Two Door Cinema Club were met by an extremely enthusiastic crowd last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! By now, though, the You Oughta Know alums should be used to it; their crowds have gotten bigger and more enthusiastic all year. And while it might not be super-thrilling at home to see another performance of “What You Know” (a single from February! Kimmel gets lots of great guests really late in their promotional cycles) the audience hardly seemed to mind. For that matter, “What You Know” also thrilled the crowd at last month’s MTV Hive Live in NYC show, which is now available to stream if you want to see what was a great show from these favorites of ours.
Over on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Bootsy Collins (sadly, sans space bass), Mark Mothersbaugh (surprisingly, with keytar), Biz Markie, Erykah Badu,Leslie Hall, and of course Black Thought of The Roots each had a turn on the mic for the funky Yo Gabba Gabba! jam “We’re Gonna Party Today.” We’re not exactly sure how much appeal the jams have for kids, but if we were parents we’d love the old-school hip-hop vibe. They even dedicated their performance to the memory of Sugarhill Records co-founder Sylvia Robinson! Check it out:
The Webster Hall mainstage may have been host to chillwave buzz band Toro y Moi last night, but for about an hour, all the excitement at the venue was downstairs in the smaller Studio at Webster Hall, as Two Door Cinema Club ripped through most of their 2010 debut Tourist History, plus a couple B-sides, for an extremely hyped audience. All night, kids—some of whom had paid to see Toro y Moi—were trying to sneak in the back door of the already-packed show.
It helped that the band sounded really, really great. We selected them as a You Oughta Know band in February based not only on the strength of their then-nascent single “What You Know,” but the deeper cuts on the album—and those really shined last night. They made the wise decision to tour with a live drummer rather than the programmed beats they created in the studio, and it made all the difference, forcing them to push their harmonies out more so as not to be drowned out, and letting the guitar riff and play more, for a really great, open sound that was still recognizably theirs. But “What You Know” was the song everyone in the building knew: it inspired an immediate, unprompted singalong. The trio (now with drummer) must be accustomed to this, as they chose to close their set with the song. Naturally, the excited crowd wouldn’t let them go without a two-song encore.
We hope you were able to tune into the livestream last night, but if not, we’ve got the setlist below the jump, and be sure to check MTV Hive in two weeks for footage of the show. [click to continue…]
MTV Hive‘s Live in NYC series doubles up this week, with full sets streaming live from Rinse FM house diva Katy B tonight at 9:30PM EDT and from Irish indie-pop rockers (and You Oughta Know alums) Two Door Cinema Club tomorrow at 9:00PM EDT. We’ve told you all about Two Door Cinema Club; as for Katy B, she’s an up-and-coming UK vocalist who’s been working with some of London’s best house producers; (hear “Katy On A Mission” below).
After launching the series with Marina and the Diamonds on June 30 they invited us to last month’s excellent Horrors show, and we suspect that tonight’s and tomorrow’s shows will be just as good. (MTVHive sure loves bands from the British Isles, though, don’t they!) If you can tune in, we recommend it. If not, MTVHive should share both sets afterwards—though likely only for a limited time.
If you attended the 2011 Lollapalooza Festival this weekend, you had to battle the elements AND a throng of 270,000 people in order to see your favorite acts. However, on Friday night at the W Hotel in Chicago, some of our most famous You Oughta Know alumni gathered for a very special VH1 You Oughta Know Night at the Belve Music Lounge. Retro soul powerhouses Fitz And The Tantrums and electro power poppers Two Door Cinema Club each performed for the fans lucky enough to score an invite (which included celebs like Twilight’s Kellan Lutz, Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse), and the one and only Grace Potter hopped on the ones and twos for an inspired DJ set. Our photogs were on hand to catch all the action, and we’d love to share the results with you!
Less than a month from now, dozens of bands and tens of thousands of music fans will be making their way to Chicago’s Grant Park for the annual Lollapalooza music festival. If you currently find yourself on the outside looking in—three-day passes to the festival are currently sold out—well then, we have some good news to share with you.
With a click of your mouse and some light typing by your fingers, you can enter the You Oughta Lolla sweepstakes. Five grand-prize winners will receive 1) A pair of General Admission 3-Day Passes, 2) VIP, front-of-line access to the You Oughta Know FYE Autograph Tent for each day of the Festival and 3) Side-stage access to select You Oughta Know performances for each day of the Festival. Of course, VH1 Top 20 and VH1 News crews will be on hand in the Windy City to cover performances from VH1 You Oughta Know artists like Foster The People, Fitz And The Tantrums, Christina Perri, Lissie, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals and Two Door Cinema Club, among others. But really, what could be better than actually being there yourself to see all of these amazing artists live and in the flesh?
To enter the contest, all you have to do is head over to the You Oughta Lolla contest entry page and fill out the required information. Complete contest rules and regulations are on that site as well. GOOD LUCK!
Yesterday, we introduced you to the upper reaches of our Top 100 Videos of 2011 … So Far list, serving up the #100-51 videos that you’ve been clicking on most so far this year. Although a hefty portion, consider that first installment just an appetizer for today’s first course and tomorrow’s main entree. Going a bit deeper into the list, we now give you #50-11, inching closer and closer to #1.
The 2011 Coachella Festival is a wrap! Sadly, we didn’t go, but here are five reasons we wish we had:
LAURYN HILL
Those who stuck it out through Cee Lo Green‘s transportation-delayed (and, by some accounts, uninspiring performance) on the main stage Friday were rewarded with a razor-sharp set from Lauryn Hill, who immediately followed. After the enormous success of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which struck a chord with millions—Adele called the album “life-defining” in last week’s Rolling Stone— Hill shrank from the spotlight, and her performances of late have been as sporadic in quality as they have in quantity. But Spinreports that she was in top form at Coachella, and we can’t doubt after watching set-closer “Doo Wop (That Thing)”:
The gates open at 11:00am tomorrow in Indio, California for the twelfth incarnation of the Coachella Festival, and for the lucky few (hundred thousand) with wristbands (and the jealous/curious rest of us), the festival has posted set times for this weekend’s jam-packed lineup. There’s at least one performer worth seeing at any given time (especially for fans of British rock, pop, and dance), so if you’re going, definitely try to check out at least one band you haven’t heard before. (For relatively early risers, may we recommend The Joy Formidable at 12:55PM on Saturday at the Gobi Stage?)
The real challenge, then, is when two or more great artists play at the same time on different stages. The schedule is pretty well-scheduled, but we’ve identified five particularly tough choices:
FRIDAY: Kings of Leon vs. Robyn: Kings of Leon’s hometown Storytellerstaping was heartfelt but powerful, and the riffs on Come Around Sundown are just as catchy as (if slightly less ubiquitous than) the band’s Only by the Night singles. Robyn, meanwhile, is a bonafide superstar in Europe who with this year’s critically-acclaimed Body Talk has for the second time nearly achieved the American pop breakthrough she had once, in 1997. The Swedish electro-pop songwriter puts not just her heart but her whole body into her emotive vocal performances.
If you’re the kind of pop music fan who finds yourself a bit dismayed when you turn on the radio and rarely hear songs that sounded like they were created using real, live instruments rather than bleeps, blips and bloops from some super producer’s laptop, we’ve got exciting news for you. Say hello to Two Door Cinema Club, a young Irish trio that are VH1′s latest You Oughta Know artist. Their highly danceable sound pays homage to the slinky basslines and jangly guitars of the late 70s and early 80s New Wave movement, but with a modern twist: Their drummer is a MacBook Pro.
