Previously unreleased track "Scoff" comes from forthcoming deluxe edition of Bleach.

By Blurt Staff

What better way to start October off than with a free, previously unreleased Nirvana song? Sub Pop has made available the track "Scoff" which is culled from their deluxe/expanded edition of Bleach, which is due Nov. 3. You'll be able to read a review of it in the new issue of BLURT, but meanwhile, here's the track, which was recorded at a 1990 live show at Portland's Pine Street Theatre. This show was re-mixed from the original tapes by album producer Jack Endino.

"Scoff"

Says Sub Pop, "Needless to say, we're all pretty excited about this one over here at the Sub Pop offices. The record has been on full blast at one desk or another everyday for the past couple of weeks and really it's never sounded better, even on my own personal 100th listen of this month. Love it."

Krist Novoselic blogs for the Seattle Weekly and in an entry not long ago, he enthused over the longevity of Bleach:

"November 3rd, the 20 year anniversary version of Nirvana's Bleach will be released. (The actual anniversary was last June.) I just got off the phone with producer Jack Endino for a comment regarding the occasion. He said, ‘Considering it only took about 30 hours in the studio, and the equipment we used, I'm glad it sounds as good as it does.'

"Jack - WTF?? There are many reasons for this record being an aural treat. First, I was in the band. (more on my utter lack of objectivity later). Second, Endino recorded it and finally, most importantly - the release is a tribute to the vision of Kurt Cobain.There's going to be a vinyl version too. Jack and I got test pressings earlier this summer and the vinyl sounds killer. It's going to be pressed on white vinyl - just like the first issue. I put the tone arm down and the bass growl of "Blew" is there in all its Grunge glory. The CD is re-mastered too."

As the saying goes, prepare to be bleached....

Appearing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon tomorrow - Friday - during a quick detour from the Lewis road trek. No thumbsuckers allowed.

By Fred Mills

It's not every day we can turn on the TV and see some of our friends on it - and come to think of it, our big screen plasma set hasn't arrived yet. We're stuck staring at this 12-inch black-and-white Motorola! Where's that damn Geek Squad, anyway? But maybe it'll arrive in time to watch Late Night With Jimmy Fallon tomorrow night (NBC, 12:30 EST), because we wanna see our pals The Ettes kick out some jams. They'll be in good company, too, as the main guest for Fallon is filmmaker and actress Drew Barrymore, talking about her new rollerderby flick Whip It.

As it turns out the Ettes also have a song in the film's soundtrack, so there's your connection. Nice to have good fans in high places.

We caught up with Ettes frontwoman Coco Hames from the road - Hames also blogs for BLURT, and you don't want to miss her most recent installments - to get the scoop on the Fallon and show and their current tour (for their new album Do You Want Power, reviewed here) opening for Juliette Lewis. Both Lewis and the Ettes are featured in the new issue of BLURT, by the way, hitting newsstands any day now.

BLURT: How did you wind up getting the gig to do the Fallon show?

HAMES: I'm pretty sure that was all Drew.  We just got back from the premiere for Whip It, her directorial debut about roller derby starring Ellen Page.  We're on the soundtrack, which was released Tuesday, same day as our new album!  The movie is awesome, I think I was laughing and clapping through the whole screening, and I wasn't the only one!

What are you planning on playing, and what's the first thing you want to say to Fallon when you meet him?

I will probably just start giggling.  His trademark giggle move is mine too.  We will obviously get a lot accomplished together.  We'll probably play "Crown of Age", the song that's featured on the Whip It soundtrack, as Drew's the guest tomorrow and Jimmy Fallon is in it, too.

Have you, Poni or Jem ever done one of Fallon's Saturday Night Live characters?

I like all the ones where he wears a beard.  No wait, hands down, Andy Gibb.

You started the Juliette Lewis tour this past week - what has gone down on that so far?

Ohhhh... A lady never tells... We are having so much fun.  She's the real deal, in case you haven't figured that from her intensely awesome performance skills on screen.  It's literally been the most fun tour ever.

What would Juliette say if some BLURT editor asked her to suck his thumb like in "Cape Fear"?

She's very, very cool, but I don't know.  She's small but she's fast.  I dare you.  At your own risk, anonymous Blurt editor...

Ettes on Tour:

Oct 2 2009      8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ The Bottom Lounge Chicago, IL

Oct 3 2009      8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Station 4        Minneapolis, MN

Oct 4 2009      8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ High Noon Saloon     Madison, WI

Oct 6 2009      8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Fox Theatre    Boulder, CO

Oct 7 2009      8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Club Vegas    Salt Lake City, Utah

Oct 9 2009      8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ El Carazon     Seattle, WA

Oct 10 2009    8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Dante's          Portland, OR

Oct 11 2009    8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Commodore Ballroom           Vancouver, BC

Oct 13 2009    8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Slim's             San Francisco, CA

Oct 14 2009    8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ Hard Rock - Wasted Space   Las Vegas, NV

Oct 17 2009    8:00P

            The Ettes w/ Juliette Lewis @ El Rey Theatre           Los Angeles, California

Finished product will also include members of Postal Service, Broken Social Scene and others.

By Blurt Staff

This summer, emcee/producer/multi-instrumentalist Lushlife released his highly-anticipated sophomore full-length, Cassette City, an album that delicately balances a classic hip-hop ethos with the artist's penchant for indie experimentation. Cassette City was met with critical acclaim from alls sides of the musical spectrum, from hip-hop journalists to indie rock bloggers.

With Cassette City continuing to build momentum, Lushlife has embarked on yet another ambitious and genre-defying project using the album's source material. He's recruited his favorite bands, artists, and producers, from the realm of indie music to contribute remixes of key songs from his original LP.

The resulting remix EP, titled Leisure Class/Stick-up Kids, features a far-reaching cast of musicians. With a glitchy jump-up contribution from The Postal Service/Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello, and a soca-tinged [yes, soca] interpretation from Broken Social Scene founder Brendan Canning with producers Ryan Kondrat and John La Magna [me&john], Leisure Class/Stick-up Kids will be, if nothing else, a fascinating experiment.

Other contributors to the project include Toronto electronic-pop dudes, MADRID, London-based low-fi outfit Gentle Friendly, as well as a solo effort from Sleep Whale drummer Spencer Stephenson under the moniker Abacus.  Even Lush's neighbors in Philly, the boys from Brown Recluse, will put their ‘60s-pysch-pop spin on his patented boom-bap sound.

In addition to these official remixes, fans will get a chance to remix a song from Cassette City themselves, via a site launched in cooperation with music industry non-profit, CASHMusic.org. The site: http://lushlife.cashmusic.org. The Tamborello remix is already streaming at the website.

It officially goes live today, October 1st, and will not only give fans a chance to download multi-track stems and upload their own remixes, but will also be a platform for the official remixers to post audio, video, and text, updating fans on their in-progress works. Ultimately, the winning fan-submitted remix will appear alongside the official re-workings on a digital release of Leisure Class/Stick-up Kids.

Leisure Class/Stick-up Kids is a chance to see rap music projected through the artistic prisms of a wide variety of incredible artists. As such, Lushlife is encouraging fan-submissions from a broad swathe of musicians. Whether you're an electronic composer of the most eccentric variety, a folk singer, a dub beat scientist, or even an ordinary hip-hop producer, the Leisure Class/Stick-up Kids remix project is an open-ended outlet to reinterpret, revisit, and recontextualize. 

"Goodbye Again" from latest album is part of a 12-song, multi-videographer project.

By Blurt Staff

To promote Lucero's new album 1372 Overton Park (reviewed, incidentally, in the new issue of Blurt) the band commissioned a music video for each song on the record - 12 videos total. While these videographers' levels of experience varied, some holding only handy-cams, others with years of training under their belt, the band sought out videographers with one thing in common: that they're all huge Lucero fans and wanted to make a video.

We've got an exclusive sneak preview of the project - here, "Goodbye Again" -  and we're pretty honored to be able to present this for one of long-time favorite bands, so please check it out in our video kiosk: www.blurt-online.com/video/view/238/  Memo to self: after seen all these images of Memphis in one place, I'm booking a vacation to the music city very soon. Los Angeles? Who needs it!

The last thing Lucero wanted was a slick video for a major label record. Or even worse, a cheap video trying too hard. And, they wanted something off center... something you wouldn't expect from a Lucero video. Think of it as "a studio documentary of sorts," as the band puts it.

This project was meant not only to promote Lucero's new album, but also their remarkable fans who, time and time again, prove their strong dedication to the band.

Legendary singer-songwriter undertakes rare tour, hitting key venues in the Netherlands.

By John Lentz

Several months ago BLURT was extremely pleased and honored to be able to profile chanteuse Chi Coltrane. In an exclusive interview she discussed her long career in music (and her massive ‘70s hit, "Thunder and Lightning") how health issues in the late ‘80s and extending into the ‘90s threatened to derail that career, and her latterday comeback - including her prediction that she'll be touring again soon. "I will be playing piano, of course, and will be accompanied by bass and drums," said Coltrane. "My first concert to kick-off my comeback will be for about 50,000 people, in Vienna, in June."

Now Coltrane, fresh from that June 27 appearance at the DonauinselFest outdoor music event in Vienna, Austria, where she performed before an estimated 100,000 music fans in her first major concert in two decades, has embarked on a two week tour of the Netherlands. Her first performance took place Sept. 30 in Venlo and it resumes tonight, Oct. 2, in Enschede.

The tour is to promote her new CD, "Yesterday, Today, and Forever", available from her website at www.ChiColtrane.com . Arranger Paul Buckmaster has said of the title song that he ". . . had to stop a few times while working on the arrangement (of the song) because of the profound emotions it stirred up in me. It is that great of a song. I think this may be the most beautiful song that I've ever heard."

Concert dates and locations are as follows, w/contact numbers for ticketing; tickets are also available by contacting pbmusicprom@zeelandnet.nl .

Go to Coltrane's website or MySpace page for more details and updates.

Fri. Oct. 2, 2009  : Muziekcentrum - Enschede   +31 53 485 85 00

Sun. Oct. 4, 2009 : Philharmonie - Haarlem (Amsterdam)  +31 23 5121212

Tue. Oct. 6, 2009 : De Lawei - Drachten   +31 512 33 50 50

Fri. Oct. 9, 2009 : Stadsschouwburg - Middelburg   +31 900 3300033

Sat. Oct. 10, 2009 : Vredenburg - Utrecht  +31 30 2314544

Tue. Oct. 13, 2009 : De Tamboer - Hoogeveen   +31 528 280180

 Wed. Oct. 14, 2009 :  Stedelijk Concertgebouw - Leiden  +31 71 5131704

Our latest pick in a new series: Concord, NC, band's new album is what's twirling our tassels as we head into the weekend. Photo credit, above: Michael Plumides.

By Fred Mills

The Avett Brothers are our Band O' The Week, the fourth selection in our increasingly popular and prestigious series. Previous artists we picked - the Clean, Os Mutantes and Panther - have all gained massive fame and reaped amazing riches in the BLURT afterglow, so we see no reason why the Avetts won't do likewise. For proof, check out our  review of their new Rick Rubin-produced album I and Love and You.

As BLURT's astute critic put it in a 9-stars-out-of-10 review, "While I and Love and You is suffused in an almost Zen-like restraint, there's still a fervor, a roaring passion lurking just beneath the surface that will be familiar to anyone who's followed the Avett Brothers thus far... Mossy and warm, full of breathing room and plenty of space for individual voices and instruments to flex, it locates itself at the Venn intersection of the Kinks' Muswell Hillbillies, Rod Stewart's Gasoline Alley and Tom Petty's Wildflowers."

Check back each Friday for the latest BLURT Band O' The Week. Meanwhile, the Avetts are on the cover of our new issue, hitting newsstands any day. Contributing Editor A.D. Amorosi interviewed the Avetts and producer Rubin for a revealing, intimate profile of a band most observers feel is about to make a huge critical and commercial break through.

They were also on the Letterman show this week doing the title track from the album:

Everyone's favorite Fujiyama mama is just about ready to pop - so she pops in to a special event for the students....

By Blurt Staff

Students and faculty from the Academy of Contemporary Music performed with recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and first lady of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson at an Oklahoma City dedication ceremony this week renaming a street in her honor. The musicians included students Jon Bohlen (bass) and Luke Buthman (guitar) along with faculty members Peter Pollack (drums) Chris Hicks (guitar).

Jackson, known as "the sweet lady with the nasty voice" played a mini-concert that included her songs "Right or Wrong," "Mean, Mean Man" and her most popular, "Let's Have a Party." See video of the performance and read more here.

Currently in the midst of its inaugural semester, The Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma (ACM@UCO) is a new school led by Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker that provides unique educational opportunities and targeted, innovative classes for students who aspire to have a career in the music industry.

Dude's been pretty damn prolific the past few years...

By Blurt Staff

Robyn Hitchcock will release concert film and live album I Often Dream of Trains in New York on November 10 on Yep Roc.

I Often Dream of Trains in New York was filmed live at Symphony Space in New York City in the fall of 2008 during the U.S. leg of Hitchcock's highly anticipated I Often Dream of Trains Tour. Deftly shot by acclaimed director John Edginton (The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story) and originally aired on the Sundance Channel, this concert film DVD and accompanying audio CD captures the cult songwriting icon recreating one of his most intimate and haunting albums in its entirety.

Robyn is joined by Trains tour mates Terry Edwards (vocals, keyboards, trumpet, soprano sax, guitar) and Tim Keegan (vocals, guitar) as well as guests Gaida Hinnawi (vocals) and Amir El Saffar (trumpet) from the Robyn-led band seen in Jonathan Demme's film Rachel Getting Married.

This release will also receive the deluxe package treatment from Yep Roc in the form of a working phenakistoscope with artwork by Robyn. Further details here.

Watch Robyn perform title cut ‘I Often Dream of Trains' from the film below.

Hitchcock will be in the United States beginning today, October 2^nd, performing with the Venus 3 at the Austin City Limits festival and later this weekend on Oct. 4^th in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  He will follow these appearances with a select run of tour dates.

10-02-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      Austin                TX            Austin City Limits Festival, Zilker Park          

10-04-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      San Francisco  CA           Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival  

10-06-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      Los Angeles       CA           Spaceland            

10-08-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      Portland            OR           Mississippi Studios           

10-10-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      Seattle                WA          Crocodile

10-15-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      Memphis           TN           Malco Theatres' Studio on the Square           

10-17-2009           Robyn Hitchcock      Nashville           TN           Bluebird Cafe      

Welcome to ACL! Here, have some grass!


Rumbling and rambling around the 2009 Austin City Limits Festival with photographer (and Blurt Associate Editor) Andy Tennille... Andy's also Twittering from ACL all weekend, so follow his Blurtweets...


Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers has some mid-afternoon wood:

An ever-earnest Phoenix gets even more earnest... gee fellas, it's kinda hot out here in this sun...

Daniel Johnston would like to sell you a drawing he made 5 minutes ago backstage with a Sharpie...

Raphael Sadiq would like all the Joss Stone lookalikes in the crowd to please take off their tops....

Caleb Followil of Kings Of Leon goes off yet again about all the "haters" out there... memo to Caleb, humility will get you through times of no respect better than respect can get you through times of no humility. Just draping a small crucifix around your neck won't cut it.

Rumbling and rambling around the 2009 Austin City Limits Festival with photographer (and Blurt Associate Editor) Andy Tennille... Andy's also Twittering from ACL all weekend, so follow his Blurtweets...


Above, Grizzly Bear testifying to the gospel truth.
Below, The Alberta Cross, preparing for an outbreak of guitar face.

Below, Felice Brothers, with an outbreak of accordion face.





Bon Iver, still working on that guitar face.





Henry Butler, working on getting his mojo workin'.

Premieres "Open the Floodgates", "Lotus Flower", "Skirting on the Surface" and "Judge, Jury, Executioner" Friday evening at the Echoplex club.

By Blurt Staff

Hitting the web over the weekend was footage of Thom Yorke and his ad hoc new "band" - Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, drummer Joey Waronker, and multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco (Forro in the Dark) - performing at Los Angeles' Echoplex club as a warmup date for the Sunday and Monday night concerts at the Orpheum.

According to Pitchfork, Yorke & Co. did his solo album The Eraser from start to finish, then for an encore Yorke came out by himself to do three brand new songs: "Open the Floodgates" (on piano), "Lotus Flower" (guitar), "Skirting on the Surface" (piano). For a second encore the band came out to join Yorke on another unreleased track, "Judge, Jury, Executioner"; Ateaseweb.com noted that "the latter is also the alternate title of Radiohead's ‘Myxomatosis' (from Hail To The Thief), but several people have confirmed it's a completely new song." Three more songs were then done: Radiohead's "Paperbag Writer" plus "The Hollow Earth" and "Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses," both of which comprise the new 12" single.

Videos of the new songs are below - "Open the Floodgates", "Lotus Flower", "Skirting on the Surface," "Judge, Jury, Executioner".

"Wrecking Ball" written to help "shut the old lady down"...

By Blurt Staff

Hitting the web over the weekend was footage of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing a new, unreleased song, "Wrecking Ball," during the Boss' five-night run at Giant's Stadium in E. Rutherford, NJ.

According to BruceSpringsteen.net, the tune was written "in honor of the imminent demolition of the longtime home of giants and Giants" (Springsteen acknowledged same in his introduction to the song, a folk-rock flavored number which wouldn't have sounded out of place on his The Seeger Sessions album of several years ago). On Oct. 2 the band also performed the album Darkness on the Edge of Town in its entirety; on Sept. 30 they did the complete Born to Run, and on Saturday, Oct. 3, Born in the USA. The Giants Stadium residency continues on Oct. 8 and 9 with both BTR and BITUSA, respectively, being performed again.

Below are two video versions of the song - the first one comes from Sept. 30, and the second is an unedited pro-shot, originally posted at BruceSpringsteen.net, comes from Oct. 2.

WWST? (What would Scientologists think?) Trench coats and cardigan sweaters meet mosh pits and anarchy symbols pasted to cheerleaders' tits: Rickrolling with Kurt Cobain & Tha Crew...

By Blurt Staff

So we're in a YouTube mood today, sue us. But it just occurred that since we're now into October, a lot of long lead-time magazines and critics are compiling their 2009 year-end best-ofs. Admittedly, that's borderline absurd; there are some awesome releases about to drop in late Oct. and early Nov., so how can you make your annual picks this early? (Trust us; we've had to do it ourselves, so we feel your pain, fellow scribes.) But we digress.

At any rate, since we're posting Thom Yorke and Bruce Springsteen vids to the BLURT site (now THERE is a mashup waiting to happen... "Born In The Paranoid Android," anyone?), and we have some spare time before leaving for our Monday morning pedicure, we decided to also post our hands-down, no-debate-necessary, favorite video of the past year, below. In the rare event that you didn't nab the MP3 first time around - the song originally appeard on DJ Morgoth's Mash-Up Your Bootz Vol. 4 album - or are not among the million-plus who have viewed the clip already, it should still be self-explanatory.

All props to DJ Morgoth for the music, along with YouTube maestro thriftshopxl for posting the video clip back in the summer, and making our lives immeasurably richer.

Seriously. This is pure genius. Keep on Rickrolling. "Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up":

Eyeing a June 2010 release for their next long-player.

By Zachary Herrmann

Ed. note: Our man in Philly, Zach Herrmann, caught NYC's Walkmen a couple of weeks ago in concert at Philadelphia's Theatre of Living Arts. In addition to being able to check out the combo's recent physical overhaul, he got some of the details on what's coming up for the Walkmen.

The group now tours regularly with a four-piece horn section (one of whom is lead singer Hamilton Leithauser's wife), reflecting the sonic shift and maturation The Walkmen made on last year's seminal release, You & Me.

Also, Walter Martin (bass, originally organist) plays organ on the old songs, though he and Peter Bauer have switched instruments for the most part. It's a subtle change the band made before A Hundred Miles Off, but one that has definitely paid off from You & Me on.

"I don't know how to play piano so it takes a while and it's sort of frustrating because everyone else in the band plays the same instrument and has played it for like 30 years," Bauer said. "So it's fun, but confusing."

According Bauer, they're looking at a June 2010 target date for their next album, which he added is shaping up to be "very quiet... Right now, it is a slow one. And it sort of works that way.

"I think it just sort of depends what the last five songs are. If we could write some big, fast songs, maybe they would fit. Or maybe they would just sound stupid. We don't know yet what the end result will be."

Go here to read Herrman's full concert review of the Walkmen.

Tantalizing tidbit about a forthcoming new Superchunk album, too...

By Fred Mills

"It may be their noise, but it's our - Amerindie, USA- story. Happy birthday to us." Thus writes the BLURT reviewer (in the new issue of the magazine), of the just-published history of Chapel Hill's Merge Records Our Noise (Algonquin Books). The label celebrated its 20^th birthday this year, and to cap what has been a crazy '09 (the multi-night festival, Merge XX, was one of the summer's high points), the book arrived in stores a couple of weeks ago. It's a story of the label and the people behind it, of course, but as our review points out, it's also "a series of snapshots (frequently literally; there are more than 300 images reproduced), that chronicle an entire musical milieu via microcosm, an alternate alt-rock history in which the good guys won and the Matchbox 20s, the Third Eye Blinds and the Limp Bizkits never even happened." Hats off to author John Cook who assembled a superb oral history for the project.

Merge/Superchunk founders Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance also collaborated with Cook to give the book a definitive stamp of authority, and since its publication the pair has been doing a series of book signings at independent shops. Friday night (Oct. 2) they turned up at Asheville, NC, at Malaprop's Bookstore Cafe and the place was jammed with well-wishers, Merge and ‘chunk fans, and book lovers of all stripes.

McCaughan and Ballance first strapped on acoustic guitar and electric bass, respectively to do a Superchunk song, then the pair took turns reading a couple of passages from Our Noise. Mac handled a section about early Merge band Butterglory, while Laura read the part about a somewhat star-crossed trip to the Northwest they undertook in which their van caught on fire (and burned up, leaving them temporarily stranded in the middle of nowhere until they could arrange a rental) en route to Seattle, where they got to observe firsthand the office operations of Sub Pop and the proverbial lightbulb went on over their heads: "We could do this, too."

Next, Mac did covers of Spoon and Magnetic Fields tunes, subsequently reading a passage from the book about Magnetic Fields and talking a bit about the peculiarities of that band's Stephin Merritt. Prefacing a passage about the career vicissitudes that Spoon has endured, Laura observed, "I think this illustrates the indignities that bands have to go through." 

Another Superchunk song followed, then it was time to take questions and comments. One thing they disclosed was that they've been working on new material for a proposed Superchunk album, and the hope is that it will see release sometime in 2010.

A query came from the audience about what's the role of an indie label in 2009 when all the traditional roles and rules have been upended - Pearl Jam striking a deal with Target, Radiohead deploying a radical new commercial model, etc. - and Mac pointed out that with so much going on and so much music out there, Merge's role is "as a filter" with people trusting Merge to find good music and bands trusting Merge to do a good job. Another question about the perennial "what is indie?" issue prompted them to suggest that the term might not be all that relevant any more other than as shorthand, Laura adding that when they started out, what they were doing was called "college rock" - nowadays, a meaningless term.

And of the genesis of the book? Our Noise almost didn't happen, amid the stress and clutter of running the label and preparing for the 20^th anniversary events. Mac noted that he felt, initially, that it wasn't even that particularly a dramatic tale worth telling, but when author Cook presented the additional context of how it was also a story of the record industry and some of the changes that had been occurring over the past two decades, it all clicked for him.

I'm glad it did, as Our Noise is one of the best music books I've taken in all year, and I don't hand that sort of praise out lightly. For anyone with a vested interest in the indie milieu (regardless of the relative relevance of the term "indie"), it should be at the top of your reading list. Buy a couple of copies, for that matter - it'll make a great Christmas gift for someone you love.

Go to the book's official website, www.ournoisethebook.com, for some visual treats. You can also get info about an online chat with Mac, Laura and John Cook, moderated by Michael Azerrad, that will take place next Monday, Oct. 12.

[Photos by Fred Mills and Michael Traister, www.traisterphoto.com]

Almost 4 hours of music on 3 discs - undiluted, stripped-down gospel!

By Blurt Staff

Tompkins Square is set to drop Fire In My Bones, a three-CD collection of "raw, rare and otherworldly gospel" produced by music scribe Mike McGonigal. It stands to be one of the year's must-purchase archival sets, and a portion of proceeds will go to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund. The compilation hits stores Oct. 27.

The majority of this music has never been reissued on CD, or in any other form (most tracks were originally released on regional independent labels). Most post-WWII compilations of African-American gospel music naturally concentrate on the astounding quartet and solo vocalist sounds made during the music's Golden Age. Fire In My Bones attempts to address and collect more neglected sounds from that era (and on to the present day).

Dozens of traditions are represented. Some go back hundreds of years while others seem to have been arrived at as soon as the tape began to roll. Field recordings and studio tracks are all mashed together, with solo performances next to congregational recordings, hellfire sermons next to afterlife laments. Leon Pinson, Elder & Sister Brinson & the  Brinson Brothers, Grant & Ella, Straight Street Holiness Group, Theotis Taylor, Brother & Sister W B Grate - these artists will now be just a little less obscure.

Fire In My Bones provides a small peek at the incredible diversity and power of post-war  black gospel. Much of this music is raw, distorted and might sound a bit strange. But it is  not presented as a novelty freak show or as "outsider music." This is gospel - which we must always remember translates as "the good news"-as it has been sung and performed in tiny churches and large programs, from rural Georgia to urban Los Angeles. It is clearly among the most vibrant, playful, beautiful and emotionally charged music in the world.

Henry Rollins' tree pulp + the blood of the working class - what's not to like?

