The Sub Pop Singles Club: The Return of the Return of Khan

The Sub Pop Singles Club is back, all tan and rested after a shockingly long sabbatical. It is a somewhat louche, world-weary thing with its eye on your wallet. And, for a price, The Sub Pop Singles Club is ready and willing to satisfy you aurally in ways you never dreamed possible.

Without further pandering, here are the facts!

Fact 1!
This run of The Sub Pop Singles Club will run for 1 year only, before returning to its secret island vacation spot for eternity (or until we here at Sub Pop feel masochistic enough to take on coordinating this debacle again.)

Fact 2!
This year’s Sub Pop Singles Club will include records (of the 7” variety) with music from such artists as Om, Unnatural Helpers, Tyvek, Black Mountain, Black Lips, Arthur & Yu, Mika Miko, Blues Control, Notwist, plus some stuff we’re not yet at liberty to divulge. And they won’t come out in that particular order, necessarily.

Fact 3!
We will mail you 1 record per month, every month for an entire year beginning on August 15th with a fantastic pair of songs from Om.

Fact 4!
For shipments to North America, you will pay us $75 in exchange for receiving this monthly boon from us. If you live elsewhere, in places outside of North America, we will require $90 from you.

Fact 5!
We will be pressing 1,500 copies of each single and so the number of subscriptions available for sale will be correspondingly limited. When these subscriptions are gone, that’s it!

Fact 6!
In addition to the singles themselves, each subscriber will receive a coupon enabling the download of high-quality MP3s of each record. No need to worry about how you’ll jam that 7” into your disk drive, we’ve got all you technophiliacs with your new-fangled gadgets covered.

Fact 7!
Subscriptions will be limited to 5 per person.

So here’s your chance to join the throngs of assholes selling their collectibles on eBay for ridiculous sums! All you have to do is: SEND US YOUR MONEY!

PLEASE NOTE: The subscription is $90 USD for all customers outside North America. The extra charge will be added in the checkout process.

SIGN UP HERE.. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!!

Alan McGee: 'All record companies are rubbish'

Alan McGee – the man who signed Oasis to his record label, Creation – has advised new bands not to sign to any record labels, describing them all as "rubbish".

Speaking on an XFM documentary about Creation, set to air tonight (July 3) at 10pm (BST), McGee urged bands to go it alone.

"I'd recommend a band not to go to any record label, I think they're all fucking rubbish," he said. "You're better off doing it yourself. They're living in the past, it's like owning a tram company or something."

McGee famously signed Oasis in 1993 after witnessing a gig by the band in his native Glasgow.
(NME)

Ian Curtis grave stone stolen

The memorial stone dedicated to former Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis has been stolen from a Cheshire cemetery.

Curtis was 23 when he hanged himself in the kitchen of his Macclesfield home in May 1980, shortly before the band were due to go on tour in the US.

Cheshire Police said the memorial stone was taken from where he is buried in Macclesfield Cemetery.

Officers are appealing for anyone with information on its whereabouts to contact them.

Detectives said the kerbstone, which has the inscription "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and the words "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was taken sometime between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.

"Unusual theft"

A police spokesman said: "There is no CCTV in the area and there are no apparent leads as to who is responsible for the theft.

"This is a very unusual theft and I am confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present."


We are agog that someone's gone to the trouble of taking it out. We are stunned
Tony Barker, Macclesfield Borough Council

Tony Barker, spokesman for Macclesfield Borough Council, which runs the site, said: "It would usually have flowers behind it and mementoes to Ian Curtis's life.

"It wasn't concreted in but tarmacked up to it.

"This has never happened before and we are agog that someone's gone to the trouble of taking it out. We are stunned."

Bill North, the council's services manager, added: "I'm shocked this has happened.

"Someone's gone to a great deal of trouble to remove the memorial stone and I hope our appeal will help return it as soon as possible."

Although the band reformed as New Order after Curtis's death in 1980, there has been an upsurge of interest in its work.

An acclaimed biopic about Curtis, called Control, was released in 2007 and a film documentary, called Joy Division, was released earlier this year.
(News via BBC)

Kingblind's Favorite Finds

The Guardian's blog makes a point that more bands should split up sooner.

MTV thinks they know of some good albums in 2008. Some right, Many wrong.

Bradley's Almanac has Mp3s of R.E.M. live in Mansfield, MA

An Extremely Brief History Of Blog Feuds.

Keith Moon's Last Interview

Sub Pop 20th Anniversary Festival

Lost Beatles interview to air after 44 years

LONDON, England (AP) -- The British Broadcasting Corp. will air a long-lost Beatles interview featuring John Lennon and Paul McCartney talking about the day they met and their songwriting partnership.
Lennon-McCartney

A 1964 John Lennon and Paul McCartney interview was discovered in a London garage.

The precious film sat forgotten for 44 years in a garage in south London until film fan Richard Jeffs realized a piece of pop history was contained inside.

Experts were surprised to find the audio portion still usable for radio broadcast.

The nine-minute interview was recorded at the Scottish Television studios in April 1964 during the early days of Beatlemania. The interview with the two Beatles will be broadcast for the first time on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday and repeated later this week.

On the tape, Lennon tells how he was playing with a skiffle band outside Liverpool when McCartney introduced himself.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Midnight Man (Music Video)

Deerhoof prepares 9th album release

Experimental rock act Deerhoof returns this fall with its ninth album, "Offend Maggie," due Oct. 7 via Kill Rock Stars. The 14-song set marks a change in the way the group would normally prepare for the studio -- this time, it decided to actually rehearse.

"We basically [used to show] each other song ideas and then that day turn the record button on, having never rehearsed," drummer Greg Saunier said. "This time we wrote the songs and rehearsed them, and actually played them at a few concerts where we could play them straight through as a band."

But Deerhoof's newfound methods have not made the band any less challenging. "Offend Maggie" extends Deerhoof's schizophrenic approach to melding rock, electronics and free jazz sounds, but also introduces new guitarist Ed Rodriguez, expanding the group to a full-time four-piece.

"Ed's music, in its way, is so flexible," Saunier explains. "He's working with combinations of notes in a sort of very academic way, which could be turned into anything. We turned his ideas into something completely unlike what we would have foreseen."

In a unique twist, Deerhoof plans to make sheet music available for an as-yet-undetermined song from the new album, allowing fans to create their own recorded interpretations before having heard the finished album version. A Web site will be set up in the next few weeks for fans to upload their work.

Deerhoof's fall tour plans are currently being worked out, but a few dates in Japan and the U.S. are on the books for later this month.

Here is the track list for "Offend Maggie":

"Offend Maggie"
"Fresh Born"
"Chandelier Searchlight"
"The Tears and Music of Love"
"Buck and Judy"
"Don't Get Born"
"My Purple Past"
"Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back"
"Numina"
"This Is God Speaking"
"Eaguru Guru"
"Snoopy Waves"
"Jagged Fruit"
"Family of Others"

The Sea & Cake Energized For Eighth Album

The Sea & Cake frontman Sam Prekop concedes "Car Alarm," the Chicago indie rock institution's eighth studio album, "does feel much more upbeat and as much in your face as the Sea & Cake can be."

He's proven correct on songs like "Aerial" and the title cut, which practically blast out of the speakers in comparison to the smooth, soulful pop of the band's recent releases.

"We showed up, everybody had their ideas together, and we worked them out in the studio quickly," Prekop said. "That was pretty exciting. We capitalized on having played live quite a bit in the not too distant past."

There's still plenty of gently groovy listening to be had on "New Schools" and "Down in the City," as well as a strange acoustic/electro hybrid pop song in the form of "Weekend" and an album-closing instrumental, "Mirrors," built around ... steel drums.

"I actually tried to get more of it on there," Prekop says with a laugh. "[Drummer] John [McEntire] got them on eBay. They're super high-end, so they're especially accurate and hi-fi. Van Dyke Parks has a record called 'America,' which has steel drum all over it. It's an interesting pseudo homage in some ways."

Prekop says the Sea & Cake will "be doing a bunch of touring in the fall. Maybe not a bunch, but most of the major cities -- a couple of weeks on the coast."

In addition, he's plotting a duo record with Sea & Cake guitarist Archer Prewitt, featuring "just the guitars and me singing. That may be my next project. I hope to get writing on that pretty soon."

Iggy and The Stooges announce 2008 Summer Tour

Iggy Pop & the Stooges - 2008 Tour Dates
07/04 - Skanevik Blues Festival Oslo, NO
07/13 - La Grande Armada Rouen, FR
07/19 - Garden Nef Party Festival Angouleme, FR
07/26 - Race & Rock Festival Seinajoki, FI
08/03 - Osheaga Music and Arts Montreal, Canada
08/06 - Massey Hall Toronto, Canada
08/08 - Terminal 5 New York, NY
08/24 - Clapham Common London, UK Loaded In The Park
08/28 - Zitadelle Berlin, DE
08/30 - Rock Am See Konstanz, DE
09/16 - Amphitheater Gelsenkirchen, DE
09/18 - Hamburg Stadtpark Hamburg, DE
09/22 - Ice Rink St. Petersburg, RU
09/24 - B1 Moscow, RU

Amy Winehouse Glastonbury 'punch victim' speaks

The fan who was allegedly punched by Amy Winehouse at Glastonbury on Saturday night (June 28) has spoken out about the experience.

James Gostelow, a 25 year-old Londoner, told BBC News that the incident was the result of mistaken identity, as someone in the crowd behind him threw a hat at the singer.

Golstelow claimed that Winehouse was reacting to the hat being thrown, and believed it was he who had thrown it at her. He said he was not bitter about the incident, saying it was part of the of the festival experience.

"I saw a hat being thrown from behind me and it hit Amy's beehive," he said. "She looked down, saw me looking up, and her elbow went for me.

"She caught my forehead, then someone may have shouted something from the back, which is when she went in again.

"At the end of the day it is all part of being at the front and being pushed by thousands of people. It is all part of the Glastonbury experience. I'm just pleased I got to see her. She did a great act.

"Not everyone can say they have been hit by Amy Winehouse. I just want to shake the person who threw the hat."

Gostelow's footage of the Amy Winehouse 'attack' is available to watch at BBC News and Cnn.com
Watch the video here

Jay Z Covers Oasis wins over Glastonbury Festival

The tents are packed up and most of the 140,000 music lovers have made their weary way home, but memories of this year's Glastonbury festival, and its headline act Jay-Z, are likely to linger.

The choice of the U.S. rapper to perform on the main stage at a festival best known for its guitar-based rock acts was widely criticized, and Oasis' Noel Gallagher riled the musician by saying the organizers were wrong to pick him.

Jay-Z's response was emphatic. He opened his show with a film using Gallagher's now infamous comments and a montage of clips parodying him, before launching into an acoustic rendition of one of Oasis's biggest hits, "Wonderwall." Most fans and critics were impressed.

"His performance will go down in Glastonbury history," wrote the Independent in a review of the festival.

Rather than being booed off stage as some predicted, "both audience and artist rose to the occasion and turned in a moment of real, euphoric, pop-culture history," added the Times.

The Guardian concluded: "It's brilliantly staged, utterly thrilling and it makes Gallagher look a bit of a jerk."

The Daily Mirror tabloid, however, described his performance as dull. "I felt seriously short-changed as I walked away from this performance," it said.

Tom Waits awarded key to El Paso

Tom Waits was awarded an official key to the city of El Paso, Texas yesterday.

The legendary singer was not expecting the honour when a uniformed officer walked onstage at El Paso's Plaza Theatre, where he was performing.

"I paid all those tickets," Waits quipped when he saw the officer, adding: "She was dead when I got there."

El Paso councilwoman Susie Boyd then came onto the stage and handed Waits a plaque, which held a key to the city.

Waits, visibly moved, said,: "This is a first for me, a real first."

Waits will continue his Gloom And Doom Tour playing shows throughout the midwest before heading to Europe for a string of summer dates.

Tom Waits Tour Dates:
06.28 Columbus, OH: Ohio Theatre
06.29 Knoxville, TN: Civic Theatre
07.01 Jacksonville, FL: Moran Theatre
07.02 Mobile, AL: Saenger Theatre
07.03 Birmingham, AL: Alabama Theatre
07.05 Atlanta, GA: Fox Theatre

Jesus & Mary Chain Reveal Box Set

The long-awaited Jesus & Mary Chain boxed set is finally set for release Sept. 30 via Rhino.

The four-disc "The Power of Negative Thinking: B-Sides & Rarities" is presented in chronological order and offers a host of previously unreleased tracks, including the "Psychocandy"-era "Walk and Crawl," alternate versions of "Never Understand" and "Coast to Coast," demos of "My Little Underground," "The Living End" and "Dirty Water" and the never-before-heard "Till I Found You."

The box also sports 19 of the 20 rarities previously released on the 1988 compilation "Barbed Wire Kisses," and a cassette-sourced 1983 recording of "Up Too High."

The packaging for "Negative Thinking" is a 6-by-10 gatefold shell and includes an 18-by-24 double-sided poster featuring artwork and a Jesus & Mary Chain family tree.

Meanwhile, work continues on the band's first new studio album in a decade, a release date for which has yet to be announced.

Here is the track list for "The Power of Negative Thinking":

Disc one:
"Up Too High"
"Upside Down"
"Vegetable Man"
"Suck"
"Ambition"
"Just Out of Reach"
"Boyfriend's Dead"
"Head"
"Just Like Honey" (demo, October 1984)
"Cracked"
"Taste of Cindy" (acoustic)
"The Hardest Walk"
"Never Understand" (alternate)
"My Little Underground" (demo)
"The Living End" (demo)
"Some Candy Talking"
"Psychocandy"
"Hit"
"Cut Dead" (acoustic)
"You Trip Me Up" (acoustic)
"Walk and Crawl"

Disc two:
"Kill Surf City"
"Bo Diddle Is Jesus"
"Who Do You Love"
"Everything's Alright When You're Down"
"Shake"
"Happy When It Rains" (demo)
"Happy Place"
"F. Hole"
"Rider"
"On the Wall" (demo)
"Surfin' USA" (outtake)
"Here It Comes Again"
"Don't Ever Change"
"Swing"
"Sidewalking"
"Surfin' USA" (summer mix)
"Shimmer"
"Penetration"
"Break Me Down"
"Subway"
"My Girl"

Disc three:
"In the Black"
"Terminal Beach"
"Deviant Slice"
"I'm Glad I Never"
"Drop" (acoustic remix)
"Rollercoaster"
"Silverblade"
"Lowlife"
"Tower of Song"
"Heat"
"Guitarman"
"Why'd You Want Me"
"Sometimes"
"Teenage Lust" (acoustic version)
"Reverberation (Doubt)"
"Don't Come Down"
"Snakedriver"
"Something I Can't Have"
"Write Record Release Blues"
"Little Red Rooster"

Disc four:
"The Perfect Crime"
"Little Stars"
"Drop" (re-recorded version)
"I'm in With the Out Crowd"
"New York City"
"Taking It Away"
"Ghost of a Smile"
"Alphabet Street"
"Coast to Coast" (alternate take)
"Dirty Water" (alternate take)
"Till I Found You"
"Bleed Me"
"33 1/3"
"Lost Star"
"Hide Myself"
"Rocket"
"Easylife, Easylove"
"40,000K"
"Nineteen666"

Kingblind Downloads

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

NOMO - Three Shades

Au - Are Animals

Alejandro Escovedo - Always A Friend

Kassin+2 - Tranqüilo (Super Stereo Sound System)

The Blind Shake - Midnight Scream.mp3

My Brightest Diamond: A Thousand Shark's Teeth (Album Review)

My first spin of My Brightest Diamond's sophomore effort, A Thousand Shark's Teeth, was accompanied by a Wikipedia binge that focused primarily on the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The album provided an evocative backdrop for my perusal of the details surrounding the ocean liner's doomed maiden voyage, but it wasn't until a second, more attentive listen that I realized how appropriate a soundtrack it was. The album's title comes from the song "Goodbye Lover," in which singer-songwriter Shara Worden likens the risks of love to an agonizing death at sea—specifically, "fear of exposure" and the prickling of "a thousand shark teeth." The portrait painted throughout Shark's Teeth is of a self-contained world, some faraway Brigadoon filled with storms and teeming with tidal shifts: "I want a storm to blow it out/I want to shake myself and turn my heart inside out," Worden sings on the theatrical "Ice and the Storm," a snow globe of a song. Throughout the album, cascading guitars submerge Worden's soundscapes of swelling strings, tinkling pianos and rattling percussion like rolling waves. "I rest my head on water/I slip under/I descend into the deep/Past the rushes, past the shipwrecks/Into my tears I flow," she says on "Like a Sieve."

Originally conceived as an album of string-quartet pieces, Shark's Teeth evolved into something more musically full-bodied (the spare "If I Were Queen" might be the only vestige from the initial concept): the peculiar, cabaret-style "Black and Cousaud" borrows lyrics from Ravel's L'enfant et les Sortileges; "To Pluto's Moon," the album's mournful, trip-hop-infused centerpiece, is like the despondent bastard child of Radiohead and Massive Attack; "Bass Player" moves with the sexy, measured swagger of its titular subject. For Worden, love is something to wail about but her vocals are slightly reigned in here—perhaps only if you listen to the record back-to-back with Bring Me the Workhorse, but noticeable nevertheless. Björk is once again a touchstone, as Worden turns an unlikely turn of phrase ("Darling, we've accumulated too much miscommunication") into a near pop slogan on "Ice and the Storm," and she possesses the Icelandic performer's peculiar attention to detail. It's something the designers of the Titanic no doubt also possessed. Aside from those iron rivets, of course.
(Via)

Oasis Sings From Its 'Soul' On New Album

Oasis' new album, "Dig Out Your Soul," has been penciled in for an Oct. 7 release via Big Brother Records. The first single will be "The Shock of the Lightning."

"If 'The Shock Of The Lightning' sounds instant and compelling to you, it's because it was written dead fast," guitarist Noel Gallagher says. "And recorded dead fast. 'The Shock of The Lightning' basically is the demo. And it has retained its energy,"

"Soul" was produced by Dave Sardy and includes songs from all four band members. A track list has yet to be announced.

"I wanted to write music that had a groove; not songs that followed that traditional pattern of verse, chorus and middle eight," Gallagher says. "I wanted a sound that was more hypnotic; more driving."

The album is the follow-up to 2005's "Don't Believe the Truth," which has sold 201,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Oasis is in the process of signing a North American marketing and distribution deal for "Dig Out Your Soul"; as reported last week, Sony BMG will handle the project internationally.

via billboard

Boy George denied U.S. visa

LONDON, England (CNN) -- DJ and pop star Boy George has been denied a visa to enter the United States, his Web site said Tuesday.

In 2007, George spent five days cleaning the streets of New York to fulfill a community service sentence.

U.S. immigration authorities denied the visa because George, 48, faces trial in November in London on charges of false imprisonment relating to an April 2007 incident, according to a statement from Boy George's management, posted on his site.

"George is astounded at the decision and is having his lawyers here in the States look at it in the hope that someone will change their mind," the statement read.

Boy George, whose real name is George O'Dowd, was charged in London last November with false imprisonment following a complaint from a 28-year-old man, police said. The incident happened in East London the previous April, police said.

George is free on unconditional bail and is not barred from traveling as he awaits trial, his management said. His upcoming schedule includes a series of U.S. club dates in July and August.

George is best known as the singer of '80s pop group Culture Club, with hits including "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" He quit the band in 1987 and embarked on a short solo career before reinventing himself as a club DJ and launching a fashion label, B-Rude.

In August 2007, George spent five days cleaning the streets of Manhattan to fulfill a community service sentence for falsely reporting a break-in at his New York home. George's management said the denial of his U.S. visa had nothing to do with that case.

Trail Of Dead Launches Imprint With Universal

Rock outfit ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead is launching its own label, Richter Scale Records, in association with Universal Music Group's Justice Records.

The band's next album is due in January 2009 and was co-produced by longtime collaborator Mike McCarthy and Chris "Frenchie" Smith. According to a spokesperson, Trail Of Dead was intent "on creating a more anthemic record" this time around.

Footage from the recording sessions can be found on Trail Of Dead's Web site.

The band left Interscope following its third album for the label, 2006's "So Divided," which has sold just 26,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Trail Of Dead's 2002 label debut, "Source Tags & Codes," has shifted 124,000.

Early in its career, the band recorded for Trance Syndicate and Merge, and according to frontman Conrad Keely, the move back to an indie will allow Trail OF Dead "to seek the creative freedom envisioned by the founding fathers of our great nation, immune from the tyranny of the corporate ogre."
(Via Billboard)

The Verve set to release 1st album since 1997

The Verve has christened its reunion album "Four" and will release it before the end of the summer.

The set is due Aug. 18 via EMI internationally and a day later in North America, where it will come out on the Verve's On Our Own imprint with distribution via MRI/Megaforce/RED.

The album's first single, "Love Is Noise," was premiered on BBC Radio One today (June 23) and is now streaming from the band's MySpace site.

"This is a very special band, with four incredibly talented people," the Verve's manager Jaz Summers told Billboard in February. "They made three great albums before. And they're going to make another great album now. There's a bit of magic when the four of them come together."

The Verve got back together in 2007 following a nine-year hiatus. The band's last album was 1997's "Urban Hymns," which launched the U.K. combo to worldwide stardom on the strength of the single "Bittersweet Symphony." Since then, frontman Richard Ashcroft has recorded three solo albums.

The Verve has a dozen summer festival dates on tap, including a co-headlining slot at Glastonbury later this month.

Here the stream of the new single "Love is Noise"

Kings of Leon set to release new album

Kings Of Leon unveiled its fourth studio album for media last Thursday (June 19) at a bar in New York's East Village, but band members snuck off before the playback began, perhaps not wanting to influence opinion.

Eleven tracks were played from "Only by the Night," due Sept. 23 via RCA. A pinging keyboard sound introduces the spacey opener "Closer," highlighted by a soulful vocal from Caleb Followill. Fuzzed-out bass drives a great, funky groove on "Crawl," while "Sex on Fire" is a strident rocker with a sultry undercurrent.

The new album is the follow-up to 2007's "Because of the Times," which has sold 180,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Kings Of Leon will be on tour in Europe starting June 27 at the U.K.'s Glastonbury Festival, and will return stateside for an Aug. 9 set at the first All Points West festival at New Jersey's Liberty State Park.