Sophomore album Scramble might result in mixed message.

By Nancy Dunham

In critics' school they teach us music journalist types that we understand tunes better than anyone else, even the artists that create them. But what to do when critics offer contrasting views? That's a quandary even the critic school overlords often can't reconcile.

Consider The Coathangers, who played nine shows at SXSW and have just released their second album Scramble. We posted the "Stop Stomp Stompin'" video and told you about the album and why we liked it a lot (but maybe didn't love it unconditionally...): Blurt.

Fader also posted the "Stop Stomp Stompin'" video debut Video with a short, yet positive, description and links to download the tune.

Yet Paste reports the sophomore disc isn't quite the caliber they expected from these grunge angels: Paste .

The solution? You! Put on your critic's hat, play the video or tune, and let us know what you think. If you wanna graduate, you gotta tell it like you hear it.

To borrow a quote from Juan Thompson -- the son of Gonzo Journalist/ultimate critic Hunter Thompson -- in response to reviews of his father's work:

"You will have to make up your own mind. He certainly did."

By Blurt Staff

Five-day event links wanna-be musicians with veteran rockers...by the way, what the hell does a photo of Hendrix have to do with all this?

Here's your chance to bond with members of the MC5, The Sex Pistols, The Beach Boys, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Devo, David Bowie's band, and Blondie. All you need is (maybe lots of) dollars and a dream - plus some musical chops would come in handy.

The Rock & Roll Experience will team participants with the road-tested musicians. You get to write, produce and perform your own songs with guidance - and we bet plenty of war stories - from the musicians.

The five-day event is in Honolulu (here's where the cash comes in) Oct. 7 to 11. And what do you get if you sign up for one of the many packages available?

"All of the celebrity artists are on site for the duration, eating, drinking, and jamming with our guests. People will get to live their rock and roll dreams, play music with rock legends, and be treated like celebrities themselves," say the promoters.

Maybe those Rock & Roll Fantasies can come true....at least for a while.

Check out details at www.rockandrollexperience.com

Wait - did they say MC5, Beach Boys and Devo? Oh, the mind just boggles... Are we not men? Kick out the surf city jams, motherfuckers!

... Matisyahu, who is featured in new video.

By Nancy Dunham

You have to love a band that puts a countdown clock on its Web site to track when its album will be released.

That's just what the electronic duo The Crystal Method has done to countdown to the May 12 launch of its fourth studio album Divided By Night.

Can't wait to hear it? The band - who as you know is Ken Jordan and Scott Kirland - just released a video featuring Matisyahu, who the duo met and performed with last year.

For more information and to check out the video for the single "Drown In The Now" click on this link: Drown In The Now

Respected decade-old veteran intends to come back in digital format.

By Fred Mills

With issue #30 recently arriving at newsstands, Skyscraper magazine announced this morning it was ceasing operations as a print publication and would be moving to an online-only format. This come after 11 years of diligently covering the DIY and indie communities for Skyscraper, thus marking yet another blow to both the music magazine print milieu and the independent music scene.

In a press release circulated to the media, co-publishers Andrew and Peter Bottomley indicated they intended to "continue publishing online in an enhanced and expanded format," adding that "a complete relaunch of skyscrapermagazine.com is tentatively scheduled to appear this summer."

The pair cited several reasons for the decision to fold their magazine, calling the convergence of those reasons a "perfect storm of events." Among them: increased printing and distribution costs, a decline in advertising, and the loss of a number of distributors and independent retailers who carried Skyscraper.

Wrote the Bottomleys, "As much as we are lovers of the printed word and a computer screen will never replace the sensation of holding a magazine in our hands, we are realists and can't help but acknowledge that the future of journalism is online (especially music and arts journalism, which is inherently multimedia). There is no point in continuing to swim against the tides of culture. Moreover, the Internet offers many unique benefits that we are eager to tap into."

Certainly we at BLURT understand all this and more; it was just over a year ago that our immediate predecessor Harp had its financial plug pulled, for several of the same reasons (among many) that conspired to deep-six Skyscraper. Those lessons were not lost upon us even as we relaunched as BLURT in digital form (both website and digi-mag) and, more recently, decided to bring a print version of BLURT to market. (We're currently working on our second issue.)

All we can say is that it's a loss for everyone when a magazine goes missing from the newsstands and mailboxes - the idea is to have MORE voices, not fewer. We extend our most sincere wishes to the Skyscraper crew that they'll be able to move forward and thrive in their new online incarnation.

And of course those ballparks have the BEST acoustics on the planet!

By Blurt Staff

Bob Dylan has just announced an ambitious line-up for this year's summer concert tour.  Along with fellow troubadour Willie Nelson, this summer The Bob Dylan Show will also feature John Mellencamp, marking just the second time in the past 24 years that these three performers have shared the concert stage.

Since first embarking on a tour of minor league baseball parks in 2004, over a half-million fans have come together to spend a night under the stars with the Bard, whose new studio album arrives next week, April 28 through Columbia Records.  Watch BLURT next week for a review of Together Through Life.

All concert tickets are priced at $67.50 and most shows are general admission (kids get in free). Showtime is 5:30pm and gates open at 5:00.  There is no baseball game on the day of the show.  For more information about the tour and presale opportunities, visit www.bobdylan.com .

      Date             Market                                                                    On-Sale

7/2                Sauget, IL at GCS Ballpark                                       5/2

7/4                South Bend, IN at Coveleski Stadium                        5/2

7/8                Louisville, KY at Louisville Slugger Field                    5/9

7/10              Dayton, OH at Fifth Third Field                                 5/2

7/11              Eastlake, OH at Classic Park                                     5/2

7/13              Washington, PA at Consol Energy Park                     5/2

7/14              Allentown, PA at Coca-Cola Park                             5/2

7/15              New Britain, CT at New Britain Stadium                    5/9

7/19              Syracuse, NY at Alliance Bank Stadium                     5/9

7/21              Pawtucket, RI at McCoy Stadium                              5/9

7/23              Lakewood, NJ at FirstEnergy Park                            5/2

7/24              Aberdeen, MD at Ripken Stadium                             5/9

7/25              Norfolk, VA at Harbor Park                                      5/9

7/28              Durham, NC at Durham Bulls Athletic Park                5/9

7/29              Sevierville, TN at Smokies Park                                 5/16

8/4                Round Rock, TX at The Dell Diamond                       5/16

8/5                Corpus Christi, TX at Whataburger Field                   5/16

8/7                Grand Prairie, TX at QuikTrip Park                           5/30

8/11              Glendale, AZ at Camelback Ranch                            5/16

8/12              Las Vegas, NV at Cashman Field                              5/30

8/14              Fresno, CA at Chukchansi Park                                 5/30

8/15              Stockton, CA at Banner Island Ballpark                     5/30

Tour dates include a performance on KCRW-FM

By Blurt Staff

Attention, western Blurt readers: one of our favorite artists is headed your way. Fresh off her successful residencies at LA's Hotel Cafe and SF's Hotel Utah in January,  Theresa Andersson will be doing a short run of dates that will take in the coast as well as Tucson and Dallas. The Los Angeles Times heralded her as an "Artist to Watch in 2009" , while Blurt named her album Hummingbird, Go! one of 2008's best.

Theresa has been garnering quite an audience thanks to her jaw-dropping live performance - check it out  here on Shockhound.

Theresa Andersson Tour Dates:

May 11- Live on KCRW
May 12 - Los Angeles, CA @ Largo at the Coronet, 9:30 PM
May 14 - San Francisco, CA @ Swedish American Hall, TBA
May 16 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios, 7:45 PM
May 18 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern, 10 PM
May 24 - Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress, 8:40 PM
May 27 - Dallas, TX @ AllGood Cafe, 8 PM

Please don't sue us for posting this video, Prince - after all, YOU posted it to YouTube in the first place...

By Fred Mills

We're not sure what we like best about the Prince video: the decidedly retro visuals that'll make you think you've stumbled into a VH1 Classic block of ‘60s clips, the fact that somewhere in the middle of the song His Purpleness goes all Hendrix-at-Monterey on your ass, or simply that he's covering one of our all-time favorite tunes, Tommy James' eternal "Crimson & Clover."

Hey, it's not as freaked out as the version our friend Peter Holsapple (of the dB's, also of Stamey & Holsapple, who have a new album coming out in June - gratuitous plug) did back in '78, but it's pretty fucking good just the same.

If an album drops in a forest and nobody listens, does it actually make a sound?

By Fred Mills

The weekend will be here in 18 minutes EST, so what better way to kick things off than with a news item on Vampire Weekend?

Hyperventilating, hairy-palmed blogospherians went into overdrive earlier today as word got out that the NYC band has been working on their next album in a Brooklyn studio for a proposed September release. Keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij is producing, according to a report filed by Entertainment Weekly in which singer Ezra Koenig commented on how things were progressing, saying, "It's definitely going to be a recognizably Vampire Weekend sound, but there are going to be new sounds. We're trying to challenge ourselves not to use the same bag of tricks that we used on the first album."

We can only hope that's true of the m.o. for the most overrated indie band of the past couple of years.

On a more promising note, the band is in Spartanburg, S.C., tonight (hey! just down the street from BLURT's southern bureau!) doing a free concert at Wofford College. It's hosted by the ONE campaign's poverty-battling "Campus Challenge," details HERE, with the band rewarding the small college for taking top honors in a related project.

Incidentally, you realize that when news about a hipster buzz band starts getting broken by a publication like Entertainment Weekly, you know it's definitely jumped the shark....

A photo like this is worth a thousand words of press hype... well, 548 to be exact.

By Blurt Staff

Seattle-based Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground is the lovechild of Kirk Huffman and Kyle O'Quin, and there's plenty of love to be had. Begun shortly after the announcement of Gatsby's American Dream's hiatus, Kay Kay was putting out good vibrations before the year was up, releasing a handful of tracks on cassette, and an intermediate live show compiled onto a two-disc, live DVD (shot in a fashion boutique) with accompanying CD, and they hadn't even made it out of Washington yet. Still, a copy of the DVD landed in the hands of Carson Daly, and after only few shows outside their home state, Kay Kay performed an abbreviated version of their song, "Hey Momma," on national television. Not bad for a band without a full-length.

If a cassette release is too retro for you, the band's eponymous debut was released strictly on vinyl, and in true Kay Kay fashion, 1,000 copies of the double LP, and the release party in Seattle, sold out before doors ever opened. It isn't just their production method that evokes the 1960s, though: Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground shimmers and soars like the greatest pop of that decade, with enough melody to lull songbirds into silence, and reverb to make your teeth chatter. Phil Peterson (cello, backing vocals), the third of the consistent members, lends his skills on strings to weave depth and darkness through the sunshine, and a revolving set of studio and live musicians (15 or so when all is said and done) round out the whole experience into an enormous orchestral affair.

The band is currently in the process of recording their second LP, and preparing the re-release of their debut, self-titled album to be released on CD for the first time ever on May 26th courtesy of Suburban Home. Look forward to new packaging for the vinyl, complete with new collages and a tri-fold design. At the end of 2008, Kay Kay hit the road with Rx Bandits and Portugal the Man for a jaunt down the West Coast, and this June they'll be out again for a handful of weeks, touring the U.S. with MeWithout You and The Dear Hunter.

Tracklisting:

1. Into The Realm Of The Unknown    
2. Hey Momma'    
3. Birds (On A Day Like Today)    
4. Simon Courage Flees The Coop    
5. Ol' Rum Davies
6. Bowie The Desert Pea
7. Santa Cruz Lined Pockets    
8. Bloodstone Goddess    
9. Cloud Country    
10. Swan Ink    
11. Night Of The Star Child's Funk    
12. One Ought To See    
13. All Alone    

!

Tour dates w/ MeWithoutYou and The Dear Hunter!

Jun 25 2009 The Hawthorne Theatre Portland, Oregon
Jun 26 2009 Neumo's Seattle, Washington
Jun 27 2009 The Venue Boise, Idaho
Jun 28 2009 The Avalon Theatre Salt Lake City, Utah
Jun 29 2009 The Marquis Theatre Denver, Colorado
Jul 1 2009 The Granada Theatre Lawrence, Kansas
Jul 2 2009 Station 4 St. Paul, Minnesota
Jul 4 2009 The Magic Stick Detroit, Michigan
Jul 5 2009 The Metro Chicago, Illinois
Jul 6 2009 The Grog Shop Cleveland, Ohio
Jul 7 2009 Mr. Smalls Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Jul 9 2009 The Music Hall of Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York
Jul 10 2009 The Bowery Ballroom New York City, New York
Jul 11 2009 The Middle East Downstairs Boston, Massachusetts

Scum-rock legends play first shows in 12 years; CD retrospective due too.

By Burt Staff

After more than a decade, New York City's infamous garage/punk-blues/noise kings the Chrome Cranks are back. Vocalist/guitarist Peter Aaron, guitarist William Weber, drummer Bob Bert, and bassist Jerry Teel have reunited for a limited series of shows to take place in May 2009; see itinerary below.

Also this spring, Spanish label Bang! Records will release The Murder of Time: 1993-1996, a career overview on CD and double vinyl LP featuring remastered tracks from the band's first three studio albums (1994's The Chrome Cranks, 1995's Dead Cool, and 1996's Love in Exile; all now out of print) and 1997's in-concert Live in Exile, plus several rare cuts.

The backstory:

Formed by Aaron and Weber (a sometime G.G. Allin side man) during the late 1980s in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Chrome Cranks became a true force to be feared when the band moved to New York in 1992 and acquired ex-Honeymoon Killers leader Teel and, eventually, ex-Sonic Youth/Pussy Galore member Bert. Dark, explosive, and overwhelmingly raw, the Cranks' corrosive sound proudly references masters like the Stooges, the Scientists, Suicide, the Gun Club, the Doors, the Cramps, the Birthday Party, the Rolling Stones, and the Jesus Lizard, interweaving these feral scraps with the band members' singular Midwest garage-meets-Lower East Side-alley breeding to create a jagged, black pastiche unrivaled since the quartet's 1998 breakup.

Known equally for their unhinged, decibel-destroying live performances and their volatile studio recordings, the Chrome Cranks have been cited as an influence by the White Stripes, the Mooney Suzuki, and other leading neo-garage acts. Additionally, the group's songs have been covered on stage and on record by many younger bands.

Check out the way-sexy video of the band and, uh, a buncha chicks, below. It'll make you reach for your Cranks recs (and maybe the stray Scientists platter, too...).

Tour Dates:

May 2 Backstage Studio Productions, Kingston, NY.
(w/ Frankie & His Fingers, Venture Lift)

May 8 Santo's Party House, New York, NY (w/ The Friggs)

May 15 Glasslands Gallery. Brooklyn, NY.

(w/ Woman, Headless Hookers, Brownbird Rudy Relic + special guest DJ)

May 22 Nuits Sonores Festival in Lyon, France

(w/ Boss Hogg, the Drones, Holly Golightly)

"Hot Blonde Coctail":