Neil Young Tribute Kicks Off Grammy Weekend

LOS ANGELES — Neil Young sat in the audience as 20 of his best known songs were performed on stage.

Elton John, James Taylor, Dave Matthews and more than a dozen other artists launched Grammy weekend with performances honoring Young as the MusiCares Person of the Year. The annual event celebrates an artist’s philanthropy each year as it raises funds for the music industry charity that provides financial, medical and personal assistance to artists in need.

Young was honored for his decades of philanthropic service, including work with Farm Aid and the Bridge School Concerts, which raise money to provide services for kids with severe speech and physical impairments. The singer-songwriter and more than 2,000 other guests at the Los Angeles Convention Center were treated to new interpretations of his timeless songs, including “Harvest Moon” and “Cinnamon Girl,” during Friday’s nearly four-hour program.

“I’d forgotten how many songs I’d written,” the 64-year-old musician said.

Jack Black served as the evening’s host. He said the night’s performers had been “unforgettably, awesomely and life-changingly” influenced by Young’s music.

They included John, who said Young was “my hero” as an artist, philanthropist and humanitarian. John played piano and sang “Helpless” backed by Sheryl Crow, Leon Russell and Neko Case.

Taylor performed “Heart of Gold.” Matthews offered a heartfelt version of “The Needle and the Damage Done.” John Fogerty and Keith Urban sang “Keep Rocking in the Free World.”

Ben Harper, backed by three female singers, offered a stirring take on “Ohio.” Jones duetted with another acoustic guitarist on “Tell Me Why,” and Crow played the accordion as she sang with Stephen Stills on “Long May You Run.”

Kingblind.com is pleased to announce that we have finished development of our new iPhone app. This app is available now through the iPhone app store and is 100% free. Our app will track all the latest post from Kingblind as well as our current tweets. (just click categories to switch between our main content and our twitter feed.)

Also, we are almost done with our Android app as well. We will keep you posted on it’s availability. Hell it’s the 21st century what’s a blog to do! Enjoy, and please send us your feedback.

Download our iPhone app by clicking on the app store icon below

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The Soft Pack have revealed that they are set to play 10 gigs in one day, this Saturday (January 30) in Los Angeles.

The band will be travelling around on a vegetable oil-fuelled bus organised by the city’s annual FYF Fest. They will kick off the gig run at 10am (PST) at a house party and wrap it up at a secret location at midnight. Updates will be given via the band’s Twitter page, Twitter.com/thesoftpack.

The Soft Pack will play:
5227 Irvington Place (10am)
Frankie’s (Sunset Junction) (12am)
FMLY Mansion (1pm)
Fingerprints (3:30pm)
Beach show (5pm)
6382 Rochelle Ave (5:30)
House party in Downey (7:30)
Vacation Vinyl (8pm)
Silverlake House Party (10pm)
Location tba (12pm)

Liam Gallagher’s new band are aiming to release an album by July.

The singer says that his new group – featuring former Oasis bandmates Andy Bell and Gem Archer – had eight songs, and are aiming to head into the studio soon.

“A lot of these songs I wrote before the band [Oasis] split up,” Gallagher told XFM. “I mean, there’s a few new ones on there that are coming out now.”

He added: “We’re going in [the studio] in April with a producer, we’re going to do three songs with him and if he doesn’t balls it up and we don’t balls it up then we’ll go in and do the whole album with him.”

Gallagher suggested he was keen to get on with the new, still nameless group – saying he regretted the fact that Oasis only made seven albums in the 16 years they had a record deal. He called the amount of music Oasis’ put out in their career “poor”, and chastised the band for taking so long to produce new material.

“Seven albums for Oasis is not good, I don’t think. We’ve been going 18 years, 16 years or whatever and all we’ve done is seven albums. Ian Brown’s on his seventh solo album. I just think it’s poor, really,” Gallagher said.

“I’m not going to beat myself up about it, I think we should have made better, bigger albums. Or more albums. Having like four or five years off is just no good,” he added. “Obviously Noel (Gallagher) wanted a bit of time off and we don’t. The band split in August – we was in the studio in November ‘cos we’re mad for it.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Gallagher said he wants to appear on ‘I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here or Total Wipeout – but only if no other contestants are involved.

“I’d like to do all that shit,” he said, before adding that Total Wipeout is his favourite reality TV programme of the moment. “They do it in Argentina. I’d love to do it on my jaxy, with no one about.”

Believe me, that headline sounded too good to be true to me as well, not to mention that this news was initially reported by one of Rupert Murdoch’s least reliable news outlets, UK rag The Sun, but the Guardian confirmed today that Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan has called on famous friends Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, and Bobby Gillespie to record a cover song to benefit Haiti disaster relief. What song are they covering? Only one of the greatest of all time: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ 1958 hit “I Put a Spell On You.”

As the Guardian aptly notes, Cave’s former band The Birthday Party also covered the Hawkins classic (watch them perform the song in 1981 here), as well as a slew of other artists, incuding Nina Simone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Joe Cocker.

No other details about this epic charity single are available at this time, but photographer Danny Clifford teased in a blog post that “later this week all will be revealed.”

The High Road

Broken Bells | MySpace Music Videos

On-demand platforms like MySpace Music, Spotify, and Grooveshark have successfully drawn attention away from file-sharing networks. Or have they? According to the IFPI, file-swapping still remains a huge problem – and the needle is hardly moving at all.

In a conference call last week, the group reaffirmed to Digital Music News that 95 percent of all downloads are still unauthorized and unpaid. Others also reported the stat, including the Financial Times and Reuters.

That is the same figure from last year, and the ratio remains stubborn despite continued digital growth. During the call, the IFPI pointed to a 12 percent gain in global digital revenues in 2009 to $4.2 billion. Stateside, Nielsen Soundscan outlined an 8.3 percent gain on paid downloads to 1.159 billion units.

But what about the effect of Spotify and friends? IFPI chief John Kennedy downplayed their influence, noting that “the effect has been exaggerated” by executives and the media. “It takes a lot to move the needle,” Kennedy noted, while also pointing to an only-partial global rollout of on-demand services. (via digital music news)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWFnti4pas&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Between our recent “Grizzly Bear Score New Ryan Gosling Film” and music at the Sundance Film Festival sleuthing posts, I would’ve sworn we had outed all the notable musical contributions to this year’s indie film showcase in Park City, UT, but it turns out we missed one…

While digging through reviews of the Gosling/Michelle Williams-starring romantic drama Blue Valentine for more details on Grizzly Bear’s contribution to the score, I uncovered the following bit from the NY Post:

A big part of [Blue Valentine’s] expressiveness comes not from the tightly controlled, elliptical script but from the score by Grizzly Bear, which also did much for the Philip Seymour Hoffman film “Jack Goes Boating”

Upon further inspection, I found that Grizzly Bear did, in fact, write music for Jack Goes Boating, Hoffman’s feature directorial debut in which he also stars. The Hollywood Reporter reports, however, that Evan Lurie of the Lounge Lizards is responsible for the film’s “gentle, piano-centric score,” while Jay-Z’s favorite new band provide “feathery, cerebral harmonies.”

It’s still unclear whether Lurie or the Grizzlies are primarily responsible for the score, though, as Variety’s credits contradict those of THR: “music, Grizzly Bear; additional music, Evan Lurie.” Either way, lots of mellow indie rock soundtracks are on the way, kids.

Animal Collective and director Danny Perez’s abstract visual phantasmagoria ODDSAC premieres at the Sundance Film Festival tonight. But if you can’t make it to Utah, the guys are offering some solace in the form of a 30-second trailer for the film– which looks dark and weird and features a dude running through the woods with smoke coming out of his head. Watch it below.
ODDSAC is also set to screen in New York and Chicago in March. Check the movie’s official site for more info.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H48VtETngA&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Spoon’s seventh album Transference has entered the U.S. Album chart #4, having sold 53,696 in its first week of release. The debut week represents the highest sales week of the band’s long running career, its previous high being the release week of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga which debuted at #10 in July of 2007.

LCD Soundsystem “are back.” Three years after the brilliant Sound of Silver, James Murphy is ready to drop his next LP in the coming months. Details are hard to come by at the moment, but we know he recorded the album at an L.A. mansion with a swimming pool, thanks to a fun behind-the-scenes video playing at the LCD site (also embedded below). The vid is soundtracked by a totally sleazy new beat that sounds a hell of a lot like Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing”– a good sign!

In the rambling MySpace missive, Murphy promises, “i’m not going to make many expensive videos. know why? no one plays videos.” This is a shame, since his “All My Friends” clip was one of the best of the decade. He also promises, “i will fall over and injure myself at some point on this tour.”

Tour dates– which start in April–

LCD Soundsystem:

04-16 Indio, CA – Coachella
04-20 Dublin, Ireland – Tripod
04-21 Dublin, Ireland – Tripod
04-23 London, England – Brixton Academy
04-26 Birmingham, England – Academy
04-27 Leeds, England – Academy
04-28 Glasgow, Scotland – Barrowlands
04-29 Glasgow, Scotland – Barrowlands
05-01 Manchester, England – Academy
05-02 Bristol, England – Academy
05-04 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
05-05 Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique
05-06 Berlin, Germany – WMF
05-08 Paris, France – Bataclan

Though it’s only 14 minutes long, Behave Yourself goes a long way toward showing what Cold War Kids can do with their music. Their second album, Loyalty to Loyalty, was filled with nearly as many disappointments as innovations, but this EP focuses that album’s dark, soulful direction into four impressive songs. “Audience of One” begins Behave Yourself on a surprisingly smooth note, bringing Cold War Kids’ sound, especially Nathan Willett’s vocals, closer to the Jeff Buckley-tinged side of their music than their feisty rock. “Sermons” gets even more soulful and feels appropriately gospel-inspired, and while the bright pop of “Coffee Spoon” and “Santa Ana Winds” doesn’t exactly rock, these songs bring an energy that contrasts nicely with the EP’s other tracks. Streamlined, confident, and cohesive, Behave Yourself finds Cold War Kids getting their groove back.

