Flaming Lips to Release Reinterpretation of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon... AND WE'VE GOT THE EXCLUSIVE TRACKLIST!
At their "secret" MySpace show last night (TMT News), The Flaming Lips revealed that they've already completed their follow-up to Embryonic (TMT Review): a complete reinterpretation of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Why am I not shocked? According to the LA Times blog, the Lips recorded the album with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs (TMT Review), a band that includes Coyne's nephew Dennis, and also invited Henry Rollins and Peaches to guest. Says Coyne:
I think our audience would forgive us for going out in the further regions of whatever we could think of. But I don’t think we’d be worthy of being forgiven if we didn’t do that. They’re giving us the freedom, the encouragement, the money and the time to say, ‘Go somewhere where no other band could go, and come back and tell us what it was like.’
The Flaming Lips' Dark Side of the Moon will likely be an iTunes-only release, according to the LA Times. (Sorry Winamp fans.) Here's the EXCLUSIVE tracklist:
1. Speak to Me
2. Breathe
3. On the Run
4. Time
5. The Great Gig in the Sky
6. Money
7. Us and Them
8. Any Colour You Like
9. Brain Damage
10. Eclipse
Annie’s Long-Delayed Sophomore LP Don't Stop Gets Release Date
Poor Annie. All she wants to do is release her second album, Don’t Stop. And feel her own heartbeat and chew some gum and hate your band and stuff like that. But, mainly, she wants to finally follow up Anniemal (TMT Review), her 2004 debut album. Unfortunately for her, that’s not what the folks at Island, her old label, wanted to do at all. Hence, Don’t Stop has been stuck in limbo for the past year or so.
Thanks to the good folks at Oslo-based label Smalltown Supertown, Don’t Stop will be escaping from that limbo soon. Real soon -- in fact, as in November 17 soon. According to Annie, the new record is “both immediately listenable and utterly beguiling,” along with “mainstream and underground, all at once.” Sounds confusing, but a good kind of confusing. Guess we’ll unravel these mysteries next month on the 17th.
Don’t Stop tracklist:
1. Hey Annie
2. My Love Is Better
3. Bad Times
4. Don't Stop
5. I Don't Like Your Band
6. Songs Remind Me of You
7. Marie Cherie
8. Take You Home
9. The Breakfast Song
10. Loco
11. When the Night
MOG Starts a Music Streaming Service, Starts Working With Universal, EMI, Sony, and Warner
In a world of nonexistent CD sales and unstoppable music pirating, the question on everyone's mind is "how do we make money off of music again?" Big record labels scrambled to think (all the while hiring lawyers to sue the pants off of citizens who accidentally downloaded six tracks from Kazaa in 2000), but entrepreneurial innovators took the opportunity to get innovative.
Thus arose a new trend in the media sphere. You can have music -- all of the music you could ever want -- streaming on the internet for a minuscule price per month. Spotify does it (but sadly, Americans can't get it), Pandora does it, Last.FM and Rhapsody do it, and now MOG does it. What is MOG you ask?
MOG (a shorter, snappier nickname for "Music Blog") is a music blog aggregate service (of which TMT is a part), filtering music blog content from the web and placing it on their main page. Not only that, but MOG has since formed an alliance with the "Big Four" music labels (EMI, Warner, Sony, and Universal) to create an "All Access" service where music fans can listen to an endless supply of streaming music for $5 a month on the web and $12-$15 via mobile device. Fans can even customize their own playlists on MOG, where, like Pandora, users can create playlists of "similar artists" and share them with fellow MOG users.
"Rhapsody costs too much and Pandora doesn't let you play any song you want at any time. We've taken the best parts of all of the existing services and left behind what didn't work," says Andy Phillips, MOG's Editor-in-Chief, when asked why users would prefer MOG to other web-based streaming services.
According to MOG CEO David Hyman, his service is a "revolutionary listening experience that will forever change how you discover music and truly redefines what radio is, and killer tools for discovery through other users of the service. And you get it all monthly for the price of a beer. We’re setting the music listening bar." Beer, eh? The man has a point.
MOG's music service is currently in beta-testing, but will be available for mass-usage come Thanksgiving 2009.
Public Enemy Look for Album Funding; Good Investment If They Make Another It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Bad Investment if Flavor Flav Has too Much to Do with It
The minstrel show better known as Flavor Flav clearly hasn’t cashed in enough on those VH1 royalties to fund a new Public Enemy album. Or maybe there’s just a political angle to the group’s latest move.
A couple years removed from their last full-length album, with its masturbatory title How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?, Public Enemy has teamed up with Amsterdam-based SellaBand to solicit fans and investors for album funding. The NME reports that the seminal rap group is looking to raise $250,000 in $25 increments, with contributing fans receiving a pro ratio share of 33.3% of all net revenues from album sales. To date, they've raised over $37,000 (or 14%) of their monetary goal.
