The tiresome theory in this piece is that, blaming Courtney Love for the death of Kurt Cobain and Jennifer Chiba for the death of Elliott Smith is pure misogyny. I know his language,… people who express their skepticism are just ‘murder conspiracy theorists’ or ‘murder monomaniacs’ and he goes on and on, throwing in the text a few references to Greek mythology to make it sound more intellectual
Which leads me to Christgau the rock critic, who once wrote of Costello “all wordplay as swordplay” –a phrase I still use. As is this one, which only I own since he said it in reference to a pan of Visage (more or less –I think I was a little ambivalent) I’d written for the Voice: “They aren’t invading Poland”…. A phrase I’ve used ever since whenever somebody is over reacting. And… MICK JAGGER SHOULD WRAP UP HIS PENIS AND GO HOME.
His portrait is based in blue streaks and I gave Joe the spiritual fire that seems to be a constant aspect in a lot of my stuff. I reckon it signifies soul and life and a certain forever, eternal, greatness. I also picked the Kansas City era Joe because I like to think of him singing without a microphone coming out from behind the bar
But more exciting still there is a new album and it includes Bobby Womack’s last vocal performance. This is off Gigwise: “Rudimental have revealed details of their second album entitled We The Generation due to be released on 18 September.
All the models figured on the blog look like French bulldogs or Chihuahuas but they sure make the same vests and tees for larger dogs. However, I click on one of their items in the store, the not-so-cheap 60 bucks heavy metal dog vest, and wow, it’s already sold out! How didn’t I think about it?
Julian Casablancas + The Voidz have released a 38 second-clip of their upcoming video for ‘Human Sadness’ (off their last year’s album ‘Tyranny’) and they will be screening the 11-minute long video in a series of theaters across the US. There are also screenings in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Denver, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Nashville, Montreal, from Wednesday 20th to Tuesday 26th, and may be not all of them are sold-out?
There is currently a rumor, the Rolling Stones may be playing a surprise and intimate show on Wednesday in Los Angeles… What? After all, they did it before, a few years ago they announced a surprise show at the Echoplex, I got on line very early in the day, but never got a ticket because it was a stupid lottery! However, the other day, I met someone who was lucky enough to get in, ‘I could have resold my ticket for thousands of dollars’ she told me… yeah, but she didn’t!
‘If Kurt were still alive, he would be so over Courtney’, she says at one point. There has been a lot of speculation about an eventual divorce, and Alice says she doesn’t know exactly but ‘they had broken up, sort of, he was angry at her, at the way she was behaving’.
In a world of diminished expectations, Miller’s skill at saturated violence and the color scheming old bike chic and skull and daggers proto-Keith Richards scallywag power pop of pasty soldiers, and crunched up power balling transportations, is pop culture at its best.
Two Lamar verses is something but a cast of thousands is something else for a song that is a hit at Katy Perry. Backstabbing all about eve featuring Selena Gomez, Jessica Alba, Lena Dunham, Ellie Goulding, Hayley Williams,and more, that was the fream. What I got was a Superheroe takedown as Bionic Taylor goes for revenge. No inside baseball here.
Azealia Banks didn’t just win the Twitter wars, she won the rap wars, both at the same epochal gig last Monday at Irving Plaza. A steaming hot, insanely crowded, perfect evening of hip hop. If there was ever any doubt, forget it folks. Azealia rules. Meanwhile, Shelby Lynne thought I was rude because of my mostly positive review of her gig at the Concert Hall.
‘And we pay a fortune in tax. Just so people know, we pay a fortune in tax; and we’re happy to pay a fortune in tax, people should. But that doesn’t mean, because you’re good at philanthropy and because I’m an activist, people think you should be stupid in business and I don’t run with that.’
I wrote this Elvis Costello overview back in 1982 for a Creem “New Wave” special. Kinda funnily, I claimed I’d always put Get Happy!! in the center of his career. Which, considering this was some six years into a career still going nearly 40 years later, has proven inaccurate. Though it is still my finest EC moment
If you are a fan, you have realized that it is actually an adaptation of his music video ’Bound 2’, into a kids’ book, and you can see the whole story here. Tebbal will be soon graduating from New York’s famed School of Visual Arts, so he is a little chicken too, with, apparently, a lot of talent and humor.
I once pitched a Spotify muckety muck on the central importance of upping their paid subscription base and they all but sneered at me. There was nothing more important for Spotify and all they did was fuck around for the past three years. They should have advertised everywhere all the time, if they had 50 million paid subscriptions today, they’d be paying their artists a lot more money
RADD, the entertainment industry’s voice for road safety (formally known as Recording Artists, Actors and Athletes Against Drunk Driving), is partnering with KROQ Weenie Roast to launch ‘Make A Plan’ campaign, encouraging designated drivers via a special RADD-branded pick-up and drop off area
Will history remember David Letterman? Well, does history remember Johnny Carson, and he was much bigger? Put it this way, working late night television is like being a telivison columnist. Murray Kempton was one of New York’s best and when was the last time you heard his name? Letterman was great and then he wasn’t great and within a coupla years it will be all the two Jimmys and when they retire no one will remember them, indeed, they will remember them even less.
So we are getting many talented Australians lately. Fraser is indeed from Australia, just like his label mate Courtney Barnett, and this explains her cameo in the clip. Apparently, folk-country is well alive in Aussie country, and I can’t wait to sing along this chorus again.