Doctors had been telling Keith for years he needed to cut back on his boozing.

He once famously boasted he would never stop because he had outlived several medics who chided him about his constant partying. Hell Raising Rolling Stone Keith Ricard has gone on the wagon – despite claiming he would NEVER give up booze.

The 66-year-old rocker finally quit after getting strict orders from his doctor – and watching bandmate Ronnie Wood’s life unravel through alcoholism.

Now “Keef” has not touched a drop for Four Months.

A friend said last night: “There’s no guarantees that he’ll stay off it – but he’s doing really well so far.”

But four years ago he suffered a brain haemorrhage after falling out of a palm tree during a booze-fuelled trip to Fiji with pal Ronnie – who later left wife Jo for teenager Katia Ivanova.

Now doctors say Keith’s hedonistic lifestyle is finally starting to take its toll.

A source close to the guitarist – married to former model Patti Hanson for 26 years – said: “He has always quite enjoyed the fact that he seemed to be able to carry on drinking as much as he liked with no real negative impact on his health.

“But he has watched Ronnie fall well and truly off the wagon last year and he doesn’t like what he sees.

“Plus he has started to feel for the first time like it might do him some good to give up the booze for a while.”

Battles have confirmed that they plan to release the follow-up to their critically-lauded 2007 debut album ‘Mirrored’ this year.

The New York band have started work on the album in their home city and are set to head to the Machines With Magnets studio in Pawtucket for proper studio sessions soon.

They are yet to reveal song titles set for the album, although guitarist Dave Konopka has spoken about how planning the album in the Times Square area of New York may influence it.

“Where we are is really seedy,” he said. “It reminds me of old school Midnight Cowboy-era New York. Most of that area has been Bloomberged into consumerism, ESPN zones and Broadway shows, but on the outskirts there’s little pockets of vice. We’re playing right above a jack shop.”

Matador will release Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement, a career retrospective compilation from reunited indie deities Pavement, on March 9. (Domino will release it a day earlier in the UK.) The 23-track album draws from Pavement’s entire pre-breakup run, and though it doesn’t include any previously unreleased material, it does “dig deeper than the hits,” as Matador promised. The Matablog just announced that tracklist, and it’s true to their word.

Pretty much every Pavement song that could be considered a “hit”, however nebulously, is accounted for: “Cut Your Hair”, “Stereo”, “Shady Lane”, “Range Life”, “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”, etc. But the comp also includes a few left-field choices, like the R.E.M. tribute “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence”, Pavement’s contribution to Red Hot’s 1993 No Alternative compilation.

Check out the tracklist below:

Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement:

01 Gold Soundz (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
02 Frontwards (Watery, Domestic EP)
03 Mellow Jazz Docent (Perfect Sound Forever EP)
04 Stereo (Brighten the Corners)
05 In the Mouth a Desert (Slanted & Enchanted)
06 Two States (Slanted & Enchanted)
07 Cut Your Hair (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
08 Shady Lane / J Vs. S (Brighten the Corners)
09 Here (Slanted & Enchanted)
10 Unfair (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
11 Grounded (Wowee Zowee)
12 Summer Babe (Winter Version) (Slanted & Enchanted)
13 Range Life (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
14 Date w/ IKEA (Brighten the Corners)
15 Debris Slide (Perfect Sound Forever EP)
16 Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse) (Watery, Domestic EP)
17 Spit on a Stranger (Terror Twilight)
18 Heaven Is a Truck (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
19 Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite at :17 (Slanted and Enchanted)
20 Embassy Row (Brighten the Corners)
21 Box Elder (Slay Tracks 1933-1969 EP)
22 Unseen Power of the Picket Fence (No Alternative compilation)
23 Fight This Generation (Wowee Zowee)

Utters Mark Oliver Everett as Eels’ latest gets underway: “Everything was beautiful and free / In the beginning.” Over a threadbare backing track, he uses a few broad strokes to paint a picture of domestic bliss, his words at once tender, candid, and – this is an Eels record, after all – loaded with foreboding. What do you do when there’s nothing to do? If you’re with the one you love, Everett suggests, do whatever. After all, you’ve done the hard part already.

End Times is concerned with what comes next: what happens when it ends, when for one reason or another – or many – you lose the one you love. The question here is less how you mend a broken heart, more how you mend a heart that’s been battered, bruised and dragged around the block as many times as this one. The answers come peppered with dry wit and keen observation; the kind of pathos Everett has spent seven albums (nine, if you include early 90s works A Man Called E and Broken Toy Shop) perfecting.

Although contemplation of heartache and loss is hardly Eels covering new ground (see 1998’s wrenching Electro-Shock Blues, or 2005’s sprawling double album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations), End Times plays to Everett’s strengths, offering enough intrigue and wonder to keep happy listeners new and old.

While he’s always seemed more comfortable in the role of heart-on-sleeve troubadour than that of oddball alt-rocker, some of this disc’s most delectable surprises emerge under the guise of the latter: Gone Man is a hugely enjoyable slice of scuzzed-up garage rock, Paradise Blues pleads humanity with a suicide bomber over the simplest of blues progressions, and Unhinged is exactly that, harking back to the band’s earliest successes.

If its title and artwork weren’t enough of a clue, Everett takes this opportunity to equate his situation with “the desperate times we live in… the end of common decency.” Yet End Times is not a hopelessly gloomy record; it is as startlingly direct and melodically assured as ever, even wrestling laugh-out-loud humour from moments of despondency (“Outside my window there’s a cat in heat / Shut up cat, and leave me alone”).

“I’m a man in great pain over great beauty,” he concludes; “but you know, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been through worse / I’m sure I can take the hit.” At this point in the game, you’d be hard-pressed to disagree.

Pixies frontman Frank Black has announced the details of his next solo album, “NonStopErotik,” which is due on Apr. 5. The album contains a cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Wheels,” and was recorded in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and a “haunted studio in London,” according to Black’s self-compossed announcement. “I wrote many a couplet by candlelight in the studio accommodation, slept very little, and only felt the need to get the f— out of there fast on the last night. The spirits had not ever bothered me, other than low drama moral support, but I was informed that they had heard enough and it was time to move on.”

The Specials, the celebrated British band that reformed in 2009 after more than two decades apart, will play its first North American shows in nearly 30 years in April, starting with an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” on April 13.

The Specials are also one of the topped-billed bands for the first night of the 11th annual Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., on April 16, and have announced a New York club show at Terminal 5 on April 21. Two more April shows are in the works as part of the brief North American trek; a full tour is being eyed for later in 2010.

The Specials played a sold-out 30th anniversary tour of U.K. clubs in May 2009, marking the first time that the six members of the ska band, including singer Terry Hall, had performed a full set together since a Boston, Mass. show in 1981. Founding member, keyboardist Jerry Dammers, is not participating in the reunion.

Subsequently, the group performed in front of more than 100,000 people at the 2009 Glastonbury Festival, played the Summer Sonic Festival in Japan, toured Australia and New Zealand for the first time ever and did a second sold-out U.K. jaunt in November.

The band’s appearance on “Late Night” will be its first U.S. performance since reforming. The Specials first appeared on U.S. national network television on “Saturday Night Live” in 1980; the group launched its reunion on the BBC’s musical variety show “Later … With Jules Holland” in April 2009.

The Specials formed in 1977 in Coventry, England, and its then-unheard-of mix of punk rock, Jamaican rhythms, social and political commentary and pop sensibilities proved a huge sensation in the U.K. and spawned an entire youth subculture that encompassed both music and fashion.

Between 1979 and 1981, the group scored seven consecutive top 10 singles in the U.K., including the No. 1s “Too Much Too Young” and “Ghost Town.” With its mixture of musical styles and its multi-racial lineup, the Specials served as a rallying point for British youth during a period of ethnic and class-based unrest in the country.

The Specials’ 1979 self-titled debut album was produced by Elvis Costello and the band’s music was released on its own self-started record label, 2 Tone. The label spearheaded a ska craze, releasing the first singles from groups like Madness and the Beat (called the English Beat in the United States) and albums from the Selecter and the Bodysnatchers. 2 Tone’s iconic logo and black-and-white checkered graphic style, along with the band’s 1960s mod-style clothing — like porkpie hats, tonic suits and Fred Perry shirts — remain symbols of the British musical shift from punk to new wave in the early 1980s.

In the United States, the Specials rode in on the tidal wave of their U.K. success, making its North American debut on Jan. 25, 1980, at New York’s post-punk mecca Hurrah’s. The band toured extensively, including a four-night, eight-show run at L.A.’s Whiskey-a-Go-Go and several arena gigs supporting for the Police. While the band didn’t enjoy the same level of success in the United States as it did at home, its two U.S. tours are widely credited with kicking off the later “third wave ska” scene and inspiring such bands as the Go-Go’s, No Doubt and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

The band split acrimoniously in 1981 having released just one more album (“More Specials”) and an EP of new music, yet its single, “Ghost Town” hit No. 1 on the U.K. just prior to the break-up. Hall, along with vocalist Neville Staple and guitarist Lynval Golding, immediately formed the Fun Boy Three and continued to top the U.K. charts; he has remained a fixture in British pop music ever since.

