Madonna State Accident Kills Two, Manslaughter Investigation Opened
Madonna’s concert at the Velodrome stadium in Marseille on July 19 was cancelled after two people died due to a stage collapse. The partially-built roof fell in last Thursday (July 16), bringing down a crane that instantly killed Charles Criscenzo (53) and injured Charles Prow (23), who later died in the hospital. Eight other people were seriously injured.
According to the BBC, “Assistant prosecutor Marc Cimamonti said an investigation for manslaughter and involuntary injuries in a work-related accident has been opened.”
Meanwhile, Marseille city councilor, Maurice Di Nocera, explained that the roof began to shake and collapse gradually, giving time for other people to get out. States Madonna: "Let's all just take a moment to say a prayer for Charles Criscenzo and Charlie Prow. Our hearts go out to their family and loved ones."
RIAA Declares DRM Dead; Sallie Mae Should Declare That To My Debt
If there is one thing that has annoyed the hell out of the music lovers in recent years, it is the use of DRM (digital rights management) in music tracks to prevent piracy. From the CDs that were impossible to play on Discmans (remember those?), to implementing nigh-impossible-to-remove malware on your computer, to crappy file formats that you couldn't play on your iPod, DRM has been the industry's version of the F-22: blunt, powerful, expensive, and largely useless. In recent years, however, a massive pushback against DRM from consumers, various lobbying groups, and even music stores such as Apple's iTunes have sent messages of the inevitable to the industry's leading anti-piracy mechanism behind lawsuits.
Now, DRM's death, at least in music, is all but a certainty. In an upcoming interview with SCMagazine, RIAA lead spokesman Jonathan Lamy was asked about the organization's view on DRM at this point in time. His response?
This marks the first on-record statement by the organization, which championed DRM as recently as last year, being so overt about its inevitable withdrawal of support. While other anti-piracy fronts such as the IFPI have also admitted that DRM-free music stores would sell a lot more music, the ever-vigilant and ever-litigious RIAA has been, up until now, constantly supportive of DRM, even in the aftermath of the Sony rootkit scandal. Its admission of DRM's death will likely accelerate the process of removing all DRM at major online stores.
Today is but a small victory for music lovers everywhere. Let's all go get cake and hope that the game industry, currently and desperately entrenched in DRM measures, will learn from this.
Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch Diagnosed with Cancer, Tour Canceled and New LP Delayed
According to a statement from Beastie Boys, Adam "MCA" Yauch was diagnosed last week with a cancerous tumor. But there is good news: "Luckily it was caught early and is localized in one area, and as such is considered very treatable. It will however require surgery and several weeks of additional treatment. Fortunately the cancer is not in a location that will affect Yauch's vocal chords."
Consequently, all upcoming shows have been canceled, and the band's forthcoming new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 will be pushed to a new release date. According to Yauch, "I just need to take a little time to get this in check, and then we'll release the record and play some shows. It's a pain in the neck (sorry had to say it) because i was really looking forward to playing these shows, but the doctors have made it clear that this is not the kind of thing that can be put aside to deal with later."
TMT wishes Yauch a speedy recovery!
Malcolm Middleton Gets Jiggy With It on Waxing Gibbous, Predicts Change of Direction
Malcolm Middleton, one of Britain’s strongest frontrunners for the dubiously honorable
(depending on who you are, I guess) title of Gloomiest Songwriter in Indie Rock, is at it again. In 2007, the former Arab Strap frontman reached a certain level of notoriety in the UK after releasing “We’re All Going to Die”--certainly the most poignant Christmas song since Wham!’s 1986 hit “Last Christmas”—in response to the glossy pop numbers cranked out by X-Factor contestants. Last year, the Scotsman released Sleight of Heart, his fourth solo album, and now Middleton’s most recent, Waxing Gibbous has an American date set. The title is a fancy term for when the moon is nearly full, and the album is scheduled to hit stores August 11. It features guest performances from Malcolm’s pals King Creosote and the Pictish Trail, Jenny Reeve, and Barry from Mogwai. AND THERE’S A RAP PROMISED.
Which perhaps leads into Middleton’s statement that this will probably be his last solo effort for awhile. He’s looking to “do an instrumental acoustic guitar album, some electronic music, some collaborations, maybe start a new band, produce someone else etc etc,” according to a press release. Of course what this means in a very veiled but still totally transparent way that he wants to set up a novelty rap crew.* Perhaps Joaquin Phoenix is available?
