Austin City Limits Episode Featuring The Head & The Heart to Air Tomorrow, January 7^th.

By Blurt Staff

2011 turned out alright for The Head & The Heart. Since the release of their self-titled Sub Pop debut (which to date has scanned over 110,000 copies in the US alone) the band has been touring non-stop, playing shows with Death Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket, Iron & Wine, Dr. Dog, and The Decemberists. Reviews have been uniformly positive as well, with BLURT enthusing thusly:

"Cooing back-up vocals, poetic lyrics and dramatic twists and turns give the music a sense of euphoria even when the feelings conveyed become the most stoic and subdued. Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Trouble Waters seems to set a stunning example for the dynamic at work, and for a band so young, their savvy and sophistication are truly impressive."

Also, in late November the band released an 8-track iTunes session featuring alternate versions of "Lost in My Mind" and "Cats and Dogs" as well as "Ever Since" and "When I Fall Asleep," two brand new songs that have become live show staples and fan favorites. With appearances on Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Late Show with David Letterman under their belt, the band kicks off 2012 with yet another TV appearance, this Saturday, January 7^th, on Austin City Limits (also on the show will be Gomez). That will be followed by a spring tour starting March 3. The band will be headlining another run of US dates starting March 3rd in Avon, CO. Full list of dates below.

Austin City Limits setlist:

"Cats and Dogs" / "Coeur d'Alene"
"Winter Song"
"Lost in My Mind"
"Down In The Valley"
"Rivers and Roads"

Tour Dates:

Mar 03 Snowball Music Festival, Avon, CO

Mar 04 Granada Theater, Lawrence, KS

Mar 05 Canopy Club, Urbana, IL

Mar 06 Headliner's Music Hall, Louisville, KY

Mar 08 Vic Theatre, Chicago, IL

Mar 09 Vogue, The, Indianapolis, IN

Mar 10 Newport Music Hall, Columbus, OH

Mar 11 Crofoot Ballroom, Pontiac, MI

Mar 13 Opera House (ON), Toronto, Ontario

Mar 14 La Tulipe, MONTRÉAL, Canada

Mar 15 Higher Ground, South Burlington, VT

Mar 16 State Theatre (ME), Portland, ME

Mar 17 Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA

Mar 18 Terminal Five, New York City , NY

Mar 20 Ram's Head Live, Baltimore, MD

Mar 21 National, The, Richmond, VA

Mar 23 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA

Mar 24 Cannery Ballroom, Nashville, TN

Mar 25 Pageant, St Louis, MO

Our Artist of the Year does a pair of songs from her 2011 album.


By Fred Mills


Last night Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs, showed up at "Jimmy Kimmel Live" with her band in tow. They did a pair of key tracks from her acclaimed 2011 album w h o k i l l, "Bizness" and "You Yes You," in all their eccentric glory. Check 'em out, below, and meanwhile, you can also read our recent Artist Of The Year profile of Garbus.

Pictured: The band at Philadelphia institution Isaiah's "Magic Garden".

By Blurt Staff

Okay, chamber pop fans, listen up: a week or so ago we gave you an advance listen to Brooklyn-Philly band Cuddle Magic's forthcoming album Info Nympho by way of an MP3 for new song "Moby Dickless." You can still grab that and get some more info on the album and group here.

Meanwhile, now we've got the video for the song, directed by Hope Hall, for you to check out, and trust us, it's a good ‘un.

Moby Dickless by Cuddle Magic from Cuddle Magic on Vimeo.

Helped salvage two of the band's most underrated albums.

By Fred Mills

Rolling Stone is reporting that guitarist Bob Weston passed away Dec. 2 at the age of 64, reportedly from "gastric intestinal hemorrhage, cirrhosis and a throat ailment," according to an autopsy.

