Your cheat sheet to the week’s new releases. More »
Some crankypants Austin American-Statesman columnist took in his first music festival this weekend, when he attended the Austin City Limits Festival, his hometown’s muddy three-day extravaganza that featured Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, and a slew of other bands. Most festival reportage tends to gloss over the hinkiness of events like these—the gradual deterioration of the venues’ PortaPotty army, the dust-flecked food, the shirtless bros who turn their favorite bands’ sets into a campfire singalong—but Ken Herman went right into the mud, and wound up slinging some of his own! More »
Unsurprisingly, Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 debuted atop today’s Billboard 200, thanks to sales of 476,000 copies in the time that elapsed between its release last Tuesday and Sunday night. But how did Jay’s first-week numbers fare in the more rarefied arena of No. 1 debuts? I crunched a few numbers to figure out just how all of the albums that topped the charts in their first week of sales fared, and came away slightly surprised! More »
Clear Channel has flipped one of its Louisville stations to a format called “Louie,” which the bigwigs are actually saying is the first firmament in what will be come to known as “Gen X radio.” Yes, the generation that inspired so much Boomer disdain is finally getting a format to call all its own, although the music associated with it may not be what you necessarily think of when you think of slackers and Singles. Quoth CC market president Bill Gentry: “It’s focused on a musical experience… [that] crosses cultures from grunge, hip-hop, hair bands, boy bands and more.” And another CC higher-up has this to say: “[Louie will] capture how 30-somethings listen to music, and it ignores genres and categories.” Sounds sorta Jack-y to me, but then again, perhaps that ill-conceived marketing will inspire further nostalgia for those 30somethings who remember all too well being ineptly pandered to back in the day. The playlist of Louie’s inaugural hour after the jump. More »
I don’t know about you, but the dog days of August are making me long for some levity. And what better way to bring in some hilarity than to think about the late Boots Randolph’s delightful “Yakety Sax,” a.k.a. “that Benny Hill Show song,” a.k.a. the best way to make any YouTube clip hilarious? Noted “Yakety Sax” enthusiast Jess Harvell and I put together a pair of lists related to the song—namely, a top 10 countdown of artists who need to cover the song soon, and a counterpoint list of 10 artists who should never get within a 25-mile radius of its implied hilarity, for fear of ruining it for all time. The countdowns after the jump. More »
Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to the seventh studio album by the Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, which arrives in stores today: More »