Tracklisting:
1. Red Travellin' Socks
2. Kiss At The Station
3. Carry Me
4. Zero
5. Stop Doing Be Good
6. Don't Want To Sleep Tonight
7. Shadow
8. Ballad Of Fuck All
9. Box and Knife
10. Made Up Your Mind
*Of course this is what this means. I did not make it up. Unless for legal reasons I need to say I made it up, seeing as it’s not strictly true and all.
TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone Reveals Release Details on Solo Project Rain Machine
For eons, humankind has battled the elements. If we’re not being destroyed by hurricanes, the blistering heat is destroying our crops and livelihood. There’s nothing us mere mortals can do about the weather, except pray to the almighty gods above for mercy. TV on the Radio guitarist/vocalist Kyp Malone has a plan to change all that. By constructing an elaborate, powerful weather-control device, Malone hopes to save millions of lives around the world. The “Rain Machine,” as Malone has dubbed it, will change the fate of mankind forever.
Something must have gone wrong in the lab, though. Malone’s creation seems to be less of an atmosphere-affecting super device and more of a solo album (TMT News). Instead of harnessing the mighty power of the atom, Malone harnesses 10 songs blending modern jazz, bluegrass, and guitar rock. Instead of constructing a shell of diamond (the only material capable of containing the device’s awesome might), Malone created music that he describes as “a nearly full spectrum of frequencies audible to the human ear, a reflection of a variety of emotions and situations real and imagined - some rhythm some rhyme.” Instead of contacting the world’s nations for proper implementation of the revolutionary new machine, Malone contacted ANTI- Records and secured a September 22 release date.
Those close to Malone could have probably predicted the outcome of his ambitious plan. All blueprints for the machine were basically just drawings of naked ladies riding lions, which Malone decided to use for the record’s sort of NSFW cover art.
Rain Machine tracklist:
1. Intro
2. Give Blood
3. New Last Name
4. Smiling Black Faces
5. Driftwood Heart
6. Hold you Holy
7. Desperate Bitch
8. Love Won't Save You
9. Free Ride
10. Leave the Lights On
11. Winter Song
New Pirate Bay will Become a Pay Site
It has emerged that Global Gaming Factory (GGF), the new owners of The Pirate Bay, will charge users a monthly fee to access the site. This money will then be used to pay off copyright holders. The exact amount users will have to pay has not been decided on; however, by sharing more files on the network, you can reduce the amount you have to contribute, says Wayne Rosso, newly appointed by GGF to facilitate the model (and described by Torrent Freak as someone “who has previous experience with failing P2P services” -- lol!).
This will represent another victory for the labels in what has already been a good year in their war against file-sharing. Nevertheless, questions remain over whether The Pirate Bay will still continue to draw much traffic if users have to pay for it, and with plenty of other sites aiming to provide a similar service free-of-charge, one begins to question the sustainability of GGF’s model.
Holy Money, Holy Love: Holy $#!T! Michael Gira Working on Swans/Angels of Light Hybrid, Debuts New Material in NY with James Jackson Toth (Who Is Set to Embark on His Own Tour)
Over the past decade, Michael Gira’s output has shifted from the ultra-menacing noise rock of legendary New York band Swans to the more quietly eerie folk songs released both under his own name and under the Angels of Light moniker. Gira, whose early work generally messed up people’s hearing and made listeners vomit, now more closely resembles the just slightly creepy olde tyme traveling salesman or itinerant preacher with a deadly secret who I imagine to live somewhere in the dusty backroads of Nick Cave’s mind at all times.
And now, at last, these two very different sounds shall finally be united.
On July 25, Gira is playing a solo set in Brooklyn with James Jackson Toth (a.k.a. Wooden Wand or Wand), a recent signee to Gira's Young God Records. Songs from both the Angels of Light and Swans catalogues are on the setlist for the night, as are some NEW songs Gira has been both working on and is expected to release as a Swans/Angels of Light hybrid.
Could a joint tour be far behind in support of this album that does not even exist yet? According to the man himself, “maybe.”
07.25.09 – Brooklyn, NY – Issue Project Room
Meanwhile, Toth has his own dates lined up, in support of the recently released Hard Knox (out now on Ecstatic Peace). And don't forget that he has an exclusive track on our TMT Darfur comp, too!
