King Khan & The Shrines Announce Comeback Tour After Seemingly Endless Year-Long Absence

By Annapocalypse on Feb 8 2010

Remember Piebald? Sure you do; they had that catchy song called “American Hearts” that you probably put on a mixtape when you were 17, right next to Saves The Day and Kind Of Like Spitting. If you’ve been missing them all these years, it’s your lucky day because Rise Records announced plans recently to reissue Piebald’s entire out-of-print catalog as a three-volume set, entitled Piebald: First Ten Years. Each volume will contain two discs, compiling the band’s first three full-length albums (When Life Hands You Lemons, If It Weren’t for Venetian Blinds, It Would Be Curtains for Us All, and We Are the Only Friends We Have), as well as all of their EP’s, B-sides, and live tracks. Volume I is due out in late April, while Volume II and Volume III will be released in May and June, respectively.

In other Piebald news, the band announced recently that they will be playing their 2002 album, We Are the Only Friends We Have from start to finish during their upcoming set at the Bamboozle Festival on May 2.

• Piebald: http://www.myspace.com/piebald
• Rise Records: http://www.riserecords.com

By Nobodaddy on Feb 8 2010

This just in: Terra Firma — the firm whose name means “solid ground,” remember? — is now reportedly trying to raise an additional $160 million to keep EMI afloat in, uh… financial water. The figure, as well as the mixed metaphor, is apparently needed despite recent successes meeting financial obligations to lender Citigroup (read: the Beatle$ rema$ter$).

After having fallen short on earlier covenants, Terra Firma had reportedly used reserves to cover the deficits, and now (duh) the Financial Times noted that Terra’s chances of meeting upcoming covenants are in serious, like, Alex Trebek-with-a-gun-and-nothing-left-to-lose type jeopardy. The Wall Street Journal has noted that Terra “is almost certain to fall short” on upcoming financial tests and has pointed to “revised business plans and proposals” from the label group. I guess “revised” usually means “better,” but hey, we could all use a good semantics lesson now and again. Separately, a source close to the label recently indicated the expectation of a “near-term blowup,” including possible divestitures and breakups of various recording and publishing units. Yipes.

Quick, everyone: think. THINK. Aren’t there more ways to keep selling people the same Beatles tracks over and over? How about 26 new albums that each feature any and all Beatles songs that start with a given letter of the alphabet? Or maybe a record of instrumental versions of all of the songs Ringo sang lead on?