Dammers recorded a third album with several of his other Specials bandmates under the band’s earlier moniker the Special A.K.A., and his 1984 single “Free Nelson Mandela” became an international anti-Apartheid anthem. He continues to perform with his jazz ensemble the Spatial A.K.A. Orchestra but has publicly criticized the current Specials reunion.

Despite recent tabloid speculation that a reconciliation is forthcoming, subsequent reports have debunked the rumor, suggesting that nothing has changed since the band first began discussing the possibility of getting back together.

The National have confirmed their first shows of the new decade. Highlights include their biggest headlining shows to date in NYC and London at Radio City Music Hall and Royal Albert Hall respectively, a performance with Pavement in Paris, and additional US dates on both coasts with more to be announced soon.

Prior to the kick off of the tour the band will make a special appearance at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, TN on March 26-28. The festival is being co-curated by The National guitarist Bryce Dessner, who is also curating the MusicNow festival in his hometown of Cincinnati, OH set for March 30- April 1.

On all the dates below, The National will perform songs from their as yet untitled new album to be released in May on 4AD.

MORE DATES AND ALBUM NEWS TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON

The National U.S./Canada Tour:
APR 22-23: Richmond, VA @ The National Theater
MAY 6: London, England @ Royal Albert Hall
MAY 7: Paris, France @ Le Zenith (w/Pavement)
MAY 9: Berlin, Germany @ Astra
MAY 22: Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
MAY 23: San Diego, CA @ Spreckels Theater
MAY 27: Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
JUN 02: Boston, MA @ House of Blues
JUN 5: Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
JUN 6: Washington DC @ DAR Constitution Hall
JUN 8: Toronto, Ont. @ Massey Hall
JUN 16: New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall

In a developing story, Franz Nicolay has decided to leave The Hold Steady, according to a post on his website.

We’ll let his post do the talking:

“You should know: I’ve left The Hold Steady. I told the band I’d be leaving in early September, played my last show with them in Minneapolis around Thanksgiving, and dotted the t’s and crossed the i’s this week. Five years seemed like a nice round number. Thanks to everyone who was a part of the experience, especially the Unified Scene, who are nice folks. I’ll see you all soon in any case.”

Kings of Leon have negotiated a new record deal and will pay for the recording of their own albums from now on. The band has left their label Columbia Records and negotiated a new deal with Warner Brothers, which will see them pay half their recording costs themselves, giving them more control on their own spending and reaping in a bigger profit share. Under normal record deals, artists are given an advance by their label to cover any costs, but they then have to pay it back and share any profits from their work with the record company. A source told The Sun newspaper: “Kings of Leon are one of the few bands on the planet who have enough heft to negotiate such a favourable deal. “It is virtually unheard of but it shows how keen Warner Brothers were to have them on their books.” Meanwhile, the group are set to gain further revenue by releasing their own clothing range. The KOLxS2A brand will hit shops this month.

UPDATE:
Kings Of Leon drummer Nathan Followill has used Twitter to deny his band are about to up sticks from current label Columbia and move to Warner Brothers.

“Once again there is another rumour circulating about KOL,” he wrote today (January 24). “We are not leaving our record label. We are happy where we are now let’s get drunk.”

It had been claimed several days ago that Kings, currently working on their fifth album, were splitting from their long-term home in order to secure a more favourable financial deal.

It had been alleged that they would receive better royalty rates and would have more control over their spending.

Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien has hit out at claims that piracy is killing the music industry.

Expressing his thoughts on the situation, the guitarist explained that whilst pirates might not purchase music, they are still putting money into the industry.

“I have a problem when people in the industry say ‘it’s killing the industry, it’s the thing that’s ripping us apart’,” O’Brien said in an interview on Midem. “I don’t actually believe it is… [Pirates] might not buy an album, but they’re spending their money buying concert tickets, a t-shirt, whatever.”

In the interview, O’Brien also added what solutions the industry could be making to remedy the problem.

“It’s an analogue business model in a digital era,” he explained. “The business model has to change. You’ve got to license out more music – have more Spotifys, more websites selling more music. You’ve got to make it slightly cheaper to get music in order to compete with the peer-to-peers.”

He added: “I find it staggering that the industry seems to be really dragging its heels on this – this is stuff that you could do in one week. Move quicker!”

Wilco were not among the amazing lineup of performers on last night’s “Hope For Haiti Now” telethon, unfortunately, but their status as one of most charitable bands in America is fully intact this morning, as Jeff Tweedy and company have posted two complete live concert downloads on their official site in exchange for a requested donation to either Oxfam or Doctors Without Borders.

The concerts Wilco have posted include their sets from Brooklyn’s Keyspan Park last summer in which Feist and Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste joined the band for a number of songs, as well as their gig last fall at London’s HMV Forum.

“In exchange for the free music,” the band writes, “we ask that you make a minimum donation of $15 to the [Emergency Relief Funds of] one of the organizations listed above if you are able.”

To download this incredibly generous offer from Wilco go here, and here again are the donation locations:

OXFAM – http://www.oxfam.org/en/haitidonate
Doctors Without Borders – http://doctorswithoutborders.org

Them Crooked Vultures has confirmed its debut appearance on Saturday Night Live. The band-featuring SNL vets Dave Grohl and Josh Homme and, in his first ever appearance on the stage at 30 Rock’s famed Studio 8H, John Paul Jones-will be music guest on SNL’s February 6 show. Ashton Kutcher will host.

Back in November, we reported that La Blogotheque filmmakers Vincent Moon and Nathanaël Le Scouarnec had documented Mogwai’s gut-blastingly loud live show for a forthcoming concert film called Burning. Well, Burning will soon come out on DVD, and it’ll come with a CD, entitled Special Moves, that will serve as the band’s first ever live album. As the band’s website announces, the CD/DVD set will be out this spring on Mogwai’s own Rock Action label.

A limited-edition triple vinyl box set version of Burning will come packaged with the DVD, set lists, and a poster. Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat designed the whole shebang. The vinyl comes with extra tracks, which will be included as a download with the CD. We’ve got the tracklistings to both the regular and vinyl box set versions below, as well as a (seriously dramatic) teaser trailer.

Right now, the band is giving away an mp3 of the Special Moves version of “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” to everyone who gives them an email address. Click here to get it. Also, the Mogwai MySpace is streaming the Burning version of “Batcat”.

Burning will receive its UK premiere on February 28 during the Glasgow Film Festival. Members of Mogwai and the directors will introduce the screening, and it will be followed by a DJ set by band members. UPDATE: It will also screen in Chicago on March 7 at Lincoln Hall as part of CIMM Fest. (via pfmedia)

Songs featured in Burning:

01 The Precipice
02 I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
03 Hunted by a Freak
04 Like Herod
05 New Paths to Helicon pt1
06 Mogwai Fear Satan
07 Scotland’s Shame
08 Batcat

Special Moves:

01 I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
02 Friend of the Night
03 Hunted by a Freak
04 Mogwai Fear Satan
05 Cody
06 You Don’t Know Jesus
07 I Know You Are But What Am I
08 I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School
09 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong
10 Like Herod
11 Glasgow Megasnake

Vinyl version:

01 I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
02 Friend of the Night
03 Hunted by a Freak
04 Mogwai Fear Satan
05 Cody
06 You Don’t Know Jesus
07 I Know You Are But What Am I
08 I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School
09 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong
10 Like Herod
11 Glasgow Megasnake
12 Yes! I Am a Long Way From Home
13 Scotland’s Shame
14 New Paths to Helicon Part 1
15 Batcat
16 Thank You Space Expert
17 The Precipice

Phil Selway just announced on the Radiohead website that his band will perform a Haiti benefit show this Sunday, January 24, at the Music Box at the Fonda in Los Angeles.

The money raised will go to Oxfam.

“We’re in the middle of recording at the moment, so you’ll be catching us on the fly…. but if you’re up for it, then we are too,” Selway writes.

It may never entirely shake its reputation as home of lumberjack shirts and loud guitars, but venerable Seattle label Sub Pop has added a new string to its bow – world music.

Next month sees the release of I Speak Fula, the excellent second album from Mali’s Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba. The LP, first issued on Out Here Records last Autumn, is the debut release on Next Ambiance, an imprint under the Sub Pop umbrella set up by label boss Jonathan Poneman and presenter Jon Kertzer (who helms the Best Ambiance show on Seattle-based public radio station KEXP).

Should this be a surprise? Perhaps not. This is new territory for Sub Pop, but thanks to the light-fingered, Afropop leanings of Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors – not to mention MP3 blogs like Awesome Tapes from Africa – there’s a new, young audience out there that has been exposed to non-western sounds and might want to dig a little deeper. Nor is Sub Pop the first US indie label to dabble in African sounds – Drag City’s Yaala Yaala imprint, founded in 2007, has chalked up several releases from Mali’s vibrant street-music scene, some salvaged from cassettes sold for a dollar in the Bougouni shanties.

And while I Speak Fula might not be immediately familiar to those weaned on the grizzled discontent of Nirvana and Mudhoney, Kouyate is considered something of a rebel in his homeland. A player of the ngoni, a traditional west African lute, he was the first musician to dispense with tradition and play the instrument standing up – a shock to the more conventional corners of Mali’s music scene, but now apparently pretty much de rigueur among younger bands. I Speak Fula is released through Sub Pop on 2 February

Jimmy Fallon can do all the (brilliant) Neil Young impressions he wants, but his predecessor has the real thing coming up for his farewell episode of the Tonight Show on Friday night. The Wrap reports that NBC and Conan O’Brien finally reached an agreement this morning that officially makes this week O’Brien’s last as the host of the famous late-night talk show.

Don’t worry, though, Team CoCo. The Cone Bone will get $32 million from the network for his trouble, the possibility of returning to television in 8 months, and living legend Neil Young as his final musical guest.

