Looking for another summer festival to hit, but not wanting to go much farther than say…Jackson Hole, Wyoming? More »
CBS has decided to pick up the Mark Burnett game show Jingles, during which contestants will be required to write songs showcasing the various sponsors of the program in a positive light, then have those tunes judged by an “expert panel” and Americans. Winning songs will get used in the featured products’ commercials, a fact that should make any indie musician hoping to pay his rent by selling his track to a soap company quiver in his boots. The designed-for-evading-TiVoers show will likely appear on the network’s schedule come summertime, and casting is apparently going on right now! Here’s a suggestion for CBS: How about cueing up a “marginal indie celebrity” version of the show to bring down your network’s average viewing age–perhaps Feist vs. Wilco vs. Stephin Merritt? A preview of that potential throwdown is after the jump.
Oh yeah, with all the They Might Be Giants videos and rhinestones and my general Dante-from-Clerks attitude this week, I almost forgot to mention that Rage Against The Machine and Wilco have been added to the list of Bands That Might Be Playing Lollapalooza (But Maybe Not). More »
The New York Times may be a little out of control blog-wise, but their blog all about migraines (!) has an entry from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in which he talks about his lifelong problem with the crippling headaches, and how managing his depression and panic disorders helped him become freer from pain… More »
While a lot of the scuttlebutt from this weekend’s Saturday Night Live will probably be about Hillary Clinton’s bright-eyed cameo and Andy Samberg’s spot-on Diablo Cody impersonation (complete with Nate Dogg reference!), I thought the most notable part of the episode was the fact that, for the first time in forever, the band actually sounded good. Wilco’s two songs were, for the most part, free of the mixing problems and cruddy amplification that have plagued so many other bands playing the Grand Central Station-decorated stage. (But surely I’m not the only one who a) thought Jeff Tweedy looked a lot like the also-cameoing Vincent D’Onofrio and b) got annoyed when the Law & Order “chunk-chunk” was used during D’Onofrio’s too-brief appearance, since the spinoff he appears on doesn’t use that sound anymore. What, did Jeremy Sisto cancel at the last minute? Hmph.) “Hate It Here” is above; “Walken” is after the jump.
Welcome to On The Shelf, Idolator’s weekly look at new releases hitting store shelves on Tuesday. Like it or not, the big album coming out tomorrow is Linkin Park’s 98% rap-free effort, Minutes to Midnight; after the jump, we give that album a once-over, along with new efforts from Wilco, Megadeth, Gretchen Wilson, and Rufus Wainwright.
Every week, we round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Today’s entry is Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, which will be released tomorrow.
MOTOVRES MUSIC has an MP3 of “One True Vine,” the first b-side from Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. Rumors are swirling that the mid-tempo piano number is Jeff Tweedy’s ode to Craig Nicholls, and we’ve confirmed that those rumors were 100 percent made up by us: Wilco – One True Vine [MP3, link… More »
-In a couple weeks, we’ll all be tired of reading about Mr. Scruffy here and his band (Will-Call, or something like that?). Until then, here’s some older stuff, some you may know, some not. [popheadwound] -A smart look at the decline of the mixtape scene in the post-Juice, post-CD world. More »
A few weeks ago, we made the argument that pre-release leaks do more good than harm (our working theory, in summary, is that the benefits of building excitement among fans outweighs the fact that some of them may not buy them album upon its official release). And it looks like Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche agrees with us–sort of.