With no chorus, a disorienting Black Thought verse smothered in mic fuzz, and a video where the band douses a kidnapped white dude with gasoline before lighting a match, the forbidding “75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction)” will sadly not end up toppling Flo Rida from Billboard or Chris Brown from… More »
In my haste to complain about Alex Lushington’s boot from American Idol I forgot to note that last night’s telecast also announced this year’s edition of “Idol Gives Back,” the telethon that features lots of guest stars and lots of medleys. More »
As week one of Crowesgate draws to a close, we’ve heard from a lot of people regarding Maxim’s decision to run “previews” of upcoming Black Crowes and Nas albums as actual reviews despite those albums being unavailable to critics and just plain unfinished, respectively. We’ve read the Crowes’ initial irate reaction to Maxim‘s journalistic gaffe and Maxim‘s lame mea culpa. Nas weighed in, wondering who gives credence to a review in Maxim in the first place, and even the neologism-challenged CNN newsroom added their own half-cocked commentary. But one party we’ve yet to hear from until now is David Peisner, who wrote the previews/reviews/who-the-hell-even-knows-anymore in question. Going on record with the LA Times, Peisner claims his Maxim higher-ups did assign him to write previews, and he only found out they had been bumped to the reviews section when the issue hit the stands.
The chart geeks among you might be interested by the above clip, which some intrepid YouTube user put together as a salute to the last 50 years of songs that were sitting pretty on the Billboard charts come Feb. 29. More »
Many thanks to this week’s sponsors, who had Robbie Carrico pegged as a wig-wearer from his first audition. If you’d like to join this group of fake-hair-savvy fans, more information is here. More »
Pervy boy-band impresario Lou Pearlman, whose trial on federal bank fraud charges is set for April, has told friends that he’s thinking about copping a plea on those charges that would result in him going to the federal pen for up to 25 years. But that doesn’t mean he’ll be free from jail after that; charges related to the huge investment scheme that he ran through his company Trans Continental Airlines have yet to be filed, and that’ll probably add to his sentence if he’s found guilty. What’s more interesting: The “friend” who told the St. Petersburg Times this little bit of news is now reselling Pearlman’s possessions–which he bought at Pearlman’s two bankruptcy auctions–on eBay, under the username a-v sales. Among the items on offer are an actual MTV Moonman (bidding currently at $560); other highlights–including an award bestowed upon Pearlman by Mikhail Gorbachev–after the jump.
It’s a bit too preoccupied with 1960s psychedelia (seriously, give it a rest), but the Spanish music scene is proving to be a relatively rich landscape of nice, solid indie rock*, as well as the occasional non-indie surprise. My music-gathering experience here has come almost entirely from people I meet in bars or other various social situations, and is therefore dependent on who I talk to, but I think I’m starting to get a handle on some of the finer points. Thanks to some obliging Spaniards, I’ve amassed a handful of bands to recommend, which I’ll be doing in a few installments so as not to overwhelm your delicate americano sensibilities (just kidding, most of what I’ve heard pretty much sounds like American indie rock except in Spanish). Here’s the first batch.
Bret Michaels is releasing his autobiography this fall, and as MetalSucks notes, it will be sure to not be as interesting as either The Dirt or anything Poison guitarist C.C. DeVille would commit to paper. More »
What better way to rise on a Friday morning than with a shameless R&B appreciation of involuntary erections by three gentlemen from Minneapolis not named Prince Rogers Nelson. “Too Close,” a song that’s been the bane of vice principals for a decade now, remains Next’s biggest hit. More »
As I gloomily predicted yesterday, Alexandrea Lushington–the spunky 17-year-old who turned “Spinning Wheel” and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” into songs that actually sounded somewhat current, despite the best efforts of the show’s worse-by-the-minute band–was eliminated from American Idol last night, thus continuing my track record of inadvertently voting off the people I’m voting for. (Well, at least Carly made it through. Uh, yeah.)To add insult to injury, yesterday I found out that she lost to David Archuleta on Star Search back in the day!