Sure, some of us were originally hoping for the White Stripes to sing Conan off into the sunset (as they did for his final Late Night episode), but it’s pretty hard to beat Neil Young when it comes to making the night special. Not to mention, Will Ferrell and Tom Hanks are also among scheduled guests for Friday’s farewell, so it should be a fun, albeit bittersweet, show.

In 2005, Starbucks’ Hear Music label released Sweetheart, a compilation of indie-leaning artists covering love songs for Valentine’s Day. Last year, the label released a sequel. Today, Starbucks dropped yet another Sweetheart album.

This time around, the Shins’ James Mercer collaborates with his brother Robert on a version of Bob Dylan’s “Spanish Harlem Incident”, Spoon take on the Damned’s “Love Song”, Yo La Tengo try out the Zombies’ “You Make Me Feel Good”, and Jose Gonzalez contributes his version of Kylie Minogue’s “Hand on Your Heart”. Elvis Perkins, Grand Archives, Mate of State, the Long Winters, and the Avett Brothers also make appearances. The compilation is for sale on iTunes right now, and we’ve got the tracklist below.

Sweetheart 2010:

01 Jose Gonzalez: “Hand on Your Heart” (Kylie Minogue cover)
02 Grand Archives: “Cupid” (Sam Cooke cover)
03 James Mercer & Robert Mercer: “Spanish Harlem Incident” (Bob Dylan cover)
04 Spoon: “Love Song” (The Damned cover)
05 Elvis Perkins: “Teneme en Tu Corazon (Keep Me in Your Heart)” (traditional)
06 The Long Winters: “Give Me All Your Lovin’” (ZZ Top cover)
07 Yo La Tengo: “You Make Me Feel Good” (The Zombies cover)
08 Céu: “Eu Amo Você (I Love You)” (Tim Maia cover)
09 Diane Birch: “I Go Crazy” (Paul Davis cover)
10 Jason Collett and Zeus: “Every Night” (Paul McCartney cover)
11 The Avett Brothers: “I Love” (Tom T. Hall cover)
12 Mates of State: “Long Way Home” (Tom Waits cover)
13 Angelique Kidjo: “Ne Me Quitte Pas (If You Go Away)” (Jacques Brel cover)
14 Hey Marseilles: “True Love Will Find You in the End” (Daniel Johnston cover)
(via pf media)

The Colossus is Rjd2′s first self-produced album for his own label, RJ’s Electrical Connections, and it definitely benefits from being released by a boutique. Aside from the features, which come from friends rather than fortune-makers, The Colossus finds Rjd2 back to doing what he did when he first began recording: simply curating excellent productions instead of wooing a new audience by creating expressly written songs or telling a story with his full-lengths. A couple of the instrumentals here are entirely constructed from samples (starting with the opener “Let There Be Horns”), and they create a fractured sense of swing — especially since they sit so well next to slightly more “played” productions. Rjd2′s guests are singers more than rappers (with just a few exceptions), so the R&B vibe behind “Games You Can Win” (featuring Kenna) and the infectious, horn-led “Crumbs Off the Table” (featuring Aaron Livingston) is palpable. Whether Rjd2 needed a reset or not after leaving his previous label, The Colossus shows him relaxed and happy being his own boss.

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New York band Vampire Weekend sees its sophomore set “Contra” debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 124,000 copies sold according to Nielsen SoundScan. The set is only the 12th independently distributed album to top the Billboard 200 chart since SoundScan began powering the list in May of 1991.

Vampire Weekend not only celebrates its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, but the New York band also notches its best sales week yet. The quartet’s previous best sales frame was earned when its self-titled first album opened with 28,000 copies in its opening week. That set debuted and peaked at No. 17 on the chart and has since sold 498,000.

“Contra” also is the second independently-distributed album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart in the past year. It is distributed by Alternative Distribution Alliance and marks the first indie set to top the tally since Pearl Jam’s self-released “Backspacer” debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated Oct. 10, 2009.

“Contra” is the lone debut in the top 10 this week, as the second-highest entry comes from Omarion’s “Ollusion” at No. 19 with 19,000 copies. This isn’t out of the ordinary for January, as the month’s release schedule is usually light on blockbuster new albums.

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Returning Brooklyn space cadets MGMT have claimed that they do not intend to release any singles from their forthcoming album ‘Congratulations’.

Merging wide-eyed psych-rock with an all out electro assault, MGMT seemed to be perfect pop fodder. Releasing a string of singles in the summer of 2008 the band dominated the festival circuit.

Tracks such as ‘Kids’ were given an overhaul by a variety of producers, with Soulwax turning the single into a dancefloor staple. Due to return with a new album soon MGMT have revealed that they do not intend to release any singles.

Working in their Brooklyn home the band have revealed that the new material hangs together as a complete album, rather than a series of singles. “We’d rather people hear the whole album as an album and see what tracks jump out rather than the ones that get played on the radio – if anything gets played on the radio!” Ben Goldwasseer revealed.

The guitarist claimed that the band keen to have the album accepted as a complete work in its entirety. “There definitely isn’t a ‘Time To Pretend’ or a ‘Kids’ on the album” he stated.

“We’ve been talking about ways to make sure people hear the album as an album in order and not just figure out what are the best three tracks, download those and not listen to the rest of it.”

Potential songtitles include two odes to cult musicians with ‘Brian Eno’ and ‘Song For Dan Treacy’. Produced by former Spaceman 3 member Sonic Boom the new album is due to be released this Spring.

MGMT are to release ‘Congratulations’ later this year.

Iconic British songwriter Paul Weller is set to work with Bruce Foxton, his old comrade from The Jam.

A seminal British group, The Jam topped the charts and inspired a Mod revival. The band’s sharp riffs and unique fashion sense influenced a generation, making the group one of the most important British groups of all time.

Sensationally splitting just after playing an enormous show at Wembley, The Jam remain a hugely loved group. Rumours last year suggested that Paul Weller could have patched things up with the remaining band members, and it seems there may be some truth in this.

Speaking to the NME the acclaimed songwriter revealed that Bruce Foxton is set to appear on his new album ‘Wake Up The Nation’.

“It came about because we had both lost loved ones last year,” Weller explained. “He lost his wife at the early part of the year, and I lost my dad, and it opened up a bit of a dialogue, and it seemed like a nice thing to do at the time. In fact it was a wonderful thing.”

Paul Weller’s dad of course also acted as his manager, and was instrumental in helping The Jam develop into the group they became.

‘Wake Up The Nation’ is the eagerly awaited follow up to 2008′s ’22 Dreams’. Hugely successful, ’22 Dreams’ was apparently released against the advice of Paul Weller’s label but went on to become one of his most acclaimed solo efforts.

Since then, the singer has picked up a Brit award and toured heavily. Returning to the studio last year, Paul Weller is also apparently working on a track with My Bloody Valentine guitar slinger Kevin Shields. The pair are linked by Primal Scream, and appeared on the band’s track ‘When The Kingdom Comes’.

Paul Weller is set to release his new album ‘Wake Up The Nation’ in April.

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has revealed that he was invited to join Them Crooked Vultures.

The age of the supergroup has returned. In the late 60s it seemed that every top musician was closing ranks, with the likes of Cream, Traffic, Big Brother Holding Company and more taking the music world by storm.

Last year the trend suddenly re-emerged as the likes of The Dead Weather, Monsters Of Folk and Them Crooked Vultures released celebrated albums.

Formed by Josh Homme and Dave Grohl, the American pair turned to Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones to complete the trio. Releasing their debut album it seems as if the band could be an ongoing project.

However in a new interview former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has revealed that he could have potentially joined the band. Speaking to the Daily Mail the iconic musician revealed that he had dinner with Dave Grohl after last year’s Grammy awards when the project was mentioned.

“We went out for a bite to eat afterwards and Dave told me he was starting this band with Josh (Homme),” he told the British newspaper. “I asked him who was playing bass and he rather sheepishly told me he’d approached John. So you read it here first; Paul McCartney was nearly the bass player in Them Crooked Vultures.”

Sir Paul McCartney was also asked about his appearance on last year’s final of The X Factor, which caused fevered discussion between fans. “When the offer came through it polarised a lot of people. Lots of my friends told me not to do it and it’s not exactly Jools Holland” he claimed.

“It’s a pop show. But what turned me around – apart from the huge audience – was the fact that it’s a family show, and so many kids I know are obsessed by it.”

The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival will bring a youth movement to the low desert this year. After several years of greybeard headliners, California’s signature festival is going back to the future with younger acts including Gorillaz, Muse, Jay-Z, Thom Yorke, MGMT, Hot Chip, Spoon, Vampire Weekend and LCD Soundsystem at the very top of the bill for the three-day concert that begins April 16 at the Empire Polo Field in Indio.

There are some flashback acts, including Woodstock icon Sly Stone and the Family Stone, 1980s alt-rock outfit Echo and the Bunnymen and reconstituted college-rock outfit Pavement, but they’re not leading the bill like Paul McCartney, Prince and Roger Waters were in past years.

The presence of rap superstar Jay-Z will raise the eyebrows of those fans who like to think of Coachella as an indie-music oasis on today’s live-music landscape; hip-hop stars such as Kanye West, the Beastie Boys, Lupe Fiasco and Kool Keith have performed at Coachella in the past but none of them tap into the same street imagery and conspicuous consumption ethos that defines the $150-million mogul.

Jay-Z is also a somewhat unexpected booking because he has a performance — for which tickets are still available — at the Staples Center on March 26. The hip-hop star will close out the opening night of the fest on Friday, when other performers will be LCD Soundsystem, rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Specials and John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols experimental outfit Public Image Ltd.

