Dr. Dog, Gutter Twins Engage the Power of the Riff

Looking (and spasming) like the Blues Brothers' distant cousin, Dr. Dog frontman Scott McMicken lead his band through a set of meat and potatoes riffage that made believers out of the afternoon crowd. Though the group stuck mostly to familiar poses, the most exciting moments came when things threatened to spiral out of control, like the swirling honky tonk breakdown during "The Old Days."

Across a field, the Gutter Twins (former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs) released a little bit of evil into the breezy afternoon air. Their churning slabs of sexy psychedelia are meant to be consumed late at night in smoky barrooms, so they sounded a tad out of place. However, that didn't stop them from gaining some converts with their slow-burning tales of obsession — most notably on their cover of Massive Attack's "Live With Me."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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