Yesterday Bon Jovi fanatics rushed to the closest ballparks to pick up their tickets to a free concert on the Great Lawn next weekend. NY1 reports that fans lined up for hours at all four stadiums; the concert is part of the upcoming All-Star Game celebration. One fan declared of JBJ: "Back in the day he was number one and he still is," while others were happy he was doing the show for free and......

Photos by Seth Wenig/AP. Yesterday came the announcement of a free concert that would be held on Central Park's Great Lawn this month featuring Mr. Jon Bon Jersey himself (now a Manhattanite). Today more details about the July 12th show and how to procure your golden tickets are unveiled via Bon Jovi's official website. Essentially, tickets will be made available at every major, and some minor baseball stadiums beginning July 2nd. Starting at 9......

Mark your calendars: Bon Jovi will be giving a free concert in Central Park next month. The concert will be on Saturday, July 12, and is apparently a "prelude to the July 15 All-Star baseball game." Bon Jovi is touring this summer and has two concerts at MSG on July 14 and 15, with The All-American Rejects opening.......

Spiegelworld returns to Pier 17 this summer...but not until August! Their lineup is a hefty one, however, running through November 2nd. The 100+ year old traveling venue became a seasonal fixture in New York three years ago. Holding 350 people, the shows are pretty intimate, and the views from the garden are on par with the beauty of the tent itself. And this year there will even be a perfect night view of the......

Each summer the Met offers a free outdoor performance, and the one-night-only event is going down in Prospect Park later this evening. Two of the opera world's biggest stars, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, will be belting out duets as Ion Marin conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Fun fact: Gheorghiu and Alagna were married backstage at the Met during a run of La Bohème in 1996...by Giuliani! Head over to the park (there's......

Since he began his fruitful collaboration with Walter Becker back at Bard College in 1968, Grammy award-winning musician Donald Fagen has steadily distinguished himself as one of the smartest and most imaginative contemporary songwriters. As Steely Dan, the innovative duo lays claim to an impressive catalog of hit singles that somehow manage to stay fresh despite their everlasting ubiquity on classic rock stations across America. For whatever reason, people still can't help cranking up the......

Original photo by Louis Lanzano/AP. Two years after pleading guilty to falsely calling in a break-in and donning an orange Department of Sanitation vest while sweeping the streets of Chinatown (as part of his community service duty), Boy George has announced he'll play a private show for the NYC Department of Sanitation workers later this summer. From the press release:Boy George will help celebrate New York City’s Department of Sanitation Family Day this summer!......

In a couple of weeks Staten Island will hold its very own music festival called Rock the Harbor, something Brooklyn Vegan posted about this week -- instantly sparking a lot of "discussion" about the borough ("Does everyone have to tan and work out before the show?" etc). With Manhattanites trying to pawn SI off on Jersey, and Jerseyites rejecting it, it was only a matter of time before Staten Island Advance caught wind of the......

In 2006, Lou Reed revived his album Berlin by performing it in its entirety with a small orchestra for five sold-out shows at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The 1973 album, which riffs on themes of drugs, love and suicide, was a commercial failure when it came out; Lester Bangs described it as “the bastard progeny of a drunken flaccid tumble between Tennessee Williams and Hubert (Last Exit From Brooklyn) Selby, Jr.” But in......

Photos via WireImage. Madonna, who recently stated that NYC gives her the zzz's, was stirring things up in town for an intimate performance last night. Her Madgesty took the Roseland Ballroom stage in front of 2,200 fans, for a show which demanded die-hards wait in line for what turned out to be 60 hours, just for a chance to get into. Fanatics? No. One of them, a Brooklynite, swears, “I’m not fanatical. But I......

Chris Martin will be (attempting to) steal the spotlight back from his wife Gwyneth Paltrow soon. She's been in the news for fainting from live-food fasts and being honored by Food Bank NYC, and you know he must be shivering there in her shadow. Well not for long; Martin and his band Coldplay have just announced a free show to help hype up their forthcoming album. If you're a fan of the fellas, set that......

All signs, and weathervanes, point towards the upcoming outdoor summer concert season, which is just around the corner. The River to River Festival is kicking things off with a nod to the past, featuring Wire at the Seaport Music Festival stage. Why should you care? Unlike other 70s bands that have been over-saturating the concert circuit, these guys haven't taken a stage in the U.S. in quite some time; their last show was in Spain......

Last night Rat Dog ended their three-night run at the Beacon Theater. The band is led by the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, and is one of the few left that will bring the hippies out to the Upper West Side (pictured). As for the band, they blogged about their stay, saying, "We’ve gotten to New York City – ‘just like I pictured it’ – and things are getting seriously New Yorked." For those keeping......

Do certain band's fans tip better than others? Sasha Frere-Jones does an uncontrolled study at Bowery Ballroom -- and Chromeo fans, you're busted.“When Chromeo played, their crowd drank house vodka and Budweiser. Didn’t tip. Some of them did what I’ll call the slide-backs. They put a dollar down on the bar, wait until you turn your back, then palm their buck and walk away. Classy. When your night starts out with “What’s your cheapest drink?”......

Real Emotional Trash, the fourth post-Pavement solo album by Stephen Malkmus, is arguably his best, and at the very least rivals the acclaimed Pig Lib for inventiveness. A well-crafted balance of catchy pop, multi-part prog rock compositions, heady guitar shredding and his signature lyrical whimsy, the album is sure to stymie Pavement fans on a nostalgia trip and the skinny jean set appalled by any song that dares last longer than five minutes. Joined by......