Saturday night will be headlined by Muse, Faith No More, DJs Tiesto and David Guetta, MGMT, Hot Chip and Jack White’s The Dead Weather. Sunday will close with Gorillaz, Yorke, Spoon, Parisian electronic rockers Phoenix and dance veterans Orbital.

The desert event has won a reputation among fans for showcasing artists on the comeback trail, and rock acts such as the Pixies and Iggy & the Stooges made splashy returns at Coachella. Pavement, a staple of the ‘90s alt-rock scene, has been an expected Coachella headliner since announcing its reunion at the end of 2009.

Gary Bongiovanni, the editor in chief of Pollstar, the concert-industry trade publication, believes Coachella doesn’t need a boomer-friendly headliner such as McCartney, who performed last year, or Waters, who closed the event in 2008. A package built around Pavement, Public Image Ltd. and hipper acts, he believes, might even hold greater appeal for Coachella’s target young audience.

“Pavement was never an arena headliner, but it lends some excellent buzz to the lineup,” Bongiovanni said. “In a way, it’s like looking at what the Super Bowl had to do. They have The Who this year, and if you stop and think about it, ‘What’s the biggest act we can get that we haven’t already done?’ — it’s a tough question to answer. If you take all these little things and put them together it becomes a compelling bill. There’s not a reliance on one name.”

Pavement already has a history with the event. Lead singer Stephen Malkmus has appeared at Coachella with his post-Pavement band the Jicks, and Pavement split soon after appearing at the first-ever Coachella in 1999. The latter performance has gone down in alt-music lore as one that showcased the band unraveling on stage.

Lydon has gone on numerous comeback treks with the Sex Pistols, but this will mark the return of Public Image Ltd. after more than 15 years. The band, which experimented with dance and electronic textures throughout its career, went through numerous lineup changes. The act that takes the stage at Coachella is not expected to feature original members Jah Wobble or Keith Levene, but will include onetime guitarist Lu Edmonds and drummer Bruce Smith.

Radiohead’s leader Yorke will be making a return to Southern California after sold-out dates in Echo Park and downtown in October. With Muse on the bill, he’ll be sharing the event with a band that’s long been compared to his showcase act, though Muse hasn’t reached the kind of sales success in the U.S. that it has overseas. Bolstered by its presence in the first “Twilight” film, Muse has become an MTV staple, and its 2009 effort “Resistance” has sold 370,000 copies in the U.S. since its September release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Synth rockers MGMT have a hotly anticipated album due in 2010, and the act will compete for best new artist at the Jan. 31 Grammy Awards. But MGMT won’t be the only act expected to bring new material to the event, as Damon Albarn’s adventurous electronic-rock outfit Gorillaz has a long-awaited album expected to be released this spring.

Oh, and what about those question marks on Sunday’s text in the concert poster below? No, that isn’t saving a spot for a Smiths reunion or U2 debut on the Coachella stage, it’s the way that Yorke presents himself as a solo star, the marquee at his Orpheum concert had the same punctuational flourish.

The big question heading into last year’s Coachella was whether the economy would take its toll on the festival, and the answer was a resounding no. Paid attendance topped 150,000, said Bongiovanni, and promoter Goldenvoice/AEG put overall attendance at more than 160,000.

Additionally, the festival’s gross reached $15.3 million, according to concert tracker Billboard Boxscore. Those numbers topped such well-known destination events as Lollapalooza in Chicago and the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, Texas.

Coachella also made some recession-friendly concessions, offering fans the opportunity to purchase tickets on layaway, which it is again doing this year. Three-day packages are $269, not including Ticketmaster surcharges. www.coachella.com

Folk singer Kate McGarrigle died yesterday at her home in Montreal, Quebec following a three-and-a-half year battle with a rare form of cancer, reports the Guardian. She was 63 years old.

While McGarrigle is likely best known today for being the mother to singer/songwriters Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, as well as the ex-wife to their father, folk singer Loudon Wainwright III, she has been performing concerts and making records alongside her sister Anna for more than 30 years.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s most recent release was 2005’s The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, an album of holiday songs featuring Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson, Emmylou Harris, and others.

According to her doctor, Robert Tabah, McGarrigle was surrounded by friends and family when she passed, including her son Rufus, who recently canceled his Australian tour to be by her side.

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Returning Bristol trip hop giants Massive Attack have revealed that Damon Albarn was wary of their working methods during a recent collaboration.

Formed by a group of DJs, producers and MCs from Bristol Massive Attack went on to become one of the most influential acts of the 90s. The prime examples of the trip hop genre, the band’s laborious working methods have become the stuff of legend.

Returning last year with their new EP ‘Splitting The Atom’ Massive Attack ended a six year silence. With their new album ‘Heligoland’ set for release later this year, the band have lifted the lid on a number of collaborations.

Featuring members of Elbow, TV On The Radio and more forthcoming album ‘Heligoland’ is an all star affair. Blur singer Damon Albarn joined the band for recording sessions, but set strict working standards.

Speaking to the NME Massive Attack leader 3D said: “He was like, ‘I want to work with you, but I’m not getting sucked into some nine-year-long Bristol dope-haze’.”

The one time Blur singer insisted on using his own studio. “‘We’ll work 10 to six, at my studio, for five days and that’ll be it’. The irony was that it was him who ended up instigating all the bad behaviour!”

Damon Albarn appears on the track ‘Saturday Come Slow’ adding his distinctive vocals. The Blur singer also added keyboard to ‘Splitting The Atom’ with Albarn set to be joined by collaborators including Horace Andy, Martin Topley-Bird, TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and Elbow’s Guy Garvey.

Massive Attack are due to release their new album ‘Heligoland’ on February 8th.

Indie kingppins The Libertines could be set to reform next year, if songwriter Carl Barat has his way.

The Libertines were spat out by the bowels of London, writing angelic hymns from the city’s seedy underbelly. Over the course of two albums the band re-defined what it meant to make music in modern Britain, inspiring almost ten years of copyists.

Splitting in 2004, the band have reformed numerous times since then. However lead songwriters Pete Doherty and Carl Barat have always been too busy, too occupied with separate careers to make the re-union permanent.

Taking to the stage at London’s Rhythm Factory last year, it seemed as if The Libertines were finally back. Speaking to press afterwards Pete Doherty claimed he would love to reform the band, but was simply too busy with Babyshambles.

Now in a new interview former sparring partner Carl Barat has suggested that the band will reform next year. Speaking to The Evening Standard the singer claimed: “It’s not definite definite. I can say 2011, but it’s hard to plan The Libertines until next Tuesday. But 2011 is where there’s room for that to happen. So if everything’s all right, then, yeah, it would be glorious to get on the old jacket and venture forth, into the known.”

Continuing, Barat argued that he would have to see if the old chemistry still exists between himself and Pete Doherty before confirming a re-union. If it works, and there’s a window for that … no, a window makes it sound like a business meeting. If there’s a doorway, then certainly we’ll go through it.”

Referring to Doherty’s much publicised drug problems, Carl Barat said: “Well, once he’s settled into his grooves, and he’s fine, and he’s not hurting himself or anyone else, then that’s all fine with me.”

The warm sound of vinyl continues its resurgence in popularity, as new album sales of LPs rose 33% in 2009 from the year before, according to the figures released by Nielsen Soundscan.

2.5 million vinyl records were sold in 2009, with Radiohead topping the chart with nearly 48,000 LPs sold. Also at the top of the list were classics by the likes of Michael Jackson, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Rounding out the top 10 best sellers were smaller artists like Wilco, Animal Collective, and Bon Iver.

Animal Collective’s widely-popular Merriweather Post Pavillion was the #3 best selling vinyl record of 2009, with 14,000 units sold. Abbey Road was at the top with nearly 35,000 copies sold. Radiohead’s In Rainbows was the top selling album of 2008, and continued to sell another 11,400 copies in 2009.

Although digital music accounted for 40% of all music purchased in 2009, it is estimated that two out of every three vinyl records purchased last year were from a brick and mortar independent music store.

While these numbers may pale in comparison to the pop chart kings, this growing trend in vinyl is a positive sign that the album as an art form is here to stay.

Waiting For Something – a short documentary about Jay Reatard

Jay Reatard | MySpace Music Videos

About two years ago, four bright-eyed young Ivy Leaguers broke from indie rock’s studiedly scruffy ranks with an exuberant fusion of sunny Afro-pop rhythms and prep-school panache they dubbed ”Upper West Side Soweto.” Within several months, a top 20 full-length debut, high-profile TV gigs (SNL, Letterman), and breathless critical acclaim followed. Vampire Weekend were as close to instant alt-stars as the fragmented music industry is capable of conjuring up these days.

With the band now a known quantity, sophomore album Contra inevitably lacks the slaphappy dazzle of breakout singles like ”A Punk” and ”Oxford Comma.” Still, the album, recorded in Brooklyn and Mexico City, stays largely faithful to the sound they’ve built, with the international-groovy experiments of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel still clear signposts — Simon’s almost glaringly so. On summery first single ”Horchata,” singer Ezra Koenig gets drunk on multiculturalism, (loosely) rhyming the Mexican rice beverage of the title with ”balaclava” and ”Masada.” If the lyrics sometimes seem to showboat their 10-carat educations (look, Ma, three continents!), the music remains happily inclusive: somewhere between limbo contest on the lido deck and cocktail hour in Cape Cod.

Many of Contra’s tracks adhere to the band’s ”Graceland B sides in boat shoes” template, though the racing gallop of ”Cousins” finds the group veering into a manic sort of rockabilly-ska territory, and the airy, electro-tinged ”Taxi Cab” is surprisingly tender. Either way, the album’s January release couldn’t be better timed: For the winter-weary listener, their jubilant take on passport rock offers sweet, if temporary, relief.