On the Public Enemy web site, Chuck D says “SellaBand's financial engine model goes about restructuring the music business in reverse. It starts with fans first, then the artists create from there. The music business is built on searching for fans and this is a brand new way for acts to create a new album with fans first, already on board.”
At this point there’s no further information about the upcoming album.
El Perro Del Mar Tours with Peter Bjorn and John, Refutes Claims That Love Is in Fact Pop
Fall is here, and with it comes -- for those of us in North America -- our annual shipment of Scandinavian indie pop singers. Perhaps this assertion cannot be scientifically qualified, although once I do remember writing a story about Lykke Li coming to the States on tour during the cold months or something. Now El Perro Del Mar will join these elite ranks, and, as luck would have it, Peter Bjorn & John are ALSO embarking on an autumnal U.S. tour. So many Swedes!
Okay, so maybe they’re going on tour together and I can’t really use them as two different examples, but frankly I don’t think that one little comment can ruin the integrity of this story. This story has as much integrity as Glenn Beck.
By the way, the Swedish songstress behind El Perro Del Mar has a new album called Love Is Not Pop coming out October 20 in the United States. It’s been around for awhile in Europe, and can also be ordered via The Control Group website before the official release date.
Speaking of dates:
10.20.09 - New York, NY - Other Music (in-store)
11.07.09 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club (2 shows)
11.08.09 - Philadelphia, PA - Theater of Living Arts *
11.09.09 - New York, NY - Joe's Pub
11.10.09 - New York, NY - Terminal 5 *
11.11.09 - Toronto, ON - Phoenix Theatre *
11.12.09 - Chicago, IL - Metro *
11.13.09 - St. Louis, MO - Gargoyle Club *
11.14.09 - Dallas, TX - House of Blues *
11.15.09 - Austin, TX - La Zona Rosa *
11.17.09 - Tuscon, AZ - Rialto Theater *
11.18.09 - San Diego, CA - House of Blues *
11.19.09 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall *
11.20.09 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall *
11.21.09 - Los Angeles, CA - Club Nokia
11.23.09 - Los Angeles, CA - Hotel Café
* Peter Bjorn & John
Atlas Sound Announces Logos Bonus Disc
Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Way back in the summer of 2008, a little record called Deerhunter’s Microcastle (aka TMT’s 2008 album of the year, in case you forgot) leaked months before its October release. As a response to the leak, the band put together a bonus disc called Weird Era Cont. Of course, old Weird Era Cont. ended up leaking too, but it was still pretty great.
Now, history is repeating itself. Sort of. Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox’s solo project, Atlas Sound, is putting out a new record called Logos next Tuesday, October 20 via Kranky (4AD in the UK). Unsurpisingly, since this is the internet in 2009, Logos leaked some time ago. Although Cox hasn’t cooked up anything quite as seemingly grand as Weird Era Cont., the man has put together a limited-edition bonus disc containing alternate versions of Logos tracks, along with three unreleased songs. Said disc can be received by purchasing Logos through the Rough Trade store.
Logos bonus disc tracklist:
1. Ruben (Traditional)
2. Criminals (Electronic Version)
3. Kid Klimax (Acoustic Version)
4. Reminder (Previously Unreleased)
5. I Know I Will Escape (Previously Unreleased)
6. Nightwork (Previously Unreleased)
Brian Wilson Plans to Finish George Gershwin's Incomplete Compositions
Well, this piece of news doesn't get more American than baseball, hot dogs, and indecent health care (but we promise not to go there). According to recent developments, Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson is getting the green light to start reworking the incomplete compositions of 20th-century music legend George Gershwin.
Gershwin, who was born in Brooklyn and died in 1937, was one of the American music greats, penning such universally recognizable tunes as "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Irving Berlin" with his brother Ira. Wilson will reportedly receive access to the full Gershwin collection, which is currently controlled by Todd Gershwin, George's great-nephew.
After reinterpreting Gershwin's compositions, Wilson will place the results in an album to be released via the Walt Disney Records imprint Disney Pearl. Wilson has praised Gershwin's work, saying "He had a gift for melody that nobody has ever equaled, yet his music is timeless and always accessible. This is the most spiritual project I've ever worked on."
Todd Gershwin also sounds mightily pleased with Wilson's project. But really, who wouldn't be? "The Gershwin families are delighted that the legendary musician Brian Wilson has chosen to record a collection of George and Ira Gershwin songs for his next project. In every generation, American music has been pushed forward by visionaries, from the Gershwin brothers to Brian Wilson. This latest interpretation will be a new opportunity to discover the magic of Gershwin music," commented Todd. No word yet as to the album's release date.
Matt Groening to Curate ATP Festival Again, Still Looks Like One of Those Weird Old Guys You See at Shows
Matt Groening might be one of popular culture’s oddest tastemakers. The 55-year-old creator of The Simpsons devotes screen time to fart jokes and Michael Chabon, crusty billionaires and Sonic Youth. So it comes as no surprise that Groening has added the curator tag to his long list of accomplishments. Back in 2003, he put together the ATP/Pacific bill, which featured Built to Spill, Daniel Johnston, and Cat Power, among a slew of others, jamming out in Los Angeles. Clearly the guy has some taste.
