go see them instead of Radiohead.

Listening to "Poisonous Times" it's pretty clear right away that this is a band from the Pacific Northwest. How would you describe that sound?
There's a certain kind of grittiness with the guitar, and just a little bit dark sounding.

You don't strike me as a band that's looking for fame, at least in the traditional way. So what would you say your goals are as a band?
Our goals are based in artistic aspects of making music. Making records and playing shows and writing songs. Making music we care about and feel is important. Addressing messages that are dear to us. Creating something that contrasts the corporate [expletive] that's around, the violence that's so predominant in the current times, in big and small ways. It's difficult to be relevant in that kind of way but that's definitely what we're trying to do.

Is it more the way you go about things? Or is it what you're saying with your music, maybe emotionally if not necessarily lyrically.
Both. ... It's about having a band be a part of a greater expression of how we all live our lives, how we're trying to live our lives and what kinds of things we're trying to accomplish through various forms of activism. Addressing everything from the environmental issues that are really scary right now and are totally a part of all the war stuff which is going on, which is absolutely insane. And that's also a part of the labor issues, the [expletive] jobs that people are forced to work and the fact that we have [expletive] health care or no health care. Every aspect of life on an individual and group level is intertwined at some point. So the hope is to address that through music. Not just be naively optimistic about things but to try to come to terms with the really damaging things that are around us and at the same time try to find some hint of an answer as to how we can change that. Or at least offer something culturally contrary to that.

Don't you think sometimes people just want to listen to music without being given a message?
Yeah, I don't think music has to be overtly political, lyrically, to offer something that's rebellious, though. People just want to listen to music without being preached to nonstop, of course. At the same time, how can we express anything without addressing the issues that are on our mind?

You're playing in D.C. the same night that Radiohead's in town. Why should people go see the Old Haunts instead of Radiohead?
Well, I'm not really familiar with their music very much.
For real?! Wow, congrats.
I've heard some on the radio but not for a while. So I don't really know where they're at nowadays. I mean, [our show] will be at a much more intimate place. There's more of a chance that somebody will connect with us in a more intense and intimate level.

You're also playing on Mother's Day. Does your mom like the band?
Yeah, all of our mothers and fathers are really supportive and listen to our music.
Do they ever give any feedback?
I mean, mostly just positive. Not a whole lot of in-depth critiques. My parents don't like staying up really late. But if we have a show that starts before midnight they'll come on out.

Seether: Now with 20 percent less Veruca Salt!

South African post-grunge band Seether has scored consecutive No. 1 hits on Billboard's hot modern rock chart, with "Fake It" and, now, "Rise Above This." Saturday, the band performs at DC101's Chili Cook-Off in the downtown D.C. parking lot where the Convention Center used to be. (Big day for rawk, what with Staind, Live, Finger 11 and Chevelle, among others, also on the bill.)

Seether frontman Shaun Morgan called from another food-and-music festival, the Crawfish Boil in Birmingham, where, he said, "it smells like herbally spiced mudbugs." Good times? "Very good times," Morgan said. "Not only does it smell bad, but it's really muggy - and the lineup is bizarre. It's Candlebox and then us, then T-Pain and Three Doors Down. This is going to be one for the books. It's definitely a special day."

Safe to say you're not going to do a duet with T-Pain?
(Laughs.) I don't know anything about buying dranks for shawty.

Would Seether have existed if not for Nirvana? People seem to be obsessed with that comparison - and your Wikipedia page even compares your current hair color and style to Kurt Cobain's in the "Come as You Are" video.

The first album we released, "Disclaimer," was very heavily Nirvana-influenced because a lot of that stuff, I wrote when I was a kid. I was like 16 or 17 years old and heavily into Nirvana. I think the comparisons held water then.

What I don't understand is why it became such a stigma to sound anything remotely like Nirvana - whereas in other genres, you can sound exactly like some other crappy band, and no one has a problem with it. In rock music, if you have any kind of similarity to Nirvana, that's a bad thing. That is quite bizarre.

Look, Nirvana was a band that changed the face of rock and roll in the '90s and basically ended the run of bad, misogynist '80s hairspray metal bands. They had a positive influence; they were a champion of the underdogs with a pretty positive message at the end of the day, which was that it's OK to be yourself.

I think we definitely owe a debt to Nirvana. "Nevermind" was the album that made me pick up a guitar.

