DJ-mix series come and go, but the paired Fabric and FabricLive mixes have so far issued 80 CDs. To see how they stack up as a whole, we're reviewing them in numerical order, and very loosely: in some cases I will only have played the mixes only two or three times.
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So, remember those nine songs from Chinese Democracy that leaked back in June? And remember how the proprietor of Antiquiet.com, the blog that streamed those songs until their servers crashed and they got a "friendly" e-mail or twelve from the Guns N' Roses camp, got a visit from the Feds shortly after the leaks sprung? Well, two days after he posted a call for lawyers on the site—"More and more each day, it looks like I may be indicted," he wrote—he was arrested by FBI agents and charged with violating Federal copyright laws.
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Do you believe in: a) the sheer animal magnetism of John Larroquette in a three-piece suit, b) situation comedy, c) the power of a tribute video to make you feel complete, d) love? If you answered "all of the above," join me after the jump.
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Last night I was clicking through the zillionth or so argument on the Internet I've come across this decade, and as with approximately 98 million-billion-trillion of them, it hinged, to some degree, on the definition of "indie." We've gone through this a quintillion times on this blog, too, so I've decided to ask everyone to make a subtle, yet important semantic shift: The next time you're tempted to use the word "indie rock" to describe a band, scene, movement, Web site, or general state of mind, I want you to take a deep breath, crack your typing knuckles, press "delete" five times, and instead type this word: alternative.
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ARTIST: New Kids On The Block
Both Britney Spears' people and MTV's publicity department want you to know that, despite her appearance in ads for the awards show and the promise of a "surprise" that night, the maybe-rising-again pop star will not be performing on the Sept. 7 telecast, at least according to a statement her manager Larry Rudolph gave to Ryan Seacrest yesterday. Whether or not this is all part of a dis-dis-disinformation campaign crafted for the purpose of item-hungry entertainment reporters to have something to chew on in this cursed final week of August or the truth is anyone's guess at this point—maybe we're all supposed to analyze, Nixon tapes-style, the fact that Rudolph used the word "perform" instead of "appear" in his statement to Seacrest? [Reuters]
On Sunday, Jim DeRogatis penned an overview of the Jonas Brothers' rise to stardom that not only called the Disney-peddled pop trio "goobers," it claimed that the lyrics on "BB Good" "could just as well be dialog from a date rape as the prelude to an innocent teen make-out session" and said that the Nickelodeon boy band the Naked Brothers "beat [the JoBros] any day." You probably know what happened next: a 43-comment freakout and many, many e-mails, some of which DeRogatis was helpful enough to repost today.
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From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. After the jump, we look at the reactions to the new album by famous Iowans Slipknot, whose album All Hope Is Gone arrives in stores today.
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Last Thursday—two weeks after being taken off life support—producer and mixer Jerry Finn died from complications from a brain hemorrhage. Finn mixed a number of significant alternative releases of the '90s, including Green Day's Dookie and Jawbreaker's Dear You before breaking out into production with albums like the Smoking Popes' Destination Failure, Superdrag's Head Trip In Every Key, several Blink-182 and Blink-related side projects, the two most recent AFI discs, and both You Are The Quarry and the forthcoming Morrissey release Years of Refusal. Although Finn was not the sort of producer who commanded the spotlight, the short list above barely scratches the surface of his catalog of work, and if nothing else, I will personally remember Finn for his ability to make Morrissey sound rejuvenated on Quarry. Finn was 39. [Billboard]
From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. After the jump, we look at the reactions to the new album by recently reunited Brit-rock standard-bearers The Verve, whose album Forth arrives in American stores today.
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No matter how vile you may find Kid Rock, there's something endearingly genuine about him. Maybe it's his penchant for extraordinarily white-trash altercations at Waffle House or his unorthodox rejection of iTunes, but he's just plain amusing sometimes, like some sort of wayward uncle that's good for a few laughs at family reunions, but who you're glad you don't have to see more than once every few years. In a recent interview with CMT the blustery rap-rocker rattled off his thoughts on music and politics with his familiar colloquial gusto.
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ARTIST: Fall Out Boy et al.
From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. After the jump, we look at the reactions to the new album by power metal outfit/Guitar Hero stalwarts Dragonforce, Ultrabeatdown, which hits stores tomorrow.
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Today I ran across a neat page on Last.fm outlining the songs and artists that are most likely to be deleted from users' musical histories on the site, which charts its users' listening habits to come up with a bunch of charts that constitute a musical profile that's then shared with the world. While the No. 1 artist who's been deleted from peoples' listening habits isn't all that surprising—"[unknown]," who comes up when people don't fill out their ID3 tags properly before giving songs a spin—and I'm wholly unsurprised by snobbier music types out there being loath to not want to share how many times they've listened to "Piece Of Me" and "Girlfriend" with the world, there were some eyebrow-raising inclusions on both lists. Top five on each chart after the jump.
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From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Today, we're going to switch things up a bit and look at the notices given to the Fred Durst-directed The Longshots, which features Ice Cube as the doting uncle of a female football prodigy and which comes out today.
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During the two weeks I was vacationing, Billboard reported changes atop all three of its flagship charts—including the blessed end of Katy Perry's No. 1 reign on the Hot 100, which was displaced by a Rihanna song I like a lot. Even more amazingly, a song that may be the most left-field hit of the decade—"Paper Planes" by M.I.A.—soared into the Top Five.
Now that I'm back, the M.I.A. song is down a bit, and the biggest news on the charts is the post-American Idol debut by tween-and-grandma fave David Archuleta.
It's a cruel business, this chart-column writing.
Nonetheless, the good news, for those of us who rooted against the stage-managed moppet during Idol's last season, is that Archie's losing out on the Hot 100's top slot—by a whisker—to Rihanna. Meanwhile, there's change on top of two other charts, including the deadly static Modern Rock list. Let's catch up, shall we?
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Idolator
