plug pulled

So the Plug Awards show is over, the winners have been announced. Here’s my wrap up of the proceedings with pictures as clear as I could muster with my tiny digital camera from my spot 20 feet back from the stage.

The event was held at Terminal 5 in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. Patton Oswalt hosted and presented some of the awards in a very loose sense (most of the time the nominee’s were splashed up on the screen for a second and then the winner was revealed on the screen). There were a few exceptions where the award was presented by another entity ranging from El-P to Battles, or the very very young duo whose name escapes me. A few presenters even showed up to surprise the audience (or were already there), including what seemed to be all of The National (get up and play danggonit!).

Patton got little love from the crowd, who seemed to happily ignore him after he commented on the sheer number of ironic t-shirts in the crowd, and even I lost interest in the Michael Showalter Mixtape vids (near bottom of page) after the first one. I thought Patton was decent enough though given the nature of his crowd and even recognized his 80’s metal bit from Feelin’ Kinda Patton. I thought the best part was when he included Halliburton and GW in ‘08 in the list of sponsors to see if it would elicit any reaction from the crowd (it didn’t).

After a seemingly disastrous set by White Denim, St. Vincent was on.  Having never listened to the album before, I had no idea what to expect but was pleasantly surprised.  I had preloaded most of the performers on my player and listened to her entire album right after the show.  The mix was great even over the din of the crowd and she and the band weren’t afraid to climax 2 of the 3 songs with noisy freak outs.

I was extremely bored with The Forms, but Dizzee was out shortly after to try and wake everybody up.  It didn’t work out too well, but a few unexpected fans were dancing up front and a gaggle of drunk girls plopped themselves a few people ahead of me.  This was probably the most animated the crowd was all evening, except for Mr. Cave’s performance.

Unfortunately the drunk girls persisted in the area even through Jose Gonzolez’s set.  Which was too bad, cause I really actually enjoy his songs.  I guess that seeing him tonight at the Tarrytown Music Hall would actually be a better choice for his style of music, but I won’t get a chance to even though it is mere footsteps from our house.  He did his best to project and ignore the rudeness, and I commend him for not chucking his guitar at them.

Of course Nick Cave was the highlight of the evening (despite his recent aesthetic change to channeling early hedgehog), and he was able to finally drown an abnormally (up to that point) indifferent crowd.  He played a 9 song set including Red Right Hand, We Call Upon the Author to Explain and Stagger Lee but I really thought he would have slayed if he had done a version of Where the Red Roses Grow with Annie Clark supporting.

I will add links to the winners later, for now I have run out of time.  Lets just say eMusic lost the vote for best on-line record store and Radiohead won best artist.   Independent music is starting to take on a whole new meaning to the masses.  The lines are definitely blurring.