Wand tourdates:
07.22.09 - Knoxville, TN - Pilot Light
07.23.09 - Fairmont, WV - River City Grill
07.24.09 - Baltimore, MD - Metro Gallery @
07.25.09 - Brooklyn, NY - Issue Project Room
07.26.09 - New York, NY - Webster Hall Studio
07.28.09 - Northampton, MA - Artifacts of the 20th Century
07.29.09 - Albany, NY - Valentine's
07.30.09 - Portland, ME - Apohadian Theatre
07.31.09 - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
08.02.09 - Columbus, OH - Rhumba
08.03.09 - Bloomington, IN - Russian Recording
08.05.09 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
08.06.09 - Rock Island, IL- Daytrotter (session and show)
08.07.09 - Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
08.08.09 - Toronto, ON - Sneaky Dee's
08.09.09 - Montreal, QC - Green Room
08.11.09 - Washington, DC - Rock + Roll Hotel &
08.12.09 - Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle &
08.13.09 - Atlanta, GA - E.A.R.L. &
08.14.09 - Birmingham, AL - The Bottletree
@ Crazy Dreams Band
& Akron Family
[Photo: Anne Helmond]
According To A New Study, British Music Fans Still Prefer CDs To Downloading, Probably Also Still Love The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Roxette, And The Cranberries
In a recent survey from two British research companies, The Leading Question and Music Alley, both concluded that UK music fans prefer buying CDs to downloading music. Straight from the source itself:
The Leading Question/Music Ally Speakerbox survey is the biggest face to face survey of UK music fans. The syndicated, proprietary project involves 1,000 face to face interviews with music fans aged 14-64 and a series of in depth focus groups which took place throughout the UK.
Of course, every study has multifarious factors that confound the results, but if this survey is a somewhat "accurate" portrayal of British music consumption, I have to ask: how can the Brits be so far behind the times? Despite the overwhelming growth of digital downloads, the survey found that:
- 73% of music fans are still happy buying CDs rather than downloading
- 66% of 14-18 year olds prefer CDs
- 59% of all music fans still listen to CDs every day
- CD burning is top of all sharing activities (23%), above bluetoothing (18%), filesharing single tracks (17%), and filesharing albums (13%)
Well, kudos to them for purchasing physicals, but I'd prefer to buy vinyl (sounds and looks better, more longterm investment, etc.) rather than waste my pounds on CDs and a new Sony Discman. Though, I guess I still can't find a vinyl copy of The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.
Zero 7 would have gotten away with new album Yeah Ghost in September, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.
Fire up the Mystery Machine, or at least burn some incense in your garage, because semi-spooky ambient pop duo Zero 7 are to release their new full-length Yeah Ghost September 8 in the U.S. Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns have hatched a plot to set the clocks back to 2004, a time when you couldn’t make out unless you were listening to their Garden State soundtrack hit “In The Waiting Line.” With soul/jazz artiste Eska Mtungwazi, folkster Martha Tilston, and electro-hopper Rowdy Superstar as their hired goons, Zero 7 hope to hypnotize more fans than their Grammy-nominated, but radio-absent 2006 LP The Garden did.
Their nefarious scheme begins with the free download of “Everything UP (Zisou)” from Stereogum . The terror continues at their official website, with the arachnid- and scorpion-infested video for the song’s remix by Joker and Ginz. Finally, Zero 7 will bring the chills to British auditoriums and European music festivals in the fall.
Will the gang foil Zero 7’s plan and place leaked copies of Yeah Ghost all over the torrentsphere? Find out next episode.
Yeah Ghost tracklisting:
1. Count Me Out
2. Mr. McGee
3. Swing
4. Everything Up (Zizou)
5. Pop Art Blue
6. Medicine Man
7. Ghost sYMbOL
8. Sleeper
9. Solastalgia
10. The Road
11. All Of Us
Tourdates:
08.07.09 - Sudwest, Portugal – Sudwest Festival
08.20.09 - Kiewit, Belgium – Pukkelpop Festival
09.04.09 - Stradbally, Ireland - Electric Picnic Festival
09.28.09 - Bristol, England - Colston Hall
09.29.09 - Oxford, England - Oxford Academy
09.30.09 - Norwich, England – University of East Anglia
10.01.09 - Manchester, England - Manchester Academy
10.03.09 - Sheffield, England - Plug
10.04.09 – Glasgow, Scotland - ABC 1
10.05.09 - Leeds, England - Leeds Academy
10.06.09 - Brighton, England - Dome
10.09.09 - London, England - Round House
10.11.09 - Preston, England - 53 Degrees
10.12.09 - Edinburgh, Scotland - Queens Hall
10.13.09 - Birmingham, England - Birmingham Town hall
Fruit Bats to Release The Ruminant Band, Tour, Lift Spirits of The Surrounding Community
Fruit Bats are set to release their newest full-length, The Ruminant Band on Sub Pop August 7. The album is full of more solid, unpretentious, folk/pop hits that will bring about feelings of hope, nostalgia, joy, regret, and beauty. This is because Eric Johnson, main songwriter and driving force of the band, taps into these worlds of humanity more acutely than most. It's just a vibe I get, true, but it's a vibe I'd put money on. This guy has a knack for finding diamonds buried in the coal of everyday life, and tell me, who doesn't love diamonds?
