Say what you will about Herbie Hancock’s controversial Grammy win, but there is no arguing with a man who steps onstage rocking a wireless keytar.

Buoyed by the plate-shifting bottom end of his jazz-funk classic “Chameleon” (carried by the powerhouse rhythm section of Vinnie Colaiuta and Marcus Miller), Herbie began his Yahoo! Live Set with the air of a giddy conquering hero, playing with such an undeniable sense of adventure and joy that all memories of his lovely but eyelid-fluttering “Joni Letters” were wiped away in a storm of actual, head-bobbing jazz.

Granted, when your back catalog includes classics such as “Cantaloupe Island,” “Actual Proof” and the genre-crashing early MTV staple “Rockit,” there’s little chance of keeping a roof on any venue, even a vaguely production-oriented stage in Century City. Hancock even flexed his ability to stretch some boundaries by showcasing a reworked “Watermelon Man” that incorporated elements from his guitarist’s (Lionel Loueke) time signature-melting composition “Seven Teens,” which together sounded like an alien funk jam tumbling down a flight of stairs.

But the biggest ovation from the small, invite-only crowd came for who Hancock had hidden in the wings: Joni Mitchell.

Mitchell was dressed in a long, utterly insane but totally perfect dress bearing what could’ve been a scene from the Bhagavad Gita across the front, and her presence alone inspired a few audible gasps. While the set was missing the extra touch that her tiny, track-suited Jack Russell terrier brought to the rehearsal, Mitchell’s three-song collaboration with Hancock’s band revealed the biggest thing missing from the pianist’s lauded tribute album: Mitchell herself.

The years may have taken the angelic lilt away from Mitchell’s unmistakable voice, but the husky tone in its place added a new weight to “River,” sounding like a slow-moving mix of molasses, honey and regret. Mitchell has always been closer in spirit to a jazz artist than her folk contemporaries, and Hancock proved her perfect foil as each instrument delicately lapped around the edges of her lyrics with a sound that was still true to the original, but constantly shifting and evolving. If only mainstream jazz as a whole could be so lucky.

(Yahoo! will air the Herbie Hancock / Joni Mitchell Live Set on April 1.)

– Chris Barton

Photo by Mark Mainz/AP

The lookie-loos Monday night on the Sunset Strip probably thought another installment of “Back to the Future” was in the works, what with the two sleek DeLoreans parked in front of the Viper Room. Drivers  slowed to snap photos from their cars, and club patrons hopped in to get their pictures taken.

But the real story was inside the Viper Room, where Neon Neon was playing only its fourth live gig in support of today’s release of “Stainless Style.” It’s a concept album chronicling the life and times of engineer-entrepreneur-playboy John DeLorean in smart, neo-’80s dance-pop songs.

No surprise that the album succeeds; it’s a side project of Super Furry Animals front man Gruff Rhys and L.A.-based producer Boom Bip, and it features vocal contributions from Cate Le Bon, Naeem Juwan from Spank Rock and Yo Majesty. But studio ventures — and especially side projects — have a habit of getting messy when the music is finally staged.

There were some rough edges Monday, but not anything you’d think was a mess. Rhys, fully backgrounding most of the songs for the almost-full house, presided calmly over the proceedings, which included tight disco numbers and bouncy guitar pop rendered tightly — if a little short of full throttle — by a five-piece band comprised of Rhys, Boom Bip, Le Bon, guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and drummer Eric Gardner. With the hip-hop contributors absent, Har Mar Superstar stood in as rapper, and his kitschy showmanship applied a deserving smile to the end of the evening.

“Stainless Style” might end up merely being fodder for iPod DJs, or maybe it signals the birth of a new band. One thing for sure: It’s nice to see electro in the hands of real musicians.

– Kevin Bronson

Photo: Gruff Rhys (left), Boom Bip, Cate Le Bon and Har Mar Superstar feed the meter on Sunset Boulevard. Courtesy of Mark Sovel / Indie 103.1

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them — and, really, wouldn’t we all want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a guy named Rocky O’Reilly?]