The British musician is best known, of course, for his 1972-74 stint with Fleetwood Mac during that group's post-Danny Kirwan transitional period that yielded the Penguin and Mystery To Me albums. Although Weston proved himself an able replacement for Kirwan and a solid songwriter-in-the-making, he got the axe after he had an affair with drummer Mick Fleetwood's wife Jenny Boyd. Of course, inter-band affairs would soon become the norm for the Mac following the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, but that's another story entirely.

In later years Weston played or recorded with Murray Head, Ian Wallace, Sandy Denny and Steve Marriott, as well as fellow erstwhile Mac member Bob Welch, additionally performing as a solo artist. Among Fleetwood Mac aficionados not blinded by the Buckingham-Nicks era, he is remembered with great fondness and respect. Check out this clip of the band from '73 on the Midnight Special - that's Weston in the white suit, with Welch in black on the right.

Good reason to hire professional video crews for concert filming...


By Fred Mills


While multiple media outlets (including this breathless one) seem to be "freaking out" over the recently released video of the Flaming Lips collaborating with Neon Indian at the Lips New Year's Eve show (NYE Freak Out #5, in Oklahoma City) for the track "Is David Bowie Dying?", if you actually bother to check it out, the clip, frankly, sucks. Even by iPhone audience shot standards, the audio is murky and the video itself is basically just a bunch of shadows. But, as the saying goes, whatevs.

N.I.'s Alan Palomo apparently tweeted the clip yesterday to lend it indie legtimacy, however, so it's hard to be too harsh. Meanwhile, though, you might want to check out a handful of other, potentially more interesting, videos from the same show, like this one:

Or this one:

Or even this one:

Meanwhile, Moon Unit Zappa...

By Perez Blurt

Zooey Deschanel has petitioned for divorce from husband Ben Gibbard, the Death Cab For Cutie guy. "Irreconcilable differences" are cited, which probably means all kinds of ugly personal b.s. will be coming out soon. Hello, Katy Perry and Russell Brand, and also Sinead O'Connor and what's-his-name.

Wait - the latter two have gotten back together after barely a month of marriage and a week's worth of impending divorce; he is Barry Herridge and, er, he is "a big hairy cave man," in O'Connor's words.

Meanwhile, Moon Unit Zapppa and Matchbox Twenty guitarist Paul Doucette, who were married in 2002, are getting a divorce. "Irreconcilable differences" are cited.

Can we get back to some record release news?

An impressively-researched book that reads more as scrapbook than history.


By Mark Jenkins

From 1973 to 1977, New York New York was a heckuva town. Hip-hop and salsa were uptown, punk, minimalism and loft jazz downtown -- and disco somewhere in between. Will Hermes' Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever tries to cover it all, with admirable breadth. Depth is another matter, however.

The novelty of this book is that it mashes together everything from Willie Colon to Patti Smith, Kool Herc and Meredith Monk, Richard Wagner to Bruce Springsteen. Nearly all the music made in the five boroughs during the period is on Hermes's self-designated beat, including classical as well as pop, mainstream as well as oddball. The author did some original research, but this is essentially an ambitious clip job.

The result is too detailed for the casual reader, yet too familiar for the devotee. To take just one example: Hermes' brief account of the New York premiere of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach includes two amusing stories. But they were already the two best-known anecdotes about this moment in Glass' career.

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (which takes its title from Talking Heads' first single) is not a work of criticism, either musical or social. New York was in turmoil during the five years Hermes covers, and he includes asides about the city's bankruptcy, the growing acceptance of porn movies, serial killer Son of Sam and the great blackout of 1977. But he doesn't attempt to explain the musical renaissance in terms of the city's plight, other than to note that real estate was cheaper then. Neither does he seek profound links between the various musical genres being defined or redefined at the time.

Instead, the connections are mostly geographic or chronological, which makes the book read like an after-the-fact diary. The segues are abrupt, and the connections are sometimes forced. At one point, Patti Smith is likened to Celia Cruz; later, she's compared to Bella Abzug. The narrative takes the occasional odd turn, detouring to France for the 1977 premiere of Gorecki's Third Symphony or time-traveling to 1850 to note that Jenny Lind once performed on the same site (not even in the same building!) as the New York Dolls.

