About Last Night... "Dark Was the Night" at Radio City Music Hall

Last night, indie rock devotees braved the dreary Sunday evening rain and headed to Radio City Music Hall for Dark Was the Night, a concert extravaganza celebrating the release of a CD compilation of the same name featuring 31 new and exclusive songs, the proceeds benefitting Red Hot, an organization dedicated to raising HIV/AIDS awareness worldwide. In attendance were album contributors Bon Iver, Dirty Projectors, David Byrne, My Brightest Diamond, Dave Sitek, Feist, The National and Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, who performed in various and sundry permutations, singing new songs, old songs and songs off of the compilation. Hight points for us included David Byrne and the Dirty Projectors' performance of "Knotty Pine" and when Bon Iver's Justin Vernon joined Feist on "Train Song." Check out this clip of the finale, wherein everyone started singing "This Land Is Your Land" (in honor of Pete Seeger's 90th birthday) until Sharon Jones came out on stage and told the huddled group of wimpy-seeming crooners, "I don't want to burst your bubbles, but listen baby, I love that version, but Dap Kings, let's show them our version..." (Fun fact: though she didn't perform last night, see if you can spot Annie Clark aka St. Vincent in the above video. She's wearing a black scoop neck dress and we think she just happened to be hanging around backstage, and decided she might as well come out for the finale! )

"Train Song" - Feist and Ben Gibbard

Buy the album here.