The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Pictures

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: Most viewed pictures

Picture: This group of five doesn't fake it

Rilo Kiley, Lupe Fiasco, The Academy Is … Help MTV’s Woodies Avoid Pitfalls of VMAs

Nearly everyone agrees MTV’s Video Music Awards are a lost cause when it comes to offering up what its viewers actually want (live performances! cool presenters!) as opposed to what they unfortunately get (clips of live songs! footage playing up the glitz and glamor of the event! people partying who are not you!). But the VMAs’ little brother, the mtvU Woodies, are thankfully far more in touch with its college-age audience. Last night the fourth-annual show taped at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, and the lineup was packed with fan-voted nominees and performers who’ve carved out their own niches in hip-hop and rock, like Spank Rock. The Academy Is… and Tokyo Police Club. Lupe Fiasco and Rilo Kiley filled in for original headliner Amy Winehouse, who may well have been the Woodie’s Britney in Vegas had she not bailed last week due to visa troubles. (To check out photos of Fall Out Boy, Rilo Kiley and the rest of the Woodies lineup, plus red-carpet interviews, click here.) Highlights ranged from Lupe Fiasco’s opening performance of “Superstar” with guest vocals from Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (in the house with his band to present Best Video Woodie) to onetime RS Artist to Watch The Academy Is… performing their breakthrough power ballad “Everything We Had” with a string section of Julliard students adding tear-jerking accompaniment. The performance-heavy lineup allowed most acts to play two full songs, as though mtvU was offering a mea culpa for the VMAs’ hotel-suite snippets. Peter (of Peter, Bjorn and John) was spotted headbanging along with members of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus during “We’ve Got a Big Mess on Our Hands,” The Academy’s guitar-heavy rocker of a second song. Also seen: Spank Rock — who performed “Loose” and “Rick Rubin” with Santogold and half-dozen girls in glow-in-the-dark bikinis — dancing dirty with one of the girls in t

Published: 2007-11-10
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News