Most cynical ploy by an artist to date of the new year. Watch the video clip, below.

By Perez Mills

As you may have heard, during the Super Bowl's halftime show in which Madonna shook some serious ass, guest vocalist M.I.A. showed her ass for flipping the bird during prime time TV. Some media outlets are suggesting she uttered one or more obscenities, too, although TMZ, which is reporting that M.I.A. may be "left holding the bag if [Super Bowl broadcaster] NBC gets fined" (read: will be liable for any attributable fines, based on the contract she signed before the performance) had not indicated that's the case.

Reports TMZ, "Sources tell us ... aside from the fact that the NFL doesn't want to pay a huge fine, the organization wants to send a message to performers -- don't you dare screw with us. We don't know if the NFL got a similar indemnity clause from Madonna."

We would be inclined to say, hey, who cares about M.I.A. anymore anyway... and hey, if you looked close, you'd swear that the other guest singer, Nicki Minaj, almost flashed her coochie at one point. Still, M.I.A. obviously gives a fuck about M.I.A., which means she realizes that here star has dimmed considerably in the past couple of years thanks to a series of lunkheaded political statements and the tepid response to 2010's Maya album. This clearly was a calculated move on the part of M.I.A. and her handlers because - drum roll, please - she has a new album due out in a few months.

She's getting more advance publicity from the half-time stunt than money (read: potential fines) can buy, period.

Here's that Madonna halftime show, feat. M.I.A. It's like a Pokémon episode come to life or something. Following that is the excerpted M.I.A. clip in case you missed it at around the 8-minute mark in the whole thing.

Temple Beautiful, out this week on Yep Roc, finds the San Fran rocker paying literal and metaphysical tribute to his adopted hometown, with striking results.

By Barry St. Vitus

So-Cal boy Chuck Prophet has long embraced San Francisco as his home, and Temple Beautiful is his ambitious paean to the little city by the bay.  Each song is based on a bit of San Fran history, some events more notorious or infamous than others. Prophet comments, "this record was made in San Francisco, by San Franciscans about San Francisco!" Cheeky Chuck also refers to the residents as "San Francentrics." This fact shouldn't deter potential listeners from hither and yon, afraid they won't get the insider insights, as the songs are just stories about things, like most songs. The title refers to the short-lived, early ‘80's punk venue that was like a little auditorium in the old Jim Jones' People Temple building, where Chuck saw his first punker shows after moving here. (I have fuzzy memories of the place and catching a show with Young Marble Giants in their only stateside tour.) His band gathers together players like Tubes and Journey drummer Prairie Prince, bassist and performer Rusty Miller, and guitarist James DePrato. Wife and singer Stephanie Finch provides vocal backup and Flamin' Groovies legend Roy Loney lends his voice to the title song. Additional cello, flute, violin, woodwinds and piano embellish several numbers. Long-time collaborator Klipschutz is co-writer on this project with him, the jelly to his peanut butter, one could say. Chuck himself is a pretty down-to-earth guy with a down-home touch to his music.

The "Temple Beautiful" song takes a page from the Groovies' playbook, as more of a late ‘50s rocker than a punk flavor. Likewise, "Little Girl, Little Boy" delves into some greaser rock and Jerry Lee piano pounding.  The tunes rocks nicely, but doesn't go much farther lyrically than the title, but this duet with Stephanie commemorates their first meeting. A real puzzler for me is what's happening in "Who Shot John."  City streets like Montgomery, Jackson and Eddy are referenced like characters, and ‘Fatty walked the plank,' who I'm guessing is Fatty Arbuckle, who got tangled up in a career-wrecking episode at the St. Francis Hotel over the death of a girl he was partying with (but was later acquitted). No matter, it's a nice, buzzy ballad. "The Museum of Broken Hearts" is a touching ballad of the terrible AIDS epidemic that swept the City, as well as all the lost and lonely souls that end their grief with a dive from the Golden Gate Bridge to the cold Bay waters below. A song that is a true personal homage for Chuck is "I Felt Like Jesus," looking back at his favorite dive bar he and many friends would gig at on the weekends, near the end of his Green On Red days. The energy displays the obvious sweet memories of bygone times, punctuated with some nice Long Ryders-type guitar runs, a rolling piano and chimes.