Photos via Copyranter Atlanta band The Black Lips better tell their street team the correct date of their upcoming Bowery Ballroom show. The above posters were spotted around the East Village (a clever guerrilla marketing campaign), but some of the dates are wrong! Copyranter calls out the "lazy hipsters" for the inconsistency, but in the end it's a nice way to be a little "green" while promoting shows. P.S. - The Bowery Ballroom show......

An influential group of rabbis have put the kibosh on a concert planned for next Sunday at MSG’s WaMu theater. Billed as The Big Event, the show was to be headlined by popular Hasidic pop singer Lipa Schmeltzer and raise money for an Israeli charity that finances weddings for orphans. But after an edict was issued against the event, Schmeltzer dropped out, saying, “I have to get out of the fire.” Two Brooklyn community leaders,......

In 1965 The Beatles performed at Shea Stadium (video), beginning a tradition of rock on the ball field. Sadly, they won't be around to bookend the life of the stadium, which opened its doors on April 17th, 1964 and gets torn down after the 2008 season. Helping them close up shop are Billy Joel and his piano. On July 16th Joel will make "The Last Play at Shea," and later in the year The Mets......

We finally got to realize our lifelong dream of hearing "inbreed three-nipple cousin-fucker" reverberate off the hallowed walls of Carnegie Hall last night at the two-nights-only Jerry Springer: The Opera In Concert. Too bad no one told headliner Harvey Keitel he was welcome to join us. Fumbling--when he wasn't downright forgetting--his lines, accidentally knocking over a trumpet, and never seeming present on stage, Keitel was mercifully the only low point in an otherwise glorious......

Shine a Light, the film documenting The Rolling Stones show at Beacon Theater in 2006, is about to hit the big screen. And the really, really big screen. The Martin Scorsese-directed rockumentary will be in both regular and IMAX theaters this April, and it won't be the first time Mick Jagger's lips have reached epic proportions; the band recorded their first IMAX concert in the early '90s. Check out the trailer for the latest one,......

MUSIC: Merkin Concert Hall is reopening, and to help celebrate some of the piano greats will be on hand for a free, six hour concert. Philip Glass and John Medeski will be amongst those who will perform. Get more details here. 2 to 8pm // Merkin Concert Hall [129 W 67th St] // Free We had a chance to catch Marla Hansen (pictured) last year, and the Brooklynite silenced the room with her hushed compositions.......

Where, like last year, we recap the biggest stories from the New York music scene of the year. Album of the Year: The National - Boxer What this album did better than any other coming out of New York all year was create images. It tells stories worth listening to. The opener, "Fake Empire," sets the tone for the rest of the record...slow and moody, yet brash and almost apologetic. Every song sounds like it......

Led Zeppelin Reunite, Songs Remain the Same Aside from a reanimated corpse Beatles reunion, there is not another dormant band in the world that could cause more excitement getting back together than Led Zeppelin. So, for the first time in 19 years, with Jason Bonham in for his late father behind the drums and the rest of the original pieces in place, the band picked up where they left off, playing a Greatest-Hits set to......

Naked Guy at Ted Leo Concert It's a tad early for year end awards, but this story is making a strong, late push for the greatest live moment of 2007. At the Ted Leo show at The Music Hall of Williamsburg Wednesday night, some dude from Jersey took off his shirt and threw it on the stage. Not satisfied with merely being topless in a crowd on that snowy night, he eventually followed the shirt......

You know you’ve finally arrived when your name appears in an Onion headline. The satirical paper of record paid that respect to the decades-spanning indie-rock phenomenon Yo La Tengo some years back with an article titled “37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster.” Since 1984 the band, started by husband and wife duo Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan, has been blazing an independent trail of restlessly inventive guitar rock. Their most......

Girl Talk Double Dip (in Puke and Booze) Those who missed out on getting tickets to the electrospazzy one-two punch of Dan Deacon and Girl Talk at Webster Hall last Saturday night fell into a bit of luck as the weekend approached. A last minute, late night show was announced for Bowery Ballroom that same night, and the formerly out of luck were now sitting pretty, seeing the two perform in a smaller room at......

Tomorrow, the city and other organizations will mark the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Here's the official city commemoration:7AM: Families start to arrive at Zuccotti Park, where the ceremony will take place. 8:40AM: Mayor Bloomberg begins the program, which includes first responders reading victims' names and readings from NY Governor Spitzer, former NY Governor Pataki, NJ Governor Corzine and former NYC mayor Giuliani. Bagpipers and drummers lead......

TIP: Starting tomorrow Opera-For_all begins the first of three nights of performances. For cheap! The New York City Opera is selling tickets to every seat in the house for just $25. Over the course of "opera season" 50 or more seats in the front orchestra will be priced at just $25 as well. As for this week, here's the sched: Thursday, September 6the OPERA FOR ALL Concert, with party to follow (this will showcase the......

Before the Beastie Boys’ concert at McCarren Park Pool last night, Gothamist attended a press conference with the 3 MC’s and verified an interesting bit of trivia: Despite having formed in Brooklyn, rehearsed often at Adam Yauch’s parent’s crib downtown, and associated themselves with the borough constantly over the decades, the band itself had not yet performed in Kings County. Mike D broke it down like so, “When we came up none of the......

If you watch the reality shows, you probably wonder at the random, more boring, points of your day: Whatever happened to so-and-so from Project whatchamacallit? Or more likely, you don't. NY Mag examines the sad, "near-fame experience" of being a Bravo reality star. Somewhere right below the D-list is the space the not-quite almost-famous Bravo TV stars occupy. Though the Bravo competition reality shows generally rely on actual skills, the article's first cautionary tale is......