Hermes lived in Queens during 1973-77, but he was a teenager with limited access to, or knowledge of, what was going down. Periodically, he reminds us of his proximity with recollections about records he heard or concerts he attended -- or drugs he took or handjobs he received. These extraneous confessions add to the sense that the book is merely a grab bag of incidents.

Hardcore music fans, or readers with less dedication but great perseverance, will find much that's of interest in Hermes' sack of musical memories. They'll learn about styles they didn't follow closely, or at all, and may even discover a thing or two about music they thought they knew utterly. What's lacking is any overarching theme, structure or analysis. Hermes has put it all together, but in a form that's more scrapbook than history.

Guitar firepower behind Iron Butterfly and Captain Beyond.

By Fred Mills

Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt passed away Monday, Jan. 2, at the age of 63. No cause of death has been announced, although a report in the Sarasota Patch indicates that he had entered a Florida hospital with an infection and later was moved to intensive care.

The Florida-based guitarist initially came to fame in the early ‘70s when he joined psychedelic legends Iron Butterfly and subsequently formed Captain Beyond (pictured, below; he's on the far right) which lasted into the latter portion of that decade. Earlier, prior to the Butterfly stint, he had performed in a pre-Allman Brothers Band outfit, The Second Coming, which featured Dicky Betts and Berry Oakley. In more recent years he had performed solo as well as taking part in various Iron Butterfly and Captain Beyond reunions. In 2011 he released an album as Rhino & the Posse.

Feb. 4 in Chapel Hill, with Phil Collins opening.

By Fred Mills

Followers of the Tar Heel indie rock scene and aficionados of good old-school style hi-nrg power pop were stoked last fall when legendary Chapel Hill band The Popes finally had their classic '88 mini-album Hi, We're The Popes reissued for the first time in digital form, including bonus tracks. As the band's John Elderkin (currently of The Public Good) told us at the time, "We played regularly in the late 80s and early 90s. The EP made a splash that surprised even the band - Billboard gave it a rave review, Jon Pareles of The New York Times sent a note asking for more music, and the record debuted on CMJ's "Hot New Release" chart one spot higher than R.E.M.'s album of the same week. We later released a cassette-only collection called Afar and several specialty releases, including a hard-rocking cover of Alex Chilton's ‘I'm in Love with a Girl' that garnered national college radio play."

Apparently the response has been wildly enthusiastic among old friends and fans of the band, so they've decided to do a reunion show on Feb. 4 at Chapel Hill club Local 506. Details can be found at their Facebook page, and it's probably one of those "event" events that will sell out in advance, if the group's popularity back in the day is any predictor. The opening act is - get this - Phil Collins! Okay, okay, not that Phil Collins, but rather the Phil Collins of fellow NC band Satellite Boyfriend, which was also greatly beloved it its time. A good time is guaranteed for all.

Hey, whatever happened to eBay, Jack!?!

By Blurt Staff

Here's some news you don't get every day: Jack White is going to appear on the History Channel's popular nuevo junque program American Pickers - you know, the one about those two garage sale ‘n' junk yard scavengers who occasionally unearth genuine buried treasure. It will air on HC on January 9 at 9pm ET.

Apparently White will host them at his Third Man Records office in Nashville, where they will pick through sundry White geegaws and memorabilia. The press release we got said that one item up for grabs will be the photo booth that White and the dead Weather used in their "Hang You From the Heavens" video, which doesn't seem to qualify for garage sale status - more like a Hard Rock Café type curiosity - but should definitely net some serious coin for White one way or another. Word has it that the booth will get swapped "in exchange for one of the most "memorable" treasures ever to appear on the show."

Pictured above is White surrounded by some of the stuff at Third Man...