You guys have described your new album, "Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces," as "a hearty serving of the usual Seether sting and grit with an added twist of lime." Lime?

It's still the same band. We're just writing songs that are slightly different now. We're starting to evolve and starting to find a better way to get our point across. I just couldn't understand why people were so offended by a song like "Fake It." And now, on the message boards, they're saying "Rise Above This" is the worst song we've ever written.

I think people are just threatened by change. It's also that old-school mentality of ownership: "This is my band. I knew this band way before you did." I guess that scares some people. But it became annoying to have to keep defending ourselves.

Look, dude, I still write these songs for myself, to get me through things and to deal with issues that I have. That's not going to change. If you don't like it, then seriously, don't listen to the songs. But don't take the time and trouble to stand on your soapbox and give us your lofty opinion of what's going on there in your little private world of anonymity where you can be all-seeing and all-powerful and no one can ever touch you. I don't get that. I guess it's the new form of road rage.

(More after the jump.)

Angus Andrew, right, and his bandmates. That horse plays a mean mellotron.

When Liars burst onto the scene in 2001 with a dynamic dance-punk sound it was easy to lump them in with similar New York-based bands like the Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol. Liars responded to this by making a follow-up that was as far removed as dance-punk as possible -- a murky concept album about witch trials in the remote mountains of Germany. The band's career has followed an unpredictable path since then with plenty of lineup changes and shifts in sound. The howling vocals and on-stage flailing of lanky lead singer Angus Andrew have remained the one constant. Liars just started a string of shows opening a for a little band you may have heard of called Radiohead, and Andrew talked about the first few shows on the tour, his recovery from a recent injury and dealing with bad reviews.

When you played at the 9:30 Club back in February you had very limited mobility because of a back injury. How's the back doing these days?
I'm learning that this kind of injury takes time and familiar relationship with a chiropractor. Neither of which I've been able to achieve since I was last in D.C. Still, in comparison to my previous state of near paralysis I'm now practically as limber as a ballerina.

Can you explain what goes through your mind when you are violently twitching up on stage?
If I get lost in the music I can become unconscious. That's a goal. Doing anything in this state is completely unthinking. I have nothing in my mind but the sound which seems to control my body.

You've had major stylistic jumps on each album so far. I'm sure this helps keep things more interesting for you as an artist but do you ever worry about alienating fans with this approach?
To be honest I never thought about this until journalists brought it up. We've always felt Liars fans were as capable and interested in exploring change as we are. I think it's somewhat of an underestimation of our audience to perceive them as susceptible to alienation from stylistic jumps.

"They Were Wrong, So We Drowned" got some famously horrible reviews from publications like Spin and Rolling Stone. Did you expect something like that to happen? Were you, in a weird way, almost courting it?
"They Were Wrong" was my favorite album to make, both before and after the reviews. We knew it would be controversial, I suppose, but never anticipated such a vehement reaction from Rolling Stone and Spin. In the end I was extremely happy with how those reviews generated such debate and discussion, which, ultimately I think is the point of making anything.

How has the first week with Radiohead been?
My word is euphoric. It covers everything from the band themselves to their crew to their show to the crowds - everything is just perfect, right down to how environmentally sound their whole production is.

How is the transition from playing clubs for audiences that have come specifically to see you to playing huge amphitheaters as a warmup act?
Obviously the circumstances are always different. But it feels really easy and nice to play for the Radiohead crowds. It kinda feels like we're all in it together, us and the audience, getting warmed up before the major event.

Let's have a party!

All hail the queen of rockabilly! That'd be Wanda Jackson, the tough-voiced trailblazer who in the 1950s helped sire this thing that eventually came to be known as rock and roll.

On May 18, a new documentary about Jackson - "The Sweet Lady With the Nasty Voice" - will begin playing on the Smithsonian Channel. And this Thursday, Jackson - still touring at the age of 70 - will perform at Jammin' Java.

What do you think will be higher in your obituary: A nod to your status as the "queen of rockabilly" or a reference to the fact that you used to date Elvis?

It's more my status as the first female to do rock and roll. In interviews, we always do talk about the fact that I dated Elvis and that we were good friends. He was the one that encouraged me to stretch myself and sing this kind of music, which I didn't think I could. He seemed to know something I didn't know. He was just anxious to see me have the career he thought I should have. He was concerned and interested; that was very flattering to me. I found that I really loved singing these songs.

