Sometimes, a secret is kept too well. Just ask Matt Maust, the bassist for Cold War Kids, who headlined MySpace’s One Year Secret Show Anniversary Show last night in a Hollywood warehouse. “I didn’t know anything about it, actually, until two days ago,” Maust told SPIN.com, minutes before taking the stage for an incendiary, 35-minute set that included a rare John Lennon cover. “It was a secret to me.”
Word did get out, but the venue seemed to be at roughly three-quarters capacity for most of the night, which bridged the gap between hipsters and hip-hop with the Cold War Kids’ southern blues-rock and Clipse’s occasionally monotonous drug-street rhymefests taking equal high-level billing. Opening for them were Diamond Nights, a group of glam rockers who braved heckling Clipse fans to break out their kick-move ’80s throwback “The Girl’s Attractive” and jump into a not-quite-swarming sea of bodies.
Sometimes more interesting than the artists onstage was a room full of posters of MySpace shows past, with anecdotes about cathartic sing-alongs and around-the-block lines — the kind of energy that seemed to be slightly lacking as fair-weather fans sung along to the hits and slowly slinked their way to the open bar during each band’s album cuts. JEFF MILLER / PHOTOS BY JESS LEE
>> Listen to Cold War Kids on Napster
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