“No Songs. No Vocals.” The stern warning was printed on every ticket to Thursday night’s performance of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio at the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan. And besides the occasional moan or grunt from Reed himself, that’s exactly what his fans got: an hour and a half of pure, throbbing -- occasionally blissful -- noise. This was no “Sweet Jane.”

Last night, Hootie & the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker and folky Kimya Dawson proved that they had at least one thing very much in common: a love for R.E.M.

If their show Friday night at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music was their last one ever -- as rampant internet speculation would have it -- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah certainly gave no indication the end was near.