The 33 1/3 book series, in which one album is given a book-length treatment by a writer, has finally narrowed its latest shortlist down to 11 titles. The list of approved albums–and the authors who will be taking the albums on–for the 2010-2011 roster of books after the jump: More »
Have you experienced anything that shattered your perception of the world today? I did when I heard that the pestilent Katy Perry was going to perform Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” at the Video Music Awards. More »
A note to Guardian music blogger Priya Elan, who spends a bunch of paragraphs and a bunch of links concluding that Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville has been “forgotten”: Darling, “forgotten” albums don’t get reissued with lots of attendant press, celebratory concerts, etc., etc. “Forgotten” albums are… More »
This “plays whole album live” is a pretty smooth way to get around the “how can we miss you if you’ve never gone away?” problem has-beens face. When a group like Public Enemy says they’re going to play It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, it’s as if the group had broken up soon after its recording, thus never having to admit they recorded There’s A Poison Goin’ On. Liz Phair will join this exclusive club of veterans revisiting former glories when she performs Exile In Guyville solo and acoustic at New York’s Hiro Ballroom on June 25, and at to-be-announced shows in Chicago and San Francisco.
Did you know Liz Phair never wanted to be on a major label? That Matador “left” her at Capitol and her infamous self-titled 2003 album (which is pretty good, BTW) was her attempt to “make the best of it”? Now that she’s on Dave Matthews’ label ATO she feels more “creative” than she has since, well, Exile In Guyville. “I can honestly say, for the first time in 15 years, I feel creative. I don’t have to start with a mindset that thinks about how to sell the record and works backward.” So she didn’t even feel “creative” for Whip-Smart or Whitechocolatespaceegg? Who names an album Whitechocolatespaceegg and doesn’t feel “creative”?
Dean Wareham’s Black Postcards is a very readable memoir that may ironically accrue a larger audience than his bands Galaxie 500 and Luna, whose careers the book chronicles. It’s both touching and amusing, but one thing I didn’t find it was melodramatic, possibly because I kept hearing the words spoken lackadaisically over Velvets-like guitar. Not so for Liz Phair, who hypes the rock’n’roll angle pretty strongly in her NYT book report review, opening with a late-’80s Queen lyric and focusing on more rough-and-tumble than you’d expect in a piece about an indie rocker with “an elective reading list to rival Art Garfunkel’s.”
As a sort of companion piece to the news that Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard had been dropped from J, Entertainment Weekly‘s Hollywood Insider blog ran a list of acts that had been dropped by/defected from major labels in 2007 last week. Frankly, I’m surprised that it isn’t about a mile longer, even though it does run the gamut from on-to-better-things artists (the White Stripes, Radiohead) to bands that seem to have hard luck follow them wherever they go (Mooney Suzuki, Blood Brothers). Full list after the jump.
THE GOOD: This is a pretty depressing list overall, but perhaps Liz Phair getting dropped by her label will make her think twice before recording her next ode to getting down with the Kotaku set, “Mii And You (Pushin’ My Trigger Button).”
THE BAD: After all that will-it-or-won’t-it-come-out? drama, it looks like Amerie has been dropped from Sony, thus leaving the status of Because I Love It‘s US release date more unknown than ever. Here’s hoping she’ll make a second mix tape.
THE WHAAA? It’s not about the list per se, but the comment section of the EW post has turned into a kinda crazy-ass pissing match between JC Chasez fans and Bo Bice diehards. I mean I loved “Until Yesterday” probably more than anyone else, but really?
A question posed to us by a friend last night: Sixteen years ago, if a friend had asked you, “What do you think Liz Phair will be up to in 2007?” would you thought to have answered “Writing songs from the perspective of Nancy Drew about feeling alienated in the school cafeteria for a teen movie?” More »