Very, very sad news: It has been confirmed that Jay Reatard has died. He was 29 years old. More details are forthcoming.

Goner Records writes, “It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our good friend Jay Reatard. Jay died in his sleep last night. We will pass along information about funeral arrangements when they are made public.” The Memphis Commerical Appeal reports that Reatard was found in his home at 3:30 am this morning.

Reatard, born Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., was a staple of the Memphis garage rock scene for years before bursting on the national scene with 2006′s Blood Visions and subsequently signing to Matador. His most recent album, Watch Me Fall, came out last year.

A statement from Matador reads, “Jay was as full of life as anyone we’ve ever met, and responsible for so many memorable moments as a person and artist. We’re honored to have known and worked with him, and we will miss him terribly.”

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Austin Business Journal:

South by Southwest funneled $99 million into the local economy last year, according to a comprehensive study released today by Greyhill Advisors.

The 2009 South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Conferences and Festivals was the 23rd time the city threw the several day event. This year’s kicks off March 11.

Though the music portion has long experienced the highest draw, film events posted significant growth last year and SXSW Interactive attendance jumped 30 percent.

The five-nights of music featured more than 1,900 artists from 80 stages last year, while 330 films were cast on eight screens. Greyhill officials said SXSW was directly and indirectly responsible for injecting approximately $99 million into the Austin economy.

Operations contributed $20 million to that total and attendance accounted for about $78.8 million.

Considering the combined value of media coverage across television broadcasts, news stories, and sponsor advertising in 2009, this city also benefitted from another $21.4 million.

The highly anticipated new album from Spoon- “Transference” is now streaming online (via NPR)

UPDATE: New link is working perfectly. Enjoy

This is pure gold kids, Enjoy.. The album is out on Tuesday, January 19th on Merge Records. You can order the CD or Vinyl (w / Download Coupon) directly from Merge Records.

News from Michael Gira:

The song “Jim” recently added to the [Michael Gira MySpace] playlist is an acoustic demo (solo at home) recording by Michael Gira. this, and many other new songs recorded in the same way comprise many of the new (rough versions) of songs under consideration, to be fleshed out on the coming new Swans album. A cd of these acoustic versions, as well as a live (2 shows) dvd of M.Gira will be for sale very soon as a hand made (by Gira) package called I Am Not Insane (CD/DVD). This package – in a limited edition of 1000 – will be sold in order to raise money for the Swans recordings/offset the huge costs involved… coming soon…

Principal players on the Swans album are (and there will be many special guests):

Michael Gira / gtr / voice / mendicant friar act (original Swans)

Norman Westberg – Guitar (original Swans)

Christophj Hahn – Guitar (mid period Swans and most Angels of Light)

Phil Puleo – Drums, percussion, dulcimer etc etc (final Swans tour and most Angels)

Chris Pravdica – Bass and gadgets (Flux Information Sciences / Services / Gunga Din)

Thor Harris, Drums, percussion, vibes, dulcimer, curios, etc etc… (Angels, now also with Shearwater)

Angels Of Light is temporarily on hold while gira pursues his “new” project… -[Michael Gira]

Fantastic news, though Jarboe is missing from the list of principal players. Stay tuned for more information. Angels of Light was formed by Gira in 1998 after Swans broke up.

This isn’t a big surprise per se (it costs a ton of money to keep even a legendary studio in business), but we have a soft spot around here for some spaces and walls that once resonated with such classic records. And so, we sadly must report that Butch Vig and Steve Marker’s Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin plans to close up shop this spring, according to Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express.

Their source, a current studio employee, revealed that they simply couldn’t make ends meet, or as he put it: “Money out > money in.”

Not only were all the Garbage (Vig and Marker’s own band) records made at Smart Studios, but also eight demo versions of songs from Nirvana’s Nevermind were tracked there (the Smart Studios version of “Polly” made the final album), and then subsequently shopped to major labels. Also, Death Cab For Cutie’s major label debut Plans was mixed there, as well as the recording of the Smashing Pumpkins’ debut album, Gish.

R.I.P. Smart Studios. You will be missed.

Yoko Ono has hinted that she may write about life with The Beatles and her late husband John Lennon in her memoirs.

Answering fans’ questions on her website, Imaginepeace.com, she said that she planned to write her next book within the next five years – which would give insights into her life influences.

“I would love to do it. I just have to find the time,” she wrote when asked if she would write her memoirs. When asked what it was like for her growing up and her influences, she wrote, “Read my next book, which will be written in five years or so.”

Ono has traditionally been quiet on the issue of her relationship with the band.

In the question and answer session she said she does attend gigs by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, describing them as “wise and delightful people”.

The highly anticipated new album from Spoon- “Transference” is now streaming online (via NPR)

Listen to complete album here
UPDATE: NPR has pulled the stream until Monday Jan, 11th (We will repost stream when available)

This is pure gold kids, Enjoy.. The album is out on Tuesday, January 19th on Merge Records. You can order the CD or Vinyl (w / Download Coupon) directly from Merge Records.

Jack White has revealed details of his solo album, which he says he may record this year.

The White Stripes frontman hinted that he could get around to recording material for the album in the near future, though he admitted to Rolling Stone that he doesn’t know what form it will take.

Asked to confirm whether he was still planning to release a solo album, White replied: “Eventually, yeah, for sure.”

Speaking about whether he would play all instruments on it, he declared: “I’ve never done that [played everything himself]. I thought about that. That might be the challenge – to differentiate from anything else that I’ve done.”

White also added that he doesn’t know when he will begin work on new White Stripes, Raconteurs or Dead Weather material, explaining that he prefers to work without timeframes.

“It would be a mistake for me to premeditate anything, even in the next six months, to say what I’m going to do,” White explained. “I honestly could be working on a White Stripes [album] in the next two weeks. I have no idea if that is going to happen. And the same with The Dead Weather. I’d rather live like this without a calendar in front of me.

After a stupendously busy 2009, Jack White is not considering slowing down for even a half of a second in 2010. He’s already recording a second album with his band the Dead Weather, and you can hear how the sessions are taking shape thanks to a new 7″. The single features early takes of new tracks “No Horse” and “Jawbreaker”. The record will not be sold in stores or online, though– you’ll have to subscribe to Third Man Records’ quarterly Vault subscription service to get your hands on it. Info on signing up here. Of course, that’s not all…

This quarter’s Vault package also includes a double LP featuring every Third Man 2009 single along with two newbies for 2010. First, there’s one from 72-year-old Queen of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson. She’s offering Jack White-produced covers of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over”. (Jackson recently said she recorded an album’s worth of material with White.)

Second, there’s the all-female, garage-rocking White discovery the Black Belles– a mysterious silhouetted photo of the group (but no music) can be found on their website. Both the Jackson and Black Belles singles will be released individually on vinyl and on iTunes January 26 (no subscription necessary).

Meanwhile, the White Stripes’ website is still accepting pre-orders for the duo’s forthcoming massive live box set, Under Great White Northern Lights, due in March.

The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. album sales in 2009 declined for the eighth time in nine years, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while online song downloads grew too slowly to close the gap.

The data, released Wednesday, indicate that the recorded-music industry is still struggling to adapt to the digital age, even as SoundScan said digital downloads now account for 40% of music purchases.

Variety sums up the less-than-stellar but still not-apocalyptic figures:

The music biz may be undergoing drastic shifts, but music still sells. Though sales of physical albums continued to wither in 2009, the number of overall music purchases rose 2.1% last year, according to year-end figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Between Jan. 5, 2009, and Jan. 3, 2010, total album sales (encompassing CDs, cassettes, LPs and digital albums) plummeted 12.7%, with almost 374 million units sold (down from 428.4 million in 2008). Overall album sales (including all albums and “track equivalent” digital albums) fell 8.5%, with nearly 490 million units sold vs. 535.4 million the previous year. Internet sales of physical albums plunged 8% during the same period.
Nonetheless, the digital realm, which accounted for 40% of total U.S. music purchases, experienced a continuing upswing: Digital album sales gained 16.1%, while digital track sales climbed 8.3%. A staggering 1.1 billion digital tracks were sold last year.

Though its sales levels were humble, the old-fashioned vinyl LP witnessed the biggest percentage sales gain last year, climbing 33% with 2.5 million sold. Two out of three vinyl albums sold were purchased at independent retailers.

—

Across the pond, the Belfast Telegraph reports that album sales were down 3.5%, 8.5% less than in the US:

Album sales in the UK fell by 3.5% in 2009, despite a growth in digital sales, figures have showed.

The Official Charts Company data showed that combined albums market sales of 128.9 million – including physical CDs and digital downloads – declined by 3.5% during 2009.

Digital albums now account for 12.5% of the albums market.

While UK Singles reached an all-time high:

The growth of downloads helped the UK singles market enjoy its best year ever in 2009. According to figures released by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), 152.7m singles were sold last year, 98% of which comprised tracks that were downloaded

Future Of The Left have said that they are going to begin work on a new album next month – despite leaving their record label.

Andy Falkous and his band have parted ways 4AD imprint Too Pure after releasing two albums through them, but has said that they will carry on regardless.

“‘Travels [With Myself And Another', their latest album] was, after a difficult gestation period, an album that we are inordinately proud of,” said Falkous. “Before the process of starting each record I always say I want to write a pop album and then our personalities get in the way. This time I’m hoping to take the thing full circle and to channel the spirit of Freddie Mercury – not Brian May – through Slayer’s backline.”