By Fred Mills

The LA Times reports that Thurston Moore is launching Ecstatic Peace Library, described as "a boutique publisher of art books." Initial offerings are scheduled to arrive Jan. 1 via the EPL website (currently, just a logo; see above), with "art books [released] in tandem with recordings from the artist-authors" - longtime SY associates Raymond Pettibone and Dave Markey, plus Moore's wife Kim Gordon.

Distribution of the Sonic Youth guitarist's EPL books will be through Distributed Art Publishers.

We'd be remiss if we didn't add a couple of comments that appeared on the LA Times website following the announcement:

i heard directly from a source that the first printings were made directly from the pulp cultivated from the trees that once stood in Henry Rollins backyard. - Posted by: Simoon Star Force Ultra Core  

Also, I heard that the inks they use will be mixed with the blood of the working class. VERY avant-garde! - Posted by: Eve

Double LP live album, along with DVD, in super limited edition. Career counseling from Nathan Means provided free of charge.

By Blurt Staff

On Dec. 8, Thrill Jockey will be releasing Trans Am's first live album called What Day Is It Tonight? which chronicles their tours and music from 1993 through 2008.  The DVD features a set's worth of songs from different shows spliced together with backstage footage and memories long forgotten (and recently unearthed).  It also features two entire live sets.  One from a very early Chapel Hill gig in 1993 and another from the 2004 Liberation tour in Heidelburg. 

This album will not be available on CD and is packaged together with the DVD and limited to 1,500 copies, so better make your plans, pronto.

LP Track Listing:

01.  Conspiracy of the Gods
02.  Outmoder
03.  Futureworld
04.  Shrigley
05.  Firepoker
06.  Idea Machine

07.  Positive People

08.  First Words
09.  June
10.  Tesco v. Sainsbury's
11.  Television Eyes
12.  Slow Response
13.  Play in the Summer
14.  Köln
15.  Don't Bundle Me
16.  Simulacrum

17.  City in Flames

DVD Track Listing:

01. Extreme Measures

02. I Want It All

03. Stereo Situation

04. Prowler

05. Armed Response/Enforcer

06. Futureworld

07. Play in the Summer

Whole Live Sets:

Heidelburg 2004

Chapel Hill 1993

The band's Nathan Means kindly provided Thrill Jockey with a lengthy screed about his experiences touring as a member of Trans Am. We do mean lengthy... the full text appears, below.

***

Set Up The Scene For Me. It's 1993. Why Start a Band?

Good question.

Um...We didn't really start playing together right then. That was earlier.  But we did all live together in a real shit-shack in Chapel Hill that summer. Seb's room was infested with fleas. Phil and I worked at a cafeteria for minimum wage and minimum hours. We were broke. I started stealing cereal boxes and apples from work. Our landlord's dog, Ginger Snap, sometimes came over and stole tampons and condoms out of our garbage. It was hot. Seb became vegan. But we wrote the first Trans Am songs then and played our first live shows.

Advice: Start a band when you are young and have lots of time to waste. But remember that you are actually wasting it.

Where were these shows?

A frat house. It was summer and not many people were around. Fortunately, the keg was in the audience. I broke a bass string - E, the lowest, fattest string - on the first note of the first song. This is something I could never, ever do again if I tried. Also, my amp head blew up. I'm not sure how the other guys did.

Our second show was later that summer at a bar called The Cavern. Phil (age 20) got carded. I didn't drink because I was scared of getting carded.

When Was Your First Real Tour?

That was a self-booked loop into the Mid-West. I remember leaving the Pennsylvania Turnpike - always cause for celebration - and seeing a sign that said "Ohio and West." We are from the East Coast. I felt like a pioneer.

On that tour we drank a lot. We slept on filthy floors next to dried dishes of cat food and beer cans stuffed with cigarette butts. We played in basements and small clubs. In Detroit, while we sat on the front stoop of the club drinking, a big, insanely drunk guy wandered past us. He happened to be Native American, although Detroit has the potential to turn people of all ethnicities, religions, and races into fuck-ups.

Anyway, he started causing trouble and the guy from behind the bar jumped out with a baseball bat. I forget exactly what happened, but we ended up sitting on top of the guy waiting for the Wayne State University cops. They seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor - cynical but joking the whole time. I guess you gotta laugh if you're a cop in downtown Detroit. They ended up macing the guy and putting him in handcuffs.

Advice: Trading 10% or 15% of your show income for having someone book your tour is the best thing you'll ever do. Unless your booking agent is insane or a thief or forces you to open for bands you hate.

Where is Europe?

Somewhere past England...

Anyway, in winter of 1996 Tortoise were on a super-long, super-successful bus tour of Europe and they invited us to open for them. To them, I guess we were like a combination of slightly annoying little brothers and wind up toys. We were loud and they wanted to sleep. We got the remaining bunks near the toilet, which, predictably, was backed up and smelled and sounded exactly like several gallons of sloshing urine. Tortoise's soundman kept plying us with hash, which was really unnecessary.

One day, their tour manager asked to talk to me privately. I thought she was hitting on me, but actually she just wanted us to stop drinking all of Tortoise's beer while they were on stage.

Two of my remaining memories: After a show in Germany, I stuck my head out of the top of the bus and saw Dave Pajo - at the front of the bus - almost get decapitated by a traffic light. Then, before our show in London, we wondered around and got completely wasted because it was England and they have those cool pint glasses and it just seemed right. Our show was awesome - and everyone knew it.

Advice: That was our peak of popularity in London. Our next show was decimated in print by their hateful, inaccurate, but sometimes funny, music journalism machine. So enjoy it while you can.

What's Wrong With England?

When you drive around the country, every single town has birthed at least one band that you love. And that's the problem, too many bands. It's like being traded on a commodities market - nobody gives a shit about musicians and they get paid and treated accordingly.

In October 2001, we did a three-week tour of the UK and Ireland with The Champs. Our plane actually went right over the gaping hole and floodlights where the World Trade Tower had been. I love Indian food, beer, socialized medicine, and New Order but it's fair to say that Ireland was the highlight. 

Advice: It turns out that "New England" was named after "England."  OK. Now imagine a three-week tour of Connecticut and Massachusetts. OK. Now imagine that you're paying for everything on the tour in the rupees you made at your uncle's car wash outside of Mumbai. That's about right.

Is There Anything Good About England?

The crowds are good. Also, breakfast.

Once, when we used to light Seb's cymbals on fire, things got a little out of hand in Liverpool. The lighter fluid container itself caught on fire and then fell behind his kit. We could see it burning right next to some long, plush curtains and a power strip. Fortunately, we had lots of beer on stage, so we doused the fire without Seb even dropping a beat. When you're 27 and beer comes in that handy, it gives you a brief feeling of universal harmony.

Advice: The fact that Phil never burned his hands off while lighting Seb's cymbals on fire proves that lighter fluid isn't really that dangerous. I think we even flew with the container in our luggage a few times by mistake. It's completely safe.

What Do "Soundmen" Really Do?

Well, sometimes they just decide to sing and play out-of-tune keyboard over your show without telling you. Sometimes they fix your otherwise totally broken amp. Sometimes they are incredibly bummed out on your entire tour. Sometimes they tell the nagging promoter who is worried about the decibel limit, "Fuck off. I don't get paid to turn it down."

Advice: Soundmen/women are pretty important. Invest in a good one.

Why Do You Always Get into Fights With Each Other in Minneapolis?

There are a couple of theories. One is that, of course, there is some kind of negative spiritual vortex there. Like a site of harmonic divergence. The other, which seems pretty farfetched, is that no matter which way you are heading, Minneapolis is a long drive which either precedes or follows two super-long days of driving and you're just tired of everything - especially those unbelievable assholes you've been on the road with for three weeks.

Advice: You can't avoid Minneapolis, so just suck it up.

Why Do You Get Along So Well in the Southwest?

Lots of sun. Plus in Albuquerque, Seb, our soundman, and once I got pulled over by a bunch of cops and then individually ordered out of our van at gunpoint, handcuffed, Mirandized, and put in squad cars. Then we all had a big laugh when it turned out they wanted a different white van - except Seb, me and our soundman.

In Phoenix, we decided to leave a particularly sketchy Motel 6. There was a big party going on at 3 AM when we got there. I think it was basically an open-air drug market, but we didn't stick around to find out what they had.

While I was getting the cash refunded outside the night window, some big guy got out of his Camaro and repeatedly offered to kick my ass. It was the Futureworld tour - maybe he didn't like my Mexican Nike gold sweatsuit and hightops? Anyway, you got to play it cool down there and stick together.

How Many Times Have You Pissed Yourself on Stage?

Hard to say. It's the sort of thing where you hope your memory will be really spotty. More than once, less than 10, and not since 2000?

Advice: Keep beer or water around so you can pour it all over yourself as a cover-up. It's a lot more attractive than piss - which isn't saying much.

Remember When Seb Was Doing that GWAR Thing in Pittsburgh?

Yes. Seb was really sick and by the time we got to Carnegie Mellon, he ran straight to the bathroom. He had tried to re-hydrate with some sort of sports drink so his vomit was this perilous, almost radioactive shade of green. It was all over the floor. The bathroom looked like the set of an alien slasher flick.

Eventually, a university security officer came in. She looked at Seb and then asked calmly, "Is he the drummer?"

Anyway, Seb went to the hospital and we played with the drummer from Zombi, Tony, in a steeply terraced lecture hall.

When Can You Trust Airlines?

Only when they answer in the positive. When they say "No" - or especially when they cite "The Rules" - they are not being truthful. There are no rules. They are just being lazy or overworked - probably both. They could fix everything and charge you nothing if they really wanted to.

Advice: Just get past the ticketing counter. Those people are useless for everything but disputes over baggage charges. The real power lies with the gate attendants. They are magical.

Is Any International Border Less Pleasant Than America's?

Not so far.

However, Britain does deserve mention. Unlike the rest of the EU, they have work permits. Also, their border agents can be quite snooty and overzealous. Once, we had two young agents parading a bag of Seb's vegan protein powder around border control. I guess they thought we had just forgotten about that pound of heroin sitting on the floor of the van?

So they took apart our van - like unscrewed the door panels and such - while they ran some tests. Eventually, I was informed in a very grave manner that, "We've run several tests and one said 'well perhaps it is [drugs]' and one said 'probably not.' So we're giving you the benefit of the doubt."  Then they asked for some posters or other promotional materials.

Also, the award for Single Most Intimidating Border Guard goes to "Serbian Guy." Thanks again for not shooting us, by the way.

Advice: Wear glasses. Cover all tattoos. In the US, always have a football clearly visible and hide Frisbees (hippy disks) and hacky sacks. Tell anyone who asks that you sound "sort of like ACDC." Don't mention acid jazz. Wipe your Facebook and Wikipedia entry of any drug references.

Why Don't More Famous People Come To Trans Am Shows?

It is surprising, but they probably wouldn't pay anyway.

At an early Thrill Jockey festival in New York, I remember "Fred" from the B-52s stepping over Seb doing push-ups backstage. He wasn't there for us and didn't seem excited that Seb was in his way.

I also remember an all-ages show we played with Braniac in LA where Mark Hamill's kid was hanging out with John Ritter's kid. That was sort of perfect. They were there for Braniac.

What Band is the Most Annoying to Tour With?

Depends what you mean. Is it annoying or funny when Six Finger Satellite kicks a stink bomb into the middle of your already tiny audience in Charlotte, NC? What about if later on they do a drive by - shooting bottle rockets out of PVC pipe - while you're carrying an 80-pound amp head? What about when a no-talent, cashing-in-on-her-name wanker like Kelley Deal call you out in St. Louis for being "stage hogs"?

Also, there's the question of blame. Is it Soul Coughing's fault that out of 1,500 people who politely watched us open for them in 1996, only one person bought a CD? Is it the Fucking Champs' fault that one of their guitarist's feet could stink up an entire room of sleeping guys? Is it Tortoise's fault that they all snore, thus earning the name "Snortoise"?

And really, who is being annoyed? We annoyed a lot of promoters by cashing in on an otherwise financially disasterous mid-December co-headlining tour of the Midwest with Har Mar Superstar. During a split bill with Don Caballero, our mere existence on stage seemed to antagonize the entire city of Cleveland as the Indians lost the World Series, but we were fine with it. Was it just annoying to Canadian border agents that someone traveling with Zombi tried to cross with an enormously small quantity of weed? They did lecture him that, "you can buy better weed here."

What's the Most Extreme Thing You Ever Did on Tour? Like, Have You Died?

Yes. Seb and I were once killed in Iceland. It was on the way to the airport. We later learned that the driver was really depressed because his mom had just died. He was coping in classic Nordic fashion by getting completely wasted (wasted even by Icelandic standards). Unfortunately, we didn't notice any of the warning signs - like when he asked us if we had any drugs for the 45 minute drive to the airport. It was snowing heavily and things got shaky and then we spun around in the middle of the highway a few times. I could see some oncoming headlights (the ones that had been behind us). Then that was it.

Fortunately, Tim Soete from The Champs was also in the car and he led us to an ancient taxi driver who kept his fingers just barely on the steering wheel and made constant incremental adjustments for the snow. So we were dead, but we didn't miss our flight.

Speaking of which, I successfully fought depression on the TA tour through regular doses of the Extreme Combination of Red Bull, Mountain Dew Code Red, and Vodka Š and then any other uppers that were around.

Advice: It didn't really work. At nine in the morning after our final show, I was walking home in DC. I was asked to sign a petition. Then, later, I had a debilitating panic attack. It was a very strong effort, though.

Read his lips. Er, tweets.

By Fred Mills

Seems like only.... SUNDAY that all was rosy in the Jay Reatard camp. Saturday night Reatard and  his band had polished off the final show of the first leg of his fall tour in support of the Watch Me Fall album, and on Sunday were driving back home to Memphis from Baltimore.

Reatard even Twittered that day thusly: "In the van on the way back to memphis . Forst leg of the shattered tour was a smash thank you to everyone who partied down with all of u ..."

Ah, but what a difference 24 hours and a stinky van ride can make. Today, avid followers of Reatard's sporadic tweets found this missive waiting for them:

"Band quit! Fuck them! They are boring rich kids who can't play for ahit anyways ... Say hello to your ugly and boring wifes opps I mean lifes guys suck it."

Apparently bass player Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes are no longer with Reatard - no official explanation has been issued yet - and while this doesn't necessarily interrupt the tour per se (Reatard's got until Oct. 15 to round up new members; that's when he's slated to kick off West Coast dates in Seattle), all we can do is say... wait and see.

Oh, and pick up the new issue of BLURT, too: we have an interview with Reatard in it.

Not sure about that "most important band of the ‘90s" angle, but hey...

By Blurt Staff

This news just in from the All Tomorrows Parties site...

***

All Tomorrow's Parties is honoured to announce that the legendary Pavement will curate ATP in May 2010!!!

It would be fair to say, we at ATP get to present some very special bands. But we are beyond excited to announce that legendary US band Pavement will headline and curate the weekend of May 14th-16th in 2010!

After years of speculation, arguably the most important American band of the Nineties is returning to the stage with the line-up of Mark Ibold, Scott "Spiral Stairs" Kannberg, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West reuniting for dates around the world in 2010 including curating and performing at ATP Weekend 2 on May 14th - 16th.

Described in their own Wikipedia entry as having experienced "moderate commercial success," Pavement's catalogue for the Matador, Domino, Drag City and Treble Kicker imprints has come to define in the eyes of many, the blueprint for independent rock over the past generation and we are thrilled to have them join our illustrious list of curators.

Tickets are priced at £160pp for room only and £170pp for self catering and go on sale this Friday 9th October at www.atpfestival.com

A second ATP festival weekend featuring a different curator on May 7-9^th, 2010 will be announced next week!

Not Monsters of Folk, that is... check out the free MP3, below.

By Blurt Staff

They are calling this the Phantoms of Folk - "two lone wolves running together for one dark blissout of a night," says their label, Secretly Canadian, adding,  "two of the finest indie-folk songwriters of the last decade come together under the Texas sky to quietly lay to tape 14 crushing, haunting tunes, leaving space enough in each to match their surroundings."

Jason Molina and Will Johnson are familiar to you already if you're a fan of Magnolia Electric Col, Centro-matic Songs: Ohia and South San Gabriel. Now the pair have teamed up for the eponymous Molina and Johnson, due Nov. 3.

Advises the label, "Molina's documentarian, record-the-room ethos finds a home in Johnson's subtle atmospherics and production tweaks; and Molina's powerful tenor croon finds a fitting dance partner in Johnson's equally moving soft-gravel vox. While the individual performances from each are stunning in their own right, the musical mind meld that was captured is absolutely the occasion it should be."

Will Johnson gets a bit more succinct: "For ten days we wrote, co-wrote, workshopped, complimented, scrutinized, drank, invited friends to come play music, smoked, made lots of notes and drawings, drank a little more and shot the BB gun off the back porch when we just needed some time and space. In the throes of all this, our record was made in the late February sun."

The album features contributions from other musicians, such as Howard Draper, Bryan VanDivier, Scott Danbom, Magnolia Electric Co.'s Michael Kapinus and Texas songwriter Sarah Jaffe - the latter, in particular, adding plaintive vocals to "All Gone, All Gone" while  accompanied by the sound of a crying saw.

Euro tour dates below; a North American tour will be mounted in early 2010.

Molina and Johnson will be available on Secretly Canadian November 3 in the US, and November 2 in the UK. And check out the duo's European tour planned for late November and December. There will also be a North American tour coming in early 2010.

 MP3: Twenty Cycles to the Ground

TOUR DATES:

11/26 Deventer (NL), Burgerweeshuis
11/27 Ottersum (NL), Roepaen
11/28 Brussels (B), Botanique: 15 years Tout Partout
11/29 Utrecht (NL), Le Gues Who? Festival@Tivoli
11/30 Eindhoven (NL), MC Frits Philips
12/01 Winchester (UK), Railway Inn
12/02 London (UK), Garage
12/03 Manchester (UK), Deaf Institute
12/10 Barcelona (Spain), Primavera Club@Sala Be Cool
12/11 Barcelona (Spain), Primavera Club@Auditorio Montjuich
12/12 Madrid (Spain), Primavera Club@Teatro Alcazar
12/13 Lloseta-Mallorca (Spain), Teatro Lloseta
12/14 Puerto Real (Spain), Venue TBA

Exclusive report from Atlanta concert and book signing...

By Blurt Staff

You could smell the love in the air.  As you can tell from the above photo, author Michael Plumides (also BLURT's Social Networking Editor) had his first photo op since the release of his book, Kill The Music, with lead singer and ex-jailhouse roomie David Brockie, AKA Oderus Urungus of the shock-cock-rock group, GWAR.

Plumides and Brockie were both present for a book signing and performance at Masquerade in Atlanta, Georgia, Tuesday October 6, 2009.  Brockie and his Richmond based band are celebrating their 25th Anniversary, and the release of Lust In Space on Metal Blade Records, which debuted at #94 on Billboard in August.  GWAR recently is spawning not only loads of bodily fluids but also sponsorships from the likes of Jagermeister, and drew 1000-plus screaming, blood-soaked fans to the Masquerade. 

An amazing show but it was a bit too sultry in the room, almost enough to see steam coming off punks and metal heads, and on several occasions, BLURT staff members witnessed bouncers carrying out young slam-dancing nymphs suffering from heat exhaustion. Look for the new issue of BLURT on newsstands next week for an excerpt of Kill The Music, along with never before seen photos of the infamous GWAR show in North Carolina in September of 1990. 

Gwar Tour Dates

Kill the Music Facebook Page

Bono and the boys still make everyone go "aww..." in Atlanta last night (Oct. 6), even if that latest album was kind of a letdown...

Photos & Text by Colin Smith

(above) Bono Screams Into The Crowd During The Concert Opener, "Breathe," A Track Taken From Their Newest Album, No Line On The Horizon.

(below) Edge Moves To The Stage's Edge To Play A Signature Riff During The U2 Concert At Atlanta's Georgia Dome On October 6, 2009.

Adam Clayton Steps Into The Spotlight To Grind Out The Bassline For "Get On Your Boots"-The Second Song In The Set.

Bono Sprints To Stage Left During "Get On Your Boots."  The 360 Stage Design, Dubbed "The Claw" By Crew And Designers, Aims To Create The Feel Of Proximity For The Entire Crowd.

Bono Opens "Mysterious Ways," From U2's 1991 album, Achtung Baby.

Bono Wraps Up "Mysterious Ways" For The Sold Out Atlanta Crowd.

The Edge Moves To The Outer Circle Of The Stage For "Get On Your Boots"

For More Photos Visit Cms Digital At Http://Www.Cms-Digital.Com. All images copyright 2009 Colin Smith.

Hold your group together, with... Heinz Baked Beans! (You can use Rotosound Strings to pick your teeth.) A touring band's guide to good eats on the road: Blurt blogger Coco Hames of the Ettes tells you what to get and where.

By Blurt Staff

Dang, just reading this stuff makes us hungry, with a capital "O" - as in HONGRY!!

Glom onto the Ettes' Coco Hames' latest installment in her "Look At Life" blog (we also have a feature on the band in our new issue). Therein you'll find a guide to good eats for the discriminating touring band, with stops for Chinese food in NYC, cheese steak in Philly, seafood along the intercoastal waterway, a "special creepy pizza" in St. Louis, North Carolina versus Memphis barbeque, Mexican food throughout the southwest, and more. Plus stops at various rock-and-roll diners.

What is a rock-and-roll diner? You'll have that question answer, and more - with the exception of where to find the best baked beans bathhouse, which is a closely guarded secret among the Ettes and BLURT - by checking out Coco's blog. Urp!

Webcast of the group's show at the 9:30 Club starts at 12:30 am.

By Blurt Staff

Portland's the Gossip are launching a tour in support of their latest album at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC tonight (Wednesday, October 7). NPR Music will be webcasting the show live via www.npr.org/music (it will later be archived at the site). It's part of the broadcast system's "Live in Concert" series.

In honor of the occasion, NPR Music's Monitor Mix blogger and former Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein will co-host the event. Hear the entire show beginning at approximately 12:30 AM ET (early Thursday) here.

The Gossip's Rick Rubin-produced album, Music for Men, was just released and features high-intensity, dramatic rock along with intermittent dance beats and balladic turns by vocalist Beth Ditto. Ditto, the group's front-person, is known for her versatility and aggressive performance style and the band has built its reputation on live performances. Tune in to BLURT tomorrow for a review of the album.

Webcast of the group's show at the 9:30 Club starts at 9:30 pm.

By Blurt Staff

Dinosaur Jr continue their promotion of their latest album at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC tonight (Thursday, Oct. 8). NPR Music will be webcasting the show live via www.npr.org/music (it will later be archived at the site). It's part of the broadcast system's "Live in Concert" series.

Dinosaur Jr. begins its 9:30 appearance at approximately 9:30 PM ET and it can be heard in its entirety here.

The original line-up of the Massachusetts group that helped define indie and alternative rock in the late 1980s and early '90s reunited and hit the road soon after issuing re-mastered versions of their first three albums. Two new albums later, it's as if J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph never abandoned the freak scene. This tour supports their new album, Farm, released this spring to rave reviews thanks to its return to the earlier, heavy style that made Dinosaur Jr. an alt-rock cult favorite.

Lou Barlow and the Missingmen will open the show doing material from Barlow's new Goodbye Unknown album and they'll be part of the broadcast as well.

How about some 2 piece slide blues whiskey fantasy? How about that? How? Here!

By Blurt Staff

Brooklyn noismongers Bottle Up & Go are doing a special show tonight (Oct. 8) at Brooklyn's Southpaw venue - also on the bill will be Drummer (featuring the Black Keys' Patrick Carney) and the Royal Bangs. Show starts at 8:30, so don't tarry.

According to BU&G's MySpace page their key influence is "Leadbelly" and they sound like "2 piece Slide Blues Whiskey Fantasy," which goes down just fine with us! Ergo, we are giving away tickets to tonight's show.

Just go to the BLURT contest page to enter in the ticket drawing - don't worry, all we need is your contact information, social security number and the time of day you are generally not at home... okay, kidding about some of that...

Hey-ho, go see Bottle Up & Go.

They still love records... vinyl... artwork... CDs, too.

By Blurt Staff

Despite Thom Yorke being widely quoted recently as saying that Radiohead "can't possibly dive into" the making of another full-length again ("It'll kill us"), guitarist Ed O'Brien is now saying that Yorke's declaration is probably premature.

Ateaseweb.com is reporting that O'Brien has been talking to UK media and indicates that winter recording sessions are being planned for a projected 2010 release. "WE WILL BE MAKING AN ALBUM!" said O'Brien, adding, "We're going into the studio in winter. It's always miserable! Are we at the whim of the seasons? We are! When you're in a studio in the countryside, the music you make is definitely affected by what season it is."

Well, all right then!

"And we all like vinyl," continued O'Brien. "That's not going to go away. I still like CDs as well. I got the Speech Debelle CD the other day - I nearly downloaded it from iTunes but I thought, ‘No. I want the physical thing.'"

So do we, Ed, so do we. Please tell all the record labels and p.r. flacks who insist on sending us downloads and streams of new releases that we're still fans and collectors and want to be able to review the physical thing...

Mark your calendars for Dec. 12... ticket and lineup details still to come.

By Fred Mills

With the release of the new Gov't Mule album By A Thread (Evil Teen) just around the corner - it's due Oct. 27 - word arrives this morning of additional Mule-related news: the date of the annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam.

The 2009 installment of this star-laden benefit (for Habitat For Humanity) concert will be held at the Asheville (NC) Civic Center on December 12 - most likely there will also be the traditional pre-Jam jam the previous night at the Orange Peel club. The lineup for this year and on-sale date for tickets have not been announced yet, however, so watch this space for details.

The Asheville Citizen-Times is further reporting that in honor of the Haynes Jam a special "official beer" has been created by local brewers Asheville Brewing. Called "Christmas Jam White," it's a wheat beer described as "made in the Belgian wit style with a hint of orange and coriander in the taste."

