Joining a better-known performer on stage to help sing one of their songs can be a risky move when you don't know all the words. Just ask Art Brut's Eddie Argos, who joined the Mountain Goats onstage during a London show about a year ago. "I'd forgotten that when I was drunk on the Hold Steady tour in the U.S. that I'd told John I'd sing 'The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton' with him at the show," Argos later recalled in a LiveJournal entry. "When John asked mid-set 'Is my man Eddie in the house?' the memory of the promise came zooming back nearly giving me a heart attack." Argos loves that song, he wrote, but he has enough trouble remembering his own lyrics and definitely hadn't practiced. After the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle "mistook my pleads of 'no I'd forgotten that I promised' as modesty," Argos came up but only sang along on the parts he knew for sure.Jay Reatard tried a different approach when he backed up Beck for Modern Guilt's "Gamma Ray" during a Nov. 10 gig at Club Nokia, in Los Angeles-- he used a lyric sheet. Sure, the Memphis punk rocker covered the song as a B-side for the "Gamma Ray" single, but he's probably written about a million new tunes of his own since then. You can't hear Reatard that well, and the camera isn't exactly in the front row, but it's still a tight, energetic performance of one of the standouts from Beck's best record in years, and it's good to see Reatard up there. Oh, and Jay, if you ever want to try to turn the tables on Mr. Hansen, Argos has some ideas in that department, as well: "My plan on my birthday is to find John and get him so drunk that he is A) Pliable enough to be talked into promising to sing an Art Brut song next time he is somewhere near where we are playing and B) Going to forget that promise in the morning."[original version from Modern Guilt; out now on XL]