25 Greatest Live Bands Now!

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GOGOL BORDELLO If there's a watering hole in Eastern Europe where the jukebox only plays polka covers of Sex Pistols songs and the bartender serves vodka to his dog, Gogol Bordello are probably the house band. With a full Gypsy-punk brigade oompahing around him, Ukrainian-born Eugene Hutz busts his best Fiddler on the Roof moves, licks his mustache, and lords over a rowdy Balkan dub-reggae boho-globalist love-in.
BEST MOMENT: When the crowd has been reduced to an undulating mass of arm-linked swaying, Hutz unveils a flag emblazoned with his take on "mission accomplished": THINK LOCALLY, FUCK GLOBALLY.

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ART BRUT Leave it to a Brit to make self-deprecation seem truly rock'n'roll. Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos often enters the stage to Metallica's "Enter Sandman" with slumped shoulders, then takes victory laps around the crowd after extolling his erectile dysfunction. But though he slags rock-star bravado, he also celebrates it in every wind-milled power chord. Those deadpan songs about the girls who've left him? They remind you why that spectacle is necessary, because fame means tricking someone into paying attention to you. And after the groupies have gone home, that's what love means, too.
BEST MOMENT: Any time that Argos tells the postscript to one of his autobiographical songs, such as the sad, funny tale of what happened to the girl from "Emily Kane."

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MY MORNING JACKET Hair will be flipped. Leather will be fringed. And Jim James will enter, quite possibly holding a lantern as if he's looking for an honest man. But what he's actually trying to do is see his way through the colitas smoke. James is the kind of frontman who mostly just wears his guitar, hitting it now and again for emphasis when he's really feeling it. And he's always feeling it, whether the band is rocking double lead guitars Skynyrd-style, performing in tuxedos with the Boston Pops, or doing goofy covers for encores, like the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" or the Misfits' "Attitude."
BEST MOMENT: Okay, so it's a cheat, but there's more than one: First, those goofy covers; then the greatest light show this side of a Laser Floyd; and then the crazed dance party that breaks out during "Wordless Chorus."

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THE ROOTS
Somehow, these guys never heard that live hip-hop must be awful and that what they're supposed to do is play minute-long versions of their songs punctuated by explosion noises. Like a jam band with chops, the Roots take it out live. Unlike a jam band, they're never boring, even if sometimes there is a limit to how much beatboxing you can enjoy when not high. Frequent guests can make Black Thought seem more a master of ceremonies than an MC, but when he and drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson lock a groove, it's like no one else is onstage.
BEST MOMENT: The ever-changing "Hip-Hop 101," a medley that takes the form of a survey of vintage singles, a meditation on "No Diggity," or a Stars on 45-style précis of today's hits.

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THE FLAMING LIPS
Sometime in the early 1990s, Wayne Coyne must have noticed that there were very few indie-rock bands who were, shall we say, entertaining. Perhaps those bands were embarrassed by the trappings of celebration, because, the thinking still goes, that's what all those horrible big-hair bands did. "Nonsense," thought Coyne, and from 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic on, the Flaming Lips have exuded the sheer joy that anyone should when 3,000 (or 30,000) people show up to watch you play music. Then, with the tour for 1999's Soft Bulletin, came the climactic Wayne-explodes-fake-blood-on-his-face moment during "She Don't Use Jelly," and the balloons raining down on the crowd, and the overwhelming sense of bonhomie that persists to this day.
BEST MOMENT: Everyone in the hall (or field) singing along to "Do You Realize?"