More local lore is exposed on "White Night, Big City," when the town exploded after disgruntled ex-City Supervisor Dan White was acquitted for shooting Mayor George Moscone and gay rights champion City Supervisor Harvey Milk. Eating Twinkies made him do it.  Other songs spotlight local luminaries, such as in "Willie Mays Up at Bat," (name-dropping blimp-breasted North Beach stripper Carol Doda) bolstered by some prog-rock guitar wailing, and "Emperor Norton in the Last Year of His Life." You MUST research him on Wikipedia. He was a much beloved local loon who proclaimed himself emperor of the United States and was treated as such by the population. "The Left Hand and the Right Hand' touches on the goings-on at the infamous Mitchell Brothers' X-rated porno theater, between brothers Jim and Artie Mitchell, with the former later fatally shooting the latter.

The standout track on the album is "Castro Halloween," celebrating the extravagant and outrageous street parties that used to go on, before some unfortunate shootings a few years back. Being that there are 3 guitars played on this, I don't know whom to credit for the gorgeous George Harrison-esque guitar solo gliding throughout, but it's a dazzler. Speaking of Harrison, who once visited the Haight-Ashbury in its hippie heyday, it seemed a glaring omission to not touch on those love and drug-fueled days, which San Francisco is perhaps best known for, and the famous Dance-Concert ballroom music scene sprang from.

Temple Beautiful is the product you expect from this highly original and creative artist. It succeeds in its goal of telling some stories of this unique and singular city, as well as rolling out a dozen solid songs. Chuck takes this act on the road for a West coast tour, then to Europe later this month, stateside again for a short tour, then back to Europe. He'll be our cultural missionary abroad, bringing with him some rockin,' racy stories for the natives, about how it all went down in the foggy Baghdad By the Bay. Just don't call it Frisco!

[Photo Credit: Charlie Homo]

We can't (and don't) make it here.

By Blurt Staff

One of our favorite bloggers (and musicians) is definitely James McMurtry, and he's just posted a new entry in his long-running "Wasteland Bait & Tackle" BLURT blog. This time around he takes a look at the erosion of American competitiveness through the lens of outsourced international slavery - and through the lens of his classic tune "We Can't Make It."

"People love to talk about fixing our country," writes McMurtry. "The Tea Party wants to ‘take our country back,' from whom, or to what, I'm not sure. Such talk is as naive as my song. The manufacturing jobs aren't coming back here as long as, elsewhere, there are people willing to enslave and masses of people desperate enough to be willing to be enslaved. Fixing the country would not be enough anymore. We'll have to fix the world. It could take a while."

Read the entire blog right here.

Doing songs from The Whole Love, plus special guest Nick Lowe.

By Blurt Staff

As previously announced, Wilco's November taping for the 37^th season of Austin City Limits was aired Saturday, Feb. 4. Watch most of the show, below.

Watch Wilco on PBS. See more from Austin City Limits.

From ACL:

When people ask what kind of music Austin City Limits stands for," executive producer Terry Lickona says, " there's one band that sums it up better than any other - Wilco!" Airing this Saturday, February 4, our fourth episode featuring this veteran modern rock band shows exactly why ACL holds Jeff Tweedy and company in such high esteem. Concentrating on its latest release The Whole Love, the Chicago sextet puts such stellar tracks as "Art of Almost," "Open Mind" and "Dawned On Me" through their paces with near-perfect poise. It's not all the new album, of course, as the band also drops a few deep cuts like "Bull Black Nova" and "War On War" into the set. And as the icing on an already delicious cake, Wilco tourmate Nick Lowe drops by with his classic "Cruel to Be Kind," backed by the boys themselves.

