ZZ Top

I woke up this morning to find two topics dominating my Twitter timeline: Jack White’s hissy fit Saturday night at Radio City Music Hall (he walked off after performing for only 45 minutes) and the new album that doom-rap duo Death Grips dropped overnight with zero warning to their label—an album with one of the most flagrantly NSFW covers of 2012 (overall a very good year for NSFW music-related visuals). Both stories are highly entertaining, but in vastly different ways. The Death Grips thing is hilarious because obviously it’s meant to be hilarious, and because I imagine that Epic Records is right now regretting signing the group, though not for the same reasons labels who threw money at Internet rappers are regretting doing that. The Jack White thing is funny because Jack White acting like a big baby over tiny things is always funny, and because I like the irony in the fact that he goes on and on about how he’s trying to emulate old-school entertainers and about how shallow and meaningless modern pop is, but in terms of old-fashioned “the show must go on” gumption he just got absolutely treated by none other than Justin Bieber, who the same night kept a concert going even as he was barfing onstage.

Speaking of live performances, here are a few happening in the next couple of days that you should consider checking out. And as always, there are lots more shows on Soundboard: