Which of course, is all part of the larger Del Rey marketing plan (as it has been for some time): get the client's name into the press, period, regardless of the context of content, because it's all about generating buzz. Hey, it worked for us! At any rate, watch both clips from last night's broadcast.


By Fred Mills


No real surprises here if you have paid attention to previous television appearances from buzzed-about pop gal Lana Del Rey; she's still a work in progress, and she still seems to command enough fascination among the media that even non-professional pundits (like, er, Juliette Lewis) feel compelled to weigh in with their observations.

As part of her pre-emptive promotion for the upcoming Born To Die album (Jan. 31, Interscope), Del Rey did two songs last night on Saturday Night Live, "Video Games" and "Blue Jean." This resulted in an instantaneous spate of blog reports and even celebrity tweets - for example, US Magazine online gleefully reported how actresses Lewis and Eliz Dushku slammed the performances. (Lewis apparently tweeted "Wow watching this 'singer' on SNL is like watching a 12 yearold [sic] in their bedroom when theyre pretending to sing and perform #signofourtimes.") And NBC anchor Brian Williams tweeted, "Brooklyn hipster Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night-- booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show's history, for starters..."

Heck, even web pundit and industry gadfly Bob Lefsetz got into the action and played Sunday morning quarterback about the Del Rey appearance.


Decide for yourself, kids!

Annual benefit concert in New Jersey yields a bouty o' Brooce!


By Fred Mills


We weren't there, but... damn. Wish we were. As Rolling Stone reported in great detail this morning, the annual Light of Day benefit concert (for Parkinson's disease) in Asbury Park was held last night (Jan. 14) at the storied Paramount Theater. Rocker and BLURT hero Joe Grushecky, as usual, was on hand for the bill - which included David Bromberg, Garland Jeffreys, Southside Johnny, Joe D'Urso & Stone Caravan, Willie Nile,  John Eddie, and sundry NJ-centric folks - as was The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen.


Read the full, detailed RS report, then check out a couple of the clips that have already hit YouTube, standout performances referenced in the review. No doubt many more are being uploaded at this very moment.

The proof is in the photo, above. Hey ladies!

By Perez Mills

In this week's scanning of celebrity news headlines: Rolling Stone is reporting that Fred Durst - yeah, the Limp Bizkit dude - undertook a 60-day juice fast a couple of weeks ago and has been blogging about it at Tumblr, additionally posting shirtless photos of himself to the site.

Yeah, we know, we know... we'll spare you the Anthony Weiner jokes here.

At any rate, we learn from the report that "though Durst has lost some weight, his posts have become increasingly sporadic and distressed. "Another day of juice down. Definitely NOT getting easier. And I cheated tonight with an oatmeal cookie. She was good!!," he wrote on the fourth day" of the diet/fast. Then apparently he went silent, finally posting again yesterday (Jan. 12):

"The diet has been challenging to say the least. I haven't seen any significant results yet. That's why I haven't been very excited to post anything. I am about 2 lbs lights and definitely feeling better internally. My thoughts are clear and inspired, but I'm discouraged in some ways. I guess it's my own personal baggage that's lugging around behind me. All comes to the forefront on a diet like this. Bullocks."

"Personal baggage"? Coming from a guy like Durst, that's easily the most insightful thing to come out of the mouth of a public figure since George W. Bush admitted he didn't really do too much newspaper reading. Good luck, Fred, we wish you the best, because, after all, we know you are only doing this... wait for it... drumroll, please... for the nookie.

EP officially released next week. Also check out the video for "Sail Away."

By Blurt Staff

The Rapture is following up their 2011 album In The Grace Of Your Love with a remix EP for "Sail Away," which features re-workings of the single by Cut Copy, Cosmic Kids and Aeroplane. You can head over to DFA's soundcloud page to stream the full EP (below too).

The Rapture - Sail Away - Remixes by DFA Records

It sees a digital release on January 17th. The Rapture is also playing Coachella on April 13 and 20, along with two additional tour dates with Justice in Oakland and Las Vegas.

Tonight's the night!

By Blurt Staff

Next week, starting Jan. 19 at a sold-out Austin show, the Mountain Goats will resume their Eternals Deck tour - with a twist. They've decided that in addition to spotlighting material from that 2011 album, they will also unveil new songs they've recently been demoing and attempt to refine, elaborate and otherwise work out the material's kinks. Risky, yes, and in 2012 an increasingly un-used strategy by artists. Sounds like just the right band to attempt this sort of thing!