Meanwhile Future Of The Left kick off a UK tour later this month, playing the following dates:

Newcastle Cluny (January 16)
Aberdeen Tunnels (17)
Glasgow King Tut’s (18)
Manchester Ruby Lounge (19)
Nottingham Bodega (21)
Sheffield Corporation (23)
Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach (28)
(via NME)

Over eleven minutes, the Knife introduce their most recent costume with “Colouring The Pigeon,” the first sounds from their operatic composition Tomorrow, In A Year, composed in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock. The piece was commissioned by Hotel Pro Forma, to accompany the Danish performance art group’s opera based on Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of The Species. Which works out, because Karin and Olof were already all about birds anyway. “Pigeons” is a master blast — it’s less obviously electronic than the Knife of the naughts, freely incorporating operatic elements as per the assignment — strings, bel canto vocalisms — but as soon as Karin jumps in after the hockety, harmonized vocal intro, and the various, sublimely eerie instrumental arpeggios color the remains, the Dreijer signature is bold on this one, even if it’s on a mask geared for a different sort of theater. This is a big one, must-download:

The Knife – “Colouring Of Pigeons” (MP3)

The Tomorrow, In A Year album is out digitally 2/2 (physically 3/9) via Mute. Some tracklist info:

TRACKLIST
CD 1
01 “Intro”
02 “Epochs”
03 “Geology”
04 “Upheaved”
05 “Minerals”
06 “Ebb Tide Explorer”
07 “Variation Of Birds”
08 “Letter To Henslow”
09 “Schoal Swarm Orchestra”

CD 2
01 “Annie’s Box”
02 “Tumult”
03 “Colouring Of Pigeons”
04 “Seeds”
05 “Tomorrow In A Year”
06 “The Height Of Summer”

Bonus track
07 “Annie’s Box” (alt. vocal)

The opera’s been performed once in Copenhagen last September, with performances scheduled for Athens (January 8-9), Stockholm (January 29-February 1), and Munster (June 5th), with others TBA. Here’s a statement Olof gave on the project:

At first it was very difficult as we really didn’t know anything about opera. We’d never been to one. I didn’t even know what the word libretto meant. But after some studying, and just getting used to opera’s essence of pretentious and dramatic gestures, I found that there is a lot to learn and play with. In fact, our ignorance gave us a positive respectless approach to making opera. It took me about a year to become emotionally moved by an opera singer and now I really do. I really like the basic theatrical values of opera and theeasy way it brings forward a narrative. We’ve approached this before in The Knife but never in such a clear way.

All Tomorrow’s Parties:

We are pleased to present a new set of line-up additions chosen by Matt Groening, genius behind the Simpsons and Futurama, for his ATP festival weekend at Butlins, Minehead on May 7th – 9th 2010. They are:

IGGY & THE STOOGES
COCO ROSIE
BUILT TO SPILL
JAMES CHANCE AND LES CONTORTIONS
THEE OH SEES
JUANA MOLINA
LIGHTNING DUST
KONONO N°1

The line-up so far looks like this with far more to be confirmed:

IGGY & THE STOOGES / COCO ROSIE / BUILT TO SPILL / JAMES CHANCE AND LES CONTORTIONS / PANDA BEAR / DEERHUNTER / DANIEL JOHNSTON / THE RESIDENTS / BOREDOMS performing Boadrum / THE RAINCOATS / BROADCAST / THEE OH SEES / JUANA MOLINA / LIGHTNING DUST / KONONO N°1 / TOUMANI DIABATE / DANIELSON / JAMES BLACKSHAW / AMADOU AND MARIAM / SHONEN KNIFE / RUINS (SOLO) / VIV ALBERTINE‘S LIMERENCE / ANNI ROSSI

Tickets for this event are on sale now from Seetickets, Gigantic and Wegottickets.
Click Here For Full Info And Ticket Links.

They are priced at £163.50 per person for room only accommodation or £173.75 per person for self catered accommodation. Some chalet options have sold out.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqznGcH92IE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

TechCrunch:

We’ve heard that a compromise has been reached. Spotify will be free for users, but a “very limited” number of people will be able to use it.

Much more interesting, though, are the conversations with Google that we’ve confirmed. The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s excellent Android application would be build into the 2.1 version of Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google Nexus One phone on January 5. The application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline syncing of songs – would give Google a much needed competitive answer to Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into it.

Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue. Without Google paying those label fees there was no way Spotify could handle the costs of the user flow that 2.1 would provide. Currently, European users must pay for Spotify Premium to use the mobile versions of the service.

CNet:
I went to my music industry sources to see what was up. What I learned from them is that Spotify started speaking to the largest recording companies about acquiring licensing to deliver music in the U.S. a long time ago but hasn’t reached a deal with at least three major labels.

TechCrunch also reported that negotiations between Spotify and the labels have faltered because Spotify wants to offer a free music service in the U.S., presumably supported by advertising, and the labels are balking.

The recording industry has seen how tough it is to generate profits from selling ads and has largely given up on the ad-supported business model. The list of failed ad-supported music services is long and includes SpiralFrog, Imeem, and Ruckus.

Look for more Spotify rumors to circulate around the Web. The site’s user experience has generated great word of mouth overseas and that has touched off lots of anticipation in the U.S.
But here’s the reality about the company: Spotify managers haven’t demonstrated that they know anything more about turning users into dollars than their American counterparts. Whether Spotify will make a splash here or whether it can even produce profits at home have yet to be determined.

Karen O and T Bone Burnett’s respective scores for Where The Wild Things Are and Crazy Heart were good enough for the Golden Globes, but the Academy Awards’ nonsensical music rules have struck again, disqualifying them from earning a Best Original Score Oscar. The Wrap reports that O’s and Burnett’s film scores were likely bumped by the following rule:

[S]cores diluted by the use of tracked themes or other preexisting music, diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs, or assembled from the music of more than one composer shall not be eligible.

Both musicians collaborated with other artists (Carter Burwell with O and Stephen Bruton with Burnett), plus there’s no doubt that they both employed a “predominant use of songs,” so that’s two possible infractions for the Oscar cops right there. Burnett and O do each have 2 songs still in the running for a Best Original Song nod, but the score category will be left to some of the usual suspects

Meanwhile, Brian Eno didn’t even bother giving the Academy a chance to scrutinize his The Lovely Bones score, opting instead to stay out of the running because he “didn’t have time to submit the required paperwork and submit to the type of publicity campaign necessary.”

I love that: Eno is just too busy being one of the coolest artists alive for this award show crap.

In early 2009 the venerable Kill Rock Stars was once again rewarded for good taste when Thao Nguyen’s much lauded second album became the label’s best seller of 2008. If that album, We Brave Bee Stings and All, was taking a playful distance on growing pains to adulthood, Thao & Co.‘s third album, Know Better, Learn Faster, is a creative, catchy, and often ironically emotive reflection on the timeless theme “love hurts.” It’s all in the title, as Thao explains on the Kill Rock Stars page for the album: “The album is named Know Better Learn Faster because you can’t. By the time you realize you should, it’s too late.” The tragedy of human love.

Thao’s last album has been described as playful, and KBLF is possibly even more so. Most of this album is instrumentally upbeat, which belies the anger, frustration, melancholy and loss that imbue its lyrics. Nguyen launches the track “Easy” with the statement, “Sad people dance too”. That line perfectly captures the ethos of this unassumingly seductive album, simultaneously groove-ridden and melancholic. Indeed, several danceable tracks have a funk riff reminiscent of Modest Mouse, Cold War Kids, and Spoon (coincidentally, the album was produced by Grammy-nominated Tucker Martine, who has worked with Spoon). It’s a special feat they’ve accomplished. Think of their company: the Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” was hilariously ironic and given to sing-alongs, but danceable?

While part of the irony of this album stems from the relationship between lyrics and instrumental accompaniment, it also stems from Nguyen’s vocal style, which has a certain childish quality about it, resulting in some songs having a slight similarity to nursery rhymes. This is nowhere more evident than in the opening slow dance funk of “When We Swam”. The comparisons with Chan Marshall will continue on this record (perhaps especially on “Trouble Was For”, as her voice climbs to a higher note with each of those title words). However, on the faster songs, such as “Body”, Nguyen displays a funked vocal style perhaps closest to Modest Mouse’s Issac Brock, alternating with a tone and pitch not far from the distinctive whine-sing of Clap Your Hands’ Alec Ounsworth. Despite the pleasant echoes, she is no imitation.

The song arrangements are also one of the album’s strengths. Songs like the opener, “The Clap”, demonstrate mature layers and developments that transform some songs from beginning to end. “The Clap” begins as a kind of spiritual, but soon stomp-claps keep time for the repetitive blues riff “If this is how you want it okay, okay”—for 33 seconds exactly. It moves from spiritual like “Let My People Go” and ends up being welded onto a clap-happy grade-school-music-class number. Consider also “Oh, no”, a patient, complex slow-burn-of a song, at its peak unveiling a gorgeous layering of back up vocals, cymbal crashes, and high-pitched, low-mixed guitar weeps and moans (imitating a country pedal steel).

Equally memorable for its arrangement is the title track, which features Andrew Bird’s strings and minor-key musings. This very Bird-stamped track begins sparse, with mere shakers for percussion and a couple of briskly plucked clear electric guitars accompanying Nguyen’s sadly emotive and often sharply punctuated vocals. However, one-minute later, Bird’s long and weepy bow strokes enter, followed by a galloping drum beat. The song exhausts itself with Bird’s trademark theremin-like whistling, going out balefully with Nguyen’s whimper, “Oh, Oh, Oh”.

