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Music

Hot tickets: Punkers pack laughs, punch

By SEAN DALY
Published October 20, 2005

It's only appropriate that the Windy City's hottest pop-punk band indulges in windy song titles. Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued, Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends, and I Slept With Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song are just a few of the puckishly titled tracks on Fall Out Boy's From Under the Cork Tree, one of 2005's biggest multiplatinum surprises.

Led by singer Patrick Stump, the shaggy quartet of 20-somethings - named after a Simpsons character that only the nerdiest D'oh boy would know - drew a raucous, skin-aplenty crowd of Tampa Bay area teens at the Vans Warped Tour at Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg this August. On a day filled with good ol' fashioned rage, FOB delivered a few needed punch lines, reminding all of us that punk rock isn't only about hating old people. It's about laughing at them, too.

From Under the Cork Tree has been moshing in the top 10 ever since its May release, and its breakout single, Sugar, We're Goin Down, is one of iTunes' most popular downloads this year.

Fall Out Boy performs as part of the "Nintendo Fusion Tour" with Boys Night Out, Motion City Soundtrack, the Starting Line and Panic! At the Disco tonight at 8, Jannus Landing, 16 Second St. N, St. Petersburg. $22.50. (813) 287-8844, (727) 898-2100 or (727) 896-2276.

It's been a long time since Neil Diamond was considered hip by anyone under the age of 50. In 1972, the Brooklyn-born soft-rock royalty released the live album Hot August Night, a bestselling double platter featuring such now-classic pop tunes as Sweet Caroline and Cracklin' Rosie. Even more memorable than the music was the album cover: The wild-haired denim-clad singer was pictured, ahem, cradling an invisible paramour.

Between then and now, Diamond embraced his Heartlight, moaned about flowers with Babs Streisand, and generally played to a graying populace that includes my Aunt Shirley. Alas, his hip factor plummeted. But on Nov. 8, Diamond will release his most-anticipated album in four decades: 12 Songs, a spare partnership with white-hot producer Rick Rubin, the man who made Johnny Cash relevant again on the Man in Black's American Recordings series. Rubin, a founding partner of rap-strong record label Def Jam, has reportedly stripped down the Solitary Man's love of schmaltz. Maybe Rick can get Neil back into that denim suit again, too.

Oh, and one more thing: This week marks the 25th anniversary of Diamond's 1980 cinematic cheesefest The Jazz Singer. To celebrate, a specially packaged DVD of the flick is being released, so we can all appreciate Laurence Olivier's finest work. "They're coming to America ... today!"

Neil Diamond plays tonight at 8 at the St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa. $42.50-$75. (813) 287-8844,(727) 898-2100 or (813) 301-2500.

If there is a single work on the Florida Orchestra season tailor-made for sophisticated listeners, it would be Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins, with its text of biting social commentary by Bertolt Brecht. Soprano Lisa Vroman sings the part of Anna, who is split into two "sisters," a singer and a dancer. The singer provides commentary on the downfall of the dancer, who leaves Louisiana to earn money to build a new house for her family. The piece, in an English translation by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, includes songs on idleness, pride, anger and other character defects.

Vroman, the vocal quartet Hudson Shad, music director Stefan Sanderling and the orchestra perform The Seven Deadly Sins Saturday at Pasadena Community Church, St. Petersburg; Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater; and Monday at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa. All performances at 7:30 p.m. Also on the program: Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. $15-$50.50. 813 286-2403; www.floridaorchestra.org ON THE WEB: If you missed Fleming's interview with Lisa Vroman, which was published Tuesday in the Floridian section of the Times, you can find it at www.sptimes.com/columns/fleming.shtml

- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic

With a slow, sinister synth line keeping his trademark rage at bay, Trent Reznor kicks off Nine Inch Nail's 2005 album With Teeth in a relatively restrained mood: "Watching all the insects march along. . . . Hiding in the crowd, I'm all alone," he hushes on All the Love in the World. That's a veritable Hallmark card for Reznor, the reclusive electronic-rock icon whose spent the past decade packaging his angst into such dark-night-of-the-soul songs as Closer and Head Like a Hole.

Reznor lightens up a bit on With Teeth, NIN's fourth album. Oh, don't get me wrong: The man still needs his meds. (All the Love in the World is followed by the messy, ear-splitting You Know What You Are?) But first single The Hand That Feeds, an indictment of our warmongering powers-that-be, is Reznor at his poppiest, a political song suitable for dance floors and protests. When I saw NIN's show at the Coachella Festival in Palm Springs, Calif., this year, the famously forlorn frontman was nothing short of crowd-pleasing, unleashing strong, faithful takes on his hits instead of getting too arty and ambiguous in his downward spiral.

Nine Inch Nails rages forth with Queens of the Stone Age at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa. $37.75-$46.75. (813) 287-8844, (727) 898-2100 or (813) 301-2500 .

[Last modified October 19, 2005, 10:43:05]