London Calling should start shooting sometime in 2011.

By Fred Mills

This can't be good. With word still fresh (from less than a month ago) about a Joe Strummer biopic, Joe Public, being planned for next year, now we learn that there's also a Clash biopic in the works, according to a report at the BBC.

The good news: London Calling will be executive produced by Paul Simonon and Mick Jones.

The bad news: it's a friggin' biopic. You know the drill. Quick, in ten seconds, name five music biopics that you'd pay money to watch again. See?

Anyhow, Lilly Allen's mom Allison Owen (who?) will produce, along with Ruby Film's Paul Trijbits (who?), while Jez Butterworth, a playwright who penned the play Jerusalem (what?), will write the script. No  actors have been cast yet, and a director has not been announced. (How about Spike Lee?)

Owen told the BBC, "Fans of The Clash all over the world have been waiting a long time to see their extraordinary story played out properly and accurately on the big screen. We're happy that Mick and Paul have given the project their blessing and are on board to help steer the ship."

Er, we suppose that means that all those Don Letts-steered videos and documentaries failed to tell this extraordinary story properly ALREADY...

By Blurt Staff

Our newest contest is one of our best ever!  BLURT is extremely excited to be giving away a copy of Bryan Ferry's new album Olympia along with a signed lithos of the Kate Moss cover!

Recently released through Astralwerks, Ferry's new album features musical contributions from Nile Rodgers, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Groove Armada, Scissor Sisters, Marcus Miller, Flea, ex Stone Roses Mani (Primal Scream) and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. It also sees Bryan Ferry reunite on record with members of Roxy Music, including Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Andy Mackay.

As we put it in our recent review, "Olympia is, indeed, a delightful album, with our reviewer enthusing, "Ferry's upped the ante this time around, opting for original material with only a pair of remakes. The sound remains all slick cabaret grooves, sinewy arrangements and a heady ambiance that amplifies the mystique. Ferry remains a class act, and with Olympia, he hits new heights."

Click over to the Blurt contest page, then enter your name and contact info in the form. It's that simple.

Newspaper blogger decides to take out a hit on one of our favorite bands.

By Fred Mills

Yesterday at BLURT we published the latest "Look at Life" blog entry from Coco Hames, frontwoman of The Ettes, who have notched more than a little acclaim for themselves over the past few years, in the process probably putting at least as many miles on their van as any other working group in the country. This particular blog was a direct response to a "Miami Music Matters" blog entry published on Nov. 26 by the Miami Herald in Florida in which a Herald blogger laid into the Ettes for cancelling a pair of South Florida gigs over the Thanksgiving holiday, the reason for the cancellation being a "family emergency."

Read the Herald blog entry first - essentially, it speculated that the Ettes actually cancelled the Nov. 26 gig because they didn't want to make a 200 mile drive, and strongly inferred that the "family emergency" claim was bogus, and that it was too vague a statement. It's significant that this was written in a snarky, accusatory, demeaning tone - essentially an ad hominem  approach - and that there was apparently no attempt made by the Herald blogger to contact the band, its booker or anyone associated with the band to verify the actual facts.

Coco's response in her BLURT blog was written in an angry and sarcastic tone, which if you've read the Herald blog entry you'll probably understand why, because that basically amounted to a personal attack on her and her band. "Get your facts straight before you prattle on like a monkey in a tree," she wrote. "You sound like an idiot who got a B+ in writing at school, got in a bad enough mood... I agree that ‘family emergency' is too vague and blanket a statement, so I won't take it personally that you don't know what you're talking about."

Full disclosure #1: Coco is my friend, so I'm a tad biased in her favor. But she's also one of my writers, and we look after our own here. Nor does that doesn't prevent me from observing, quite objectively, that (a) over the years tons of bands have canceled shows and entire tours using "vague" reasons such as "family/band emergency" or simply "illness," and while sometimes it's turned out to be due to drugs, booze, laziness or one of the members disappearing on the side of the highway, other times the reasons have been quite legitimate and reasonable; and (b) it's actually nobody's business but the band's when you get down to it, and they are not required to be more specific if they choose not to. I should add that it strikes me as highly unusual the Ettes would be singled out for what's a very common occurrence in the music business - the tone of the Herald blog entry has all the hallmarks of some personal axe being ground against the band.

Full disclosure #2: I actually was not going to write anything about this on the BLURT site. In the comments section of the Herald piece I posted the link to Coco's blog so readers would be able to see her side of the story, and I additionally suggested that since the entry bore no byline, it was a cowardly and unprofessional thing for the Herald to sanction for publication. I also sent an email to the Herald saying the same thing. The blogger who actually did write the original piece responded to my comment at the blog, then emailed me directly - his name is Tom Bowker. At the blog and in the email he accused me of having poor vision, then in a followup email backpedaled and admitted that due to some unspecified technical glitch on the website his byline had indeed not been published. He also indicated that he stood by his original comments, and that he had not thought it was worth the time and effort to attempt to get the full story on the Ettes' concert cancellations in time for him to post his blog. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

So we essentially agreed to disagree on the matter. Which is fair enough; he expressed his opinion on his blog, and Coco did likewise on hers. Tit for tat.

Subsequently, though, a few things happened to resurrect the matter, hence this writing: (1) Bowker's online response to my online comment was altered at some point yesterday afternoon, and the stuff about me needing glasses was deleted; (2) Coco and at least one other individual attempted to post their own online comments, yet those posts were either blocked or deleted; and (3) today ALL the comments were deleted, either by Bowker or the Herald, and replaced by an update apparently penned by Bowker - there is still no byline - in which he resumes his anti-Ettes screed. The link to Coco's blog has been removed as well, although there is a note indicating that Coco "responded to this post with a vitriolic [sic], profanity-laced, non-denial on hipster webzine Blurt."

(Emphasis mine - why thank you, Tom!) [Editorial note: Bowker is, in addition to a writer, a member of profanity-laced comedy/funk/rapper Blowfly's band. Apparently, several years ago he approached Managing Editor Mills with repeated requests to write about Blowfly.]

All of this is apropos of nothing, other than to just offer a kind of snapshot tutorial on how to behave unprofessionally under the guise of "music journalism" in the digital era. If you're going to have a blog with a comments section, you should have the guts to allow readers comments to be published, whether or not you agree with them, unless it's an instance of inappropriate or offensive language. And deleting them after the fact is beyond the pale. Plus, if you alter your own text, that needs to be indicated as such.

And the Miami Herald - which I know for a fact is a very professional organization; a relative of mine was until recently one of the editors there - should be ashamed about sanctioning this sort of behavior.

Rare lyric sheet goes on the auction block an aims for a quarter-mil. Check the video clip, below.

By Fred Mills

Okay, so we all know that NONE of you are the "next Dylan"; that sobriquet has been the friggin' kiss of death for promising singer-songwriters since the mid ‘60s.

Just the same, if the latest news from the Dylan universe is any guide, on the very remote chance that you eventually come even marginally close to being as popular and influential as the good Dr. Zimmerman, it would be in your best interest to have saved all your notebooks, files, stray scraps of paper and hastily-scrawled cocktail napkins - or at least have made sure there was a close friend of sycophant dutifully trailing along behind you to retrieve all that stuff that you, in your booze-and-drugs-addled state, couldn't quite muster the wherewithal to safeguard.

Case in point: As various media outlets were reporting late yesterday, the original hand-written lyrics to Dylan's timeless "The Times They Are A-Changin'" will be auctioned off by Sotheby's next week on Dec. 10, with an estimated selling price of between $200k and $300k. Apparently Dylan "was slack" about hanging on to his written stuff, but a Greenwich Village buddy, Kevin Krown, had indeed kept the lyric sheet in a safe place.

Let the bidding begin - and let this also be a lesson to all you whiny, woke-up-this-morning-and-drank-some coffee tunesmiths who have yet to master the art of being packrats.

Erstwhile musical collaborator and longtime friend pays tribute.

By Blurt Staff

Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV's Genesis P-Orridge sent out a press release today containing his personal eulogy for his old bandmate Peter Christopherson, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last week. The text is reproduced in full, below.

***

PETER  "SLEAZY"  CHRISTOPHERSON

27th February 1955 - 24th November 2010

You never expect to be writing a eulogy about your deepest and beloved friends when you meet them and they glide into your loops of L-if-E so sleekly, so boldly and with such confidence that it is like one of Nature's perfectly designed dynamic creatures following its instinct home to where it began.  You never expect to hear, without forewarning, that you have lost another dear and treasured member of your chosen, freely embraced famille.

We have written several pages already trying to write a eulogy/obituary.

But it read too dry. It turned into being about facts and dates and becomes a fake entry in Wikipedia! That's not what we are feeling and it's NOT what we want to give to Sleazy at this horrible moment that shocked everyone so unexpectedly. My dear friend Bee in Bangkok emailed me the news. "Sleazy died in his sleep last night Genny". What do you say? 

FUCK!  It is the slap of a hand on a wall, the crash of a fist on a kitchen table, it is the utter failure of our words to express a feeling!

Your mind slides into turmoil. How? What now? Who knows? ...Over and over.

Who will take care of him? We imagine Bee, and various of his beloved extended famille that he nurtured, supported and cared so deeply for in Bangkok. Sleazy had built his special paradise there. He died there in his haven, amongst his friends, with his dogs, as gentle and peaceful as death can be for we humans. He went to sleep and never woke up perfecting.

We had the great fortune to visit Sleazy at his previous  "compound". A beautiful place to retreat to in between the hectic, stressful life of "work". With my friend HannaH we had come from Kathmandhu where we had done a puja for Lady Jaye who passed away in 2007. Sleazy had prepared an air conditioned room. Clean linen. Peace and quiet. Food appeared miraculously, clothes were laundered...we had gin and tonics in his "dipping pool" every day at 4pm and we talked of death and loss. Sometimes he held me gently in his arms as we cried. He spoke of  Jjonn and how hard that loss had been. We'd both been through a horror of  finding our "Other Half" dying at our feet and both been treated awfully by the cops on the scene. My lifelong friendship with Sleazy deepened even further into an unbreakable bond of love as we relived this together and we have treasured ever since those days in Thailand.

We had, needless to say, always loved Sleazy since those early times when we all found his new "real" name so easily adopted. Of course, all families, even those spawning wreckers of civilization, have their little squabbles and minor issues over the years. What is amazing is that our chosen famille (Chris, Cosey, Sleazy and me) weathered thirty-six years despite being attacked and hammered by international newspapers, TV media, the Legal Establishment, and music, art and other rivals. Despite all our various trials and tribulations, "something special almost magical would happen to TG onstage" as Cosey says. The mysterious chemistry that made TG so unique as a unit.

Sleazy was an astounding talent. During his prolific phase with COIL he developed new visionary methods of mixing sound and video in ways akin in their radicalism to  Rembrandt's breakthrough with catching light itself within the oil and pigment. For me it is his deftness and precision with minutely accurate sounds or shadows that made him so worthy of the honoured name "Master".

Sleazy was a huge part of my life creatively during our 36 year friendship. He joined COUM; was an incalculable part of the process and experiment that was and remains TG.; he followed me into Psychic TV to collaborate in two classic albums with Alex Fergusson, Ken Thomas and myself; with Monte Cazazza he actively brainstormed concepts and attitudes towards the creation of Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth. During that first year or so of T.O.P.Y. a young schoolboy called Geff Rushton turned up at my house in Beck Road Hackney. He wanted an interview about "sex magick".

We called Sleazy and said, "We think YOU will be the perfect person to be interviewed by Geff, will you do it?" , because Sleazy wasn't keen on interviews much back then. Anyway, Geff went, Sleazy did the interview and "one of them got the job". This turned out to be Sleazy's "BIG LOVE" and they both went on to create COIL and be a huge worldwide influence on what became, with the parallel influence of David Tibet (also named during his bootcamp times with PTV and TOPY) known as DARK FOLK etc.

Talking of influences, it was Sleazy who discovered Mr Sebastian in 1980 without who we, and hundreds of TOPY Individuals, PTV fans and readers of the Research Book "Modern Primitives" wouldn't have been pierced.

Sleazy loved Bangkok and Thailand. He had been visiting regularly for several years before deciding to move there permanently after Jjonn/Geff passed on. While we were spending time in 2009 with him we were pretty sick from the intense emotional stress of our ceremony in Nepal for the reliving and releasing of a beloved. Sleazy became a source of every suture for my heart, loving sustenance for my soul. He nurtured me with words of wise counsel garnered from his own similar and tragic losses.

There had been a long sometimes desolate expanse between the seventies and now. But we had both crossed our abyss and we were blessed by Sleazy's loving nature to be able to accept his gentle embrace and, crying like a child we often are, be able to lovingly say to him, "I HAVE GOT MY FRIEND BACK." Many times, since then, we have stopped during hard times, confusing times, and we think of Sleazy and how his mastery of light went from cameras to hearts and souls, and that makes me smile and laugh. Which is as he would wish. We loved Sleazy in all he did...

Genesis Breyer  P-Orridge     nyc, Nov 2010.

Followup to 2007 comeback album, and first on their own label.

By Blurt Staff

Buffalo Tom will be releasing its eighth studio album, Skins, on February 15, the first release on the band's own Scrawny Records. Produced by the band in their hometown of Boston, MA, and mixed by long-time friends Paul Q. Kolderie (who produced the band's breakout third album, 1992's Let Me Come Over) and Tom Polce, Skins is the follow up to 2007's Three Easy Pieces, which brought Buffalo Tom back into the spotlight after a nine-year hiatus.

The new album, incidentally, features guest Tanya Donnelly of Belly, Breeders and Throwing Muses fame singing on the song "Don't Forget Me." Besides the standard CD, a deluxe edition will be available with demos and b-sides, as well as a vinyl version with a download card featuring the additional songs.

Writer/actor Mike O'Malley, whose star has recently risen higher as a result of his work on Glee, loves the band so much that he asked to write the bio for Skins. In it, he writes of the moment he discovered the band when they released 1994's Big Red Letter Day:

"Here were men my age making music about things that mattered - how we navigate our lives amidst the messes we get handed and the messes we've made -- and they were doing it with an authentic sound that had heft, texture and drive.   They did what we want our rock and roll to do -- distill potent observations about life and disguise any sentimentality - eliminate it -- by backing up the observations with guitars and drums.

"And for those who fell for the Buffalo Tom of "Taillights Fade," "Soda Jerk," "Tree House" and "Summer," this document exists, in part to proclaim that Buffalo Tom's new album Skins is worthy of your attention. It has all the things that Buffalo Tom does well.    Songs about situations and subjects that the average human can relate to - with all the gravity you'd expect from a band that still has something to say.  Throughout Skins, Buffalo Tom is unafraid to go deeper than the surface layer, and they spend much of this record bringing forth warnings, laments and admonishments."

Tracklisting:

Arise, Watch
She's Not Your Thing
Down
Don't Forget Me
Guilty Girls
Miss Barren Brooks
Paper Knife
Here I Come
Lost Weekend
The Hawks & The Sparrows
The Big Light
The Kids Just Sleep
Out of The Dark 

Dehydration and exhaustion cited; band plans to recuperate in time for the New Year's Eve run.

By Fred Mills

Late yesterday word arrived from the Drive-By Truckers camp that the band was abruptly canceling the remaining 5 shows of their current European tour. A post at their website read thusly:

Drive-By Truckers will be forced to cancel the remaining shows on their European tour. The band has been sick for several days and last night Mike Cooley collapsed due to exhaustion and dehydration. Doctors have advised complete bed rest. We are very sorry to cancel shows at the end of this tour, especially in Scandinavia, where the band have such a loyal following. Please know we will make every effort to reschedule these shows sometime in the near future. Thank you for your understanding and your continued support.

Then later that evening it was disclosed that the band would also have to cancel the upcoming appearance at the annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam, which takes place Dec. 10-11 in North Carolina:

In addition to canceling the end of their European tour the Drive-By Truckers will also cancel their appearance at Christmas Jam in Asheville, NC. The band needs some much needed and deserved time off and sends their sincerest apologies to Warren and all involved with Christmas Jam. They will be back in full force for their New Year's Eve run in New York.

So apparently the Dec. 30, 31 and Jan. 1 shows in Brooklyn, NYC and Philly are still on - here's hoping that the month's recuperation will take care of what ails ‘em! They've got a killer new album, Go-Go Boots, due on Feb. 15 which we've been listening to nonstop, so we need a tour to go with the album, like, pronto.

Meanwhile, Haynes Jam watchers should keep an eye on the Jam website for an announcement of who will wind up taking the band's place in the Jam lineup.

What singles were you buying in 2007....?

By Blurt Staff

Okay, sure - you're bound to have seen this nifty bit of animation-synching to an equally stellar mix of funk maestro Lack of Afro's classic 2007 single "Rodrigo." But that don't mean you don't wanna see and hear it again, right? This is one we never get tired of, period.

So when's our man Lack of Afro gonna release something new, hmmm?

Announcing the latest installment in our "Play For Today" series of video game reviews. This time out we take on Splatterhouse, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, Pac-Man Party and uDraw Game Tablet. Incidentally, don't miss the debut of "Play For Today - The Print Version" in the Fall 2010 issue of BLURT, on newsstands now.

 By Blurt Staff

Head over to BLURT blogger Aaron Burgess' "Play For Today" blog - he's just posted some action-packed (term used relatively and literally) reviews of a slew of more top-rated games. Included are his own ratings plus screenshots - like the ones below - and trailers. Game on!

(above) Splatterhouse

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom

Pac-Man Party

UPDATE 5pm EST: She's got the track "Written On the Forehead" now uploaded to a SoundCloud account. Check it out here.

First sonic teaser slated to be unveiled; album arrives Feb. 15.


By Blurt Staff


Quick update on that forthcoming new PJ Harvey album we wrote about last week: due out on Island in the UK on Feb. 14, it will have a Feb. 15 released stateside on Vagrant.


Today, Nov. 30, fans have been notified that they can visit her official website to get a preview of a new song, although as of this writing there's nothing posted. Instead, there is a message indicating that tonight at 7pm (UK time) she will be a guest on the BBC's Zane Lowe show, where a new track will be aired.


Here's the tracklisting, by the way:


1.       Let England Shake
2.       The Last Living Rose
3.       The Glorious Land
4.       The Words That Maketh Murder
5.       All And Everyone
6.       On Battleship Hill
7.       England
8.       In The Dark Places
9.       Bitter Branches
10.   Hanging In The Wire
11.   Written On The Forehead
12.   The Colour of The Earth