Well, all right then!

"It's one of the most important beers that we've made," brewer Mike Rangel told the newspaper. "We had to make a great beer because this is a great event."

Boy howdy to that.

To read our 2008 interview with Haynes in which he discusses the history of the Christmas Jam and talks about the '08 edition which was a two-night 20^th anniversary blowout, go to "20 Years of Xmas Jams."

Fridays in November confirmed for L.A. residency.

By Blurt Staff

The solo debut album from Julian Casablancas, Phrazes for the Young, will be released November 3 on Cult Records/RCA (Rough Trade in the U.K.). In support of the release, Casablancas will perform a special series of shows every Friday night in November in Los Angeles.

Casablancas wrote and orchestrated every musical detail on the album from poly-rhythmic drum beats to harmonizing guitar solos. Highlights include the first single, "11th Dimension," already getting critical huzzahs along the line of "catchier than the Strokes," which is... interesting!

The record was written and recorded over the last 18 months with studio work completed in Los Angeles, New York City and Nebraska. The project was produced by Jason Lader with additional production by Mike Mogis.

Track listing:

1.      "Out of the Blue"
2.      "Left & Right in the Dark"
3.      "11th Dimension"
4.      "4 Chords of the Apocalypse"
5.      "Ludlow St."
6.      "River of Brakelights"
7.      "Glass"
8.      "Tourist"  

Album trailer, interviews, news, etc.: www.juliancasablancas.com

A stream of "11th Dimension" can be heard at his MySpace page: www.myspace.com/juliancasablancas

Limited edition tour-only CD, kinky USB wristbands, digital downloads, etc. etc. etc.... oh yeah, they're touring, too...

By Blurt Staff

The Pixies, currently about half-way through their sold-out European "Doolittle Tour," are recording their shows in London (October 6-9), Amsterdam (October 13), Brussels (October 14) and Paris (October 15-16), and then making a collectors/limited edition CD of those shows available.  Only 1000 copies of each collectors edition CD set will be made, and fans can purchase them beginning about 10-minutes after the end of the shows, or by going to http://pixieslive.sandbag.uk.com  The CDs are priced at £15.00.

In addition, 500 custom USB wristbands, priced at £20.00, will be available at the "Doolittle" shows as well as online.  The wristbands will include that night's show plus the added bonus of the five videos created specifically for the "Doolittle Tour" and featured as part of the show's live production.  

Both the CD and USB wristbands can be shipped worldwide, and can also be purchased as a digital download.

Fans and audiophiles will be particularly excited as the audio is mixed and mastered "on-the-fly" utilizing a full multi-track setup combined with microphones strategically placed in the audience to capture a true "live" feel.

The Pixies' "Doolittle Tour" is in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the release of their classic 1989 album, Doolittle, and the band is preforming all of the album's songs and its related B-sides.  Doolittle was the band's third album and includes classics such as "Debaser," "Wave of Mutilation," "Here Comes Your Man," "Hey," and "Gouge Away."

The tour, which kicked off October 1 with two sold-out nights in Dublin, has received rave notices - five-star reviews in the [London] Times, the Guardian, and the Independent, which also said, "...no band has pulled off a one-album show as triumphantly as the Pixies did here with a 20th anniversary performance of their 1989 masterpiece Doolittle...a show that was a lesson in how a legendary band can reunite and actually enhance its status and its dignity."

For more information on how to purchase the Pixies' limited edition CDs and USBs, visit
http://pixieslive.sandbag.uk.com

Remaining dates for the European leg of the Pixies' "Doolittle Tour" are as follows:

OCTOBER

 9 Brixton Academy, London England

11 Jahrhunderhalle, Frankfurt, Germany

13 Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam, Holland

14 Forest National, Brussels, Belgium

15 Zenith, Paris, France  

16 Zenith, Paris, France

The Pixies kick off the U.S. leg of their "Doolittle Tour" with three dates at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.  That itinerary is as follows:

NOVEMBER

4 The Palladium, Los Angeles, CA

5 The Palladium, Los Angeles, CA 

6 The Palladium, Los  Angeles, CA

8 Fox Theater, Oakland, CA 

9 Fox Theater, Oakland, CA 

10 Fox Theatre, Oakland, CA

12 Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA 

13 Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA 

14 Hult Center, Eugene, OR

16 The Fillmore, Denver, CO 

17 The Fillmore, Denver, CO

20 Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL

21 Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL 

23  Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, NY

24 Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, NY 

25 Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, NY  (early show and late show)

27 Wang Center, Boston, MA 

28 Wang Center, Boston, MA 

30 Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C. 

DECEMBER

1 Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C. 

Employs Thom Yorke-approved "pay what you want" method for new release.

By Blurt Staff

Britain's Tilt, which consists of musicians that have collaborated with artists as diverse as KT Tunstall, Sugababes and Porcupine Tree release 'Long Gone' from their acclaimed debut EP, Million Dollar Wound as a 2-track digital single on October 12th 2009.

The nucleus of the band consists of Steve Vantsis, Dave Steward and Robin Boult. For the new song they are featuring vocals from guest singer Kaela Rowan, best known for her work with esteemed Scottish outfit Mouth Music. It shows a quieter, melancholic side to Tilt and has already received glowing reviews.

'Long Gone' is available exclusively as a pay-what-you-want download from the band's BandCamp site: http://tilt.bandcamp.com

More news on the band: www.milliondollarwound.co.uk

Take THAT, Radiohead! From his ‘80s debut LP with Skid Roper to more recent solo and Toadliquors offerings, and maybe even a Led Zep or Kenny Rogers tune to boot, it's all free-free-free.

By Fred Mills

Gadzooks! It's a freebie frenzy for twisted raconteur and BLURT hero Mojo Nixon, who is offering up nearly all of his back catalog in digital format - totally free. No charge. Nada. Zip. No strings attached. Not even a pay-what-you-want, tip-jar strategy.

It's all part of a timely, consumer-friendly promotion for his new album Whiskey Rebellion that was just released on Oct. 6, and it'll be running for roughly another two weeks.

That's right, root hogs, operators are standing by to take your call, er, mouse click, over at Mojo's Amazon.com store. That's where you can select from 147 DRM-free MP3s, or, if you are inclined to nab entire albums, you can download any or all of the titles listed below; there's also a handful of singles including covers of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" and the First Edition's "Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In."

If you're not up on your Mojo Nixon, check out his Wikipedia page, pronto, pal, or head over to his official website. If you're on Sirius/XM radio, you've probably heard his daily weekday (4-8 pm) show on the Outlaw Country channel, or his weekly political talk show, "Lyin' Cocksuckers," that airs Thursdays at 8pm. Now sing along with us: " I saw Jesus At McDonald's at midnight/ Don Henley must die!"

With Skid Roper:

• Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper (1985)
• Get Out Of My Way! (1986)
• Frenzy (1986)
• Bo-Day-Shus!!! (1987)
• Root Hog or Die (1989)
• Unlimited Everything (1990)

Solo:

• Otis (1990)
• Mojo Nixon Live at The Casbah 12/28/2003 (2003)
• Whiskey Rebellion (2009)

With the Toadliquors:

• Whereabouts Unknown (1995)
• Gadzooks!!! The Homemade Bootleg (1997)

Collector's edition comes in a working guitar amp?!? WTF!!

By Blurt Staff

Backtracks is what's being billed as the  "ultimate AC/DC collector's experience," available Tuesday, November 10. We are all about ultimate collector's experiences. Here's the scoop:

Arriving in two distinctly different fan-friendly editions, Backtracks spans the length and breadth of AC/DC's career, bringing together rare songs, hard-to-find live performances and the long-awaited debut of "Family Jewels Disc 3," a DVD showcasing the group's music videos, live performances, and promotional clips from 1992-2009.  (The original double-disc "Family Jewels" was named 2005's "DVD of the Year" by the UK's Classic Rock magazine while the RIAA certified the collection 10x Platinum for sales in excess of 1 million copies in the US alone.)

Manufactured in an exclusive run limited to 50,000 pieces, the deluxe collector's edition of Backtracks includes a CD of studio rarities, two CDs of live rarities, the "Family Jewels Disc 3" DVD, the "Live at the Circus Krone" DVD, a front-row immersion in the band's scorching 2003 club show in Munich, Germany, and a 12" long-playing album, struck in 180 gram vinyl, of hard-to-find studio tracks.  The limited edition Backtracks includes a five-disc media carrier to house and transport the set's three CDs and two DVDs.

In addition the deluxe collector's edition comes with a 164 page coffee table book and an Original Memorabilia Reproductions Envelope containing an astounding array of facsimiles including the "I DO IT FOR AC/DC" button (the band's very first tour merch), the 1976 "Lock Up Your Daughters" tour flyer, the Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap recording track sheet, a 2' x 3' 1977 Let There Be Rock European Tour poster, a Bon Scott parrot tattoo replica, an AC/DC logo guitar pick, an Australian Money Talks dollar, three b&w fine art lithographs of never-before-seen photos of the band in the Alberts Studio in 1977 and more.

The AC/DC deluxe collector's edition of Backtracks comes housed in a fully operational AC/DC guitar amplifier.  The limited and numbered deluxe collector's edition of Backtracks will be available direct-to-consumers exclusively through the website www.acdcbacktracks.com with full details on pre-ordering going live on the site on Tuesday, September 29.

The three-disc standard version of Backtracks distills the electrifying essence of the deluxe set into one CD of studio rarities, one CD of hard-to-find live tracks, and the indispensable "Family Jewels Disc 3" DVD.

AC/DC

BACKTRACKS: COLLECTOR'S EDITION DELUXE BOX SET

CD1 [STUDIO RARITIES]

1. High Voltage (Original Australian Full Edit)

2. Stick Around

3. Love Song

4. It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N' Roll) (Original Australian Full Edit)

5. Rocker (Original Australian Full Edit)

6. Fling Thing

7. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (Original Australian Full Edit)

8. Ain't No Fun (Waiting Around To Be A Millionaire) (Original Australian Full Edit)

9. R.I.P. (Rock In Peace)

10. Carry Me Home

11. Crabsody In Blue

12. Cold Hearted Man

13. Who Made Who - 12" extended mix

14. Snake Eye

15. Borrowed Time

16. Down On The Borderline

17. Big Gun

18. Cyberspace

CDs 2-3 [LIVE B-SIDES]

CD 2

1. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (Sydney Festival 1/30/77)

2. Dog Eat Dog (Apollo 4/30/78)

3. Live Wire (Hammersmith Odeon 11/2/79)

4. Shot Down In Flames (Hammersmith Odeon 11/2/79)

5. Back In Black (Landover, MD 12/21/81)

6. T.N.T. (Landover, MD 12/21/81)

7. Let There Be Rock (Landover, MD 12/21/81)

8. Guns For Hire (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

9. Sin City (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

10. Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

11. This House Is On Fire (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

12. You Shook Me All Night Long (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

13. Jailbreak (Dallas, TX 10/12/85)

14. Shoot To Thrill (Donington Park, 8/17/91)

15. Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be (Donington Park 8/17/91)

CD 3

1. High Voltage (Donington Park 8/17/91)

2. Hells Bells (Donington Park 8/17/91)

3. Whole Lotta Rosie (Donington Park 8/17/91)

4. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (Donington Park 8/17/91)

5. Highway To Hell (Moscow 9/28/91)

6. Back In Black (Moscow 9/28/91)

7. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) (Moscow 9/28/91)

8. Ballbreaker (Madrid 7/10/96)

9. Hard As A Rock (Madrid 7/10/96)

10. Dog Eat Dog (Madrid 7/10/96)

11. Hail Caesar (Madrid 7/10/96)

12. Whole Lotta Rosie (Madrid 7/10/96)

13. You Shook Me All Night Long (Madrid 7/10/96)

14. Safe In New York City (Phoenix, AZ 9/13/2000)

LP

SIDE A

Stick Around

Love Song

Fling Thing

R.I.P. (Rock In Peace)

Carry Me Home

Crabsody In Blue

SIDE B

Cold Hearted Man

Snake Eye

Borrowed Time

Down On The Borderline

Big Gun

Cyberspace

DVD 1 "Family Jewels Disc Three"

VIDEOS

Big Gun

Hard As A Rock

Hail Caesar

Cover You In Oil

Stiff Upper Lip

Satellite Blues

Safe In New York City

Rock N Roll Train

Anything Goes

BONUS VIDEOS

Jailbreak

It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N' Roll)

Highway To Hell

You Shook Me All Night Long

Guns For Hire

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (LIVE Album Promo)

Highway To Hell (LIVE Album Promo)

BONUS FEATURES

The Making Of Hard As A Rock

The Making Of Rock N Roll Train

DVD 2 "Live At The Circus Krone"

Hell Ain't A Bad Place To Be

Back In Black

Stiff Upper Lip

Shoot to Thrill

Thunderstruck

Rock N Roll Damnation

What's Next To The Moon

Hard As A Rock

Bad Boy Boogie

The Jack

If You Want Blood (You've Got It)

Hells Bells

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Rock N Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

T.N.T.  

Let There Be Rock

Highway To Hell

For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

Whole Lotta Rosie

AC/DC

BACKTRACKS: STANDARD EDITION

CD 1 [STUDIO RARITIES]

1. Stick Around

2. Love Song

3. Fling Thing

4. R.I.P. (Rock In Peace)

5. Carry Me Home

6. Crabsody In Blue

7. Cold Hearted Man

8. Snake Eye

9. Borrowed Time

10. Down On The Borderline

11. Big Gun

12. Cyberspace

CD 2 [LIVE RARITIES]

1. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (Sydney Festival 1/30/77)

2. Dog Eat Dog (Apollo 4/30/78)

3. Live Wire (Hammersmith Odeon 11/2/79)

4. Shot Down In Flames (Hammersmith Odeon 11/2/79)

5. Back In Black (Landover, MD 12/21/81)

6. T.N.T. (Landover, MD 12/21/81)

7. Let There Be Rock (Landover, MD 12/21/81)

8. Guns For Hire (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

9. Sin City (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

10. Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

11. This House Is On Fire (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

12. You Shook Me All Night Long (Detroit, MI 11/18/83)

13. Jailbreak (Dallas, TX 10/12/85)

14. Highway To Hell (Moscow 9/28/91)

15. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) (Moscow 9/28/91)

16. Safe In New York City (Phoenix, AZ 9/13/2000)

DVD "Family Jewels Disc Three"

VIDEOS

Big Gun

Hard As A Rock

Hail Caesar

Cover You In Oil

Stiff Upper Lip

Satellite Blues

Safe In New York City

Rock N Roll Train

Anything Goes

BONUS VIDEOS

Jailbreak

It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N' Roll)

Highway To Hell  

You Shook Me All Night Long  

Guns For Hire

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (LIVE Album Promo)

Highway To Hell (LIVE Album Promo)

BONUS FEATURES

The Making Of Hard As A Rock

The Making Of Rock N Roll Train

Eclectic Underground Event Spreads Fairy Dust on Seedy LA

By Jose Martinez

Serendipity is defined as ‘good fortune' or ‘luck.' And this weekend eclectic promoters Leila Fakouri and Alison Segura, via their Tree Top Productions, are putting together their second Serendipity event this Saturday, October 17 at a secret location in downtown Los Angeles - good fortune for any L.A. hipsters that want to revel off the beaten path.

A combination of Halloween, New Years Eve and Mardi Gras on absinthe, Serendipity is hedonistic delight where fairytales come to life; just look at the elves that will be abound, as well as stilt walkers, acrobats and pirates. OK, the pirates are a little out of left field but they just add to the fun.

"We want to create an environment that is conducive to making connections for people to play and let down their guard and interact, not only with the characters but with the other guests," Serendipity co-founder Alison Segura explains.

"Serendipity," according to fellow co-founder Leila Fakouri is "a performance-based multi media event that features musical acts, theatrical performances, live installations, soaring spectacles, art, costumed fashions, dance, video, decadent desserts, and signature drinks."

Housed in an impressive 3,600-square-foot design space loft in downtown Los Angeles, a "living portfolio" for designer Fakouri, partygoers are treated to an array of decadent desserts courtesy of Blu LA Café and signature cocktails aimed to send your taste buds and senses into overdrive.

"We purposely went for dessert because it's so decadent and such a treat to have just tables and tables of different types of dessert," Segura points out. "We want to evoke that sense of playfulness."

Indeed, guests are invited to explore this fantastical playground, engage in its unfolding story, and interact with its eccentric inhabitants - characters who further blur the ambiguous line between nature, human, animal, and creature.

"Imagine an antiquated society that has evolved within the borders of a mythical garden," Fakouri notes. "We want to create a personal experience for our guests that is interactive, one that will break the audience performer relationship that we're all too familiar with.  Ultimately we want to create an opportunity for people to play and to have a chance to escape their everyday routine."

Billed as a seasonal event, the inaugural Serendipity took place this August and now, with Halloween upon us, this soirée is aimed to elevate the status quo.

"We're really excited about all the surprises we have for this Serendipity," Segura assures with glee. "We're definitely delving into the ominous and the mysterious. We have dancers, singers and acrobats and we want to incorporate all of their talents within this ever-changing story. Every time you come there's something different and new elements are added."

Serendipity, a word coined by English author Horace Walpole in 1754, took its origins from part of the title of a fairytale, called "The Three Princes of Serendip." Saturday night should prove to be an evening where anything is possible," party host Segura states.

"We're hoping people will forget about their day and what they have to do in the morning and just completely surrender to the environment and the performances and the food and touch, taste and hear and play."

For more information on Serendipity or to buy tickets go to www.treetopproductions.org.

Declares "State of Emergency" and plans on using the universal language of music to bring socially conscious messages back to hip-hop.

By Blurt Staff

Some days the press releases we get around here are absolutely fascinating...

***

Bill Cosby rekindles hip-hop's socially conscious flame on "Bill Cosby Presents the Cosnarati: State of Emergency," an album of music with messages reflecting today's most critical issues affecting young people. Created to engage listeners and lead them to take action, the CD's empowering and dialogue-provoking themes will be spread throughout the Internet via the comedian/actor/author's extensive social media network and an interactive new web site, billcosby.com, designed to build a grassroots campaign of activist-led house parties and town halls.

On Oct. 19, Cosby and the Cosnarati Band will kick off the project with a virtual town hall meeting in New York City. Presented in association with Ustream, the town hall starts at 7pm EDT (4pm PDT) on urban radio station web sites across the country as well as billcosby.com and facebook.com/billcosby.  A highlight of the 90-minute event will include a first time ever performance by Cosnarati specifically for the town hall event of a few songs from the record.  The songs will be available at digital retailers on Oct. 20, to be followed by the album's Nov. 24 physical and digital release.  

Audience members can tweet @BillCosby before and during the live town hall using http://www.tinyurl.com/ASKCOSBY and connect with him directly at http://twitter.com/BillCosby

During the town hall, Cosby will simultaneously relaunch billcosby.com-supported by Blue State Digital, a leading online marketing agency-and announce the house party campaign. Visitors to the site will be able to obtain the "Emergency" CD, its lyrics and a copy of Cosby's 2007 best-seller, "Come On People: On the Path From Victims to Victors." It's all part of a grassroots effort to foster ongoing community dialogue and action by way of listening parties held at homes, community centers, churches and other locales.

Cosby executive produced the project and conceived the songs' story concepts. "I don't like referring to the music as 'clean," says Cosby, who does not rap or sing on the album. "What I like is what you're not going to do. You're not going to curse. You're not going to put women down. You're not going to put the glory of the gun somewhere. And you're not going to put a whole lot of violence up front like that's the thing that will cleanse you and make you feel better."

Two years in the making, "State of Emergency" adds new meaning to the phrase "message in the music." Tackling such social issues as self-respect, peer pressure, abuse and education, the CD is the aural companion to Cosby's "Come on People," co-authored with Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint. The project's 14 tracks integrate frank, positive messages with a progressive mix of hip-hop, R&B, jazz, pop, funk and rock. The result is a strong, cohesive narrative that doesn't rely on profanity, misogyny, materialism or ego exercising to deliver its powerful impact.

"State of Emergency" was produced by Cosby's longtime musical colleague, William "Spaceman" Patterson.  The musician/arranger's extensive list of credits include "The Cosby Show," Miles Davis, LL Cool J, Eric Clapton and Alicia Keys. In addition to his production partner Ced-Gee, co-founder of the pioneering hip-hop group Ultramagnetic MCs, Patterson recruited three guest rappers for "State of Emergency": Jace the Great, Brother Hahz and Supa Nova Slom.

Brother Hahz and Jace the Great set the stage on the opening title track, which features a no-holds-barred chorus: "Let the horns blow; it's a state of emergency/This whole world needs surgery/Every soul breeds perjury/And I got the urge to speak my mind." Other standout tracks include the New Orleans-jazzed "Where's the Parade?," which salutes powerful black women; the introspective "Where Did I Go Wrong?";  the funky yet hard-hitting "Dad's Behind the Glass": and the R&B-empowered "Get on Your Job."

Notes Patterson, "We want people to receive 'State of Emergency' the way we made it: as a gift; an opportunity for dialogue between children and parents and an alternative to the cookie-cutter sound that's out here. Hopefully, we can tear down some walls and be part of the solution, not the problem."

By using the universal language of music, "Bill Cosby Presents the Cosnarati: State of Emergency" delivers a powerful wakeup call-one that everyone should heed. "Do me a favor," adds Cosby. "Just listen. Please."

Meanwhile, there's also those matters about the sexuality of Christ and the lonely journey of the male seahorse.

By Blurt Staff

Tom Waits is set to release Glitter and Doom Live, a collection of outstanding live tracks from his 2008 sold out US and European tour. This two CD set contains 17 live recordings from ten nights along the tour including, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Tulsa, Knoxville, Atlanta, Paris, Milan, Jacksonville, Dublin and Columbus. The second CD entitled, Tom Tales holds nearly 40 minutes of Waits quixotic ruminations on topics ranging from romantic spiders to injured vultures. The CD will also come with a booklet of live photos. It drops Nov. 24 on Anti-.

The vinyl version of Glitter and Doom Live will feature gatefold sleeve with live photos from the tour and contain all 17 tracks but no Tom Tales. Inside the LP, Anti- is providing a card w/mp3 download instructions, which will enable the buyer to download Tom Tales as well.

Musically, the live discs encapsulate Waits in all his chug, boom and steam. His shamanistic vocals, innovative arrangements, visionary lyrics, pounding rhythms and emotional melodies are all here. There are dark swampy tribal rhythms, ominous hymns, and cautionary tales all swirling around Waits' unmistakable howl and croon. The CD has a dead man singing to his widow, a convict's last words, an instructional dance number, lamenting sword swallowers and bragging pirates. All of the tracks were personally selected and sequenced to give you the feeling of one great night on tour.

Yesterday, October 12, www.tomwaits.com went live. Fans are invited to wander and roam through the first ever official website for all things Waits: news, updates on recordings, new releases, tours, films and more. A resource for lyrics, photos, wit and wisdom, strange but true tales, and more imponderables on topics as far ranging as the origin of consciousness, the sexuality of Christ and the lonely journey of the male seahorse.

Track Listing:

1. Lucinda / Ain't Goin Down (Birmingham - 07/03/08) - 5:37
2. Singapore (Edinburgh - 07/28/08) - 5:00
3. Get Behind The Mule (Tulsa - 06/25/08) - 6:26
4. Fannin Street (Knoxville - 06/29/08) - 4:16
5. Dirt In The Ground (Milan - 07/19/08) - 5:18
6. Such A Scream (Milan - 07/18/08) - 2:51
7. Live Circus (Jacksonville - 07/01/08) - 5:04
8. Goin' Out West (Tulsa - 06/25/08) - 3:48
9. Falling Down (Paris - 07/25/08) - 4:21
10. The Part You Throw Away (Edinburgh - 07/28/08) - 5:07
11. Trampled Rose (Dublin - 08/01/08) - 5:06
12. Metropolitan Glide (Knoxville - 6/29/08) - 3:10
13. I'll Shoot The Moon (Paris - 07/24/08) - 4:25
14. Green Grass (Edinburgh - 07/27/08) - 3:20
15. Make It Rain (Atlanta - 07/05/08) - 3:58
16. Story (Columbus - 06/28/08) - 2:02
17. Lucky Day (Atlanta - 07/05/08) - 3:47

Photo credit: Michael Regan

Video exclusive unveiled at Blurt + review of the new live album.

By Fred Mills

It's officially James McMurtry day at Blurt (first 10 callers win an all-expenses paid trip to the Texas singer-songwriter's artistic aesthetic). Ergo, we've unveiled his new video from his new album Live in Europe, out today on Lightning Rod Records.

The vid is for "You'd a Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die)" and it's a corker, as our British pals might say. Go here to check it out in our video kiosk.

Meanwhile, we've also got a review of the album just posted to the site this morning. Sez we:"it  offers the distinctive pleasures of a typical James McMurtry show, with his thousand and one guitars of perfect tone." Go here to read the review.

McMurtry, incidentally, is one of our most-viewed bloggers. If you haven't read his Blurt blog, Wasteland Bait & Tackle, you're missing out big time...

Out ‘n' about in the City of Angels with Blurt's roving shutterbug...

