(Photo by Al Powers | SpyOnVegas.com)

Man, you know the recession is getting bad when fruit prices are so high the Carmen Miranda look has to be improvised.

By Jason Scavone

Yeah, you know me.

Pool season: Desperately hanging on by its fingertips. Pool concert season: Well, you don’t need a bikini to rock. (Although we strongly recommend it.)

Our Lady Peace heads things up at the Rio’s VooDoo Beach tonight with a free concert tied up in the SpyOnVegas.com Open Bar. Go score yourself a free ticket here.

Incidentally, shouldn’t these guys drag Third Eye Blind with them around on tour to play “Kryptonite” before they come on stage for their big “Superman’s Dead” finale? Also, are we the only ones who think lead singer Raine Maida sounds like a prepubescent Muppet? No? Just us? Fine. Be that way.

By Jason Scavone

It’s like Piet Mondrian threw up on prom tuxes. Art joke! (Via myspace.com)

If you want to understand why we won the Cold War, all you need to do is look at two bands. The Presidents of the United States of America named themselves after a collection of politicians whose office is routinely described as that of “Leader of the Free World.” Gorky Park named themselves after the Soviet version of Six Flags Over Texas. Plus, Gorky Park totally sucked.

The Presidents are at VooDoo Beach at the Rio tonight along with a band named for the second-greatest icon of American culture, The Ataris, and just for good measure the SpyOnVegas.com Open Bar is running concurrently from 6 to 9 p.m. Go ahead and get your free ticket here, confident in the knowledge that this is the reason the Berlin Wall fell.

By Jason Scavone

Lookit ‘em. They’re casting devious stares. RIGHT IN YOUR DIRECTION.

The ’90s were unquestionably full of super-dumb lyrics posing as arty free verse (we’re looking at you, Collective Soul) but there isn’t any combination of two words that send us into an apoplectic rage quite like “disco lemonade.” So, well done, Marcy Playground.

Also: Perhaps when you’re writing the words to your hit single, maybe you shouldn’t give the song a title that makes everyone else on the planet immediately think of a pedophile van. But what do we know, we never had an ubiquitous alt-rock hit 10 years ago.

Regardless, the “Sex and Candy” guys are at VooDoo Beach inside the Rio for a free show tonight to open up for Nine Days — with Open Bar courtesy of SpyOnVegas.com. Get your ticket here.

By Jason Scavone

At least they didn’t do that stupid ‘Bittersweet’ song. That was Big Head Todd. Worst. Lyrics. Ever.

Toad the Wet Sprocket comes out of that dark corner of the ’90s when serious, earnest, acoustic-playing slow-jam bands were somehow lumped into the alternative section instead of being confined to the ghetto where bands played on your dentist’s receptionist’s radio belong. See also, Maniacs, 10,000; Blossoms, Gin; and the Blowfish, Hootie. At least they got their name from a Monty Python bit, but we will, for the rest of our life, always confuse them with Big Head Todd and the Monsters. The show is at 7 p.m. tonight at the Rio’s VooDoo Beach (keep your shirt on) and runs concurrently with the SpyOnVegas.com Open Bar from 6 to 9. Get your voucher here. Click for more words and pictures »

By Jason Scavone

(Photo by Al Powers | SpyOnVegas.com)

This is how you end up with a rice necklace.

By Jason Scavone

Still searching the world over for their Eurotrash girl.

What the world needs now is a Cracker show at the Rio’s VooDoo Beach, apparently. David Lowery hit the scene in 1984 with Camper Van Beethoven. When that band split in 1990, he returned in ‘92 with Cracker. Now 17 years and nine studio albums later, we’re going to go ahead and assume he still hates his generation. To get yourself up to that level of surliness, the SpyOnVegas.com Open Bar runs from 6 to 9 p.m. before the show. Click for more words and pictures »

By Jason Scavone

(Photo by Ray Alamo | SpyOnVegas.com)

One, somwhere Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi are sizing this guy up as a potential challenger for the throne. And two, this being the internet, there has to be at least one Burrito Deep Throat fetish site, and this pic will be making the rounds for months.

By Jason Scavone

The Spin Doctors and Kennedy. Well hello there, Most ’90s Thing Ever.

There isn’t just one prince kneeling before you. There’s two of ‘em. Just ask the Spin Doctors, who hit the stage at 7 p.m. at Rio’s VooDoo Beach. SpyOnVegas.com has you covered with free tickets and the Open Bar. If you listen to “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” on the way over it’ll be exactly like that time you skipped fourth period English to go to the show, too. Click for more words and pictures »

By Jason Scavone

The world’s cursed-CD-hauntingest jam band.

VooDoo Beach’s summer concert series starts back up May 21 with the pride of 1991, The Spin Doctors. They follow up at the Rio June 11 with Cracker, July 30 with Toad the Wet Sprocket, Aug. 27 with Nine Days and Marcy Playground and Sept. 24 with The Presidents of the United States of America and The Ataris. So, clearly, when they were booking these shows the idea was to provide the soundtrack for our junior high through early college years.

True fact: The first CD we ever bought was the Spin Doctors. We’re not proud of this. We even tried to offload Pocket Full of Kryptonite to a used CD shop in college and get something marginally less embarrassing, but they turned it down. This store had rows and rows of Ace of Bass CDs, but they wouldn’t take our Spin Doctors album. We still own the damn thing to this day. It’s like the One True Ring. We’re going to have to throw it in the crack of Mount Doom to get rid of it, with Chris Barron biting off our fingers and screaming at us as he falls all the way into the lava.

By Jason Scavone