Well, next year’s UK edition of the ATP festival – which has already slated Pavement to curate one weekend – has brought back Groening for more curating fun. He’ll choose the bands for the festival’s first weekend, which takes place May 7-9, 2010, at Butlins in Minehead, UK. No lineup has been announced yet, but based on Groening’s history of taste-making, you’ll want to snatch up tickets when they go on sale October 16.
Keep your eyes locked on the ATP website for lineup announcements. And if the concert blows – which I highly doubt – the concert location features a wave pool, fencing, and something known as “crazy golf.”
RIP: Brendan Mullen, founder of punk rock club Masque
From the LA Times:
Brendan Mullen, founder of the Masque punk rock club in Hollywood that helped launch the vibrantly anarchic music scene on the West Coast in the late 1970s, died Monday after suffering a massive stroke over the weekend. He was 60.Mullen died at Ventura County Medical Center, said his companion of 16 years, Kateri Butler. The couple had been traveling through Santa Barbara and Ventura celebrating his 60th birthday, which was Friday.
"The doctors are completely perplexed," Butler said. "They can't figure out why he had a stroke -- he had none of the indicators, his cholesterol was perfect. One of the neurologists summed it up best when he said, ‘Sometimes, your number is just up.’"
- Brendan Mullen Wikipedia entry
- The Masque Wikipedia entry
Pavement Start Reunion Tour in New Zelaland and Australia, No New Songs Expected
Pavement's purported one-off reunion tour has just gotten a little chunkier. After having announced four Summerstage dates in New York (TMT News) and the curating of ATP Weekend 2 (TMT News), Pavement have now revealed the actual start of their tour to be in New Zealand and Australia. How not exciting for everyone in the U.S.! Though, I suppose they have to road-test their reunion show somewhere -- and since New Zealand and Australia are not important culturally or politically, I'd call it a wise move. (I'm just kidding. I was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia when I was 2.)
In even more not exciting news, non-Stephen Malkmus member Bob Nastanovich told The Quietus that the band is not expected to perform any new material. Darn. But do expect them to perform "Cut Your Hair" with a few more wrinkles, a.k.a. the way it was meant to be performed
03.01.10 - Auckland, New Zealand - Auckland Town Hall
03.04.10 - Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre
03.06.10 - Victoria, Australia - Golden Plains
03.07.10 - Adelaide, Australia - Thebarton Theatre
03.08.10 - Perth, Australia - Metro City
03.10.10 - Brisbane, Australia - The Tivoli
03.12.10 - Melbourne, Australia - The Palace
05.14.10 - Minehead, UK - All Tomorrow’s Parties
05.15.10 - Minehead, UK - All Tomorrow’s Parties
05.16.10 - Minehead, UK - All Tomorrow’s Parties
09.21.10 - New York, NY - Central Park SummerStage
09.22.10 - New York, NY - Central Park SummerStage
09.23.10 - New York, NY - Central Park SummerStage
09.24.10 - New York, NY - Central Park SummerStage
The Flaming Lips to Open a Pop-Up Store for One Day Only, Play Small Secret Show
Isn’t it funny to watch Warner Bros. Records flail around to try and promote oddball acts like The Flaming Lips these days in the hopes that they’ll somehow sell 10,000,000 records? Case in point, to coincide with this week’s release of The Flaming Lips’ freaky new abandoned-moonbase-under-water-sounding double-LP Embryonic (TMT Review), Warner will be doing their best hungry, DIY label imitation by opening a pop-up store this Thursday, October 15. The one-day-only store, located at the NIKE/Ricardo Montalban Theater at 1615 Vine St. in Los Angeles, will feature all kinds of exotic and special-edition Lips gear, including CDs, vinyl, the Embryonic "Furry Package" (which features a bonus DVD and fur box), and goodness knows what else. Though I guess if there’s any place where it makes sense to sell “furry packages” on the street, L.A. would be the place.
And once they get over the weird suspicion that they must be on drugs, (sure, you might be tripping, but that store over there is as real as... well, as real as Empiricism will allow, at least. Why not stop licking that lamppost over there and mosey over to browse some limited-edition Lips gear?) visitors to the surreptitious store will also have a chance to win tickets to see The Flaming Lips at one of them there MySpace secret show things where a big old band plays a secret show at a small, undisclosed venue (not-so-subtle hint: it's at the Ricardo Montalban Theater, which holds 1,200 people). Tickets for this show are being distributed on a first-come, first-served basis as soon as the store opens. Remember MySpace?? Hop to it, Californians!
For the rest of us, Embryonic is out today, and the band will be making a special musical appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien tonight to promote the freak-flag-flying record... because THIS ALBUM’S GOING PLATINUM, DAMNIT.
