Who's Putting On A Ripping Great Show for a Big-Box Store? Pete Townsend at the Troubadour

The last time I saw Pete Townsend perform was from the remove of at least half a football field in a stadium where that was considered a good ticket. So, if you'd suggest to me that I'd ever see him in the comfy environs of the Troubadour, alongside Death Cab for Cuties's Ben Gibbard, the Eels' E (Mark Oliver Everett for you initial-haters), Jakob Dylan and Zoey Deschanel, well, I'd've replied, give me a ticket.

And so, someone did, and I slipped inside the inner circle of the "In the Attic" production Friday night. "In the Attic" is a sporadic series of webcasts created by Pete's significant other, Rachel Fuller, featuring artists around Townsend and whoever's hot at the moment in an intimate setting. Friday's show was captured for eventual release (on both CD and DVD) by a big-box store that you'd never imagine being thanked so copiously from the stage of the indie-minded Troubadour. It'll be available for everyone else - with the false starts edited out, naturally - in March of 2009.

Highlights included Gibbard's acoustic performance of "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," Dylan's take on "6th Avenue Heartache" with Townsend on guitar and Everett, Townsend and Gibbard performing "Let My Love Open the Door" in tandem.

Townsend collaborated with just about everyone, but sloppily (he repeatedly needed to refer to charts or start over, all of which will no doubt be edited out of the final DVD).

It wasn't until he took the stage for his own set when he came into his own and regained his raw, unexpurgated passion for his songs (he couldn't even remember his own lyrics for "Mary-Anne with the Shaky Hand" for his duet with Gibbard).

(Don't look! A guitar legend is forgetting his own lyrics!)

But at the end, alone onstage, he pretty much torched "Acid Queen" -

- and "Won't Get Fooled Again." (He acknowledged the "Meet the new boss/same as the old boss" lyric probably didn't apply when comparing Barack Obama to George Bush.)

All the participants reunited for the finale, and all I remember about that was that E was onstage text-messaging someone while everyone else was performing.

So: When your musical heroes aren't in their venues of choice, they can kind of d!ck around and not care so much, but they can also create inspired stuff that you'd never expect of them. And that mixed bag is actually kind of cool.