Here's a good sense of who we're dealing with here. From his blog:
----
This picture above was taken by me, with a blue plastic Fisher Price 110 camera. I'm guessing the year as 1986. That tiny brownish plateau in the far distant middle of the picture was (and is) a landfill. I had never really seen a mountain yet in 1986, and this was as close as it got. I was pretty obsessed with this thing. It was the most dramatic piece of the horizon for miles until you hit the towering skyscrapers of Chicago. In the winter it would get covered in snow like a little tiny Matterhorn. If you ever got up close enough you'd see that the whole mound was covered in busy flocks of gulls, crows, and garbage trucks zooming up and down the side. The area around it was no less captivating to me - a patchwork of corn and soybean fields, some natural prairie, a trickly little river, a Civil War era cemetery, and an old stone quarry that, like all old stone quarries, was haunted by the ghosts of drowned boys. And this big garbage heap towering over it all. It was creepy and weird and beautiful and rad.I went back to visit my folks not too long ago and now the mountain is much bigger and covered in wavy green grass and purple clover. They took down the barbed wire fence around it and stopped filling it, and put a hiking trail right up to the top. The field in the foreground is all McMansions now, though, stealing the view for themselves. These days I live in a place with gigantic gorgeous snow capped beastly peaks, but I still will always love that little trash pile the most of any mountain.
Tourdates:
08.18.09 - Victoria, BC - Lucky Bar*
08.19.09 - Vancouver, BC - Media Club*
08.20.09 - Seattle, WA - The Crocodile*
08.22.09 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir*
08.24.09 - Sonoma, CA - Gundlach Bundschu Winery~
08.25.09 - San Francisco, CA - Independent~
08.26.09 - Los Angeles, CA - Spaceland~
08.27.09 - Tucson, AZ - Plush~
08.28.09 - Santa Fe, NM - Corazon~
08.29.09 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge~
08.31.09 - Norman, OK - Opolis~
09.01.09 - Dallas, TX - The Loft~
09.02.09 - Austin, TX - Mohawk~
09.03.09 - Houston, TX - Walter's~
09.04.09 - Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon~
09.05.09 - Oxford, MS - Red Star Bar~
09.06.09 - Atlanta, GA - The EARL~
09.08.09 - Nashville, TN - Exit In^
09.09.09 - Knoxville, TN- Square Room^
09.10.09 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506^
09.11.09 - Washington, DC - Black Cat^+
09.12.09 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie^+
09.14.09 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg+@
09.15.09 - Cambridge, MA - TT's+@
09.16.09 - Buffalo, NY - Soundlab+@
09.17.09 - Newport, KY - Southgate+@
09.18.09 - Louisville, KY - Zanzabar+@
09.19.09 - Madison, WI - Orpheum+@
09.20.09 - Chicago, IL - Schubas+@
09.21.09 - Chicago, IL - Schubas+@
* Johnny & the Moon
~ Death Vessel
^ Pronto
+ Kevin Barker
@ Iran
K Records Announce Sleepover at Helsing Junction; Don't Forget Your Smurfs Pajamas With the Cute Footsies Or Your "My Buddy"
In classic K Records fashion, Calvin and crew are havin' a sleepover, and everyone's invited! Set for late August, the Helsing Junction 2009 Sleepover will see the the crew hopping on big wheels and riding 55 all the way down to rural southern Thurston County to join forces with the 30-acre Helsing Junction organic farm (30 minutes from Olympia, an hour and a half from Portland and Seattle, and an hour from Tacoma). In addition to swimming, camping, picnicking, and other summer camp-style fun, there will be plenty of underground films and of course sincere, heartfelt music during which you can find a warm blanket to cuddle in with your snookums.
There will be performances by Kimya Dawson, LAKE, Desolation Wilderness, Tender Forever, Mirah, Karl Blau, Calvin Johnson, Arrington de Dionyso, Joey Casio, Christmas, Angelo Spencer, Hooliganship, Brainstorm, Danny Kelly, Gary May, Why I Must Be Careful, Inside Voices, and others. And if that's not enough, there will be a DJ party too in the orchard with Jeffrey Jerusalem, film screenings curated by Vanessage Renwick, and plenty of fresh organic cooking from the Helsing Junction crew, who have been providing organic fruits, vegetables, and flowers to the surrounding areas for years and running an 800-member CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Together, Helsing Junction and K Records will be celebrating all things locally produced, whether it be fruits, vegetables, or music.
Passes for the three-day fest, from August 21-23, are $30 in advance or $35 at the event. For more info, click here and here.
