Hole holds its own in return to U.S. stage

0

[My main assignment Friday was to cover the SPIN 25 party – all six hours of it – for SPIN.com:]

sxsw-hole-KB

Courtney Love took the stage at Stubb’s on Friday evening wearing an orange sash that said “BEWARE.”

As if the capacity crowd at the SPIN 25 party (presented by RockBand and MySpace Music) at the South by Southwest Music Festival needed any warning: The Hole frontwoman has kept friends and foes on their heels for the better part of two decades. And most who angled their way onto the list for one of 2010’s hottest tickets – Hole’s first North American show in more than a decade – came expecting some sort of spectacle, maybe even a train wreck.

They got neither. With Love leading an entirely new cast of co-conspirators, Hole delivered a muscular and saw-toothed 50-minute set that reaffirmed her status, even at age 45, as rock provocateur.

Read the rest of the review on SPIN.com.

â—Š â—Š â—Š

The show-stealer for me was the midafternoon set by Canadian punk/hardcore sextet F*cked Up, which was off the charts in both ferocity and hilarity. I summarize in my review the antics of frontman Damian Abraham. Here’s a mini-gallery – yes, I almost got a mud hug:

no images were found