By Scott Dudelson

Dave Gonzales (of Hacienda Brothers / Paladins) - Live at the Mint (www.themintla.com) - 9/23

Banyon (featuring Stephen Perkins of Janes Addiction, Dan Shulman of Garbage, Willie Waldman, Tim Kobza, and Norton Wisdom - Live at the Mint (www.themintla.com) - 9/25

Greg Dulli - Live at The Roxy Theatre (www.theroxyonsunset.com) - 9/27 (a benefit for Scott Ford, bass player of Twilight Singers)

Steve O (of Jackass) -  Live at The Roxy Theatre (www.theroxyonsunset.com) - 9/27 (a benefit for Scott Ford, bass player of Twilight Singers)

Peter Frampton - Live at The Mint (www.themintla.com) - (sitting in with Back Door Slam) - 9/30

Loney Dear - Live at Troubadour (www.troubadour.com) - 9/30

Albert Lee - Live at the Canyon Club (www.canyonclub.net) - 10/3 (a benefit for Richie Hayward, Drummer of Little Feat)

Coco Montoya - Live at Canyon Club (www.canyonclub.net) - 10/3 (a benefit for Richie Hayward, Drummer of Little Feat)

Jackson Browne - Live at Canyon Club (www.canyonclub.net) - 10/3 (a benefit for Richie Hayward, Drummer of Little Feat)

Manzarek / Krieger (feat: Brett Scallions of Fuel on vocals), Robby Krieger, The Doors - Live at Club Nokia (www.clubnokia.com) - 10/5

***

Scott Dudelson is a music journalist and concert photographer based in Los Angeles.  Scott is also the Chief Operating Officer of Prodege, LLC, the company behind www.swagbucks.com.

You can see The Rosebuds play an acoustic version of "Leaves do Fall" from their 2007 album, Night of the Furies during XX Merge.

The Rosebuds performance wraps up the six week series at Converse.com showcasing Merge bands performing stripped-down sets in numerous locations during the festival. The Converse series includes videos from Superchunk, The Clientele, Telekinesis, Lou Barlow, Wye Oak, and The Rosebuds.

Additional Merge footage can be seen at the Merge channel at Babelgum for live footage from the <XX Merge 20th anniversary shows held July 22-26th at the Cat's Cradle and Memorial Hall.

Most photogenic outfit we've seen all week in fact..

By Blurt Staff

En route next February is the debut from one of indiepop's hottest young prospects. They're called Phantogram - described by their new handlers, the good folks of Barsuk Records, as "electronic loops, hip-hop beats, shoegaze, soul, pop" - and they don't live and work in a major urban center, but rather cals the town of Saratoga Springs, NY (population 26,186) home.  Despite the cultural influence of local Skidmore College (where fellow beat-experimenters Ratatat formed) and a relatively small scene of adventurous musicians and listeners, Saratoga isn't exactly teeming with fans of J. Dilla, My Bloody Valentine or Serge Gainsbourg.

But Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, the duo that make up Phantogram and who grew up in the even smaller nearby municipality of Greenwich, have flourished in Saratoga. In fact, the town itself isn't rural enough for their taste - they drive almost every day another 45 minutes into upstate farmland to a barn they call Harmony Lodge to write and record. Serving as their homemade studio/practice space/think-tank/bat-cave, the barn is equipped with various samplers, tapes, records, synths, drums, and both percussive and stringed instruments. It's there that Phantogram allows their natural surroundings and metropolitan influences to meld together creating beautiful, beat-driven dreamlike pop songs.

The band even references dreams when describing both the lyrics and sonics of their own music, and the process of making it: "We ran across a description of dreams somewhere that used the phrase ‘eyelid movies' - and it really struck us both as something that fit our music," notes Barthel, while Carter explains further: "Daydreams, the spots you see moving around when your eyes are closed tight, and the shapes you see in the world - those are the kinds of things we want to surface in your mind when you hear a Phantogram song."

Hard to say from song to song whether the dreams are entirely pleasant or nightmarish (there tends to be a bleak undercurrent of loneliness and isolation in much of the band's work, counter-balanced by bright moments of swagger and joy), but this music is certainly vivid and exciting - springing as it does from an unpredictable mix of technological and organic roots.

Original mover and shaker on the L.A. scene passes away at the age of 60.

By Fred Mills

L.A. punk scenester and author Brendan Mullen died on Monday, Oct. 12, after having suffered a stroke the previous Saturday. He was 60 at the time of his death, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Mullen, of course, was well known to anyone with even a passing interest in punk rock - he'd moved from Scotland to L.A. in the early ‘70s and opened the legendary Masque club in Hollywood in 1977. During its storied 1977-79 run the Masque put the likes of X, the Germs, Go-Go's, Weirdos and scores more front and center at L.A. punk ground zero.

Over the years Mullen continued to book bands and write about them, most notably a pair of must-read books on L.A., 2001's We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk and 2002's Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs.

On a personal note, I was fortunate to interview Mullen a couple of times and always found him to be sharper than the proverbial tack and wittier than at barrelful of Weirdos lyrics. He remained an unfailing and unflappable supporter of the scene he helped to kickstart, and without his pioneering efforts it's likely that Los Angeles punk would not have achieved the level of regional and national prominence it ultimately did. His voice and vision will be missed.

[Photo courtesy Wikipedia]

Blue Cheer bassist had carried the torch for uncompromising skronk, biker metal and "ultra blues" since the ‘60s...

By Blurt Staff

We got back from a road trip to learn the sad news that Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer had passed away on Monday. The band had recently issued a live concert DVD, Blue Cheer Rocks Europe and was additionally planning a tour to support it when the bassist was diagnosed with cancer.

BLURT's Rev. Keith paid tribute to Peterson at his About.com Blues blog (follow the link, as he has also posted video clips of the band), and we are reprinting it below. Peterson will be missed....

***

By Rev. Keith A. Gordon

Founding Blue Cheer bassist and vocalist Dickie Peterson passed away on Monday, October 12, 2009 in Germany. Although no cause of death has been released, Peterson had been fighting a long battle with prostrate and liver cancer. He was thought to be 61 years old at the time of his death, although the artist's MySpace page lists his age as 63.

Peterson formed Blue Cheer in San Francisco in 1966 with guitarist Leigh Stephens and drummer Paul Whaley. Taking amplified blues-rock to its logical extremes, the band was one of rock's original "power trios," and they played louder and heavier than any of their contemporaries. Blue Cheer scored a hit with a cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from its 1968 debut album, Vincebus Eruptum. Subsequent Blue Cheer albums, which combined psychedelic rock with a healthy dose of electric blues, would help write the blueprint for heavy metal during the 1970s and grunge during the '90s.

Blue Cheer broke up during the early-1970s, although Peterson would put together new versions of the band in 1979 and again in 1985. In 2007, Peterson reunited with drummer Whaley in a revived Blue Cheer, recording the band's final album, What Doesn't Kill You with guitarist Duck McDonald. During the years in between, Peterson recorded two solo albums, including the 1999 blues-rock barn-burner Tramp, which was only released in Japan.

In a 2005 interview with StonerRock.com, Peterson is quoted saying, "people keep trying to say that we're heavy metal or grunge or punk, or we're this or that. The reality is we're just a power trio and we play ultra-blues, and it's rock 'n' roll. It's really simple what we do."

Inaugural release from the musician's new indie label; CMJ showcase announced too.

By Blurt Staff

We previously brought you details on the recently launched Terrible Records label, Formed by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear, and Ethan Silverman of Lust Boys. Now comes word of the Terrible first release, CANT, out today. CANT is the title of Taylor's first solo release, "Ghosts," and is coupled with a previously unreleased song recorded by Arthur Russell in the late '70's, called "Come To Life" (courtesy of Audika Records).

CANT is the first in a series of 7-inches recorded at Terrible Studios. The series will continue with songs produced by Taylor, recorded at his church-studio in Brooklyn where Taylor produced much of the latest Grizzly Bear record, Veckatimist. The CANT 7-inch release is limited to 1000 copies and is out today, available at the label's website and select retailers. 

In conjunction with  its first release, Terrible Records is offering a free mp3 download of Taylor's track "Ghosts" for a limited time. You can nab it here:

"Ghosts"

Terrible have also announced their CMJ Showcase in NYC at Pianos on Friday, Oct. 23rd. On the billwill be Ungdomskulen, Spleen UTD, Class Actress, Acrylics, Blood Orange, Little Girls and Arms. (Hey, there's already a band called the Blood Oranges, somebody let those goobers know about this...)

Speaking of the Acrylics, the next release for Terrible will be the Taylor-produced 5-song, 10" EP from that NYC group on October 28th, entitled All of the Fire.

20 years of what?!? Making punk rock?!? That's like, 100  in dog years!

By Blurt Staff

"I don't really regret a single thing with this band; it all happened for one reason or another and led me here. I am healthy, I am strong, and I love the new record. Shit like that don't last so I'm going with it."

That's Strung Out frontman Jason Cruz, talking exclusively to Blurt's John Moore, in the latest punk-rockin' installment of his "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" blog. You can read the whole thing here, in which the Simi Valley musician reflects on 20 years of creating politically-tinged, hardcore-tilting melodic punk rock and on his band's new album Agents of the Underground.

Two songs hail from same recording session that yielded the first single - part of Jack White's label's subscription series. And what about that live Raconteurs album!?!

By Blurt Staff

Okay, White Stripes and Raconteurs fans, time to pony up!

Third Man Records - Jack White's label - will be releasing outtakes from the Stripes' debut 7" recording of "Let's Shake Hands "- marking the first time ever that the band has released any outtakes from any past recordings throughout their 10 year career.  Recorded in 1998 during the same session that yielded their debut single, alternate versions of the title track and its accompanying b-side "Look Me Over Closely" will be made available exclusively to subscribers of The Vault; Third Man Records' groundbreaking online subscription service.

In addition, subscribers will also receive another piece of exclusive vinyl: The Raconteurs, Live in London - a double LP 180-gram vinyl gatefold of the band's 2008 live performance in London - along with a limited edition Rob Jones-designed screen print poster for The Dead Weather. 

This package is the second installment of give-a-ways to from Jack White's Third Man Records to The Vault's Platinum service members, which provides subscribers two pieces of exclusive vinyl, not available in stores or online, as well as a limited edition t-shirt or screen print every 3 months.  Registration has opened for three weeks (October 1st through October 22nd) for the Platinum service of The Vault which grants subscribers not only these exclusive give-a-ways, but also access to audio and video previews, pre-sale concert tickets, early entry to gigs, live-to-video performances and direct contact with Third Man artists.

"Direct contact," hmmm... o, the mind just boggles!

For more information on The Vault: www.thirdmanrecords.com/vault.html

Engages in usual strongarm tactics to try to get 7-11 to reverse its decision to carry the November issue containing a... cartoon on its cover. Cartoon PO*N, in fact!

By Fred Mills

It's great being a parent, or sometimes just a parent with friends who are parents. Or sometimes just being a journalist who has people who send him all kinds of interesting stuff. To wit, this morning's arrival of a memo from the American Family Association. For those not in the know, the AFA is the right-wing conservative Christian group founded in 1977 (as the National Federation for Decency) by the Rev. Donald Wildmon; favorite pastimes for the AFA include boycotts of all kinds of crap, anti-homosexuality crusades, and generally getting up the ass of anybody it perceives as not being down with its inflexible view of live, love and the cosmos.

If Darwin were around he'd have a field day with the AFA. But I digress!

Below is the letter the AFA sent out to supporters and the media this morning. You've all heard of the upcoming, November issue of Playboy in which Marge Simpson is to appear on the cover and in a spread. You also probably know that while the 7-11 chain does not carry Playboy - primarily because, some two decades ago, the AFA strong-armed it into pussying out (term used relatively) - it made a decision to stock this issue. This in turn has enraged the AFA, who apparently think that a lone issue of Playboy will turn our sons into compulsive masturbators (you know what that leads to... sex with Slurpees!) and will lead us down a slippery slope to abusing and degrading the entire female population and generally treating them as second class citizens (and you know what that leads to... an Arab takeover of Amerika!).

The letter speaks for itself and is reprinted verbatim, including the AFA's Cindy Roberts' contact information if you should feel inclined to call or email her to express your, uh, support.

The only thing left to say is... sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon, Dr. Freud.

***

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Cindy Roberts
662-844-5036 x227

croberts@afa.net

October 15, 2009

AFA TO 7-Eleven: DON'T STOCK SIMPSON P*RN

American Family Association (AFA) today called on 7-Eleven stores to reconsider their decision to sell the November issue of Playboy, which will feature a cartoon character on the cover. The magazine will hit newsstands on October 16 with a cover and two-page centerfold featuring Marge Simpson, the mother on the Fox animated series The Simpsons.

"Most American dads know the dangers that porn represents to young males. It's irresponsible of 7-Eleven to display porn in front of boys who pop into 7-11s for a hot dog or a Slurpee," said Randy Sharp, AFA Special Projects Director.

"The cover will create the kind of curiosity that can easily lead them into an addictive porn habit," he said. "This is not what American families want to see in their neighborhood convenience store."

The magazine will be carried in the 1,200 7-Eleven stores that are corporately owned, stores that have been virtually porn-free for the last two decades.

Monica Cole, Director of AFA's OneMillionMoms.com, and a mother herself, finds 7-Eleven's decision deeply offensive. "Marge Simpson on the cover of Playboy is disturbing on so many levels," she said. "7-Eleven has to know that using an animated character on the cover of a pornographic magazine is deceptive and harmful because it will attract the attention of children.

"It's inexcusable for a company that wants to be a responsible member of American society to use a cartoon character to hawk pornography," Cole said. "America's moms didn't like Joe Camel selling cigarettes to their kids, and they don't want Marge Simpson selling degrading images of women either.

"A lot of moms are going to shop somewhere else if 7-Eleven doesn't do the right thing and refuse to stock this magazine."

American Family Association is a pro-family advocacy organization with over 2.5 million online supporters.

The Whigs just announced an upcoming tour and sneak peak at their upcoming album, In The Dark (ATO Records). The headlining tour covers 29 cities in seven weeks and The Features, The Dead Trees and Mean Creek will support the run at different stages.
 
The Whigs are offering the title track for free HERE.
 
TOUR DATES:
 
With The Features (from October 28th - December 15th)
With The Dead Trees (from October 28th - November 21st)
With Mean Creek (October 28th and December 5th - 15th)
 
October 28th                Middle East (Downstairs)       Boston, Massachusetts
October 29th                Funk & Waffles                      Syracuse, New York
October 30th                Mohawk                                 Buffalo, New York
October 31st                Musica                                   Akron, Ohio
November 2nd             Mad Hatter                            Cincinnati, Ohio
November 3rd              Newport Music Hall               Columbus, Ohio
November 4th              Birdy's                                    Indianapolis, Indiana
November 5th              Cannery                                 Nashville, Tennessee
November 6th              Bottom Lounge                      Chicago, Illinois
November 7th              Triple Rock                             Minneapolis, Minnesota
November 10th            Bluebird Theater                     Denver, Colorado
November 13th            Media Club                              Vancouver, British Columbia
November 14th            Tractor Tavern                         Seattle, Washington
November 15th            Doug Fir Lounge                     Portland, Oregon
November 17th            The Independent                     San Francisco, California
November 18th            Detroit Bar                               Costa Mesa, California
November 19th            The Troubadour                       Los Angeles, California
November 20th            Beauty Bar                               Las Vegas, Nevada
November 21st             Soma (sidestage)                    San Diego, California
December 1st               Emo's                                      Austin, Texas
December 2nd              The Loft                                   Dallas, Texas
December 4th               The Variety Playhouse            Atlanta, Georgia
December 5th               Rhythm & Brews                     Chattanooga, Tennessee
December 8th               Visulite                                     Charlotte, North Carolina
December 10th             Black Cat                                  Washington, DC, Washington DC
December 11th             The Fillmore @ Irving Plaza      New York, New York
December 12th             North Star                                  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
December 14th             Local 506                                   Chapel Hill, North Carolina
December 15th             Pour House                                Charleston, South Carolina

Current BLURT fave Jemina Pearl just released her first video from her "Break it Up" solo debut. Entitled "I Hate People" it features an Iggy Pop duet and an appearance by Thurston Moore. Brilliant. Check it out HERE!

v

Lifted from upcoming remix album, in fact...

By Blurt Staff

NYC collective The Phenomenal Handclap Band are releasing a sizeable remix album for "15 to 20"/"You'll Disappear," out Oct. 20th on Friendly Fire Recordings. The band has enlisted the help of some of the finest electronic artists around the world for this digital-only release, including Prins Thomas, Montee, Horse Meat Disco, Ilya Sanatana and more. 

You can nab a free MP3 of Prins Thomas' remix here (note, keep trying, as it was glitchy first time we tried to access it):

"You'll Disappear"

The band  has been playing select dates with Simian Mobile Disco, Chromeo and Bajofondo among others, and have announced a special headlining show at the Bowery Ballroom, Friday 12/11 with Javelin. Members of PHB will also be DJing at select events and parties during the CMJ Music Marathon. Led by Daniel Collás and Sean Marquand, (producers/musicians/pals/DJs), The Phenomenal Handclap Band has been touring behind their self-titled album, out now on Friendly Fire Recordings. The album features contributions from their friends in TV on the Radio, Antibalas, The Dap Kings, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, L'Trimm, Calla, The Mooney Suzuki, Sí Se, and Honeycut among others. Live they are an 8-piece band, with a variety of special guests.

Tracklisting:

15 to 20 (Radio Version)
15 to 20 (Den Haan Remix)
15 to 20 (Telonius Remix)
15 to 20 (David E Sugar 5 10 Replay)  
15 to 20 (Anthony Mansfield Punk Funk Remix)  
15 to 20 (Glimmers Remix)
15 to 20 (Bim Marx Remix Dub)
15 to 20 (Anthony Mansfield Disco Remix)  
15 to 20 (Montee Remix) )
15 to 20 (Skull Juice Remix)
You'll Disappear (King of Town Remix)
You'll Disappear (Ilya Santana Remix)
You'll Disappear (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
You'll Disappear (Horse Meat Disco Remix)
You'll Disappear (Munk Remix)
Pretty Mask

Tour Dates:

Oct 16 New York, NY- Irving Plaza w/ Chromeo  [SOLD OUT]
Oct 20 New York, NY - CMJ LimeWire Space, 45 Howard St. (Corner of Broadway) 5:00 - 7:30PM
Nov 1 Washington DC - 9:30 Club w/ Simian Mobile Disco   
Nov 4 Chicago, IL - Metro w/ Simian Mobile Disco   
Nov 6 Toronto, Ontario - The Mod Club w/ Simian Mobile Disco   
Nov 7 Montreal, Quebec - SAT w/ Simian Mobile Disco  
Nov 13 Philadelphia, PA - Making Time At Pure w/ The xx
Dec 11 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom w/ Javelin
Dec 12 Washington, DC - Rock n Roll Hotel w/ Javelin

Warren Haynes gives the lowdown on the new album too....

By Blurt Staff

Gov't Mule's By A Thread is due out Oct. 27 on guitarist Warren Haynes' own Evil Teen label, and if you need any convincing this'll be one of the year's heavy-hitters, you can check out a couple of sneak previews via digital stream:

Stream "Broke Down On The Brazos" and "Frozen Fear"

For Haynes, creating a new album is akin to walking a tightrope: Write new songs that please old fans, while hopefully garnering new ones. Develop that material in the studio rather than on the road, to prevent premature leaks via the internet. Celebrate the roots of American music, yet take sonic forays into the future. Honor the memory of the late Allen Woody, while simultaneously welcoming new bassist Jorgen Carlsson into the fold.

With By A Thread, Gov't Mule's first studio album in three years, recorded at Willie Nelson's Pedernales Studio in the Texas Hill Country, the band -which also features drummer Matt Abts and multi-instrumentalist Danny Louis - meets those challenges and more.

"It feels like we're moving forward and backward at the same time," Haynes notes. "Hardcore fans tend to not want us to move too far away from where we started, but the band never wants to stay in one place for very long.

"While Jorgen brings his distinctive musical personality to the table, he also uncannily evokes some of (Allen) Woody's spirit which inspired us to revisit our past. I don't know if we were willing to travel that road right after Allen died, but this far down the line, it seems liberating and exciting.

"There was this groove that Matt and Jorgen were playing the first day in the studio. We taped it, and when the occasion came up for us to start writing something new, we pulled it out, and it became the catalyst for that tune. Danny and I started attacking it, Gordie Johnson [the album's producer] got involved, and during a break I went next door and began writing the lyrics. Writing in the studio was a lot of pressure, but it worked out great. For whatever reason, the time seemed right. The door was kicked open, and now we're moving full steam ahead."

"These songs didn't exist until we got to Pedernales," Abts says. "No one's heard ‘em yet, which is kind of frustrating."

Haynes explains, "We want By A Thread to be a surprise, so we've made a point not to play any of them live until our fans can get the full impact of the new material."

"The studio is a kind of science lab, where you're performing experiments that you don't have to let anybody hear," Louis adds. "There's an interaction with our fanbase, but it takes time for it to happen. In a live situation, we're in that lab atmosphere, but we've added the energy of the audience, so we get instant feedback. The anticipation is just building and building. These songs are like a Thorazine shuffle, alive in my head. They have yet to get out of the barn, so to speak."

Our latest pick in the series: Lone Star tunesmith and political rabble-rouser James McMurtry.

By Fred Mills

James McMurtry is our Band O' The Week, the fifth selection in our increasingly popular and prestigious series. Okay, so technically he's ARTIST of the week. Work with us here. Previous artists we picked - the Clean, Os Mutantes, Avett Brothers, Panther - have all gained massive fame and reaped amazing riches in the BLURT afterglow, natch, and McMurtry's been glowing with us along. You knew, for example, that he's a BLURT blogger, right? If not, check out his political and pop-culture screeds at "Wasteland Bait & Tackle"...

So anyway, JM's got a new album out this week, Live in Europe, a combined CD/DVD release. As our reviewer put things, "It's another chance to notice how in and around the anger about macroscopic events, McMurtry is capable of extraordinary nuance in describing the lives of ordinary people on a microscopic level... Apart from refocusing songs away from the glare of diatribes against Dick Cheney, Live in Europe offers the distinctive pleasures of a typical James McMurtry show, with his thousand and one guitars of perfect tone, and that impeccable rhythm section of bassist Ronnie Johnson and drummer Darren Hess."

McMurtry also debuted a new video at BLURT this week, "You'd a Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die)". It's from the new album of course, and you can check it out in our video kiosk.

And check back each Friday for the latest BLURT Band O' The Week.

Some serious hallelujah hollabackin' going on again...

By Blurt Staff

Awesome, yes. Remember the "Complex Soundboard" that surfaced on Complex.com back in August? The one that played off the Sgt. Pepper's album sleeve and featured assorted hip-hop, reggae and assorted personalities - everyone from Bill O'Reilly and Bizzy Bone to Spike Lee and President Obama - and you'd click on their faces to trigger a sound sample and corresponding word bubble? (Obama's "Hallelujah hollaback" wasn't too shabby.) If you click on a bunch of them in succession you get a whole chorus of hollabackin'!

        At the bottom is the image of the original ‘board (go here to try out the actual soundbytes). So now they are showcasing "Complex Soundboard 2," and while it's not as visually elaborate (it's pictured at the top of the page), it's still pretty ace. Go here to hear the soundbyes; the Joker's "Why so serious?" is always welcome, while Kim Kardashian may or may not be having an orgasm, and it goes without saying that you definitely need to hear Raekwon intoning "I'll fuckin' lay your nuts on a fuckin' dresser" at least once or twice a day.

        The rogues gallery for CP2 is as follows:

ROW 1: (Left to right) President Obama, Olivia Munn, Ras Kass [Ed.-it's his boy in the clip], Ras Trent, Rick Ross, Eric Cartman, Kanye West (South Park version)

ROW 2: The Joker, Larry David, Lil Wayne, Kim Kardashian, Mooj (from The 40-Year-Old Virgin), Latarian Milton, Jonah Hill

ROW 3: Randy (Aziz Ansari in Funny People), Red (Danny McBride in Pineapple Express), Clay Davis (The Wire), Smokey (Friday), Kanye West, Tommy Buns (DMX in Belly), Howard Dean

ROW 4: Bow Wow, 50 Cent, Brick Tamland (Anchorman), Cam'ron, Kenny Powers, Leon Black (J.B. Smoove in Curb Your Enthusiasm), Super Craka

ROW 5: Brian Collins, Leroy Jenkins, 2Pac, Mike Tyson, Superhead, Craig Robinson (as club bouncer in Knocked Up), Christian Bale

ROW 6: Kim Kardashian, David Letterman, Raekwon, R. Kelly, Super Craka, Jay-Z, O-Dog (Menace II Society)

And if you are digging all that, don't forget to check out the David Lee Roth soundboard we told you about almost a year ago, that came courtesy TheTyser.com. A day without Diamond Dave is... you know...

It's just like being a member of the band!

By Blurt Staff

Jamband kingpins Umphrey's McGee recently unveiled their "Stew Art Series" where fans essentially help "conduct" the band's live improvisations. Umphrey's debuted the deal earlier this month and it was a raging success: the first in a series of S2 events was held in Milwaukee's Eagle's Ballroom on October 3rd, 2009, and as you'll be able to see in the 4-minute video below, band and fans alike had one whale of a time. Wait'll you see the whole place turn into a Metallica concert, yo!

The Eagles Ballroom show was received with overwhelming enthusiasm and to rave reviews. The sold-out crowd of 50 fans submitted their ideas by texting descriptive words, phrases, and pop culture references (pretty much whatever came to mind), to the Umphrey's Mozes mobile interface.  The suggestions were then filtered by the band's long time Sound Caresser Kevin Browning and projected on a screen for the band to digest and turn into the next phase of the jam.  The band's music varied stylistically with suggestions ranging from "an afternoon bus ride in Jamaica" to "drinking pina coladas...in a hurricane". As one elated fan commented after the show, "S2 was the coolest thing I have ever been a part of. It's always been a dream of mine to meet the band, and the opportunity to participate in leading the Jam for the band was a dream come true as well."