But I think the main thing will be my pioneering in that field and opening doors for other women. Plus, I changed the look of clothes for the girls in country music. I got out of cowboy boots and hats and full skirts and dressed the way I wanted to dress. I broke some rules. I decided maybe I was covering up things I shouldn't be covering. (Laughs.) My mother being my seamstress, we came up with the straight skirts and the off-the-shoulder spaghetti strap dresses with the silk fringes that moved without me having to actually move a lot. It gave me a lot of movement anyway. That turned out to be a style that everyone jumped on. They started copying me.

So if you helped open up the world of rock and roll for women, does that me should we blame you for Tila Tequila?

(Laughs.) No! I'd rather not be given credit for that. Rock and roll was our music. It was called rockabilly at the time, I guess because we had been country singers, most of us, and country singers were known as hillbilly singers. None of us liked it, but Elvis became "The Hillbilly Cat." From that came rockabilly. It was the first rock-and-roll music. And then, somewhere in the '60s I guess, it started changing, getting more and more radical until you have what you have today. I think Elvis would turn over in his grave if he heard and saw what's going on today. So no, I don't want to want to be referred to with that bunch.

(Four more after the jump.)

With most indie rock bands the only debate you can have about them is pretty straightforward -- are they good or do they suck? It's rare you can have an argument of substance, but that's not the case with Destroyer. Dan Bejar (who basically is Destroyer) is the kind of idiosyncratic, iconoclastic songwriter who inspires obsession (check the Destroyer wiki), random hilarity (check the Bejar Family Circus) and, well, more obsession (what follows over the next few thousand words).

When I was down in Austin a couple of months ago I ran into friend of Post Rock/Pitchfork senior contributor/Get Him Eat Him frontman/fellow Bejar-obsessive Matt Lemay at the Merge Records showcase where Destroyer played. We started into a debate about what the best Destroyer album was and found that we both felt very strongly that our respective favorite albums -- 2001's "Streethawk: A Seduction" for me, the next year's "This Night" for him -- was Bejar's best. Pistols at dawn can only work for so long, so we decided to settle things in a more civilized way -- arguing and insulting each other over e-mail.

What follows is our back-and-forth and to say we are a little obsessive would be an understatement. If you haven't heard either of these albums, you're going to be more lost than a virgin at an orgy, but you just might learn something. I start things off and the "Streethawk" album cover is my symbol.

What I love most about "Streethawk" is that its bombast is manageable. It has a lot of the grandeur that Bejar took to new levels on subsequent albums but the arrangements and songs themselves are relatively understated. They don't get gobbled up in chaos; I can actually picture a band playing these songs in the studio. And "Streethawk" isn't defined by some weird aesthetic, like those chirpy backing vocals on "This Night" or the MIDI terror of "Your Blues." (Although I guess you could make the argument that "Hunky Dory" rip-off is an aesthetic.) Mostly it comes down to the fact that I'm a songs guy - to me, the best albums are the ones with the most awesome songs, not necessarily something that's to be taken as a grand, unified artistic statement - and there's not a weak track in the bunch.

"The Bad Arts" is the best of Bejar's many epics, "The Sublimation Hour" rides its ascending guitar riff to glam perfection and "Beggars Might Ride" is a concise, breezy pop song, maybe the last of that kind that he's written. I'd feel perfectly confident putting any of these songs on a mixtape for someone and I don't think you can say that about any other Destroyer album.

....But here we come up against the difference between good art and great art -- if mixtapeability is the gold standard of an album's worth, I quit. You're trying to play the "I'm just a songs guy" card -- the rock crit equivalent of calling your opponent a latte-sipping elitist -- but the idea that "This Night" is simply an exercise in "some weird aesthetic" is absurd. Yes, the songs on "This Night" are sprawling, imprecise, difficult -- but they are also thoughtful, melodic, and, uh, songs. The record's "aesthetic" doesn't work against its songs, it's an integral part of them. It reinforces their structural irregularities and realizes their subject matter.

