Because judging by the near-riotous reaction to him tossing his jacket into the audience at the end of his performance on Today, it looks like the crazed young ladies making up the front row would have torn him limb-from-limb, instead of his poor, defenseless (and sorta Sergio Tacchini-looking!) More »
One of the things I miss most about Baltimore is regular access to club music–New Jersey, on the other hand, seems to have a lot more bar bands covering Daughtry songs–especially the sillier stuff that samples comedy bits from movies, kiddie cartoon theme songs, etc., which is why I nearly pissed myself with glee when a friend sent links to some bedroom videographers’ club clips. YouTube user ABB4MADFLICKS has a bunch of cheaply charming samples like the Peanuts short above, plus Spongebob, Dora, and all yr friends. Meanwhile, the less family-friendly corunography has crafted some that are decidedly coarser (if even funnier):
NME sez new documentary reveals that Marc Bolan of T. Rex “lost his virginity” at the tender age of … nine. Uh, dudes, we know he was a freaky and fey glam rock fairy-cum-bad-ass and all, but that’s not what we on this side of the pond call “losing your virginity.” More »
Siobhan Donaghy’s Ghosts–which has been out on the other side of the Atlantic for a few months, but not available here because the record industry is apparently only interested in my dollars when they come via Amazon’s UK site–is making a serious run for my best-of-’07 list; it’s 12 tracks of the… More »
Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe and Spin are given a once-over by an anonymous writer who’s contributed to several of those titles–or maybe even all of them! After the click-through, he switches things up a bit and gives the latest issue of Paste a once-over:
Many thanks to this week’s sponsors, who refuse to divulge on which side they fall in the great Kanye/50 battle, even after the leaks. If you’d like be counted among these secret Kenny Chesney fans, you can find more information here. More »
Lyle Lovett has recorded the theme song to the awful-looking upcoming musical satire Walk Hard: The Legend Of Dewey Cox with the help of Jewel, Jackson Browne, and … Ghostface Killah. (Somewhere my pal John’s throat just clenched without knowing why.) The brief description of said song in this Rolling Stone interview has rendered me momentarily … something:
Mark Knopfler and crew have been given the right to kick out the loafers who had registered www.direstraits.com thanks to having the “intellectual rights to their band name,” aka a commonly used English-language phrase. More »
Except this time it’s in Canada and there’s no Bill O’Reilly or Virginia Tech-related furor, just a bunch of mixed messages and no comments. XXL reports that a group of Ottawa college students putting on a “Rock The Vote” event featuring Mr. Jones summarily had the rug pulled out from under them when the venue said “no way” upon learning who their headliner was:
The music industry certainly thinks/hopes so according to this Variety article about the jam-packed September release schedule, with a bargeload of new releases set to drop on the (hopefully) golden Tuesdays of Sept. 11 and 25. The shortlist of artists namechecked here as potential moneymakers includes the super-obvious (Kanye, 50, Kenny, Rascal Flatts), the second-tier pretty-damn-obvious (Foo Fighters, Barry Manilow [don’t front, dude does huge numbers with the crucial over-50 set]), the third-tier obvious (Chris Botti [ditto Manilow], Melissa Etheridge), and then a whole lot of discs that will probably do well over time or make up the slack come Christmas and the crit polls/awards shows (Seal, PJ Harvey, Miles Davis reissues, etc.). But save the first four, there don’t seem to be any with the grease of last year’s unholy September sales triumverate (Justin, Beyonce, Fergie), and it’s arguable/possible that none of this year’s crop will best them. And that might be why the labels are looking to singles to make up the sales slack rather than just as a promotional push:
