Gothamist's Week in Rock, Volume 34

High School Musical Takeover
Despite the fact that the most common response we've been hearing is "What the hell is High School Musical?", it appears that Rolling Stone coverboy Zac Efron and his overly theatrical buddies are the toast of the town. Topping the Billboard chart, breaking cable TV records and zombifying tweens everywhere (you've probably bumped into a few already this week on the sidewalk with their faces buried in the lyric book). Even though the acting is bad, the songs are cheesy and the plot makes Saved by the Bell seem like Shakespeare, there is no denying the impressive success they've been able to pull off in an era where nobody can sell a cd. For a more sophisticated look into the movie and the phenomenon as a whole (compared to the zOMG livejournal reviews scattered about the web), check out Status Ain't Hood.

Somebody Screeeeeam(fest)!
The Massive Hip-Hop/R&B megatour Screamfest pulled into NYC this week, and headliner T.I. pulled off quite the stunt, bringing up on stage the biggest names in Modern Rap. One after another, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Kanye, then Diddy all took the mic while running around and driving the crowd, predictably, even crazier than ever before. Especially considering the 50/Kanye feud was supposedly going full swing, it's the kind of moment that people in attendance will remember forever, and put a stamp on the Screamfest as the major event it was billed to be. Check out the video here, we can't make much sense of what's going on, but one thing's for sure...there's a lot of screaming down there.

New Porn 'Get Back' @ Bowery
There were several running, inside jokes throughout the New Pornographer's amusing set last Tuesday. One of which was that the band was using the intimate Bowery show to regain the spark. One wonders if they might have been reacting to some of the criticisms following the July 4th show where they seemed to be going through the motions, cause this show was an amusing gabfest of a stage full of old friends. They talked a lot, poked fun at each other and themselves and played a long set of old hits and new faves from the latest album, which is out this week. Despite some sound issues for Neko at the beginning, the show turned out to be pretty great. Music Snobbery was also there and had some thoughts and took some pics -- see 'em here.