Jennifer Lopez donning a Louis Vuitton LBD at Scott Barnes‘ About Face book launch at Provocateur at the Gansevoort Hotel Wednesday night (top photo), The City‘s Whitney Port and Roxy Olin attending the Thompson Hotel’s Haiti Relief party that raised $35,000 for the American Red Cross Wednesday night (middle photo), Vampire Weekend performing a free show at the Union Square Barnes and Noble Thursday (bottom photo), The Click Five‘s Kyle Patrick performing solo at Rockwood Music Hall Wednesday, and Questlove, Talib Kweli and Q-Tip DJing at Brookyln Bowl for Haiti relief Thursday.
We had so much fun at The Click Five‘s Bowery Electric show Wednesday night that we had to hit up the band’s semi-unplugged gig at Rockwood Music Hall Thursday!
“This is our absolute favorite venue in New York,” said frontman Kyle Patrick, of the intimate, less-than-100 capacity Lower East Side venue. “It’s good to see you all so close up to us.”
Of course we’d never come back without a treat.
Check out a clip of the band performing a borderline acoustic version of their newest single, “I Quit! I Quit! I Quit!”, above.
You may remember The Click Five best from their 2005 invasion of MTV with power pop hits “Catch Your Wave” and “Just The Girl,” but the band has come a long way in four years.
In 2006, The Click Five replaced lead singer Eric Dill with Kyle Patrick (pictured left), started playing nightly residencies at clubs in New York, Philadelphia and hometown Boston, and independently produced a record that’s set to come out in early 2010.
“It’s more rock & roll than the last album,” Patrick tells Poison Ivy, after the band’s powerhouse set at New York’s Bowery Electric Wednesday night.
“It sounds kind of timeless in a way,” adds bassist Ethan Mentzer, noting that the record was recorded almost a year ago.
“We’re not afraid to put it out a year later,” he tells me. “We don’t think it’s dated.”
Along with the club circuit, the boys have played some pretty significant gigs in the last year, including the first international rock concert at the ancient temple of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia back in December, and a show for 50,000 people at Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh, Cambodia as a part of MTV EXIT, an organization which raises awareness about human trafficking.
“We met a woman named Somaly Mam, who’s kind of this unsung hero,” says keyboardist Ben Romans, of the human rights advocate. “It’s a pretty cool thing that [MTV] is doing.”
The band cites everyone from Elvis Costello to the Rolling Stones to “bands that stay relevant” as their influences, but admit they’d have a broad roster if they could plan the ultimate festival.
“We would be on the bill, but we would be opening,” Mentzer laughs, placing U2, Paul McCartney and The Killers on the lineup.
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