Darnielle posted the following on his website regarding this new plan:

"One small word about these shows. For years bands have been pretty judicious about playing unreleased new material, because much of it becomes available online immediately, even when the new songs are still in fairly raw form. We, too, have gotten into the bad habit of holding new stuff back. We are done with that whole philosophy, though. I miss playing stuff that's unreleased & unrecorded, stuff that still stings fresh. So we got together and decided to tour the new songs before we even record them. I don't guess that we'll be touring all ten of the new songs I've written for the next album (eleven if you count one that's presently being herded back and forth between its cell & the chopping block), but be advised that if you're the sort of person who wants as many surprises as possible when you hear a new album, you should tread lightly around recordings of these shows, because we're not going to be holding the best o nes back for the album release like people tend to do now."

Tour Dates:

* = w/ Nurses
Jan 19 Austin, TX - Antone's* SOLD OUT
Jan 20 Houston, TX - Fitzgerald's*
Jan 21 New Orleans, LA - Tipitina's*
Jan 23 Tallahassee, FL - Club Downunder*
Jan 24 Orlando, FL - The Social*
Jan 25 Tampa, FL - Crowbar*
Jan 27 St. Augustine, FL - The Original Cafe Eleven*
Jan 28 Atlanta, GA - The Earl*
Jan 30 Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club*
Jan 31 Charlotte, NC - Visulite Theatre*
Feb 02 Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle*
Feb 04 Saxapahaw, NC - The Haw River Ballroom*
Mar 09 Denton, TX - 35 Denton Festival*
Mar 13 New York, NY - Carnegie Hall: "The Music of the Rolling Stones: Hot Rocks 1964-1971"
Mar 24 New York, NY - Ecstatic Music Festival w/ Anonymous 4
Apr 02 London, UK - The Barbican w/ Anonymous 4

Technically, yes.. but we'll have to wait another year to find out...

By Thee Creeper

That sawing sound? It's a thousand music critics snoring loudly as they drop off in the middle of reading the list of nominees for the 2012 Brit Awards.

Okay, so admittedly they are, of necessity, English-centric in nature, which means that a lot of us can dismiss a bunch of the nominees right off the bat. I mean, who the heck are Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande, Jessie J, Chase & Status, Professor Green, Pixie Lott and The Wanted? But it's a sad state of affairs when a country with a legacy of generating cutting-edge music dating all the way back to the ‘60s winds up with a roster of nominees that makes our own Grammys look positively Pitchfork-esque (and I say that with the assumption that everyone realizes that as recently as 3 years ago the Grammys were still considered a joke, a place where musicians went to preemptively bid for "legacy artist" stature, also known as "putting themselves out to pasture").

No, by and large, as you can quickly surmise by scanning the list of nominees, the Brit Awards have become more conservative than the Tea Party - which makes the handful of genuinely credible, non-mainstream artists that did manage to get included stand out all the more prominently. That said, our hunch is that these deserving nominees will not go home with trophies on Feb. 21 when the awards ceremony is held at London's O2 Arena: Laura Marling, Kate Bush (British Female Solo Artist), Arctic Monkeys, Elbow (British Group), Noel Gallagher (British Male Solo Artist), The Vaccines and Anna Calvi (British Breakthrough Act).

(We should add PJ Harvey to that list as well, although we have to note that the BLURT-beloved icon is up for the "Mastercard British Album of the Year" award, for Let England Shake, and as more than one punter has pointed out in the past, being nominated for an award with the name of a credit card as a prefix leaves a bit of a taint.)

As for a bunch of the other categories that delve into international artists, those are, likewise, extremely mixed bags. We love us some Feist, Bon Iver, Foo Fighters, Ryan Adams and (for the moment at least) Lana Del Rey, but the rest... zzzzz....

Decide for yourself by checking out the Brit Awards site.

What's inside a girl, hmmm?

By Fred Mills

Ever wonder what the gals in the Ettes look like backstage when they are changing into their stage attire, fixing their makeup, etc., before a gig? Wonder no more - their new video for the song "Teeth" (off their latest album Wicked Will, which placed pretty high in the BLURT Top 50 Albums of 2011) will reveal all.

Well... sort of. As you shall see:

The video was directed by Poni Silver (of the Ettes) & TM, and filmed/edited by Trevor White. Starring Jonas Stein (Turbo Fruits - www.turbofruits.com) as Coco Hames, Seth Sutton (Useless Eaters - http://www.myspace.com/uselesseatersmemphis) as Poni Silver, and Jem Cohen as Himself. Shot at the Cannery Ballroom, Nashville Tennessee.