As highly skilled improvisational musicians known for using a complex set of signals on stage to prompt spontaneous musical changes, S² is proving to keep the band on their toes as they navigate through the audience's prompts. S² events also include a Q&A session providing an opportunity for fans to ask about what they're witnessing (or ask anything else for that matter). As part of the ticket (which will actually be a custom laminate that will be different for each S² event), every attendee will receive an autographed CD of the Stew Art Series they attend - minutes after the event has concluded. To be clear, each S² show is a TOTALLY separate event than the scheduled concert date and will be sold as a separate ticket - getting a ticket to S² does not get you into the show later that night (and vice versa). The S² experiment is just that, an experiment. Keyboardist Joel Cummins explains, "The improvisational elements of our show have always been one of our favorite parts about playing together - and we think the audience feels that way, too. That's our inspiration for the S² series. It's also a great way to stay on top of our chops." S²events take place in the early evening before the respective show start times. Prices and ages vary from show to show - which should last one hour (with Q&A).

The next S² event is slated for Oct. 24 in Portland - see below for details on that and the band's "regular" tour as well.

Tour Dates:

October 21 Knitting Factory Spokane WA
October 22 Showbox Seattle WA
October 23 McDonald Theatre Eugene OR
October 24 Crystal Ballroom Portland OR*** [S² show that day]
October 25 Eureka Theatre Eureka CA
October 27 Crystal Bay Club Crystal Bay NV
October 28 McNears Mystic Theatre Petaluma CA
October 29 House of Blues West Hollywood CA
October 30-31 Las Tortugas - Dance of the Dead IV Groveland (Yosemite) CA
November 11 The Opera House Toronto, Canada
November 12-14 Higher Ground Ballroom South Burlington VT
November 15 Port City Music Hall Portland ME
November 17 Northern Lights Clifton Park NY
November 18 Water Street Music Hall Rochester NY
November 19 Mr. Small's Theatre Millvale PA
November 20-21 9:30 Club Washington D.C.
December 10-14 Caribbean Holidaze Runaway Bay
December 29 Vic Theatre Chicago IL
December 30-31 Aragon Ballroom Chicago IL
March 21-23 Jam in the 'Dam, The Melkweg Amsterdam 

Talented guitarist worked with the greats and even mentored Jimi Hendrix.

By Blurt Staff

Blues guitarist Johnny Jones passed away on Wednesday (Oct. 14) at the age of 73. According to media reports no cause of death was immediately known; he was found dead in his Nashville apartment by exterminators. An autopsy is pending.

BLURT contributor Rev. Keith A. Gordon pays tribute to Johnson at his Blues.about.com blog. It is reprinted, in part, below.

***

By Rev. Keith A. Gordon

Born in 1936, Jones had living in Memphis as a teen before moving with his mother to Chicago during the early-1950s. A self-taught guitarist, Jones was in a small blues group that played with both harp legend Junior Wells and guitarist Freddie King. Unaccustomed to the cold Chicago winters, however, Jones moved back to the south, landing in Nashville.

In the "Music City" during the early-1960s, Jones found a thriving blues and R&B scene, mostly centered on the city's Jefferson Street and anchored by the famous New Era Club. Jones formed the Imperial 7, playing often at the New Era, where a young soldier from Fort Campbell, Kentucky named Jimi Hendrix would come and sit in on guitar. Jones mentored Hendrix for a couple of years before the guitarist left for New York City, fame and fortune. One of Nashville blues community's favorite stories is that Hendrix challenged his teacher to a six-string duel at Club Baron during the early-1960s, with Jones coming out the winner based on the audience's applause.

Jones would stay busy throughout the 1960s. He played guitar behind Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown on the Nashville-produced R&B music TV show The!!!!Beat and was a member of the house band for the Night Train TV show. For a short while, Jones fronted the King Casuals, a band formed by Hendrix in the early-60s as the King Kasuals. Jones also toured with soul-blues giant Bobby "Blue" Bland. But by the 1970s, the guitarist had tired of the musician's daily struggle for dollars-and-cents, and Jones retired from performing.

During the late-1990s, though, Jones got back into the music business, backing R&B singers like Charles Walker and Roscoe Shelton in local Nashville nightclubs. In 1999, Jones released his first solo album, I Was Raised On The Blues, a long overdue showcase for his underrated guitar skills. A couple of years later, he recorded Blues Is In The House for the Northern Blues label, earning Jones widespread critical acclaim. Later that year, In The House, a live album of Jones backing the dynamic soul singer Charles Walker (now with the Dynamites) was released.

Jones and his colleagues were recognized for their musical contributions by Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970, an exhibit that ran at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum from March 2004 through December 2005. Jones (with the Imperial 7) also had a song placed on the Night Train To Nashville double-CD that was produced by Daniel Cooper and Michael Gray to accompany the exhibit.

The talented guitarist continued to perform, appearing at the ninth annual Jefferson Street Jazz & Blues Festival in June 2009.

Doing a song-by-song remake of Dark Side Of The Moon... wait, didn't Phish already do that?!?

By Blurt Staff

Geez, we'd barely finished posting our exclusive Wayne Coyne "Words of Wisdom" interview at the site today along with our, ahem, glowing 9-stars-out-of-10 review of the Flaming Lips' new album Embryonic, when word came down the newswire (okay, technically over the Internet) that the band's on to the followup!

According to the Los Angeles Times, in a story about last night's special mini-concert by the Lips at Hollywood's Ricardo Montalban Theater to promote Embryonic, Coyne & Co. "have already recorded a follow-up to Embryonic. The band will release a track-by-track interpretation of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in the near future, which it recorded with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, a band that features Coyne's nephew Dennis."

The Times added that guesting on the album are Henry Rollins and Peaches (apparently in the MGMT and Karen O roles of Embryonic... or maybe it's the other way around!), and that at the moment plans are for the remake to be an iTunes-only release.

Read the entire story here.

Coming of Age:  CMJ Music Festival Premiers "The Perfect Age of Rock-n-Roll"  Indie Film.

By Michael Plumides

In its 29^th annum, The CMJ Music Festival (College Media Journal), will now premier a number of "Feature films and music docs that have played in film fests around the world," in 2009, to add a new dimension to the three decade old gathering.  The festival runs from October 20th thru the 24th, and will offer viewings of a number of films. CMJ opens with "The Perfect Age of Rock-n-Roll" and closes with the film, "The Messenger." 

George Clooney's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" and Milla Jovovich's "The Fourth Kind" among others will also show at the festival.  In a statement, Alex Steyermark, CMJ Film Festival Artistic Director, commented on the lineup:  "We are so excited to offer such a strong film line up to the CMJ community as well as film devotees in the NYC metropolitan area.  Submissions were at an all-time high, and we'll be presenting almost twice as many films as in previous years.  We've also added a new program, the Music Doc Showcase at Norwood, which is sure to become a signature event of the festival."

The opening film, "Perfect Age of Rock-n-Roll," follows a pair of excommunicated friends, Kevin Zegers (TransAmerica) as Spyder, and Jason Ritter (Peter and Vandy) as Eric. Zegers' Spyder is a spoiled but subdued ex-rock star, whose debut album was a huge hit, but after his sophomore effort flops, he is then forced to retreat to his hometown on Long Island. Ritter plays Eric, the son of a legendary punk rock dad, who whiles away the hours as a bored-to-death music teacher with dreams of rock stardom. His ex-buddy Spyder left him behind for greener pastures (after stealing a number of his songs and venturing out to Hollywood). After years of separation, Zegers and Ritter reunite, although it's not a happy reunion. Eventually all is forgiven, and the two channel their talent and passion for music into a cross-country road trip with a hellish group of bandmates on Route 66. During their excursion down the legendary byway, the two are brought face-to-face with their angels and demons, personified by the various character actors who share the screen.  The ensemble cast includes: Aimee Teergarden, Lucas Haas, Kelly Lynch, Billy Dee Williams, Lauren Holly, Taryn Manning, and Peter Fonda.

"The Perfect Age of Rock-n-Roll" refers to the age, 27, the cryptic numeral that so many famous young and vital rock stars have met their demise, including but not limited to: Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Robert Johnson, and Jimi Hendrix, all joining the hereafter before their time.  You wonder if this turbulent trek might end in a Thelma and Louise-type fashion?  I can't say.  You'll just have to wait and see.

The film is helmed by first-time director, Scott Rosenbaum (who also co-wrote the film with Jasin Cadic). Rosenbaum had been developing the project for almost 7 years, and was originally a musician turned stock broker, and in recent years turned to film. Rosenbaum said of the festival, "I am really excited for the CMJ music and film savvy crowd to see ‘Perfect Age'. And as a NY based filmmaker, having the film's NY premier is a real thrill." Joseph White, a producer on the film, commented on the NYC debut, saying, "We can't wait for 'The Perfect Age of Rock-n-Roll' to open this year's CMJ Film and Music Festival. I can't think of a better place for a hardcore rock-n-roll movie to open, other than the hardcore CMJ Festival in NYC."  The film is presently in negotiations for distribution.

Also appearing in the film are blues greats Hubert Sumlin and Sugar Blue.  The film features an original score arranged by New York Doll, Steve Conte and Andrew Hollander, as well as music from Nirvana, Bob Dylan, Alice in Chains, Jane's Addiction, and The Stooges.

"Perfect Age of Rock-n-Roll" won the "Outstanding Achevement in Filmmaking" award at the Newport Beach Film Festival this past April, and also showed at the Woodstock Film Festival earlier in October, where a number of the musicians who played in the film, performed after the showing.

Festival passes, which permit entry to all of the feature films, can be purchased on the CMJ site here.

Details on the film: www.theperfectageofrocknroll.com

And better naked than rich, too! The pied piper speaks!

By Fred Mills

About a month ago we brought you the details on Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, the forthcoming 44-song "album" by the Smashing Pumpkins that Billy Corgan intends to release one song at a time, "beginning around Halloween" and extending into the new year, absolutely free. "You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish," said Corgan - no strings attached. He'll treat it all as a series of four-song EPs that will eventually be issued as physical artifacts for fans and collectors.

Corgan recently expanded on his comments in an interview with Rolling Stone, explaining that the impetus behind the project was his increasing realization that the traditional album format and the means of getting it out to the public had become outmoded. "It always felt so forced and was obviously an economic decision made by others and not an artistic decision made by creators," sade Corgan. It can be draining to try to record 15 songs over a six-month period.

"I want no limitations on what I can, and will do. I think the size and shape of the traditional album is just morphing into something much more in the moment. Four songs at a time will mean I can give my heart over to the music fully without giving away my now happy life."

Corgan, responding to the question of can he actually afford to give his music away, added, "I can't afford it!!" he says. "But I would rather be free than rich. The [major] labels are dead ghosts walking, and they know it. They never should have left this mystic free, because I am way more of a pied piper than they could ever fathom."

Read the entire RS article here.

Gearing up for that gouge-the-fans 2CD deluxe edition reissue...

By Fred Mills

As Idolator put it in their news clip this morning - Lady GaGa is representing "her fear of not putting out music that's as glitzy as possible."

This morning the track "Bad Romance," from LG's upcoming deluxe reissue of 2008's The Fame, a/k/a The Fame Monster (due November 23) was released, and the sultry slice of Eurodisco is already sweeping the internet. Check it out below. Glitzy, no? The tune, in unfinished form, leaked earlier this month, likewise setting off rainbow colored firestorms across the blogosphere.

The album will be a 25-song double-disc, with 8 of those tracks being newly-recorded material and three of them previously appearing as bonus tracks on overseas editions. Once again, our hat is off to the music industry for trying to plug its leaky boat by making  fans buy the same music twice. Hey, why not issue it on 8-track while yer at it! See the full tracklisting below.

Disc 1:

1. "Bad Romance"
2. "Alejandro"
3. "Monster"
4. "So Happy I Could Die"
5. "Speechless"
6. "Dance in the Dark"
7. "Telephone"
8. "Teeth"

Disc 2:

1. "Just Dance" featuring Colby O'Donis
2. "LoveGame"
3. "Paparazzi"
4. "Poker Face"
5. "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)"
6. "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich"
7. "The Fame"
8. "Money Honey"
9. "Starstruck" featuring Space Cowboy and Flo Rida
10. "Boys Boys Boys"
11. "Paper Gangsta"
12. "Brown Eyes"
13. "I Like It Rough"
14. "Summerboy"
15. "Disco Heaven" (international bonus track)
16. "Again Again" (U.K. bonus track)
17. "Retro, Dance, Freak" (Japanese bonus track)

YouTube (audio-only) clips of the new, final version, followed by the previous leaked/unfinished version:

Featuring Nick Cave, Debbie Harry, Lydia Lunch, Mick Harvey, Mark Lanegan, Isobel Campbell, Barry Adamson, Johnny Dowd, Dave Alvin, The Sadies, The Raveonettes, Kid Congo Powers and Wovenhand/16 Horsepower's David Eugene Edwards.

By Fred Mills

Germany's long-running Glitterhouse label will be releasing a tribute to the late Gun Club mainman Jeffrey Lee Pierce on January 11. Titled We Are Only Riders - The JLP Sessions Project, it features the above-listed all-star cast of musicians, many of whom were friends of or collaborators with Pierce in his lifetime. (Thanks to Bucketfull of Brains for the heads-up on this.)

Apparently Britain's Cypress Grove (a longtime Pierce fan and friend who had worked with the vocalist on the 1994 album Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee; he subsequently appeared in the Hard Times Killin' Floor Blues JLP documentary) came across a trove of nearly-forgotten tapes he and Pierce had recorded in the early ‘90s, and while the sound quality was deemed too poor to release, the idea arose to approach other artists about recording their versions of some of the material. Once word got out in the music community about the project, folks quickly lined up to volunteer their services, resulting in an extraordinary 16-song album that includes not only artists' solo tracks but some tantalizing duets and collaborations as well - Nick Cave and Debby Harry, anyone? (Fun fact: in his pre-Gun Club days, Pierce operated a Los Angeles-based Blondie fan club.)

Here are the details and tracklisting, courtesy Glitterhouse:

We Are Only Riders is more than just a 'various artists' compilation. It's a musical collective of artists who have come together to interpret (and in some cases, complete) unfinished skeletal works by Jeffrey Lee Pierce, an artist they were friends with or whose work they admired. Artists featured on the album include Nick Cave, who has done his own solo track, as well as duetting with Debbie Harry, and playing piano on Debbie's solo track, and added backing vocals on the Cypress Grove track. Mick Harvey contributed to two of the Nick Cave tracks and has recorded a solo track. Barry Adamson plays bass on the Nick Cave solo track and also on the Mark Lanegan solo track, who has also recorded a duet with Isobel Campbell. Dave Alvin is the driving force behind 'Walkin' The Streets' together with Lydia Lunch, a song which The Blasters and The Gun Club jammed on together in the studio after a drunken night many years ago.

About three years ago while clearing out his attic, Cypress Grove came across a bag of dusty old cassettes. He started to sort through them and found one marked 'JLP Songs'. As soon as he put it on he remembered what it was; Cypress Grove & Jeffrey rehearsing material for the album they made together in the early 90's. (Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee and Cypress Grove with Willie love'). The album was initially going to contain country songs, but it gradually evolved into a full blown blues album. It was recorded on an old boombox in Cypress Grove's bedroom, just the two of them on acoustic guitars. The sound quality was terrible, but was good enough to make out the songs, which were excellent. The three country songs were ‘Ramblin' Mind', ‘Constant Waiting' and ‘Free To Walk'. In addition to the terrible audio quality, there was also no level of performance on these recordings, as Jeffrey was merely showing Cypress Grove the material. Releasing these songs from the cassette was therefore out of the question. But if Cypress Grove could get them properly recorded, that would be different. Also, because there were no definitive versions of these songs, and there was no idea how Jeffrey himself would have envisaged the completed work, then why stop at one version? It would be fascinating to hear how different artists might interpret these songs from this most basic and crude of templates - the cassette!

Cypress Grove initially started to contact musicians through their myspace pages. Mark Lanegan was totally into it and was in the studio at the time, so was able to record his stuff quite quickly. Cypress Grove then asked if Isobel Campbell would duet on 'Free to Walk' with Mark, which of course she did. She was so please with it that she added the song to their live shows. Cypress Grove then e-mailed Jim Sclavunos and asked if he thought Nick Cave would be interested, who also agreed. This would have been impossible without Digital technology, with artists adding their parts all over the world - London, Melbourne, Glasgow, Barcelona, Los Angeles etc. Once word of the Project started to get out, more material became available through family and friends. Jeffrey's old friend Phast Phreddie Patterson provided a copy of a home made cassette recording he made of Jeffrey doing ‘My Cadillac' and ‘St. Mark's Place', which were actually pre - Gun Club recordings. Also, Cypress Grove was able to obtain the two inch master tapes of some song ideas they had recorded at the end of the 'Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee' sessions One of these was 'The Snow Country'. All they had was Jeffrey's guitar part and the drums; but no vocals. Cypress Grove had no idea what Jeffrey had in mind for this song but he had acquired some hand written lyrics that Jeffrey had never used, so they matched ‘The Snow Country' lyrics to the track. Gene Temesy and Mick Harvey came up with the vocal melody and they had a brand new Jeffrey composition from beyond the grave! With the exception of 'Lucky Jim', all the songs on the album are brand new Jeffrey songs.

'Lucky Jim' was on the end of the 'Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee' tapes and was the very first time Jeffrey recorded this song. In Cypress Grove's opinion, this version is better that the one that ended up on the ‘Lucky Jim' album. So although Cypress Grove had a policy of 'no previously released songs - only new material', he felt he had to make an exception for this one. The only problem was the tape ran out after about one and a half minutes. But thanks to digital technology, Cypress Grove was able to 'stitch' an entire song together and then add bass and guitar parts. Debbie Harry added vocals and Chris Stein played Guitar, with Nick Cave's piano to top of it all.

Tracklisting:

1 Nick Cave - 'Ramblin' Mind'
2 Mark Lanegan - 'Constant Waiting'
3 The Raveonettes - 'Free To Walk'
4 Debbie Harry - 'Lucky Jim'
5 Lydia Lunch - 'My Cadillac'
6 David Eugene Edwards - 'Ramblin' Mind'
7 The Sadies - 'Constant Waiting'
8 Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell - 'Free To Walk'
9 Lydia Lunch - 'St. Marks Place'
10.Crippled Black Phoenix - 'Bells On The River'
11.Cypress Grove - 'Ramblin' Mind'
12.Johnny Dowd - 'Constant Waiting'
13.Nick Cave & Debbie Harry - 'Free To Walk'
14.Mick Harvey - 'The Snow Country'
15.David Eugene Edwards & Crippled Black Phoenix - 'Just Like A Mexican Love'
16.Lydia Lunch, Dave Alvin, And The JLP Sessions Project - 'Walkin' Down The Street (Doin' My Thing)'

JLP doing "Alabama Blues":

Massive 4-CD set chronicles "influential and trailblazing" ‘60s Chicano rock ‘n' roll outfit from East L.A.

By Blurt Staff

Thee Midniters are the subject of a new box set, the most comprehensive collection ever assembled on the group.  Thee Complete Midniters: Songs of Love, Rhythm & Psychedelia! is being released on November 3 on Micro Works.

Here's the scoop, from the label:

When the British Invasion took the world by storm in the 1960s, it went largely unnoticed in East Los Angeles, save for a band of young, Latino musicians.  Thee Midniters took to the new rock and soul sound with a fervor, mixing it with psychedelia, big band jazz and some of their own traditional Mexican folk and found themselves heralded as America's first Latino rock band, continuing to influence acts to this very day.  Their music, history and impact are the subject of a new 4-CD box set, Thee Complete Midniters: Songs of Love, Rhythm & Psychedelia! The collection features all full-length albums recorded by Thee Midniters, as well as singles that were never included on the LPs and rare tracks that have never been available on CD before.

Musicologists often refer to Thee Midniters as the archetype Latino rock band, but the group's musical eclecticism is as much a cross cultural affair as the dynamic era it grew out of.  "The '60s weren't segregated," Thee Midniters bassist Jimmy Espinoza said in an interview with writer Richie Unterberger. "The '60s were integrated. The whole 'peace, love, black, white, brown, we're all the same': that's who we were. We were a crossover group, and we really loved it. It's extremely frustrating for me to get put into the Latin bag, because Thee Midniters aren't." 

But their Latin roots were undeniable, surfacing in their garage rock flavored with R&B and soul in a way that no other bands of the era could do.  They twisted the Rolling Stones' "2120 South Michigan Avenue" into a localized "Whittier Blvd," recorded the Spanish-language "Tu Despedida," "Chicano Power" in 1969 and wrote the powerful "The Ballad of Cesar Chavez."  "We seem to have impacted a whole new generation with our music, and it's very gratifying," reflects frontman Willie Garcia (aka Little Willie G), who continues to be active as a performing and recording artist with the likes of Ry Cooder, Los Straitjackets, and Los Lobos, in an interview with journalist Unterberger.  "Thee Midniters were the best band around at the time," adds Los Lobos guitarist Louie Perez.  "They became our Beatles; all of the stuff that was going on in Beatlemania, we translated into Midnitermania. In this microcosm which is East Los Angeles, this is something that belongs to us. It gave young kids who would eventually become musicians like myself inspiration to pursue a career in music."

Thee Complete Midniters: Songs of Love, Rhythm & Psychedelia showcases the band's evolution in chronological order.  Beginning with their first two albums, Whitter Blvd. (1965) and Thee Midniters Bring You Love Special Delivery (1966), the band's adoration of British rock was clear as they chose to record cover versions of their favorite songs.  By the time their third album, Unlimited, was released in 1967, Thee Midniters had developed the confidence and stunning ability to write their own material and deepen their eclectic mix of styles.  By the time Giants  was released in 1969, the band had reached an altogether new era, but one without lead singer Willie Garcia (who has since gone on to work with Ry Cooder, Los Lobos and Los Straitjackets).  Each CD in the box includes bonus tracks such as singles that were not found on any of the LPs, rare b-sides and previously unreleased recordings such as "Baila Cinderella" and an instrumental version of "Walk On By."

Thee Midniters included in the box set are:

Larry Rendon (Saxes, Flute, Piano, Organ)

Roy Marquez (Rhythm Guitar, Vocals)

Romeo Prado (Trombone, Vocals)

Little Willie G. (Lead Vocals, Trombone, Piano, Harmonica, Guitar)

George Dominguez (Lead Guitar, Mandolin)

Jimmy Espinoza (Bass Guitar, Vocals)

Danny LaMont (Drums, Piano)  

Ronny Figueroa (Organ, Conga, Vocals, Hysterical Laughter)

Arty British rocker recommends "Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time"‏ by David Greenberger & Paul Cebar.

By Blurt Staff

Hey, you could call this a shameless plug for a BLURT contributor (David Greenberger, who also happens to be a monologist, an author, a musician, an NPR commentator and a raconteur), or you could simply call it a friend offering up testimony for another friend. Plus, when Robyn Hitchcock speaks, we listen...

From Robyn Hitchcock:

David Greenberger meanders around America, lovingly collecting the life stories of old people like fireflies in a jar. On Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time he visits Milwaukee which, as one elderly resident explains, has the same number of letters as Wisconsin.  Over a smoky grid of blues-funk and acoustic guitar played by Paul Cebar and his band,  David recites anecdotes and reflections from the Milwaukee senior citizens that he has interviewed on his recent visits there.
 

In an America that seems increasingly dominated by amnesia, and the erosion of its history, it's very heartening - and poignant - to hear these fragments of lives as they draw to a close. The rootsy tone of the music - Ry Cooder, Tom Waits, David Byrne and even Beefheart's Magic Band come to the mind's ear - adds Americana to these tales of vanishing Midwestern life. Here are the man who cheated at tomato-growing by hanging a purchased one on a vine; the man who made peace with his artificial arm and hung shopping bags from it; and the man in a red shirt who feels like a king. There are exuberant moments, but the most moving pieces are the elegies: people who gently mourn their vanished partners - one speaks of his wife as his co-pilot, another of how he's tried to replace his wife with crossword puzzles. The matter-of-fact tone that David uses in these vignettes is partly what makes them so emotional. In 'No Rooms Here' you can hear the life and memory of the elderly female narrator dissolving as she speaks. Just as certain as our death is the uncertainty of what follows - this ambiguity riddles the inhabitants of Cherry Picking Apple Blossom Time.

The fragments drift by in a meditational parade - the slow shuffle of people preparing to exit their lives, setting things down, and then picking them up a few minutes later, trying to weigh everything up while it's still theirs. Here, in this album, they can dwell a little longer, and we can hear them until our echoes fade with theirs. I recommend this record to anybody who cares about people.

 
 - Robyn Hitchcock, September 2009

 
For more details: http://duplexplanet.com/giftshop.html
 

Flaming Lips, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Walkmen, Yo La Tengo ... what's not to like! And BLURT was on the scene.

Photos and Text by David Downs

The Flaming Lips closed out the second and final day of the 3^rd annual Treasure Island Music Festival in San Francisco after masterful sets from Yo La Tengo, Beirut, Grizzly Bear, and the Walkmen Sunday.

A cold wind blew through the scarved and hooded crowd of several thousand fans who had stayed for the 9 p.m. Sunday set, and The Lips rewarded them with an epileptic light show, buckets of confetti, dancing space girls, abominable snowmen, and a roaming set list featuring cuts from new album Embryonic as well as rarities like "Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear".

The Oklahoma natives emerged from a strobing video vulva like true children of light, and frontman Wayne Coyne donned the band's widely-loved moon-ball suit before jumping off into the crowd in the big bubble. The intro literally caused one young female in the front row to pass out cold, either from an epileptic seizure or some other cause. After a short minute on the ground, she became lucid and a bit panicked as they carried her off amid the frenzy.

"Everyone ok out there?" Coyne double-checked before taking off into "Convinced of the Hex" and "Silver Trembling Hands" from Embryonic, the 12^th studio album, out this October.

Coyne called the show a homecoming of sorts. "San Francisco is the home of the freaks. I am one of you," he said. "San Francisco was the first place that ever invited us out. We're from Oklahoma, and nobody wanted to see us. So for the longest time, people thought that we were from San Francisco. So for tonight, it feels like a homecoming to me. Thank you."