Setlist:

• Art of Almost
• Poor Places
• Bull Black Nova
• Open Mind
• Born Alone
• One Wing
• Black Moon
• War on War
• Far, Far Away
• Dawned on Me
• Cruel to be Kind (with Nick Lowe)

[Photo Credit: Scott Newton, via ACL]

Band documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim.

By Blurt Staff

U2 officially released the documentary From The Sky Down on DVD, Blu-Ray and video download on January 24th, 2012 with bonus performances and interviews. The film documents the making of the band's landmark 1991 album Achtung Baby.

Enter HERE to win a copy of the film from your friends (and U2 fans) at BLURT.  Check out the trailer:

About the film: Early in 2011, the band returned to Hansa Studio in Berlin to discuss the making of Achtung Baby with Academy Award winning director Davis Guggenheim (It Might Get Loud, Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth). Originally screened as part of BBC's Imagine Series across the UK last October, the film was also the first ever documentary to open the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. Twenty Years after the release of U2's Achtung Baby, Guggenheim charts the path toward this groundbreaking album. Guggenheim uses animation and unseen footage from Berlin and Dublin alongside conversation to reveal what is now a key chapter in U2's career. "In the terrain of rock bands - implosion or explosion is seemingly inevitable. U2 has defied the gravitational pull towards destruction...this band has endured and thrived. From The Sky Down asks the question why," says Guggenheim

Can't wait to see what she could do with the "Born To Die" video and a slasher flick...

By Fred Mills

Betcha this goes viral by tomorrow. Second City comedian, writer and actor Holly Laurent has created a so dumb-it's-Spinal-Tap-worth-clever video that mashes up Lana Del Rey and The Hunger Games.

Titled "Lana Del Rey's ‘Hunger Games'," the 2 ½ minute clip utilizes material from the official trailer for the upcoming Hunger Games film, assorted grainy/scratchy clips intended to bring to mind the grainy/scratchy home-movie quality of Del Rey's original "Video Games" video - and Laurent herself, dolled up to look remarkably like Del Rey in that video, singing new Hunger Games-centric lyrics to the "Video Games" backing music. You've got to be a fan of the book trilogy (we are), and at least have a passing familiarity with the Del Rey video (we do), in order to "get it." But if you do, the payoff is pretty sweet.

Can't wait for the movie, by the way....

Casal embraces the "New Cosmic California" aesthetic: "Need Shelter" from forthcoming album Sweeten The Distance.

By Blurt Staff

Songwriter and guitarist Neal Casal, known both as a solo artist and as a member of both Ryan Adams & The Cardinals and the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, will release his tenth studio album Sweeten The Distance on April 10 via The Royal Potato Family. Check out new song "Need Shelter" - a solo video performance of it can be found below as well.

Need Shelter | Neal Casal by Royal Potato Family

Produced by Thom Monahan (Fruit Bats, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver), Sweeten The Distance includes rich acoustic textures and sophisticated melodies ("Bird With No Name," "Need Shelter" and "Gyrls of Wynter") contrasting with psych folk ambiance ("White Fence Round House," "Feathers for Bakersfield" and "How Quiet It Got").

Casal first made a name for himself with a series of highly praised solo albums, beginning in 1995 with Fade Away Diamond Time and followed by recordings like Basement Dreams, No Wish To Reminisce and the retrospective collection Leaving Traces. In 2006, he joined Ryan Adams & The Cardinals with whom he recorded four albums: Easy Tiger (which reached #7 on the Billboard chart), Follow the Lights, Cardinology and III/IV. Currently, he serves as a central component of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood. The band toured throughout 2011 and is working on their debut studio recording. Over the last year, Casal has also added guitar and vocals to Ryan Adams Ashes & Fire, Fruit Bats Tripper, The Jayhawks Mockingbird Time, Vetiver The Errant Charm and a forthcoming recording by Beachwood Sparks.
 