“Oh, oh, oh” is a good opening into the lyrical virtues of this album. Stripped of their instrumental and delivery contexts, the lyrics will appear hopelessly simple. They tell the timeless story of love, loss, and heartache, especially noticeable in the abundance of woeful oh’s and no’s throughout, which as refrains embedded in the music perfectly punctuate all other lines. “I need you to be, better than me, you need me to do, better than you”, Nguyen reflects in “Know better, learn faster”, which she promptly follows with “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh”, each one held for a few seconds as they ascend and then descend the music scale, sounding like inconsolable sobbing. Similarly, the provocatively titled “Burn You Up” fades with wails of “oh” after having offered confessions and impossible fantasies about love lost: “I mishandled you, but don’t you think we came close? Oh oh-o-oh. Don’t you want to come home with me?” On several occasions the lyrics speak to the lost lover, pleading for him to come back or stay, as in the catchy “When we swam”, which ends rather elongatedly: “Oh why, oh why, oh whyyyyyy, won’t you stay?” If we can’t identify with that then we probably haven’t lived much yet. What’s beautiful is that Nguyen can reflectively, even playfully, make music about it. As for the rest of us doomed to suffer the same fate: at least we have this music as comfort to dance to.
Know Better, Learn Faster is without a doubt one of the best indie folk-rock albums of the year.

Wilco, the celebrated Chicago-based roots-rock band whose latest album is nominated for a Grammy award, announced today a 16-date East Coast tour kicking off March 22 that will find the band revisiting songs from each of its seven studio albums. Billed as “An Evening with Wilco,” the band promises “extended, varied sets” in mid-sized theaters. Tickets for all the shows start pre-sales through the band’s official website, wilcoworld.net, on Wednesday, January 6 at 10:00 a.m. EST.

The spring East Coast tour adds to an already busy schedule for Wilco in 2010. The band is scheduled to appear as part of the 2010 MusicCares Person of the Year concert honoring Neil Young in late January, before playing embarking on a tour of the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Canada. The band will also play in Japan, New Zealand and Australia in April and May.

The band is also setting to work on new songs. According to sources, Wilco will record new material in its Chicago loft studio during the January break from the road.

In addition, Wilco co-founder Jeff Tweedy is producing a new album for fellow Chicagoan Mavis Staples at Wilco’s loft studio in Chicago thoughout the month. Neko Case band singers Nora O’Connor and Kelly Hogan are singing with Staples on the new recordings. A 2010 release on Anti- is expected.

After a quick retro read of Lester Bangs’ Led Zeppelin III review (dated 1970), two thoughts sprang to mind: A) if Bangs lived, he’d be a blogger and B) the Zep’s place in rock’s canon is much more debatable than commonly thought. We could riff on those thoughts night and day, but, frankly, there is no Led Zeppelin without John Bonham, IMO, and Jimmy Page disagrees… I guess.

“You’d better ask Robert Plant what the future of Led Zeppelin is,” said the legendary guitarist (via Starpulse). “Musicians can always play together but I don’t think you can go out with a band called Led Zeppelin if you haven’t got the original vocalist.”

To read between the lines, Plant and his armful of Grammys just aren’t down with Page and his Oscar-snubbed documentaries. No, it’s more complicated than that, of course, but this quote only provides more fodder for Bangs and my “nursing [of] this love-hate attitude toward Led Zeppelin.”

Don’t get me wrong: I love Led Zeppelin (I think). These guys have cast some of the biggest hooks to date, but sometimes we all get tired of feeling like bait.

Spinner:

Child Abuse Watch founder and CEO Evin Daly told the press, “The Who is a great band. Pete Townshend is the only issue here.”

Townshend…was given a police warning following the charges and put on the U.K.‘s Violent and Sex Offender Register for five years. Townshend contends that he purchased access to a Texas-based pedophile website as part of research for his autobiography, which was published in 2008. He was also booked for possession of “indecent pictures,” but was cleared of those charges, as no pictures were found on his computer.

AbuseWatch.net’s statement on Townshend:http://www.abusewatch.net/CAN_NFL_Townshend.php

Our Position: Child AbuseWatch is objecting to the hiring of Pete Townshend of the WHO by the NFL as the half-time act for the upcoming Super Bowl XLIV. Townshend was caught and arrested by British police in 2003 for accessing and viewing a Texas-based child pornography website.

Townshend admitted to and pleaded guilty to the crime of accessing and paying for viewing child pornography online and received a ‘caution’ (guilty plea with adjudication withheld) from the police and avoided a formal trial. He was never cleared of any charges pertaining to his caution and resulting sex offender status.

Townshend was listed as a sexual offender on the British Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR) from 2003 to 2008. The police did not detect child rape images on his computers despite his guilty plea. His excuse of conducting ‘research’ is one well documented by the FBI when they make arrests for child pornography (see under the following sections Facts and Resources – Research).

Other points of interest:

*In 2002 he wrote in a paper (see Smoking Gun article) ‘that the “pathway to ‘free’ pedophilic imagery is—as it were—laid out like a free line of cocaine at a decadent cocktail party: only the strong willed or terminally uncurious can resist.’

*In 2006 he wrote and subsequently withdrew a graphic teen sex story on his website (See London Times article 2006).

In a statement issued by his solicitor, Townshend said at the time, “I accept that I was wrong to access this site, and that by doing so, I broke the law, and I have accepted the caution that the police have given me.” Key facts of the case taken from the London Times May 08, 2003

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwdU7I_1R9o&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Imagine for a moment that the internet is something you can hold in your hands. You pick it up and, ignoring mother’s pleas to leave the mucky thing alone, you set about building a scrapbook for every band ever blogged about, by anyone, anywhere. When you’re done, a billion volumes of yack-stack tower and teeter above you like an ironic and never-ending forest of corpse trees, but it’s Animal Collective whose music has inspired the most virtual ‘column inches’; their book of clippings is so thick Yuri Gagarin can see it, and he’s not just flung out in space any more, he’s nowhere.

And that’s strange, isn’t it? Not that they attract praise, or that Gagarin’s dead (it’s a dangerous profession), but that so much blather surrounds the quartet when the noises they make – slippery, absurd, familiar yet future-new – are so hard to talk about. Taking this record apart is like diving into the sea and trying to glue water together. Better to let it wash over you, because the sound of ‘Fall Be Kind’ is one of a band fast running out of context.

Baltimore-born, Brooklyn-based, Animal Collective already seem to exist on no-one else’s terms but their own. This EP looms into life with ‘Graze’; a track that begins by stealing Walt Disney’s strings and disappears while playing electric panpipes on a medieval waltzer. Where did it go? Where did the electricity come from? Is Walt Disney still frozen in the past? Gluing. Water.

That absurd, time-defying hoedown somehow bleeds seamlessly into ‘What Would I Want? Sky’, which has been in Animal Collective’s live set for over a year, and as such is already more famous on the internet than Tyson the skateboarding bulldog. Sun-baked and blissed out, it’s just as warming and impressive as watching Tyson roll around California’s oceanfront and mocks the band’s assertion that what’s here was “too dark” for their last album. It contains the first legal sample, sounds a bit like Lemon Jelly’s ‘The Staunton Lick’ and still manages – through its hook’s hypnotic repetition – to be the best thing you’ll hear all day.

The surprises continue to gather. ‘On A Highway’ and ‘I Think I Can’ are the most ‘standard’ Animal Collective fare here, the former guided through a lonely night drive by Avey Tare, his eyes picking out pissing workmen, pretty lady passengers and dreaming bandmate Noah Lennox. The latter, the EP’s final track, is Noah’s, and as such loops and lopes along, his throat trailing cascades across strange, quacking synths and war-march drums as he harmonises with sampled versions of himself. It’s good – everything on ‘Fall Be Kind’ is good – but it’s not something we haven’t heard done better before, either in Animal Collective’s past or in 2007, on Lennox’s full-length ‘Person Pitch’.

That’s not to say their past is becoming a curse. This EP’s centrepiece, a stunning hymnal called ‘Bleed’, ranks alongside anything Lennox, Tare (real name David Portner), Brian ‘Geologist’ Weitz and Josh ‘Deakin’ Dibb have ever put their names to. Slow-motion and sparse, it’ll widen your eyes and put an ache in your gut; consisting of little more than Tare’s cooing, Lennox’s wailing and the sombre drone of a lone cello. Stripped of all the sonic flotsam that usually surrounds them, Animal Collective come into their own – if you can ignore the chatter to listen with innocent ears, they surpass ‘good’ and remain bewildering.

from the rights-holders-f*ck-up-everything dept

Two rather successful venture capitalists, Brad Feld and Fred Wilson, have been at the forefront of bucking the ridiculous claim that VCs only invest in companies that have patents, as both have spoken out about how patents tend to stifle innovation, and how their portfolio companies are often held back by patents, rather than helped by them. It looks like both of them are also quite aware of how copyright gets in the way of basic innovation as well. Brad Feld has a post up about how he created a Pandora station based on Fred’s blog post detailing his top albums of the decade. Pretty cool, right?

Well, the problem is that Brad sent Fred an invite to this “station,” and Fred is traveling for the holidays in Argentina with his family. So, because of ridiculous demands from copyright holders that make it so Pandora is only available in the US, Brad gets informed that Fred cannot access the station that Brad created for Fred solely due to ridiculous copyright holder demands. Yes, even though Fred almost always accesses Pandora from the US, but just happens to be in Argentina this week, Pandora says he can’t listen to the station that Brad created for him. Brad makes a good
point, that any human can understand why this situation is silly, but computers still can’t quite figure it out, noting: “The level of interaction of human and machine is high, although the level of sophistication is pretty low.” As for Fred’s summation of the situation? “Rights holders f*ck everything up.” Indeed.

Here is what Fred saw:

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in Argentina (your IP address appears to be 201.234.146.243). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us atpandora-support@pandora.com

If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.

We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.

We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.