Coyne later, quipped, "I was worried it was going to be too cold for people to fucking freak out," but the late crowd was going nuts for "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots", which was surprising, given the chilly 60-degree temperature and wind. The set capped a postcard-perfect day in the center of the Bay set against the backdrop of the setting sun, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island and San Francisco's signature fingers of fog lapping at the skyline. Coyne called it "one of the best days we've had in a long time."

New Mexico's Beirut (below) echoed the sentiments, thanking the crowd for joining them in their final show for the year during a gorgeous sunset set. Flocks of pelicans glided in formation over Zach Condon's head, as if on cue, while the band played "Nantes", "Sunday Smile" and "Elephant Gun". Beirut's multi-instrumentalism far surpassed any other act, incorporating trumpet, tuba, ukulele, and accordion at one point in their journey through the junction of Eastern European folk and Western Pop.

Grizzly Bear (below) proved equally adept at reinterpreting classical styles while the Walkmen continue to blaze forward with their beery, boozehall dirges, and Yo La Tengo (also below) played an eclectic set in front of a wall of Fender amps that Ira Kaplan frequently squared off against, issuing forth walls of reverbey distortion.

Day 2 was easily the more rock and indie music-oriented part of the festival which included headliners MGMT and MSTKRFT the night prior. More than 12,000 attendees sold-out day one of the festival and Day 2 looked almost as packed. Indie promoters Noise Pop of San Francisco, and Another Planet of Berkeley proved adept at getting the throngs on and off the island via fleets of shuttles and buses as well as serving them cold beer and warm food at a reasonable cost. Shorter, smaller and better-curated than almost any festival, Treasure Island has solidified its position as a the Summer-ending Micr-oachella for elite aesthetes of modern music.

Indie rock mainstays, legends and newcomers to blow the lights out in the Bull City on Nov. 5-7.

By Blurt Staff

Megafaun, The Love Language, and Bowerbirds will join
nearly 70 other bands from in and around North Carolina at the 2009
Troika Music Festival, taking place November 5th, 6th, and 7th in
Durham, NC.

This year's impressive lineup also features fan favorites Birds of
Avalon, Future Islands, Dex Romweber Duo, and recently reunited Merge
Records veterans Pipe. The festival, now in its seventh year,
showcases the thriving independent music community in the Research
Triangle area of North Carolina, formed by the cities of Raleigh,
Durham, and Chapel Hill. The area is home to indie powerhouse and
festival sponsor Merge records, and has spawned a stream of acclaimed
acts, including Ryan Adams, Tift Merritt, Superchunk, Polvo, and
Archers of Loaf.

The 71 bands take over nine different venues around downtown Durham,
NC, including the newly christened Durham Performing Arts Center.
Exciting up-and-coming acts like Red Collar, Hammer No More The
Fingers, Whatever Brains and EAR PWR help make the festival's $20 pass
price an incredible value.

For passes, a complete schedule, and more information, visit
http://www.troikamusicfestival.org or email kyle@churchkeyrecords.com

About the Troika Music Festival:

In 2002, the Durham Association for Downtown Arts, Inc. (DADA), having
successfully hosted a showcase series in 2001, decided to organize the
first Durham Music Festival, a one-day event featuring musicians and
bands from Durham, North Carolina. The event was a success, and DADA
held the following year's festival over the course of three nights at
multiple venues in downtown Durham. In 2004, festival organizers
invited independent bands from all over the Triangle region and
beyond. Several well respected independent record labels participated
by showcasing some of their bands and their products.

In subsequent years, organizers have continually grown the festival in
the burgeoning, culturally rich downtown area of Durham, consistently
featuring the area's brightest musical acts as well as critically
acclaimed acts visiting from elsewhere.

Notable performers Troika Music Festival headliners have included The
Mountain Goats, Portastatic, Okkervil River, The Everybodyfields,
Elvis Perkins, Man Man, Screaming Females, Phosphorescent, Future
Islands, and Alina Simone. The 2008 festival, featuring The Rosebuds
and Kimya Dawson, was the most successful iteration yet, and festival
submissions more nearly tripled between 2008 and 2009.

Remastered version of "About A Girl" and accompanying Kurt Cobain dreams yours for the taking.

By Blurt Staff

Seems like it was just yesterday - okay, technically, a couple of weeks ago - when Sub Pop was giving away a free MP3 teaser culled from the upcoming deluxe/expanded Nirvana album Bleach. It hits stores Nov. 3; read more about it here.

Or simply pick up the new issue of Blurt and read our review of the album, courtesy Nirvana expert Gillian G. Gaar (who, incidentally, recently published a book on the band - read the review here).

Anyhow, Sub Pop's got another freebie for ya from the Bleach rec, and you can nab it right now. And glom onto the Bleach product shot, above, CDs, LPs, white wax and all. Rock over Seattle!

"About A Girl" (remastered)

All those classics you remember from your childhood, recast for the brainy set... not to mention 16 Yokos.

By Blurt Staff

As if there hasn't been enough fun Fab Four stuff going on in 2009 already (something about remastered CDs... must... try... to... remember...), on December 5^th and 6^th The Beatles Complete On Ukulele Marathon, A Benefit For Yoko Ono, will take place at N8 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The marathon consists of two days featuring 185 songs (the entire Beatles catalog) performed by 60 singers, 40 musicians and 16 Yokos all on ukuleles. 

Did they say "16 Yokos"?

Right they did, Blurt Staff. The project brainchild of producer Roger Greenawalt (Ben Kweller, Nils Lofgren, The Pierces) and David Barratt (Jimmy Page, David Bowie) also includes a 185 week project where various artists join Greenawalt and Barratt for the re-recording  of every Beatles song on ukulele.  Releasing a song every week alongside an essay on The Beatles Complete on Ukulele blog, a number of these artists will now be playing Beatles songs live while Greenawalt, a music producer by day, sits in with each artist providing the required ukulele accompaniment.

Both Golden Bloom and Alan Cohen Experience recorded Beatles songs for The Beatles Complete On Ukulele website.  On Saturday, December 5^th Alan Cohen Experience will be performing "Magical Mystery Tour", "Flying", "Blue Jay Way" and "Your Mother Should Know" at 7pm and Golden Bloom will be performing at 8pm, "I'll Get You", "Rain", "All My Loving", "I'm Only Sleeping" and "Your Bird Can Sing".

Downloads of both Alan Cohen Experience's version of "Your Mother Should Know" and Golden Bloom's take on "I'll Get You" are available at the aforementioned blog.

Now that's one meaty undertaking!

Concert broadcast from the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles.

By Fred Mills

As Twittered yesterday, couch potatoes this weekend - make that, desktop surfers - will be able to get a free, live dose of U2, courtesy YouTube. The announcement that the Irish superstars' Sunday night 360 Tour concert at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles would be webcast no doubt brought a thrill to punters across the US - mainly on the West Coast, since the show starts at 8:30 pm PST, which means that everyone else will have to stay up real late and go in to work Monday morning pretty bleary-eyed or simply miss it altogether.

But hey, that's what God made software to catch and burn live audio and video streams for!

Anyhow, you'll be able to see Bono & Co. at U2's official YouTube channel, where they also have a zillion individual live clips from the current tour along with sundry interview segments and more.

Meanwhile, check out our photog Colin Smith's photo essay of the band in Atlanta on Oct. 6 here.

Album to be released/is released; band plays around with the internet.

By Blurt Staff

Well, we have a couple of Editors headlines this morning. The band has a new album due out in January, but apparently you can already get it at iTunes as a digital "pre-release," which by our way of thinking means it's already released. But what do we know?

Then there's some tomfoolery going on over at Google with the group, which is obviously a publicity stunt but hey, fans like this stuff. Read on...

***

Editors Announce New Album For January 19 via the Fader Label; Pre-Release Available NOW on iTunes

As the old adage goes - If you're not growing, you're dying. Editors have decided that they'll do the former, thank you. In This Light And On This Evening, which debuted at #1 in the UK charts last week, is the follow-up to 2007's platinum selling record An End Has A Start, and was produced by Grammy Award winner Mark "Flood" Ellis (U2, Sigur Ros, Depeche Mode). The album finds Editors heading in a daring new direction where synths replace the soaring guitars and lead singer Tom Smith takes his vocals to haunting new places giving the album a dystopian, apocalyptic, mechanical ambience.

Lyrically, Smith drew heavily on his new-found appreciation of London - his ‘adopted home town' - for the stories that weave throughout the record. From the opening track (which is also the album's title) "In This Light and On This Evening" referencing a view from Primrose Hill at dusk, to ‘The Boxer' telling of the Friday night disturbances of London's pub culture, to the brutal imagery of a carnivorous House Of Commons on ‘Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool', the locations of London and its people are the very heart and soul of the record.

Some things are vintage Editors, make no mistake. The record is as bleak and as vivid as ever: "a record that sings of no God, a record of broken love songs, a record where the filthy city is so close you can smell it, taste it, a record of drunken violence, a record which has lost all trust in those in charge of our world," describes Smith. But those who focus on the gloom-and-doom in itself, he says, are missing the point. "Dark is interesting, dark is exciting, dark can be funny, there's real life in the dark, real life IS dark. When an album feels like this, the fragments of hope and love that do occasionally shine through, shine through ten times brighter than they would normally do so." Exhibit A: the album's stirring closer ‘Walk The Fleet Road.' It tells of a lost soul, cold and alone, consumed by vitriol. "Hate can turn to love," sings Smith, the gentle patriarch. Stark, life-affirming, gorgeous - it will move you.

Inevitably, as with any shift of this magnitude, fans of the band will be divided on their new sound. "Good," says Smith. Editors have had their critics. Listening to them never got them anywhere.

Editors Hack Google Maps

To celebrate this week's release of their third studio album, In This Light And On This Evening, Editors have created a unique listening experience for their new album by appearing to 'hack' Google Street View.

The experience allows fans to use a version of Google Maps on the Editors website to travel to certain areas of London where the band have hacked in their own custom locations. The new additions consist of some gloriously moody 360 degree images, shot at night. Within each location the user will hear a track from the new album, which was inspired by the mood and magic of London at night. The images feature the band and a group of their fans performing surreal activities, which reportedly have hidden meanings relating to the songs.

The locations are normally unavailable on the regular Street View. Editors modified version of Google Maps allows users to enter into these locations and make the transition from light to dark so fans can explore the band's atmospheric vision of London at night. To access the Map go to:

http://www.editorsofficial.com/streetview

It's the bizarre collaboration of the year!

By Blurt Staff

Simple Minds and OMD will appear on stage together for the very first time when they perform Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights" on their forthcoming UK tour which kicks off at the Newcastle Metro Arena on 30th November. 

The news follows OMD's recent appearance in the BBC 4 television documentary 'Synth Britannia' that chronicled the rise of electronic and industrial pop music in the mid 70s and early 80s. "Neon Lights," originally released on Kraftwerk's 1978 album The Man Machine, will be performed together by OMD and Simple Minds during Simple Minds' set on every date of their UK tour. Both bands have previously performed Neon Lights in their own right.

Says Jim Kerr of Simple Minds, "Kraftwerk were the link between a whole generation of kids in the UK that used synthesizers to define some of the 80's most glorious pop music. In our own way we want to honour their influence by performing ‘Neon Lights'."

"Kraftwerk's contribution to music is timeless," says OMD's Andy McCluskey. "Kraftwerk was the reason why we formed OMD. Simple Minds and OMD listened to Kraftwerk before we started making music, but eventually our individual styles of music ventured into different directions. Simple Minds' early electronic rock albums Empires and Dance and Reel To Reel Cacophony defined industrial electronic rock with 'I Travel', while OMD explored electronic soundscapes and minimalism with our early songs 'Electricity' and 'Messages'."

Longtime Blurt faves make long-awaited return; also do the Guggenheim next week.

By Fred Mills

Just announced: the second album from New York's Yeasayer. The album will be titled ODD BLOOD and is released February 9 via Secretly Canadian. See the track listing, below.

The scoop: "First brewed in the frosty hills of Woodstock, NY at the Marotta lair, then transferred to the steely sweeps of NYC, ODD BLOOD took many layers to finalize, but with all things Yeasayer the outcome is spectacular.  Filled with Yeasayer's own take on pop pleasures and experimentation, the band has once again carved its own path through that ice cold glacier that is modern pop/rock."

As you might imagine, we at BLURT are pretty excited about this. 2007's All Hour Cymbals was one of that year's best and it made it into our personal top ten. Anyone who's seen the band live knows how riveting they can be too - unlike other blog-hyped outfits (hello, Vampire Weekend!), this group delivers the goods.

Meanwhile, the group just wrapped up a UK tour with Bat For Lashes, and next Friday, October 30 Yeasayer will play the Guggenheim Museum in NYC and "promises an extravaganza of excitement" that includes expanding its lighting gear in the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda "to create a more interactive affair."

Lotsa ancillary details to be had here:

http://www.yeasayer.net
www.twitter.com/OddBlood
www.myspace.com/yeasayer

Track Listing:

1. The Children
2. Ambling Alp
3. Madder Red
4. I Remember
5. O.N.E.
6. Love Me Girl
7. Rome
8. Strange Reunions
9. Mondegreen
10. Grizelda

Eclectic mixup includes exclusive Brian Eno / Karl Hyde collaboration.

By Blurt Staff

Underworld will temporarily ditch the electro and techno scenes in order to pay tribute to their art-school roots on their new compilation album, Athens, due Nov. 24 from !K7. Quirkily co-billed as "Underworld Vs The Misterons, it's the first in a series that serves up a mix packed with rare grooves and cult gems from the outer limits of dance music, jazz-rock, fusion and progressive pop. The nom du rawk album credit represents a collective alter ego which includes the group's core members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, their regular studio and live collaborator Darren Price, plus creative mastermind Steven Hall. Ranging far and wide across musical genres and eras, this music will appeal equally to vinyl-loving connoisseurs and arty party hedonists. The grooves are still funky, but the vibes are warm and soulful, with more live instruments than sequencers or drum machines.

"The overall mood is jazz and improvisation," Underworld explain. "There is very little playing in a lot of people's records in the dance and DJ world these days, but one thing Underworld have always liked is musicianship. It doesn't stop us loving machine music and house music and everything that goes with it, but the idea with this album was to highlight records we liked that we thought had great live playing on them."

Athens is a study in range and contrast. From the immersive, cosmic tone poems of Alice Coltrane's "Journey In Satchidananda" to the seductive, snaking groove of "Space Odyssey" by techno titan Carl Craig's orchestral jazz offshoot Detroit Experiment. From the mystical psychedelic blues of Mahavishnu Orchestra's "You Know, You Know" to the spicy Afro-funk of Laurent Garnier's "Gnaumankoudji." And from the avant-garde mellowness of Squarepusher's "Theme From Sprite" to the bustling disco-funk crosstown traffic of "New York City" by Miroslav Vitous. The musical agenda is limitless, the rhythms infectious, the mood hypnotic.

Underworld themselves appear twice on the album, in slightly different guises. The first is their jazz-textured instrumental "Oh," originally heard on the soundtrack to Danny Boyle's 1997 film A Life Less Ordinary. "We are often painted as a techno act," the band explain, "but we like to think we've been much broader than that musically. You do become stereotyped, so for us it is nice to get pieces like this out and show that we can recontextualise our sound. We've never tried to make current, trendy techno records. We've always tried to make something more adventurous and timeless than that."

Karl also delivers one of his signature stream-of-consciousness raps on the album's climactic cut, "Beebop Hurry," a collaboration with the legendary polymath producer Brian Eno conceived during sessions for Eno's Luminous Festival of experimental music, which was held at the Sydney Opera House in May and June 2009. A vivid blast of liquid beats and jazzy electronica, this fantastic new work has never been released before.

"This was part of an exploration period of Karl and Brian trying some idea together," the band explain, "before they went off to Sydney, Underworld and Brian got together to do some pieces in the studio. This was a track from those sessions that we thought fitted the concept we had anyway. We've got a very broad definition of jazz."

A younger version of Eno can also be heard elsewhere on the album, in the Roxy Music classic "2HB," an achingly romantic torch song from the band's eponymous 1972 debut album. The vibrant British art-rock scene of the early 1970s, often overlooked by pop historians, was one of the key inspirations behind the musical selection and creative input on Athens. Indeed, Soft Machine's intoxicating jazz-rock instrumental "Penny Hitch" from 1973 was the original catalyst for the entire project and the cover artwork is a painting by Karl Hyde himself.

"The Soft Machine track was the starting point of the concept of the whole compilation," say Underworld. "A few years ago we wanted to try and mix a load of Soft Machine material, so we tried to get record companies interested, but nothing could ever be arranged. They are a band that people should listen to now because so much of what we now think of as techno appears in a lot of Soft Machine stuff. Their use of early synths was incredible."

Tracklisting:

01 Alice Coltrane                     Journey In Satchidananda feat. Pharoah Sanders
02 Mahavishnu Orchestra         You Know, You Know
03 Squarepusher                     Theme From Sprite
04 Soft Machine                       Penny Hitch
05 Roxy Music                         2HB
06 Detroit Experiment              Space Odyssey
07 Moodyman                          Rectify
08 Osunlade                            The Promise
09 Underworld                         Oh
10 Laurent Garnier                   Gnanmankoudji (Broken-Afro Mix)
11 Miroslav Vitous                    New York City
12 Brian Eno & Karl Hyde          Beebop Hurry (EXCLUSIVE UNRELEASED TRACK)

Hear a sample of the Eno / Hyde track on the official Underworld's Site ,

Remember this?

Double CD includes selections from both TV and cinema, including Wenders' Palermo Shooting.

By Blurt Staff

Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt has just released Filmmusik Anthology Vol 4&5 on Mute / Spoon. Fans of the band will also know the virtuoso pianist's other gig, as a composer, conductor and film scorer.

This double CD release follows 1994's Anthology Soundtracks 1978 -1993 and contains a selection of Schmidt's works over the last 10 years for 20 different films for both the big screen and television. The anthology includes tracks from the critically acclaimed German TV series Bloch and Tatort and the award winning film Schneeland.

Filmmusik Anthology Vol. 4&5 also includes eight tracks from the original score of the latest Wim Wenders film, Palermo Shooting, which premiered in the Official Selection of the Cannes film festival 2008. The complete original film score is available digitally on Mute. (The photo above shows Wenders, left, with Schmidt.)

In other Schmidt news, he has been commissioned by the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele (Ludwigsburg Castle Festival) to present an evening of orchestrations of his work for film in summer 2010. A selection of pieces (some included on the album Filmmusik Anthology Vol 4&5) will be transcribed for orchestra and the concert will be conducted by the composer himself. The event is being organised in co-operation with the Baden-Würtemburg Film Academy. In addition Schmidt will be holding a series of workshops at the film school.

And courtesy Worn Free, natch.

By Blurt Staff

Remember that article we ran in the Fall issue of BLURT about vintage teeshirt company Worn Free? (They have cool, fully-licensed tees patterned after those previously worn by the likes of Joe Strummer, Gram Parsons, Blondie, Frank Zappa, Kurt Cobain, etc.) Well, now the company has the greatest piece of apparel, like, ever: the Muhammad Ali Luxury Robe.

We're not kidding. It's a deluxe velour boxing robe modeled precisely on the one The Champ wore - with his immortal catchphrase "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" stitched on the front pocket and "Muhammad Ali" in capital letters on the back.  The robe will be accompanied by a large hangtag, printed on high-quality paper, featuring a photo of a preening Ali in his robe.  

Worn Free will also be offering six Ali-themed T-shirts (again in conjunction with No Mas), including Cassius Clay, Stardust Hotel, the Hurricane, Ali Track Meet and two versions of The Champ's Training Camp tee.  As with all Worn Free shirts, they will be accompanied by a "backstage pass" hangtag/sticker bearing a photo of Ali in the shirt and detailing its back story.   

If anyone is trying to figure out a nice Christmas gift for their favorite BLURT editor this year... we're just sayin'...
 

It's America's greatest living poet, natch.

By Blurt Staff

This just in: Smokey Robinson will deliver the keynote address at the 2010 South By Southwest Music Conference. The address will kick off SXSW activities at the Austin Convention Center on Thursday, March 18, 2010. It markes the 24^th annual SXSW.

You may have, er, heard of Smokey Robinson - Motown Sound, Kennedy Center Honors, member of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Grammy winner alongside multiple other awards. Bob Dylan called Robinson "America's greatest living poet," and his work as an executive at Motown was central in establishing a unique chapter in popular music history.

More recently, Robinson has been mentoring "American Idol" contestants in 2009 and releasing a new CD, "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," this past August on his own Robso Records and the songs sound as fresh and timeless as his pioneering work from the 60's.

For more information on South By Southwest, visit www.sxsw.com - they're already open for registrations.

Read our recent feature on Robinson and his early band The Miracles here. And for a review of Robinson on his current concert tour, go here.

First new collection of original material in 8 years from the semi-itinerant troubadour.

By Blurt Staff

Bar/None just announced it will be releasing Freedy Johnston's new rec Rain On The City on Jan. 12. It was produced in Nashville by Richard McLaurin, of Justin Townes Earle, Allison Moorer, Slaid Cleaves and Matthew Ryan fame. As the label informs us, the sound ranges from strings/keyboards-draped tunes to sensitive acoustic tunes to full-on country-rockers.

Where has Freedy Johnston been wandering in the years prior to making this album? Some folks lost track of him after his 1994 hit "Bad Reputation" and his last Elektra album, 2001's Right Between the Promises. He has moved around, living in NYC, Austin, Kansas, Madison and Nashville. Explains Johnston, "It takes a while to re-adjust one's priorities and get back on track after working with the big budget that the majors give you. I went through issues with the IRS, had a relationship go south and a touring vehicle grind to a halt but through it all I never gave up writing and gigging whenever possible."

Johnston's been around since the ‘80s, crafting literate pop while becoming a mainstay of the Hoboken scene. He's worked with uber-producers like Butch Vig and T Bone Burnett, although for most of the past decade he's kept a pretty low profile. Re-emerging, he promises to stay busy and reportedly has already been brainstorming his next album, working with other songwriters, including Silver Seas' Daniel Tashian in a side project they call the Charmers. He's also done some recording in Austin with Jon Dee Graham, and word has it he might even be working up some material in Madison with Duke Erikson and Butch Vig of Garbage in their joint cover band the Know-It-All Boyfriends

In which we explain more than we really need to explain about his fab new novel Juliet, Naked...

By Fred Mills

Nick Hornby is my new BFF. Admittedly, the celebrated English novelist (High Fidelity, duh) doesn't know that yet. But I figure if I friend him enough via Facebook, he'll come around. Plus, we've already danced together at the ball, so to speak.

You may have heard that Hornby has a new novel out, Juliet, Naked: it's outstanding, and BLURT contributor Jake Cline, in his review of the book posted to the site today, outlines many of its numerous charms. "It may read as if it's been tuned to a minor key," summarizes Cline, "but it's a major accomplishment."

Juliet, Naked concerns itself partly with reclusive American rocker Tucker Crowe, a pair of British fans, and events that follow in the wake of Crowe issuing demos from his early album Juliet - titled Juliet, Naked, natch. That's the bare bones of the plot, but there's lots more to this twisted love story.

Meanwhile, though, sharp-eyed BLURT readers may recall how back in February I interviewed John Wesley Harding for a feature titled "Songwriter, Author and... Label Owner?" - the story included details on JWH's latest album Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, of course, but it also ran down the deal on his new grassroots indie label, Popover Corps, which he established in order to release his own music as well as worthy, frequently obscure, titles from other artists that he and his "staff" of ad hoc A&R agents unearthed. Those A&R persons were drawn largely from Harding's circle of literary buddies, among them Rick Moody and Nick Hornby, both of whom were also interviewed for the article.

To make a long story short, the whole interview was a hoax that JWH and I cooked up, conducting the conversation "in character" (we semi-"outed" ourselves this past March at SXSW, but that's another story entirely). All the artists featured at the Popover Corps site are fictional save Harding - it's well worth checking the site out just to get not only a good laugh but also admire the diligence that Harding and his band of merry pranksters exercised in creating credible biographies (and record sleeves) for the non-existent bands and songwriters. Those song samples on the site? Well... listen to ‘em and decide for yourself!

Among the featured "artists" on the site? You guessed it: Tucker Crowe, whose Juliet, Naked album purported to be one of Popover Corps' key releases.

Wrote Hornby for the Popover site, about the album, "Juliet remains, along with Tunnel of Love and Blood on the Tracks, one of the great break-up albums of all time - and Tucker Crowe hasn't been seen or heard since it was released in 1986. Popover Records is proud to present Juliet, Naked, the demo versions of the songs that have been cited by Jeff Buckley, Sufjan Stevens, Damien Jurado and others as a crucial influence, and Crowe's first ‘new release' for nearly twenty years. You thought the electric version of ‘You And Your Perfect Life' was harrowing? Think again."

Brilliant stuff. At the time (February) I doubt many people outside of the UK had even heard about the Juliet, Naked novel yet, so it makes the whole Popover thing more than just a tad surreal... in retrospect, it was downright pre-meta. I am picturing Hornby and Harding, who I'm guessing was aware of the then-forthcoming book, having a pretty hearty, extended chuckle over what clever lads they were.

Interviewing Hornby for the JWH article led to this following exchange, equally surreal for me because there I was interviewing him "in character" with Hornby answering - and at one point scolding - me also "in character." (As I later told JWH, it was a High Fidelity moment, no less. He understood what I meant.)

***

BLURT: Nick, a lot of observers would say that, among all of Popover's A&R execs, you're the one most naturally suited to the job description. I'd be journalistically remiss if I didn't ask - have there been any High Fidelity-esque moments at the label thus far?

HORNBY: This is my first time working for a record company, and it's been much tougher than I thought - heartbreaking, sometimes. The powers that be - and you know who I'm talking about  here -  are only really interested in making money, and for  every god-like genius I've persuaded them to sign, I've had to let another nine go.  I thought I was going to be working for Seymour Stein or someone hip like that; I've ended up working for an indie Simon Cowell.

