Lemonheads' Evan Dando trashes NME Award

A bit of chaos — some of it comic — unfolded at last night’s NME Awards (held at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles), where few of the award winners were big on acceptance speeches. Members of MGMT, who were voted NME’s Breakthrough Artist, and Vampire Weekend, who took home Best New Indie/Alternative Band, barely mumbled a ‘thank you’ before taking their bronzed middle finger back to their tables. But one recipient was particularly unenthused. Lemonheads frontman and founder Evan Dando, who was given the Classic Album award for his band’s seminal 1992 record, It’s A Shame About Ray, walked offstage and literally chucked the weighty trophy in the garbage can, telling a minder, “I don’t want this.” Afterwards, he performed two songs from that album solo — the title track and “My Drug Buddy” — to an audience that included celebrity attendees Kelly Osbourne, Danny Masterson, and Bijou Phillips, but then disappeared for the rest of the night and never explained his actions.

Dando’s strange antics were just the tip of the iceberg, though. At one point, Osbourne spat at the show’s host, Aussie comedian Jim Jeffries, who responded with, “Wow, Kelly Osbourne spitting — that’s not what I read on the Internet” — which prompted attendee Sienna Miller to throw a drink at him.

But all hell broke loose once a reunited Jane’s Addiction took the stage to play four of their classics, including “Been Caught Stealing” and “Jane Says.” Singer Perry Farrell was clearly thrilled to be back and on his home turf. He told the crowd, “I do this in my underpants, but it’s not as much fun.”