"This Night" is an album that plays with extremes of order and chaos -- "everything must break to be beautiful" -- sounds pile on and disintegrate only to settle, unexpectedly, into a beautiful melodic passage or a disarming lyric. The Bowie comparison is overstated but yes, "Streethawk" does sound a little "ripoff"-y, whereas "This Night" is the first -- and best -- entirely unique and inimitable Destroyer album. Yeah, sure, I would put "The Sublimation Hour" or "English Music" on a mixtape for anybody, but I don't think I would put "Goddess of Drought" or "Crystal Country" on a mixtape for somebody unless I planned to marry her -- it's the difference between a fun, fleeting crush and a big scary commitment. "This Night" asks more and it gives more.

So, so, so much more after the jump...

NEW ORLEANS - Random raves, notes and observations from the Jazz and Heritage Festival's second and final weekend:

The big story here was the return of the Neville Brothers, this city's first family of funk. They'd served as Jazzfest's closing headliners for more than a dozen years before Hurricane Katrina hit; since then, they hadn't performed together in the city at all, causing much consternation and controversy. So much so that a columnist for the Times-Picayune was compelled to write a column on Sunday in which he urged locals not to protest the Nevilles' headlining performance.

No worries. Jazzfest producer Quint Davis introduced the brothers from the stage by calling their return "a family reunion" - meaning the New Orleans family, which splintered following the hurricane. Davis even appeared to get choked up as he brought the brothers out one by one - Charles first, then Cyril, Aaron and Art.

The Nevilles themselves only marginally addressed the symbolism of the set, with Art declaring, "Another family coming back together. We ain't never left New Orleans, y'all." Mostly, they let the music carry the day, performing songs with a decidedly local flavor, from "Fiyo on the Bayou" to "Meet de Boys on the Battlefront," a funky song about Mardi Gras Indians during which the Nevilles were joined on stage by Tchoupitoulas Indians covered in colorful, ornate feathered suits. A hard-driving cover of Professor Longhair's defining New Orleans piano anthem, "Tipitina," was a highlight, all dirty, snarling funk and swagger.

The Nevilles also threw a bit of salsa into their musical gumbo and also turned to Sam Cooke for a slice of cleansing soul, with Aaron Neville singing "A Change Is Gonna Come," which was a showcase for his airy, ethereal voice. How does something so tender, sweet and delicate come out of somebody so ... hulking? (Seriously - his biceps are the size of my head.) Neville ended the stirring performance by saying, "I'm coming home." But he didn't have to. He was already there.

Three songs heard with great frequency around the New Orleans Fairgrounds over the weekend: Gospel standard "When the Saints Go Marching In," Randy Newman's newly relevant storm-of-the-century ballad "Louisiana 1927" and Ben E. King's classic soul song, "Stand By Me."

The latter tune actually provided what was surely one of the most surreal mash-up moments in history: If you happened to be walking between the gospel tent and the heritage stage right around 4 p.m. on Saturday, you could hear Aaron Neville performing a hymnal version of "Stand By Me" at the same time as the Pinstripe Brass Band was blasting through its own boisterous take on the tune. Their approaches could not have been any more different: One ruminative and spiritual, the other rambunctious and swaggering. Only in New Orleans.

(More after the jump.)

Last night I caught Langhorne Slim at Iota (very good, pick up tomorrow's paper for the review). I was standing about five rows from the stage and right in front of me was a small group of people who talked incessantly through the entire show. During songs, between songs, just nonstop. And it didn't bother me in the slightest. Not one bit. Why?

They were speaking in sign language.

First, let's give it up for some (possibly) hearing-impaired people who still make it out to see live music on a Thursday night in Arlington. And maybe we can use them as inspiration for helping us end the epidemic of people talking over bands. If you desperately need to talk during a show -- learn sign language! You can be polite and it's a solid skill that can come in handy (no pun intended) at some point in your life. Get to it, folks!

A one-man 'Seven Nation Army.'

As you most certainly have heard/ read/ seen/ dreamed about/ sworn at yourself for missing/ watched on YouTube before the cease-and-desist letters landed, etc., Prince killed it at Coachella last weekend with a set that included a cover of Radiohead's "Creep."

This just a little more than a year after he rocked the 2007 Super Bowl with a half-time set that included a cover of the Foo Fighters hit, "Best of You."

Which got David and I thinking out loud: What else from the alt-rock world should Prince cover?

I voted for Soundgarden and Evan Dando.

David nominated ... Creed.

Our IM back-and-forth is inside.