Neon Neon, “Stainless Style” (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era’s dancefloor vacuousness comes … an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop — this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. “Stainless Style” is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, “Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It” (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O’Reilly walks a tightrope — to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on “The Never Never”), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. … Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast’s Spaceland residency. … Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, “Here’s to Being Here,” headlines the Troubadour. … At the Roxy, it’s the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. … The Chapin Sisters‘ residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose “Really Real for Forever” (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

– Kevin Bronson

Here’s the video for These New Puritans’ single, “Elvis” (album out Tuesday on Domino):

By now the sordid details of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s spectacular crash and burn are well-documented. But, did you know that “Kristen,” nee Ashley Alexandra Dupre, is not just America’s Most Famous Alleged Prostitute. She’s also an R&B singer! We’re guessing the 100,000 plays she’s received today have less to do with the tinny, dated, sub-Ciara club jam “What We Want” than her newfound notoriety. But it is ironic that her most infamous alleged Emperor’s Club VIP connection was a prosecutor of major-label payola shenanigans involving R&B singers.

“This one was inspired by a guy, who taught me not to confuse my dreams with the sounds of the city… I hope you like it,” she writes in her MySpace bio. We have to give her credit for staying remarkably classy throughout the New York Times article and in the legal proceedings so far, and we can’t really imagine what she’s going through now as this story develops. So for that, we’ll give “What We Want” a sympathetic rating of :

– August Brown

Photo AFP/Getty Images

Everybody who knows me even a little knows I just love Steve Earle. The first time I saw him was in his Nashville outlaw days, when he dressed like a Hells Angel in black leather with a red bandana around his wrist, and sang songs about pot-growing moonshiner boys. I sought him out in concert countless times after that — making the girls in denim cut-offs dance at Midwestern festivals, spinning endless story songs in clubs along the California coast, even when he got pretty rough and rambling in the throes of drug addiction in the late 1980s. What started as a crush turned into deep respect, and that feeling I have with only a few artists: sympatico.

I was in the packed crowd at Steve’s comeback show at New York’s Bottom Line at the end of the 1990s, and watched every eye in that room get damp. Since then, he’s become more clear-headed, though no less fiery, as he’s settled into the role of “hard-core troubadour” — a Renaissance man who has a book of short stories, a play and years of impassioned anti-death penalty activism under his silver-black beard.

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One of the best opportunities to see live music, if you can get in, is the Nissan Live Set on the Fox lot in Century City. About once a month, Yahoo tapes an hour-long concert where big-name acts such as PJ Harvey, the Foo Fighters and Wyclef Jean play a handful of new and classic tunes and take questions from the audience. An edited version of the evening appears later on Yahoo.com, and if you get MTV’s HD channel, you’ll see it there as well.

Last week, a dressed-to-the-nines Snoop Dogg graced the stage, accompanied by a backing group that would have made MC Hammer say, “Damn, brotha!” At one point, there were 19 people onstage: Snoop, several backup singers, two guitarists, a horn section, a trio of turntablists (including DJ Quik), keyboard players (featuring Teddy Riley), a rhythm section and one of the guys from Tony Toni Toné (Raphael Saadiq). And everyone was wearing their Sunday best.

The Dogg Father took his time with new songs off his latest CD, “Ego Trippin’,” which drops today. He politely asked for second takes on a few of the numbers — though the crowd was thoroughly pleased with the soulful new material, particularly the country tune “My Medicine,” dedicated to Johnny Cash. Snoop Dogg dug into his illustrious past with “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” and “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” but that still didn’t take away any luster from the newer songs or a cover of the Time’s “The Bird.”

If there was any criticism — and woe are those who look sharply upon the Dogg — it’s that the event took about three hours to complete. The ending was interesting enough as Snoop and his huge band played the crowd out with “Sha La La Snoop Dogg.”