"Rising Below" comes from Toward the Low Sun.

By Blurt Staff

Just over a month ago Australia's Dirty Three announced they were prepping their first album in seven years, Toward the Low Sun, for a Feb. 28 release on Drag City.  "The crusty troika are back!" they crowed.

Today the band unveiled the first track from the record, "Rising Below":

MP3: "Rising Below"

The label kindly provided a bit of backstory for those of you who came in late:

It's been a wicked dry spell of seven years since the filthy unit of Mick Turner, Jim White, and Warren Ellis graced the world with a full-length of any kind. In recent years, Ellis, White and Turner have been busy, playing with others including Nick Cave, Grinderman, Bonnie ‘Prince' Billy, PJ Harvey, Nina Nastasia, White Magic, Bill Callahan, and Cat Power, making solo records, and, of course, there's Warren's soundtrack collaborations with Mr. Cave ("The Road," "Proposition," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."), all the while generally seeing and feeling the world on their own terms.

All this is reflected in the power and the glory of Toward the Low Sun. Returning to the basic formula for the Dirty Three, the labor and decision-making is divined evenly and democratically as they improvise themselves into the heart of the moment. The sounds of traditional music are glimpsed in Warren's violin as he saws away at something that kind of tightens our chest and give us that ol' thousand-yard stare. Mick wanders hollow-bodied from abstract and dreamy to punishing hard chord rock in the space of a breath, never sacrificing a sense of the awesome along the path. And Jim . . . There are drummers and time, and then there's Jim White. He's doing something that no one else does back there. Plus, he's drumming! Each takes the lead as the untidy trio trip lightly and jazzily from etude to still life to exploding the air into flames around us with just a violin, electric guitar and trap kit. Don't shade your eyes! Look Toward the Low Sun and you will know once again the burn of the Dirty Three.

So there you have it. Watch this space for further developments.

Tracklisting:

1. Furnace Skies

2. Sometimes I Forget You're Gone

3. Moon On the Land

4. Rising Below

5. The Pier

6. Rain Song

7. That Was Was

8. Ashen Snow

9. You Greet Her Ghost

Yes, we have no bananas...

By Fred Mills

Bands sue former business associates all the tie in this world, but it's not too often a defunct band sues a dead mentor. Yesterday the Velvet Underground filed in New York court against The Andy Warhol Foundation For The Visual Arts - apparently the latter has plans to license the iconic Warhol-designed banana that graced the VU's 1967 debut The Velvet Underground & Nico, but erstwhile bandmembers (including Lou Reed and John Cale) are claiming that the image is more specifically associated with the Velvet Underground.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Warhol Foundation's plans include licensing the image for iPod and iPad related projects, so "the band made moves to put a stop to such activity... The lawsuit says that the Velvet Underground urged the Warhol Foundation to cease licensing activities ‘likely to cause confusion or mistake as to the association of Velvet Underground with the goods sold in commerce by such third parties.'"

The report adds, "According to the complaint, ‘The symbol has become so identified with The Velvet Underground ... that members of the public, particularly those who listen to rock music, immediately recognize the banana design as the symbol of The Velvet Underground.'"

Dem's some bananas - particularly considering the potenially lucrative (read: $$$) nature of digital era licensing for an image such as the VU banana. One potential sticking point: the image was never copyrighted by the artist or the band.

Intriguingly, the ORIGINAL LP release of the Velvets album did not have their name on the front cover, just the back: the banana sleeve simply had the "peel slowly and see" instructions plus Warhol's inscription. Food for thought, eh?

Plus a very special surprise for the tour, and an archival release.

By Fred Mills

David Gedge announced this week that the 8^th studio album from the Wedding Present will arrive in March. Titled Valentina, it will be accompanied by a North American tour that kicks off March 13 in Austin at SXSW.

Also very cool: in addition to showcasing the new material on the tour, the band will be performing their 1991 classic (and Steve Albini-produced) Seamonsters in its entirety.

And in other news, next week sees the release of a live 2CD Wedding Present album titled Live 1990, the seventh and eighth of the band's live tapes originally sold on cassett by the band through their fanzine. Live 1990 includes the group's North American debut (it was a Maxwell's, in Hoboken) and focuses heavily on the then-current Bizarro while including a handful of tunes that would wind up on Seamonsters.