BLURT: Tucker Crowe: how did you know about Tucker, or track him down, and what is he like? Was he aware of the cult following that had built up around him since he fell off the radar? I've only seen the Juliet, Naked album once, in the early ‘90s at a record fair, and it was priced so ridiculously high I had to pass, although I later was able to buy a bootleg CDR of it...

HORNBY: I've known Tucker for a while - he got in touch after something I wrote about him, which was pretty amazing, seeing as he's been a recluse for over twenty years. Nobody even knew about Juliet, Naked, although pretty much everyone of my age owns a copy of [the original] Juliet. When you say you own a bootleg, you're lying. Showing off. Don't do that.

***

At any rate, consider this a long-winded, slightly convoluted way of a personal endorsement for Juliet, Naked (the novel).  Nick, if you're reading this, get in touch and I'll be glad to send you the FLAC files of Juliet, Naked (the album) - I downloaded them from SoulSeek.com over a decade ago, and... oops. There I go again. I'm showing off... sorry.

And Wes, if you are also reading this - happy birthday. I'll see you in the airport next March.

Muscular Noise Band Announces New Songs For the French album and European Tour; Eugene S. Robinson Publishes First Novel.

By Blurt Staff

Well, we have a ton of Oxbow news to report. First up: the band will be doing a huge UK and Euro tour staring Nov. 6 in France and running until the end of the month. Tour dates can be found  at their official website (www.theoxbow.com) or at their label Hydra Head's site (www.hydrahead.com).

Speaking of touring... there is a new vinyl-only album, New Songs For the French, the band has pressed up to be sold on tour. In typically impressionistic Oxbow fashion, they are describing it thusly: "A highly conscious effort to do things exactly as we ourselves would never do them in order to create a compelling bridgework between THE NARCOTIC STORY of yesterday and THE THIN BLACK DUKE of tomorrow. Lyrically, musically, thematically this march into intuitive mind has been Russian rouletted into existence, with Oxbow ceding control where control has never been ceded."

Ah - right. The tracklisting is as follows:

Side: HERE

Oxbow + Philippe Thiphaine
1.2 P.M.
2.Coalking
3.Well-Dressed Man

Side: THERE

Oxbow [live recordings]: Europe 2008
4.Frankly Frank [London]
5.La Luna [London]
6.The Duke: A Gentleman's Gentleman [London, Extempore]
7.Yoke [Rotterdam]

And finally, the band's Eugene S. Robinson has just published his first novel (and second book, the followup to 2007's Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked For Asking). It's titled A Long Slow Screw and it is described as "a two-fisted hardboiled crime saga set in 1970s New York that closely follows a diamond heist gone right and then murderously wrong. Featuring a passel of punks, tough broads, shysters and homicidal homos, it draws heavily on Robinson's real life involvement with elements partially detailed in Fight, weaving a fictional story of the chaotic pre-9/11 world of New York City.... It reads like a travelogue to the business end of a bunch of very, very bad things."

Go to Robinson's publisher Robotic Boot (www.roboticboot.com ) or to Robinson's website (www.eugenesrobinson.com ) for details on how to order. Tell ‘em BLURT sent ya...

Phoenix garage combo blows through crowds like a gale force wind.

By Fred Mills

In case you hadn't noticed we run concert reviews here at the BLURT site - lots, in fact; this past week we posted our 200^th. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the current one if you're curious, as that will bring up the review in question alongside the full month-by-month queue of previously posted show recaps.

We also try to run exclusive photos whenever we can, and the above image, of garage outfit The Love Me Nots frontwoman Nicole Laurenne, just slays us. It was taken by Frank De Blase (salute to ya, Frank!) to accompany Bill Holmes' review of the Phoenix quartet's recent appearance at Rochester's Bug Jar.

Advises Holmes, "Not only is Nicole Laurenne a dynamic, kinetic lead singer, she does it while banging out one-handed Farfisa riffs and flaunting some go-go dance moves that are obviously too hot for the cage.... I'm hard pressed to recall the last time a band came out of the chute with such force. But they kept the pace up throughout a sixteen-song set."

Glom onto that killer De Blase pic - it really does put into a single image what Holmes relates in his entire review - and check out Mr. Holmes' comments here.

Nov. 17 release date followed by overseas shows but nothing confirmed for US yet.

By Blurt Staff

All those mysterious Twitters will no longer seem quite as mysterious:Them Crooked Vulture  - a/k/a Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones-just  confirmed November 17 as the release date of its eponymous debut album in the United States and Canada on DGC/Interscope Records. 

The self-produced 13-song record will feature the debut of the studio versions of the material Them Crooked Vultures unveiled at its August 9 debut at Chicago's Cabaret Metro and played on a first series of shows throughout a handful of UK and European cities and portions of the eastern U.S., wrapping up with an October 15 appearance at New York's Roseland Ballroom. 
 

Additional shows are being announced in the wake of the album's release, including but not necessarily limited to December dates in the UK and Europe and a January trip to Australia and New Zealand.   

 
Track Listing:

No One Loves Me & Neither Do I
 
 Mind Eraser, No Chaser
 
 New Fang                                                                                         
 
 Dead End Friends
 
 Elephants                                                                                     
 
 Scumbag Blues
 
 Bandoliers
 
 Reptiles
 
 Interlude With Ludes
 
 Warsaw or The First Breath You Take After You Give Up
 
 Caligulove
 
 Gunman
 
 Spinning In Daffodils

Elvis Costello, Little Feat and tons more will perform next May at the annual music festival.

By Fred Mills

Last night the lineup announcement was made for the 2010 edition of Doc Watson's annual MerleFest bash - the 23^rd year, in fact, held as always in Wilkesboro, NC, on the campus of Wilkes Community College. Headliners: The Avett Brothers, currently giving good face time on the cover of the new issue of Blurt. They'll be closing out the event, which will take place April 29 - May 2 next year.

Among the other heavy hitters lined up: Elvis Costello (making a return visit no less), Little Feat, the Travelin' McCourys, Jim Lauderdale, Donna the Buffalo, Brave Combo, Avetts dad Jim Avett, and of course the good Doc himself.

Said the Avetts, in a statement, "We are honored and excited to announce that our only NC performance in the first six months of 2010 will be on Sunday, May 2nd at 3:30PM closing the 23rd annual edition of MerleFest. We have attended MerleFest, as fans and as performers, since 1994. There is not a finer or more welcoming music festival in the country. Those who make their way to Wilkes Community College for the event this year will find, as they would any year, a sincere and friendly place where the music is as colorful and beautiful as the North Carolina countryside that leads them there. MerleFest offers four days of absolute quality for the music-loving family. For us, in terms of performance, it is very much like coming home."

Amen to that.

Tickets will go on sale Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 2:00 pm EST, on the web at www.merlefest.org or via telephone 1-800-343-7857. (Early bird discounts thru March 12.)

Over 75 acts will perform on 15 stages throughout the festival - see the initial list, below. The Watson-hosted event is billed as "a celebration of ‘traditional-plus' music - a term Watson coined to describe the unique mix of traditional, roots-oriented sounds of the Appalachian region, including bluegrass and old-time music, and expanded to include Americana, country, ‘plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.'"

A good mood is generally had by all, needless to say...

Doc Watson - www.docsguitar.com

Richard Watson

Susana and Timmy Abell - www.timmyabell.com

Alberti Flea Circus - www.albertifleacircus.com

The Avett Brothers - www.theavettbrothers.com

Jim Avett - www.jimavett.com

Balsam Range - www.balsamrange.com

Shana Banana - www.shanabanana.com

The Banknotes                                               

Bearfoot - www.bearfootband.com

The Belleville Outfit - www.bellevilleoutfit.com

Roy Book Binder - www.roybookbinder.com

Brave Combo - http://www.brave.com/bo/

Buffalo Barfield - www.buffalobarfield.com

Sam Bush Band - www.sambush.com

Cadillac Sky - www.cadillacsky.net

T. Michael Coleman - www.tmichaelcoleman.com

Elvis Costello - www.elviscostello.com

John Cowan Band - www.johncowan.com

Dailey & Vincent - www.daileyvincent.com

Dehlia Low - www.dehlialow.com

Donna The Buffalo - www.donnathebuffalo.com

Jerry Douglas - www.jerrydouglas.com

The Duhks - www.duhks.com

Eleanor Ellis - www.eleanorellis.com

Alice Gerrard

The Gibson Brothers - www.gibsonbrothers.com

Great Big Sea - www.greatbigsea.com

The Greencards - www.thegreencards.com

Buddy Greene - www.buddygreene.com

Mitch Greenhill - www.folkloreproductions.com/about.html

George Hamilton IV - www.georgeiv.net

John Hammond - www.johnhammond.com

Corey Harris - http://www.myspace.com/coreyharrismusic

Wayne Henderson - http://waynehenderson.org/Wayne/AboutWayne.htm       

David Holt - www.davidholt.com

The InterACTive Theater of Jef - http://www.jefthemime.com

Phil Jamison -www.swangathering.com/Catalog/OT/sgotstaff1.html

Jeni & Billy - www.jeniandbilly.com

The Kruger Brothers - www.krugerbrothers.com

Jim Lauderdale - www.jimlauderdale.com

Jack Lawrence - www.jacklawrence.com

The Lee Boys - www.leeboys.com

Little Feat - www.littlefeat.net

Jeff Little - www.jefflittle.net

The Local Boys                                  

The Lovell Sisters - www.lovellsistersband.com

Harry Manx - www.harrymanx.com

Bill Mathis

Andy May - www.andymay.com

Nashville Bluegrass Band - www.nashvillebluegrassband.net

Nation Beat - www.nationbeat.com

The Neighbors - http://www.myspace.com/theneighborspage

Ben Prestage - http://www.myspace.com/bprestage

Missy Raines & The New Hip - http://www.missyraines.com

Red Molly - http://www.redmolly.com

Tony Rice - http://www.tonyrice.com

Peter Rowan - http://www.peter-rowan.com

Scythian - http://www.scythianmusic.com/indexmain.cfm

Anne and Pete Sibley - http://www.anneandpetesibley.com

Joe Smothers - http://www.myspace.com/joehsmothers

Steep Canyon Rangers - http://www.steepcanyon.com

Tut Taylor - http://webpages.charter.net/tutbro

Happy Traum - http://www.happytraum.com

The Travelin' McCourys - http://www.myspace.com/thetravelinmccourys

Rhonda Vincent and The Rage - http://www.nemr.net/~rhondav

The Waybacks - http://www.waybacks.com

Lightnin' Wells - http://www.lightninwells.com

Pete and Joan Wernick - http://www.drbanjo.com

Shannon Whitworth - www.shannonwhitworth.net

The Wilders - http://www.wilderscountry.com

Wilkes Acoustic Folk Society    

Tony Williamson - http://www.mandolincentral.com/bio.html

W.P.A. - http://www.myspace.com/wpaband

Wylie and The Wild West - http://www.wylieww.com

Zephyr Lightning Bolts - www.zephyrlightningbolts.net     

Our latest pick in the series: erstwhile freak-folkie Devendra Banhart.

By Fred Mills

Devendra Banhart is our Band O' The Week, the sixth selection in our increasingly popular and prestigious series. Okay, so technically he's ARTIST of the week. Work with us here. Previous artists we picked - the Clean, Os Mutantes, Avett Brothers, Panther, James McMurtry - have all gained massive fame and reaped amazing riches in the BLURT afterglow, natch.

So anyway, DB has a new album out next Tuesday, Oct. 27: What Will We Be, and our intrepid reviewer from the UK, Meryl Trussler, nimbly dissected it in advance today. Writes Trussler, "Devendra has muzzled his weird syllables and upped his production values a bit. Nothing drastic, no mass-produced toothbrushes with Devendra's face at the top. Which would be scary... With that slithering voice weaving into the beats making a bitching chimaera, it's the joy of hearing him work any style that makes you want to get the man drunk and take him to a karaoke night."

Check back each Friday for the latest BLURT Band O' The Week.

[Photo Credit: Lauren Dukoff]

Gov't Mule, Ani DiFranco, Counting Crows, moe. and a slew of the usual suspects among the initial acts announced.

By Fred Mills

Well, you can see the header, above - the 21^st annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam officially kicks off today with the initial announcement of performers. While more will undoubtedly be added to the roster, for the time being the heavy hitters included Haynes' band Gov't Mule, Ani DiFranco, Counting Crowes and moe. The Jam takes place December 12 at the Civic Center in Asheville, NC, and as usual there will be related events taking place around Asheville during Jam weekend.

Among "special guests" listed in the announcement: Trombone Shorty, DJ Logic, Audley Freed, Jackie Greene, Col. Bruce Hampton, Robert Kearns, Kevn Kinney and Eric Krasno.

Go to the official Haynes Jam site for full details on this and on ticketing - VIP packages will go onsale Monday, Oct. 26, at noon, with the official Jam Pre-sale following the next day, Oct. 27, also at noon.

Last December we interviewed Haynes about having hosted 20 years of Jams (the 2008 event was a big 3-night blowout, including the pre-Jam jam), and you can read that conversation here.

Speaking of the pre-Jam, our good friends at WNCW-FM will no doubt be broadcasting that live over the airwaves on Dec. 11, so keep your eyes peeled for final word on that.

Live streaming webcast from Hollywood next Tuesday.

By Fred Mills

The Gossip, arguably one of the most compelling live acts going right now, hit Hollywood next week, and on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 6pm (PST) the band will be doing a live performance at Amoeba Records. It's in support of their recently released Music For Men album, produced by Rick Rubin.

Those of you who don't happen to be within pogoing distance of Amoeba that afternoon, don't fret: Amoeba will be streaming the trio's concert live at Amoeba.com. Go here to pick up the stream on Tuesday.

Ex-Smiths vocalist reported to be in stable condition, however.

By Fred Mills

News in this morning from British media and CNN is reporting that Morrissey had just started his concert last night in Swindon (in West London), going through "This Charming Man," when he collapsed. Am ambulance arrived and he was treated at the venue then rushed off to the hospital.

The singer was subsequently discharged today about 1pm British time. A statement on his official website announced "Morrissey is in stable condition after his collapse in Swindon Saturday night. Thanks go out to all his well wishers, more information will be posted as soon as it is available."

No further details have been made available yet.

Morrissey's Swords tour of the UK had only just kicked off Friday night in Birmingham and the status of remaining dates has, as of this writing, not changed; he's due in Bournemouth tomorrow night. However, more than a dozen concerts have been rescheduled this year alone due to illness on Morrissey's part.

UPDATE: According to a post at Morrissey's site this morning, tonight's concert in Bournemouth is cancelled: "The Morrissey concert at Bournemouth Academy on Monday 26th October will not take place on medical advice."

Nothing has been mentioned yet about other gigs this week.

[Photo Credit: Fabio Lovino]

Can we be the first to call the Over Mountain Men a Tarheel supergroup?

By Blurt Staff

Glorious Day, the full-length debut CD from Over Mountain Men, will be released in early 2010 on Ramseur Records. The Ramseur connection is no small one: Bob Crawford, bass player for  Ramseur alumniThe Avett Brothers is part of the band, along with the Charlotte-based singer/songwriter, David Childers. Rounding out the ensemble is guitarist Randy Saxon and drummer/percussionist Robert Childers, both formerly of David Childers and The Modern Don Juans. The album features a slew of guest players including: Scott Daley, piano; Geoffrey White, fiddle; Andy The Doorbum, vocals,  guitar; Charlie Lybrand, baritone  trumpet; John Boswell, back up vocals; Matt Ranck, back up vocals and guitar; the Avetts' Joe Kwon, cello; Ingrid Stenzel, accordion; Will Kitchen, drums; and Eric Mullis, xylophone.

 The CD features nine original tunes penned by the band, among them "Angola ," which is featured in the award-winning documentary Six Seconds of Freedom, an indie film  about the famous prison rodeo at Angola Prison.  (View a video with footage from the film on YouTube.) The songs were recorded primarily at Old House Studios in Gastonia, NC; additional material was recorded at The Grange,  Greenville , NC , and the Milestone Club, in  Charlotte ,  NC .  

Crawford, a long-time fan of Childers, comments: "David  Childers belongs in the pantheon of great  North Carolina songwriters.  I am honored to work alongside him. He is a great friend, a great  thinker, and a great man. I like to think of him as the sage of  Mount Holly ; a true North Carolina treasure."

On the web: www.overmountainmen.com. And check out a live clip of the band, below.

Over Mountain Men- Some Place Along The River from Over Mountain Men on Vimeo.

Where's that boy's goddamn medicine?

By Blurt Staff

Ike Reilly, indie rock raconteur whose new album, "Hard Luck Stories," drops digitally November 24, has planned a special weekly podcast series.  As a lead-up to the release of the album, Reilly will be hosting "Where's my Goddamn Medicine?," which will be available for free download beginning TODAY, October 26^th on Reilly's website: www.ikereilly.net. It will be broadcast weekly from Libertyville, IL.

"Where's My Goddamn Medicine?" will preview many of the tracks from "Hard Luck Stories," of course, but Reilly hastens to add it will give fans a quirky introduction to the "friends, enemies, bankers, drug dealers, real estate agents, cheerleaders, high school students, teachers and coaches, family members, offspring, and all the other fucking freeloaders that live with me."  

Prior to the album release, Reilly will be appearing on November 9^th at the Improv Olympic "Armando Diaz Experience" as the "monologist" for the evening.  The cast will then improv off of Reilly's stories/songs for the show.  "Armando Diaz Experience" is iO's longest-running show and a landmark of comedy in Chicago.  Reilly will also be visiting the Improv Olympic Theater every Wednesday through November 18^th as part of the "TJ and Dave" show, where he will be kicking off each show by performing several tunes and telling stories.  Long-form improv masters TJ and Dave have been using Reilly's music to open their weekly shows for a long time.

Tour dates for Hard Luck Stories are tba for 2010, but he and his band The Ike Reilly Assassination will do a Thanksgiving Eve show Nov. 25 at First Avenue in Minneapolis and then a Chicago gig (Liberty Hall) on Dec. 11.

Meanwhile, everyone involved starts circling the wagons...

By Blurt Staff

Some days we write the news, some days the news writes itself, yadda-yadda-yadda... This press release came in over the weekend: apparently erstwhile Sublime bassist Eric Wilson and Sublime drummer Floyd ‘Bud' Gaugh were to play a gig Saturday night under the name "Sublime" (they hired singer/guitarist Rome Ramirez to replace their late bandmate Bradley Nowell, who died in '96). The pair had previously formed the Long Beach Dub All-Stars in order to play Sublime music and other material and had the good wishes of the Nowell family, but as the statement makes clear. The Nowells are not very happy about this latest development. Read on...

***

The Estate of Bradley Nowell, Sublime's late singer, guitarist and primary songwriter, issued a statement today regarding the use of the band's name by Sublime bassist Eric Wilson and Sublime drummer Floyd "Bud" Gaugh.   

Sublime members Floyd "Bud" Gaugh and Eric Wilson, along with new vocalist Rome Ramirez, who performed with Gaugh and Wilson earlier this year, are scheduled to perform under the name "Sublime" on Saturday, October 24^th at Cypress Hill's 2009 Smokeout Festival.  Sublime, with its original members, has not played together since their final performance with Nowell on May 24, 1996. The advertising and promotion of the new group as "Sublime" has been done without the consent of the Estate of the late Bradley Nowell (consisting of widow Troy Nowell, father Jim "Papa" Nowell, and son Jakob Nowell).  The Estate intends to take appropriate legal action to protect Brad's intentions, as well as the legacy and integrity of his body of work.

Nowell's family released the following statement on the band's official Web site today:

"It was recently announced that Sublime bassist Eric Wilson and Sublime drummer Floyd ‘Bud' Gaugh are ‘reuniting' and teaming with singer and guitarist Rome Ramirez in a band they intend to call ‘Sublime.' Prior to his untimely passing, both Bud and Eric acknowledged that Brad Nowell was the sole owner of the name Sublime. It was Brad's expressed intention that no one use the name Sublime in any group that did not include him, and Brad even registered the trademark ‘Sublime' under his own name.  

As Brad's heirs, and with the support of his entire family, we only want to respect his wishes and therefore have not consented to Bud and Eric calling their new project ‘Sublime.' We have always supported Bud and Eric's musical endeavors and their desire to continue to play Sublime's music. We wholeheartedly supported Bud, Eric and the many talented members of the Sublime posse that formed the Long Beach Dub All-Stars, soon after Brad's death, to honor him through their original recordings, live performances and Sublime music until they disbanded in 2001. But, out of respect for Brad's wishes, we have always refused to endorse any group performing as ‘Sublime,' and now with great reluctance feel compelled to take the appropriate legal action to protect Brad's legacy.

Our hope is that Brad's ex-bandmates will respect his wishes and find a new name to perform under, so as to enhance the ‘Sublime' legacy without the confusion and disappointment that many fans have expressed upon seeing the announcement.

Peace and Love to all,

Troy, Jakob & Jim ‘Papa' Nowell."

***

Meanwhile, Jon Phillips, of Silverback Management, which apparently lists Eric Wilson among its clients (Gaugh is not a client) issued a preemptive statement that appears to be intended to distance himself from the upcoming legal tussle. In the statement he decries the decision to restart the band but takes pains to note," I DO NOT have the legal authority in this matter to prevent Eric and Bud from performing or recording as Sublime.  That power rests within the legal parameters as they relate to Brad's Estate." (Read the statement here.)

Gaugh himself decided to get his own statement out to the public, posting to his website (prior to this weekend's statement from the Nowells). He takes Phillips and Silverback to task, observing, none-too-succinctly, "And then there are those who work in the business side of music, who see the artists and music as simply an object, as dollar signs, they only see music as a way to achieve power, money, fame, that's all it is to them." (Read that statement here.)

As always, there will only be one winner in crap like this - the LAWYERS. Let the games begin...

Self-released/produced/engineered/performed album to arrive next February.

By Blurt Staff

Peace And Love, Juliana Hatfield's latest album, will be released on February 16, 2010 on Ye Olde Records. Hatfield, of course, has a long history of DIY endeavors - from her trailblazing days with Boston indie band the Blake Babies to her recent releases on Ye Olde Records, the label she founded in 2005 - but with Peace And Love she reaches a new level of independence. She produced and engineered the album herself and played all the instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, piano, harmonica and drum machine.

"I've produced records before but I was always in a studio with professional engineers. So it was definitely a learning process for me," says Hatfield, who was ready to strip things down after her critically acclaimed 2008 album, How To Walk Away, which was a full studio production. "I always like to try things I've never done before and I'd been yearning to record myself."  

Hatfield had just purchased her brother's eight-track digital recorder and moved into a Cambridge apartment with a back room that had excellent natural acoustics, so the time was right. "I was able to follow every instinct without worrying that anyone was going to think it was a kooky idea," she recalls. "I just wanted to do something simple."

The result is an incredibly intimate collection of songs, expertly capturing the loneliness and collateral damage borne of broken relationships yet adamantly refusing to remain broken. In the liner notes, Boston Phoenix music editor James Parker gives it a name: "Survivor-music - because even at their most palpitatingly fragile, your songs have always been built to last. Well-made, strong-boned, fit to be played on streetcorners and station platforms."

Just as Hatfield stripped down the recording process, the characters that populate Peace And Love are ready to shed their convoluted lives. The lilting "Why Can't We Love Each Other" answers its own question by acknowledging that love is a choice: "we can make our lives a song/will it be a blues or a hymn/a dirge or a psalm/it could be so simple." But there's the rub, of course: it could be so simple...if it weren't for our propensity to muck things up.

From the plucked Elizabethan chords that introduce the opening "Peace And Love" and the feedback-drenched "What Is Wrong" to "Unsung," Hatfield's first-ever instrumental, and the closing "Dear Anonymous," written from the point of view of a victim who finds empathy for her stalker, the collection is both compelling and surprising. "Faith In Our Friends" celebrates those who "think you're just right the way you are" while Hatfield gains fresh perspective on her complex relationship with longtime friend Evan Dando on the exquisite, ethereal "Evan."

Peace And Love is Hatfield's 11th solo album and follows last year's How To Walk Away, which was hailed as "rueful and gorgeous," by Entertainment Weekly, which gave the album an A-. "After 20 years, the songstress still packs a wallop on her 10th album, featuring edgy tales of heartbreak sung with that classic sweetness," said Newsweek, naming it a "Checklist" pick of the week upon its release while Spin pronounced it "vital," awarding it three out of four stars. Her autobiography, entitled When I Grow Up, was published by Wiley & Sons in September 2008.

Hatfield first came to prominence in her teens as a founding member of the Blake Babies. After four independent albums with the group, she signed to Atlantic as a solo artist and had a string of modern-rock hits (including "My Sister," "Spin The Bottle" and  "Universal Heartbeat"). She left the label in 1998, signing to Zoe Records (a Rounder Records imprint) and releasing four well-regarded albums, including 2004's In Exile Deo, named as one of that year's 10 best albums by The New York Times' Jon Pareles. In 2005, Hatfield came full circle, returning to her independent roots and founding Ye Olde Records.

The track listing for Peace and Love is as follows:

1.    Peace and Love
2.    The End Of The War
3.    Why Can't We Love Each Other
4.    Butterflies
5.    What Is Wrong
6.    Unsung
7.    Evan
8.    Let's Go Home
9.    I Picked You Up
10.    Faith In Our Friends
11.    I'm Disappearing
12.    Dear Anonymous

[Photo Credit: Phil Morrison]

Continuing to lead, while others lag behind...

By Blurt Staff

Remember that sprawling feature/interview with the legendary Pylon we ran awhile back? At the time, the band's sophomore album Chomp wasn't specifically lined up for reissue (and guitarist Randy Bewley, sadly, had also just passed away).