After the jump, check out the complete playlist, the complete cast of musicians and the response to an audience member who asked Snoop what advice he would give Kanye West. The Snoop Dogg concert will be on the Yahoo Music site Monday March 17th.

– Tony Pierce

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Liela Moss can talk the talk. Now her band, the Duke Spirit, has “The Step and the Walk,” and the sky might be the limit.

That single, off the British quintet’s new album, “Neptune,” capped a set that made you forget its occasional soft spots Wednesday night at the Echo, which was more crowded than NME’s thesaurus of platitudes. The shoulder-to-shoulder masses witnessed a band that’s about one tick short of a 12 o’clock high, as Moss and bandmates dealt lean, foreboding garage rock that harks back to the ’80s and ’90s Britpop heydays.

It all hinges on Moss, the singer who’s as much icy hot as hot-and-bothered. Her pipes have drawn comparison to Patti Smith and Nico and PJ Harvey; maybe there’s some more-gutteral Chrissie Hynde in there too, in the phrasing; and somebody in the throng even suggested Christina Amphlett of Divinyls, which … might not be too far off. Whatever. Moss delivers, even if you feel at times she’s trapped between offering herself directly to the crowd and maintaining her veneer of detached cool.

There’s a weather-beaten intelligence in Duke Spirit songs such as “Send a Little Love Token,” “Into the Fold” and “Cuts Across the Land” (the latter from its 2006 debut) that lesser bands might suffocate in histrionics. On Wednesday, nobody was gasping for air, except maybe the bartenders.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit returns to L.A. for a May 13 show at the Troubadour.

||| Stream: “Send a Little Love Token” [login required].

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

– Kevin Bronson

When Dead Moon broke up in 2006 after 19 years, 13 official albums and 11 singles, they left a gaping hole in the international garage rock arena. Although the band put itself on the Pacific Northwest’s ’90s rock ‘n’ roll map with an early Sub Pop single and a brief appearance in the grunge documentary “Hype!,” they never achieved the recognition their tireless recording, touring and steady vision deserved. After a year-long hiatus, Fred and Toody Cole — the hardest working husband and wife team in punk — are back on the scene with a new drummer, Kelly Halliburton, and an impressive new band.

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What was the hottest show in Hollywood Thursday night? Not this at the Avalon, and certainly not this at the Knitting Factory. The toughest ticket to snag on a cold, rainy evening in the ‘hood, surprisingly, was at the Vanguard, where a band called Mumiy Troll played to a packed house of chain-smoking Russians. And tickets were not cheap either (starting at $45).

Over 700 Chloé-clad twentysomethings (you’ve never seen so much leopard-print in your life) are apparently crazy for the Vladivostok foursome, who sounded like a nuclear meltdown of the Bravery, Tom Petty and the Afghan Whigs last night (the band calls their style of music “rockapops”). Mumiy Troll played for more than an hour to the hyper crowd, who stayed well after the band was done around midnight to dance to techno (with no trace of irony… Russians just like to party, mind you).

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The rumbling many readers may have heard in the distance over the last couple days was the sound of Chicago sinking under the weight of its collective Wilco love. Our blogging brother Todd Martens over at Extended Play has taken some time out from his awards show beat to attend every show of the so-absurd-it’s-fantastic Complete Wilco run, and for those who didn’t drop the cash for what seems to be a combination of Mardi Gras, Christmas and the Super Bowl for Wilco fans, Todd’s chronicle of the first round of shows is the next best thing to, well, being there. There’s little to envy about waiting in sub-freezing temperatures for a theater to open, but his anecdote about a Chicago PD patrol car playing “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” through its intercom as it drove by the line of Wilco fans outside the Riviera warmed our blackened hearts. Seriously, what is it with Chicago?

For the true believers, here’s a clip of Wilco playing “Impossible Germany” at last year’s Bonnaroo. Maybe someone out there is recording these shows too.

– Chris Barton

(Photo by Richard Hartog / LAT)