I would have felt bad enough about missing the Hot Hot Heat at the FNX/Phoenix Best Music Poll concert last Friday without being berated by a 14-year-old. We were sharing a table during intermission while I wolfed down a FleetBoston Pavilion fajita. My new friend, Heather from Acton, looked at me in astonishment. "They’re the best band!"

So, mea culpa, Heather, but that’s the curse of being the opener on a four-band bill that starts at 6:30. Heather and her friends were there to see the Hot Hot Heat and Iggy Pop, not art-techno act Fischerspooner — "not real" as one of Heather’s friends described them — and, for some reason, real as they are, not the Yeah Yeah Yeahs either.

Which is too bad. Even from the back of the Pavilion tent, Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O was a giant — striding, marching, and kicking her way around the stage, her legs beginning apparently somewhere around her armpits. Wearing hot pants and a snug T, she yawped and yowled high-pitched vowels to the staccato riffs of guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase. There were maybe two songs in their set that included standard verse-chorus releases, and there wasn’t a lot of melody, but Zinner, with those spiky riffs and an orchestral sense of harmonics and distortion, could be a good on-call guitarist for Sonic Youth, if they need one. And Karen O is something to see.

Fischerspooner is "not real" and damned proud of it. I’d been thinking Karen O needed an old-time Peter Frampton–era manager to take her aside to help her perfect her choreography, but Fischerspooner arrived with a full complement of spike-haired Vegas-quality dancing girls. The group assaulted the crowd with massive techno beats, sinus-throbbing bass, smoke, lights, confetti, and Fischerspooner frontman Casey Spooner’s constant snit. Of course, there was no band. "Paul, press ‘play’ — come on!", Spooner said in mock exasperation, in what had to have been the ultimate inversion of the Ramones’ "1234, 1234!" At one point, he blatantly drank a beer while he "sang."

Iggy Pop was, of course, the most real, appearing, as usual, stripped to the waist of his blue jeans, with, I’d swear, the same three anonymous metal lunkheads he’s been touring with since at least his last appearance in Boston, in November 2001. Tempos were way up (even for a sorta ballad like "The Passenger"), the guitars were loud, and Iggy was always moving, through hits and lesser-knowns, from the opening "Loose" to "Search and Destroy," "Raw Power," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Cold Metal," and an encore of "TV Eye" and "Sixteen." Among the more recent songs, Iggy gave "Drink New Blood" (from 2001’s Beat ’Em Up on Virgin), which is about the vampirism of retail marketing, a particularly lurid delivery.