Handily rectifying that, however, EFA just issued an expanded/remastered edition of it they're calling Chomp More. Here are the rather colorful details, and keep your eyes peeled for a review at BLURT soon...

*** 

DFA's reissue of Pylon's second LP release, 1983's Chomp, (following the reissue of their 1980 debut Gyrate) offers inarguable justiï¬ï¿½cation for their seminal status. "K," an unlikely ode to Scrabble that opens the record, begins with drummer Curtis Crow using his snare to tick off a beat akin to a time bomb; seconds later the song builds to a clash ofjagged guitar lines, wiry bass, propulsive drumming and Vanessa Briscoe's startling vocals. "Crazy," - which R.E.M. would later famously cover- sees guitarist Randy Bewley avoiding his usual sharp angles and instead taking a jangly respite, while Briscoe veers from a moody monotone to arresting snarls and piercing yelps. "Yo-Yo" strips down to herky jerky staccato guitar and a few perfectly placed lyrical melodies; "Gyrate" buzzes with antsy, danceable energy; "Altitude" is a gorgeous and dreamy study in loud-quiet-loud dynamics. 

In addition to remastered versions of the LP's 12 original tracks, Chomp More includes the 7" version of "Crazy"; a "male version" of "Yo-Yo," on which Briscoe merely guest stars, Pylon's own frenzied, frenetic remix of "Gyrate" and the rarely heard single "Four Minutes," an ineffably beautiful pastiche of homemade and seemingly found noise. These innovative songs speak to the timeless vision of four young people who unwittingly created a sound that still sounds innovative, fresh and distinct. More than three decades on, Pylon continues to lead - while music, as always, lags safely behind. 

In which we infiltrate the press box at the Rose Bowl and live to tell about it...

By Gil Macias

A band selling out the Rose Bowl is something not heard of very often these days. U2 are probably one of the only few acts that can pull this off - -and they did. The Irish juggernauts played a historic show in Pasadena, California last night and packed in a 95,000-plus-crowd. Hordes of fans who had general admission floor tickets arrived hours early, baking in the sun, a price well-worth getting a spot up close to the Irish quartet.

U2 are well-known for their huge concert spectacles and enormous stage set-ups, but this latest one is not only one of their finest, but it is something that is right out of a sci-fi movie. It's some sort of cross between a rocket launchpad and one of the tripods from War of the Worlds, only with a fourth leg. But no matter how elaborate and distracting the stage might sound, it never draws your attention away from Bono and the gang. There is always something unique in the air whenever U2 plays--an energy and connection with the audience that can be felt by new and old fans alike. Bono commands the stage and has an amazing stage presence that not all band leads can pull off. There were moments in the show, for example during "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," where Bono goes silent during the chorus, and the audience turns into a gigantic choir. It's truly something that needs to be experienced in person, fan or not.

One minor beef that some might have with the show is the setlist. When you're a band with 30 years of material, of course, not everyone is going to hear their favorite U2 song. While Bono's voice soared as gracefully as ever, and the band never missed a beat, the setlist can best be described as "safe" and "radio friendly." Shockingly, it was dominated by material from the band's three most recent albums. The 24-track setlist only contained 6 songs from the ‘80s, and only 4 from the ‘90s. Albums Zooropa and Pop were completely ignored. Notably absent were songs like "Pride (In the Name of Love)," "New Years Day," and "I Will Follow." However it was nice that the band treated the crowd to two not-so-popular songs like "Ultraviolet" and "The Unforgettable Fire." When you talk to U2's wide range of fans, opinions on which era of the band are the best and which albums should and shouldn't be ignored vary quite drastically, but in the end, there is no denying that U2 remain one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

As for the setlist... You be the judge. What they played:

Breathe
Get on Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment
No Line on the Horizon
Elevation
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
Until The End of the World
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy - Remix
Sunday Bloody Sunday
MLK
Walk On
One
Where The Streets Have No Name

Ultraviolet
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender

[Photo via 360 Tour archive]

Indiepop's resident Doublemint gals deliver new album next year; announce fall tour.

By Blurt Staff

the Watson Twins will have their sophomore release Talking To You, Talking To Me issued on Vanguard Records February 9their most ambitious album to date. The new album finds the Watson Twins taking a soulful turn a la Carole King, but with a pop edge reminiscent of Feist. The result is a heartfelt nod to their roots, retaining the ethereal harmonies that have become their signature while incorporating a variety of influences and inspirations.

In June of 2009 Chandra and Leigh, along with producers J. Soda and Russell Pollard, went to a remote cabin in the High Sierras near Yosemite to demo songs for the new album. What they captured there would be the backbone of Talking To You, Talking To Me. The songs were brought back to Los Angeles where a band of friends (including members of Everest and My Morning Jacket) came together to help record the album at Fairfax Recordings. Talking To You, Talking To Me captures the essence of the Watson Twins extraordinary music... driving, poignant and beautiful. More information and links below.
  

The Watson Twins will also be starting a tour with Joshua Radin on October 28^th through November 22^nd:

10/28/2009    Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre

10/29/2009    San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall  

10/30/2009    Portland, OR - Aladdin Theatre 

11/1/2009      Seattle, WA - Neumo's
11/2/2009      Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory

11/3/2009      Boise, ID - The Knitting Factory
11/5/2009      Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater 

11/6/2009      Lawrence, KS - Granada Theatre
11/7/2009      St. Louis, MO - Blueberry Hill - Duck Room

11/8/2009      Birmingham, AL - WorkPlay Soundstage Theatre
11/10/2009    Saint Petersburg, FL - State Theatre

11/11/2009    Fort Lauderdale, FL - Culture Room

11/13/2009    Orlando, FL - The Social 
11/14/2009    Atlanta, GA - Center Stage Theatre

11/15/2009    Raleigh, NC - Lincoln Theatre

11/17/2009    Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
11/19/2009    New York, NY - Webster Hall

11/20/2009    Philadelphia, PA - The Trocadero Theatre
11/21/2009    Montclair, NJ - Wellmont Theatre
11/22/2009    Boston, MA - House of Blues Boston   

Due in early February; to be preceded by short U.S. tour.

By Fred Mills

Okay, Midlake fans, here's the news you've been anticipating: Bella Union just announced this morning that it will be releasing the third Midlake album on Feb. 2. Titled The Courage of Others, it's the followup to 2006's acclaimed The Trials of Van Occupanther - which was more than merely "acclaimed," if you think about it; the record turned up on nearly every critic's year-end best-of list and was a mainstay at college radio and Triple-A.

The Denton, TX, band literally left the road for two years to work on the record, which was cut at their home studio by vocalist/songwriter Tim Smith, bassist Paul Alexander, drummer McKenzie Smith and guitarists Eric Pulido and Eric Nichelson. According to the label, the album "builds on the complex textures that made ‘Van Occupanther' a touchstone, revealing breathtaking soundscapes and bygone eras... Equal parts intimate and epic, the album evokes a cloistered world of its own with dreamlike melodies, stunning vocal harmonies and ambitious arrangements."

The world needs more breathtaking soundscapes, indeed. Anyone who's heard the band's signature cut "Roscoe," from the last album, knows what we mean. For newcomers to that sound, you can hear what all the fuss has been about to date over at Midlake's MySpace page where a slew of songs are streaming.

‘The Courage of Others' tracklist:

Acts of Man

Winter Dies

Small Mountain

Core of Nature

Fortune

Rulers, Ruling All Things

Children of the Grounds

Bring Down

The Horn

The Courage of Others

In The Ground

Midlake 2010 tour dates so far (more to be announced soon):

Jan 5 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon

Jan 6 Tallahassee, FL Engine Room

Jan 7 Orlando, FL The Social

Jan 8 St. Augustine, FL Cafe Eleven

Jan 9 Mt. Pleasant, SC Village Tavern

Jan 10 Asheville, NC Grey Eagle

Jan 11 Memphis, TN Hi-Tone

Jan 12 Little Rock, Rev Room

 UK Dates:

Jan 22 Newcastle, England - The Cluny
Jan 23 Leicester, England - The Musician
Jan 24  Cambridge, England - Junction2
Jan 27  Norwich, England - Arts Centre
Jan 28 London, England - Tabernacle

"Cigarettes and Wine" recorded live in Muscle Shoals...

By Fred Mills

With Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit set to hit the road again this weekend - part of Isbell's seeming "never ending tour" in support of Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit (Lightning Rod; read our 10-star review here) - he's also just unveiled a new video. It's for the track "Cigarettes and Wine," from the album, and it was filmed live at the Shoals Theater in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The black and white footage perfectly fits the elegiac tune's tone.

Check it out below, along with the tour dates. Some shows will also include on the bill, variously, the Mother Hips, Chuck Prophet and Son Volt.

Oct 30 - The Bottleneck - Lawrence, KS
Oct 31 - Larimer Lounge - Denver, CO
Nov 1 - The State Room - Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 3 - The Wild Buffalo - Bellingham, WA
Nov 5 - Tractor Tavern w/ The Mother Hips - Seattle, WA
Nov 6 - The Doug Fir w/ The Mother Hips - Portland, OR
Nov 7 - The Blue Lamp - Sacramento, CA
Nov 8 - Great American Music Hall w/ Chuck Prophet - San Francisco, CA
Nov 9 - Echoplex - Los Angeles, CA
Nov 12 - Buffalo Joe's - Paris, TX
Nov 13 - Longhorn Saloon - Ft. Worth, TX
Nov 14 - Antone's w/ Son Volt - Austin, TX
Nov 16 - Cain's - Tulsa, OK
Nov 18 - Off Broadway - St. Louis, MO
Nov 19 - Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL
Nov 20 - Turf Club - St. Paul, MN
Nov 21 - High Noon Saloon - Madison, WI

Up next: reinventing the wheel; creating a better mouse trap; and locating some suitable hair plugs for the Edge so he can finally ditch the ski cap.

By Fred Mills

Never ones to rest on their laurels, U2 announced today their plans to do a free concert on November 5 at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin to mark the 20^th anniversary of the toppling of the Berlin Wall (technically, Nov. 9, 1989, was the date the East German government made the announcement of the Wall's imminent opening).

Not all that coincidentally, Nov. 5 is the date of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Germany and the performance will be broadcast into Berlin's O2 Arena, the site of the Awards. In a statement, U2 manager Paul McGuinness observed, "It'll be an exciting spot to be in, 20 years almost to the day since the wall came down. Should be fun."

Added Awards executive produer Antonio Campo Dall'Orto, "The world's major music players will be coming together against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall to celebrate music, freedom and the birth of a new age in Europe".

Wow. That's astoundingly cynical.

At any rate, Katy Perry will be hosting the Awards, which sounds like a good reason to wall Berlin back in and not let her out. Oh yeah, U2's up for "Best Rock Band" award, hence their performance.

Go here to read our report on last weekend's U2 mega-concert in Pasadena.

Pictured below: (top) U2 fans queue up in advance for the concert; and (bottom) MTV Awards bouncers remove them for trespassing.

And what an ass it be. Sheer luxe, at that...

By Fred Mills

Sasha Grey, that little minx, she's showing her ass again! Not content to take the porn world by storm, she decided to go mainstream by appearing in Stephen Soderbergh's recent film The Girlfriend Experience, then she turned around and did an interview and photo shoot for BLURT. (See our spread and feature here.)

Now, American Apparel just unveiled its new line of assless lingerie - euphemistically described, product wise, as "Sheer Luxe Cut Out Pantyhose," but we know what they are getting' at, now, don't we? Who do you think is modeling the goods? Yup.

$28 dollars will get you a black, nylon blend thong cut back/sewn seam at toe outfit, perfect for that "Add to Wishlist." Glom onto some of the pics above in case you or your partner need convincing, then surf over to the AA order page, pronto. First five orders will be hand-delivered by Gray herself... or so some may be fantasizing...

Filming in an old mental hospital tends to make you a little bit crazy...

By Blurt Staff

Alabama's resident garage rock crazies the Dexateens - how crazy? They've worked in the past with Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood, so you KNOW they must be nuts! - issued their most recent album Singlewide (Thirty Tigers) back in May. But they're also budding film stars, and they recently made a 20-minute movie titled Old Bryce with the help of director Paul Hanninen, on October 30th of last year. It was done inside the dilapidated, supposedly haunted building that housed Alabama's African-American mental patients during segregation.

Having snuck onto the premises with guitars, recording equipment, and a generator, the Dexateens played some gospel songs in an effort to conjure up those long rumored spirits. The film tells the oft forgotten history of Alabama's black mental patients, and in doing so sheds light on the clouded history of the state, itself. Along the way, the boys encounter voices, howls, strange sensations, and the Tuscaloosa Police Department.

Hey, fuck da police! Anyhow, while you're getting ready for Halloween this weekend, take some time out and check the footage from the band, below.

[Photo credit: Adam Smith]

The estimable Mrs. Earle hooks up with R.S. Field to craft a high-soaring gem.

By Blurt Staff

Allison Moorer is set to release her new album Crows, on February 9 - it'll be her debut for the Ryko label.  Produced by R.S. Field (Buddy Guy, John Mayall) at the House of David Studio in Nashville, TN, the 13-track album is the follow up to her critically acclaimed 2008 album, Mockingbird, which was a celebration of songs composed by female songwriters including Nina Simone, Patti Smith, Cat Power, her sister Shelby Lynne, and more.   It also follows Moorer's first Grammy Award Nomination for the song "Days Aren't Long Enough," a composition she co-wrote with her husband, Steve Earle, for his Grammy Award Winning 2007 album Washington Square Serenade.  

Speaking with Billboard recently regarding Crows, Moorer stated "I really just set myself free and just threw all the rules out the window." Regarding the album's title, Moorer offered "We have crows in the yard at our place up in Woodstock. I am a little obsessed with birds, and have been told that they are indeed our messengers from the other side.  So I decided that instead of letting the crows make me uneasy, I would start to consider them as friendlies, and that they were actually bringing me a message of comfort."

Ruby Marchand, head of A&R for Ryko, said in an official statement, "Ryko is enormously proud to welcome Allison Moorer to our family of artists.  Allison's extraordinarily evocative songs and vocal style capture her unique signature in the singer/songwriter community.  With the February 2010 release of Crows, Ryko celebrates the beginning of a worldwide relationship with Allison through an album of astonishing breadth and scope." 

In other Moorer news, on December 13^th, 2009, Moorer will be seen in The People Speak, a film inspired by the Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States and the Zinn/Anthony Arnove-penned Voices of A People's History of the United States.  The film, presented by The History Channel, also features Bob Dylan, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Springsteen, Danny Glover, Matt Damon, John Legend, Rosario Dawson, Josh Brolin, Benjamin Bratt and more.

Tracklisting:

1. Abalone Sky

2. Goodbye To The Ground

3. Just Another Fool

4. The Broken Girl

5. Should I Be Concerned

6. When You Wake Up Feeling Bad

7. Easy In The Summertime

8. The Stars and I (Mama's Song)

9. Still This Side Of Gone

10. Like The Rain

11. Sorrow (Don't Come Around)

12. It's Gonna Feel Good

13. Crows

And if that sends a Halloween shudder down your spine, well... you're not alone. Somebody let Fred Durst know about this.

By Blurt Staff

Well, it's been practically an all-distaff day in the Blurt news department, what with fresh items posted this morning and this afternoon on such fine ladies as Allison Moorer, Sasha Grey and Bono... er, and also the Dexateens, but work with us here. So word arrives now of the imminent return of... Lilith Fair.

Yes, THAT Lilith Fair, the ‘90s estrogen fest co-founded by Sarah McLachlan whose reputation for crunchiness was sometimes deserved and sometimes not-so deserved. Well, it foisted Jewel on the world, which counts as an unpardonable sin, so.. But to detractors, it probably didn't help that the same era also brought the rise of rap-rock and mook-metal as epitomized by Limp Bizkit, Korn and Tool. Rock's never been an equal opportunity employer - and it shouldn't be, of course, but it's also a shame that the guys' exploits have always overshadowed the gals' endeavors.

Of course, the Lilith organizers went laughing to the bank 'cos the event was one of the summer's perennial hot tickets. Check these factoids:

From 1997 through 1999, Lilith Fair was one of the highest grossing touring festivals in the world, with over 1.5 million fans in attendance and raising over $10 million dollars for national and local charities.  Founded by Grammy-award winning artist Sarah McLachlan along with Dan Fraser, Marty Diamond and Terry McBride, Lilith Fair was the only tour of its kind-a celebration of women in music featuring artists like Sheryl Crow, Christina Aguilera, Erykah Badu, The Dixie Chicks, Missy Elliot, The Pretenders, Nelly Furtado, Jewel, Fiona Apple, Joan Osborne, Queen Latifah, Indigo Girls, Tegan and Sara and of course, Sarah McLachlan.

That's a lotta damn dough, yo.

So today, the official Lilith 2010 website launches, not only revealing the new look and feel of Lilith a decade later, but also the first set of cities that the traveling festival will be hitting -New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, London and more.  Check out www.lilithfair.com for the complete list. 

"I can't reveal anything further now," says LF co-founder (and Nettwerk Records CEO) Terry McBride,  "but I can assure fans that we have some exciting announcements over the course of the following weeks, from confirmed artists to additional cities to innovative social initiatives. Lilith 2010 is very much upon us."

Lilith 2010 promises to be a much bigger summer festival than it was in the past, traveling for the first time overseas and celebrating a mix of international artists and local up-and-comers.  To capture the new energy of Lilith, Vancouver's Traction Creative was brought on board to reinvigorate the Lilith brand - the new look is revealed today for the first time with the launch of the website.

Hey Terry, just promise us - no Jewel, hokay?

This Is It Michael Jackson documentary marks final goodbye.

By Jose Martinez

So I managed to catch the new Michael Jackson tour documentary This Is It last night, in grand IMAX no less, amidst a theater full of suburbia fans in Burbank, California.

Whereas I was expecting all the loonies to be out in full force, even dressed like the self-proclaimed King of Pop, what I found was a very respectful and subdued crowd, and more surprising, me enjoying Jackson's final goodbye.

I wouldn't say I was MJ's biggest fan, I own Off The Wall and Thriller, and the most recent compilations that came my way as record company promos, but seeing Jackson in this dress rehearsal footage, prior to his 50 sold out concert run in London, was very impressive watching the man behind the scenes hard at work.

With the foul stench still in the air from Sunday's lackluster and thoroughly disappointing U2 Rose Bowl concert, I enjoyed seeing Jackson doing his thing. I'm not a fan of dance-oriented, pop performances as I often find them too controlled and robotic. I prefer spontaneity in my rock & roll shows but that went out the window viewing This Is It (Sony Pictures). At 50-years-old Jackson still had it. Unlike Bono, who easily phoned in his performance Sunday night in front of a worldwide audience, Jackson, even in a series of rehearsals, pulled it off.

"That's why we rehearse," he'd say every time someone made a mistake. Working with his band, his backup singers and his bevy of young, star-struck dancers, Jackson was having the time of his life getting ready for his "comeback" concerts.

Viewing the film in IMAX proved impressive not only because I was able to view the 35MM print in its entirety, but because watching on that grand scale of a screen you really get to see Jackson up close and personal, which sometimes can be difficult looking at all his many cosmetic imperfections. Sure, he looked skinny, almost frail, onscreen, but never weak. There wasn't talk of him not sleeping and he doesn't come across as someone heavily medicated. This is just a series of impressive rehearsals performing monster hit after monster hit.

Now, sadly after his death in June, perspective is starting to set in and I can appreciate his talent and catalog, which I always new was stellar. This Is It isn't just for the crazy, obsessive fans, it's for all of us that at one time or another marveled watching Michael Jackson dance or enjoyed one of his songs. Seeming his last performances, and getting to hear the new title track song during the closing credits, provides a sense of closure to Jackson's bizarre story.

New album is Wild! Loud! Ungggghhh!!! Skry me a river!

By Blurt Staff

When Pit Er Pat sends a message down the vacuum tube to land on our desk, we check it out pronto - as with the one , copied verbatim (exclamation points, boldface, etc.) below.  It's about their new album The Flexible Entertainer, due Jan. 26 from Thrill Jockey. Hey, who needs publicists when you can do your own press releases with such elegance and erudition! Take careful notes, because there will be a pop quiz on this sometime soon, kids.

***

BRAVE NEW SOUND - BIG DANCE - FREAK YOU HARD WITH BANGING MPC, FIERCE GUITAR, FUNKY DRUMS AND CREAMY VOCALS - GENIUS CLIENTELLE - BUTCHY + FAY - RECORDED WITH CRAZY STYLE @ TOP CAT INTERNATIONAL + @ SHAPE SHOPPE STUDIOS W/ BUTCHY FUEGO + BLUE HAWAII - MASTERED BY DAVE COOLEY @ ELYSIAN MASTERS

IT'S BEEN JUST 10,992 HOURS SINCE THE LAST ALBUM, HIGH TIME WAS RELEASED AND MUCH HAS HAPPENED - REMIXES, TOURS, EXPANDING, CONTRACTING - BUTCHY CUT RECORDS (EITHER PRODUCING/RECORDING/PLAYING +/-) WITH THE BANDS SOFT CIRCLE, HECUBA, THESE ARE POWERS, RAINBOW ARABIA, THE RED KRAYOLA + MATTEAH BAIM - HE APPEARED LIVE WITH THE BOREDOMS, LUCKY DRAGONS + LICHENS - FAY HAS CONSULTED WITH THE UNIVERSE AND RECEIVED VISION...

IT'S WILD!  LISTEN LOUD!  SYNTHESIZERS!  PERCUSSION!  DRUM MACHINES.  "HOT"!  SUPREME SOUNDS FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE!  BEATS FROM THE FUTURE! - THE THICKEST - MOST INDESCRIBABLE - RING THE ALARM!  IT'S MAGIC!  GET INVOLVED WITH PIT ER PAT!  HOLY SHIT! THIS IS A FUN BAND!  INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN!  YES, FEEL ON THIS VIBE!  UNGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

All played by Butchy and Fay:   Electric Guitar, Synthesizer, Voices, Kick Drum, Snare Drum, Cymbals, MPC and Assorted Percussion. Largely recorded LIVE.  Recorded, mixed and mastered fall of 2009.  LP cut by John Gold at Salt.

Limited editions will include. Richard Swift, Damien Jurado, Cotton Jones and others.

By Blurt Staff

Laminar Excursion Monthly is a 3" subscription service starting January 2010 and made available through the collaboration of Crossroads of America Records and Flannelgraph Records. The folks involved promise that "the intimacy of its sparsity and the intentionality of its medium" will make it an even more fulfilling investment than a jelly-of-the-month club.

Dang. And all the BLURT wives and girlfriends just joined that new jelly-of-the-month club outta D.C. Stop presses, we're cancelling that and signing up for LEM!

Subscribers will receive two new 3″ CDs at the beginning of every month, starting in January, with a unique box to house the year's offerings being sent with the initial shipment.As we are advised, "Even if the rest of your world falls apart, you can still count on having two new compact discs arriving to your mailbox each month for the entire year."

Each disc will hold approximately 20 minutes of brand new, unreleased material from the artists. The joint effort is bringing together the rosters of both labels as well as such notable artists as Richard Swift, Damien Jurado (both pictured, above) Cotton Jones, J. Tillman, Desolation Wilderness,  Bexar Bexar, Danny Grody (of Tarentel and The Drift), Saxon Shore, and others.

Better act fact, however: Laminar Excursion Monthly will be limited to 100 subscribers. Think: limited editions; future eBay fodder; etc.

The yearly subscription fee is $45.00 until January 1st.  If any subscriptions are still available at that point, the fee raises to $50.00. Subscriptions will be available at the Crossroads of America site (www.xrarecords.com) beginning this coming Monday, November 2nd.

Blurt says, regardless of how the Smashing Pumpkin dude tries to make you paranoid, please go out and get your flu shot.

By Fred Mills

OPINION: We haven't visited Billy Corgan's spiritually-themed Everything From Here to There website all that often since he launched it a little over a month ago. That's not a reflection of any lack of spirituality on our part; it's just that we're not that into celebrity blogs, regardless of what their beliefs are. And as far as musicians doing blogs, well... we'd probably be bored stiff by a blog by Dylan, come to think of it; we buy his records because we want to hear his songs, and how he combines words and music, not because we want to read an essay or a dissertation.

Anyway, regarding Corgan (who, after all, has as much right to do a blog as I have right to do this news item and opinion piece), his heart, initially, did seem to be in the right place of course, when he described the site thusly: "This is not a place of judgment, nor a place of making proof. We begin with the idea that there is a God. We begin with the undying belief that there is a unifying intelligence that manifests itself in Every-thing." Sounds good; we all want to think that something links us, and that as a human race we share a collective intelligence - that's what makes us human, after all.

So thanks, then, to Pitchfork for tipping us this morning to Corgan's new entry regarding the H1N1 vaccine that the government is racing to get into the hands of medical personnel before the swine flu spreads further. You may have heard about H1N1: it's already causing scores of school closings, and it's likely that everyone reading this knows of someone who's contracted the virus. Speaking personally, I can add that I got a chill the other night when I was at my kid's Cub Scout pack meeting, wondered why it was so sparsely attended, and then learned that several kids and one den leader were out with the swine flu. Would they have contracted the flu if the vaccine had been available locally in time? Who knows; it's a moot point, though, when all credible news and governmental reports (both national and at a state level) suggest that the virus is moving speedily through the population.

You may also have heard how some folks are expressing reservations about getting vaccinated, with reasons given ranging from skepticism over how extensive the flu will actually be, to vaguely-expressed fears over introducing a relatively new vaccine into their bodies, to an outright belief that there's some broad conspiracy afoot, probably government-helmed, relating to H1N1.

Yes, and AIDS was introduced into the population in order to kill all the homosexuals, and crack cocaine was a scheme of some governmental Caucasian cabal to flood the ghetto and keep African-Americans "down." Oh, and Ji