Tracklisting:

1. Sweeten The Distance
2. Bird With No Name
3. Need Shelter
4. Let It All Begin
5. White Fence Round House
6. So Many Enemies
7. Feathers For Bakersfield
8. Time & Trouble
9. How Quiet It Got
10. The Gyrls of Wynter
11. Angel and You're Mine

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Soul Coughing frontman dishes on former bandmates while spilling the beans on his own shortcomings. Also in the crosshairs: assorted alt-rock era personalities such as the dude from Everclear. Published recently by Da Capo Press.

By John B. Moore

Though not necessarily a love letter to drugs The Book of Drugs is hardly an angry recovering addict's manifesto railing against all that they have taken away from him; To the contrary, even though musician Mike Doughty regularly attends meetings for addicts nowadays, he states early on in his memoir that he can't renounce drugs. "I love drugs. I'd never trade that part of my life when the drugs worked, though the bulk of the time I spent getting high, they weren't doing shit for me."

It's surprisingly refreshing to hear a full-time rocker relay that sentiment in a autobiography, as most use that as the main excuse for why the band broke up; why they are broke; and/or why they are no longer packing stadiums (see Guns N' Roses, Aerosmith, Motley Crue or any number of recent "if not for the drugs, I'd still be huge" bios lining the shelves over the past 12 months). The Book of Drugs, thankfully, is not your standard memoir in other ways, as well.

Written in more of a conversational collection of anecdotes, remembrances and one-off stories, though largely chronologically, Doughty eschews the traditional chapter by chapter story in the life of, opting for a more original take on the standard rock memoir. The Book of Drugs obviously devotes a great deal of ink to Doughty's time as frontman and founder of the ‘90s alt rock band Soul Coughing, a group he doesn't exactly look back on with fond memories. Unlike most bands, the group didn't grow out of teenage friendships, nor did they jam together on a regular basis, rather Doughty cold called his three former band members having seen them perform around NY, when he needed to put together a quickie band.

As he tells it, the three musicians, all older and more experienced, looked at Soul Coughing as little more than a side project not worth putting much time into until the labels started sniffing around. They convinced Doughty, the primary songwriter, to split royalties equally, all while mocking his level of talent. Granted the memoir (as is the nature of memoirs), is largely one-sided, but you can't help but feel for Doughty as he recounts story after story of slights by his band mates.

The book is also filled with famous cameos by musicians as varied as Redman, Dave Matthews, Ani DiFranco and Jeff Buckley (a musician it seems Doughty both admired and was annoyed with in equal measure). Though he has no problem mentioning many of these musicians by name, he inexplicably thinly tries to hide the identity of others he had problems with (for some reason he never mentions Everclear frontman Art Alexakis by name, though it doesn't take more than five seconds on Google to realize this is who he slams in talking about his groupie behavior).

More than a decade after breaking up Soul Coughing and several years of being sober have certainly given Doughty plenty of perspective on how things were being part of an up-and-coming alt rocker in the mid to late ‘90s. Despite the fact that he swears we will never hear from that band again, his time in Soul Coughing and his relationship with drugs clearly made for some fascinating stories.   

Photo Credit: Deborah Lopez

"An experience of a lifetime" comes to an end.

By Blurt Staff

As PC World and other tech sites are reporting this morning, BTjunkie closed its virtual doors this weekend. The popular torrent file-sharing site's voluntary move comes in the wake of the recent legal action against MegaUpload, and BTjunkie indicated to TorrentFreak that this, along with the high profile 2010 moves against Pirate Bay also "played an important role" in the decision to close.

"This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best," reads a short message from BTjunkie.

By Blurt Staff

Performing "Holocene" and "Beth/Rest" this weekend on Saturday Night Live was Bon Iver, the latest in the long-running NBC show's musical coups. Check out the clips, below. (Bon Iver, you may recall, had been nominated for a slew of Grammys this year; the Grammy Awards happen next Sunday night.)

There was also a priceless sendup of Lana Del Rey, courtesy Kristin Wiig, whose resemblance to the luscious-lipped one is remarkable. (Del Rey, you may recall, has not been nominated for any Grammys yet, but she did make a memorable appearance on SNL recently.)