U2 Join Lady Gaga, Scarlett Johansson and More for Gavin Friday Benefit at Carnegie Hall

October 5th, 2009 by David Fricke Leave a reply »

“We had all kinds of grand ideas,” Bono said onstage at Carnegie Hall, early in an October 4th concert honoring Irish singer-songwriter-provocateur Gavin Friday. Bono was recalling his teenage years in Dublin, running through the streets with Friday and the future members of their bands, U2 and Friday’s tribal punk surrealists the Virgin Prunes. “We invented these great events in our imagination,” Bono went on, noting that Friday, at one point actually had the temerity to say, “Why don’t we all play Carnegie Hall?”

They had to wait awhile, until Friday’s 50th birthday (officially on October 8th), but it was worth it. Dubbed “An Evening With Gavin Friday and Friends” and curated with eclectic bravura by Hal Willner, the show — presented by the charitable foundation (RED), with proceeds going to fight AIDS in Africa — was a riotous three-hour party, with a to-hell-with-genre rollcall of the many friends Friday has made in his art-rock pop-art film-score and noir-theater travels.

Rufus Wainwright, Scarlett Johansson and Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen joined Friday for the come-hither cartoon “Mr. Pussy,” from Friday’s 1995 album, Shag Tobacco. (Armisen came out dressed to the purple nines — as Prince.) Friday and falsetto-soul singer Antony duetted on a pair of ballads, including a Memphis-brass-soaked reading of “He Got What He Wanted” from Friday’s 1989 solo debut, Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves. Friday and Virgin Prunes devotee Courtney Love were just on the right side of out-of-control in a pounding version of Magazine’s “The Light Pours Out of Me.” Queen of the post-punk furies Lydia Lunch played the same half of the night as Lady Gaga (who came out in next to nothing — she made Love look demure). And a metal-machine-noise assault by Laurie Anderson (violin), John Zorn (saxophone) and Lou Re...

Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

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