Rumors are flying around town about what was flying through the air at Whiskeytown's raucous, unwieldy performance at Trees on Jan. 23. Aside from the cups and ice, lead singer Ryan Adams fired some cheap shots at Old 97's, kicked a mike stand over, threatened to beat up a couple of loud frat boys and smashed his acoustic guitar and distributed the shards.

He (Adams) risks alienating potential new fans (most of whom left when the band took an intermission at 1 a.m.) and even die-hards (most of whom stared open-mouthed at Mr. Adams as he capped the evening with a feedback-fueled, patience-testing cover of Sonic Youth's "Expressway to Your Skull").