The great thing about death is it is the reset button in everybody’s brain. King is no longer the elderly man who couldn’t stop touring, he is the vibrant 30 year old electric guitarist changing the blues in the 1950s, and then the breakthrough star in his mid-40s, the hero of the 1960s UK blues movement, and the elder statesman. All those things at once.
I don’t know if they will ever make up,’ continued McCartney. ‘It would be good because I think everyone likes brothers to like each other — and make up. It’s a pity because they are very good together. Like many brothers, they are crazy. But it would be nice if they got together.”
When we look at this great moment in pop, I think we will see it as an equivalent to the summer of 1982: the pieces are on the chessboard but the moves haven’t been made yet. The moment in pop, when videos became central to pop and rock, hadn’t quite happened. In January 1983, Michael Jackson would drop “Beat It” and MTV and videos would become the story of music
From roasts to toast, Bieber is rebuilding a career that hasn’t tanked. Did you hear his Jack U song with Diplo and Skrillex, earlier this month, “Where Are U Now”? To my mind, the best the duo have managed and a fine vocal.So, in conclusion, let me quote from the book of Marx: Hey, you big bully. What’s the idea of hitting that little bully?
This is totally great in a completely funny and narcissistic way! A 24-year-old guy from Yorkshire has made this crazy video of himself singing and playing every single instrument of this 70-piece orchestra. These days, we can do so much with a computer and a lot of talent!
Rap is not responsible for the decline of Christianity, on the contrary they push the God agenda all the time… but O’Reilly is a simple guy with huge blinders on each side of his big head… A decline of Christianity? I see that as a good thing, may be the product of more science in school curriculum?
Cobain’s death was ruled a suicide by the Seattle Police Department shortly after his body was found, but 21 years later, suspicions and theories around the events leading to his death have never been more alive, and a long series of inconsistencies, oddities and plain weirdness (including taped phone conversations with Courtney Love) have let Tom Grant to continue his investigation about the case till this day
Who knows what anybody is really really like? So take these snapshot deep character studies as semi-fictional impressionistic cliches but with some truth thrown in here and there for taste. Much like TMZ, it is gossip by other means… But there is enough info out on these folks where it isn’t SCIENCE FICTION.
‘When I was giving a lecture at Oxford, I brought up this school because when I went on that mission to create in other spaces, apparel, film, performance, it would have been easier if I could have said that I had a degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.’
The world is messy, my house, my room, my desk are messy, I constantly fight against the entropy of the world around me and each day I am losing the battle… but am I right? Should I even fight it?
The acting is very very sharp, Alicia Vikander is tremendous, she reminds me of Jeff Bridges in “Starman”, there is something both the same and other. The four are all hidden agendas and playfulness that isn’t really playful at all. And in this remote supersonic prison cum laboratory the most deadly thing is not always who it appears to be.
‘It is not inconceivable that there are similarities between the two songs. It’s also not inconceivable that there may be vaguely legs in something,’ he explained. ‘It’s also not inconceivable that when they came out they were quite open in interviews that they liked a lot of Australian bands.’
With the field to themselves, they should have advertised Spotify everywhere till it became part of the landscape, till the commercial was being spoofed on SNL, and they should have gone after paid subscribers day and night, instead they sat back and waited and while they were waiting, Apple woke up.
We want a high spirit very musical romp, not this downcasted miserable look at lives wasted. It is, in fact, a big time bummer. As star vehicles go, why are we watching “The Threepenny Opera”. Sure, it is better than every musical since “Passion” but it is still a downer experience. Did they really drag all these octogenarians out of their beds to tell them this?
‘No one ever questions the disorder behind her tarantula LA glamour — sociopathy, narcissism — because it’s good rock and roll, good entertainment! I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill.’
I used Los Angeles Lakers colors because Watt is a huge homer for the local hoops squad. I dressed him in his customary flannel, he was wearing flannel before the Northwest peeps took that look over and claimed it as their own, and threw his outdoor jacket on him.
In an act somewhere between hubris and stupidity, ingenue singer Natalie Prass cancelled her Bowery Ballroom gig an hour before she was meant to go on stage, leaving management to send a manager to unceremoniously give us the boot with “we don’t know why she is sick but you have to get out of here now”. Her explanation on Facebook (she had a sore throat) was fulsome but too late. Amateurs.
Different music genres affect individuals in different ways. During consultations I have noticed, for example, that most cats like classical music, particularly George Handel compositions, and become more calm, confident and tolerant throughout the clinical evaluation.
He told them that we were promoting him to “lame, hair metal” mags (or maybe he called us lame, metal publicists?) and that’s not what Nirvana was about. He couldn’t handle being that popular with just about everyone, it made it fake somehow to him. I know I was devastated that I wasn’t going to be working with them anymore, but I was tired too. Working for a “phenom” can wear you out, even at 24.
Not only Tyler is re-appropriating the white power symbol, but he has put a rainbow twist on it to make it more… gay. He left a long explanation on his Tumblr under the picture of him holding hands with a white guy and wearing the new shirt
Sure, I had a crush on Susannah Hoffs. I actually had a good friend named Stacey Ghindi, a Syrian Jewish girl, who looked very like her. And I got in trouble by Creem Editor Dave Dimartino because they wanted me to interview Vicki and I wanted Susannah, but I got both so I won. 1985 and the band had just hit big.
I was with a friend who is an Elliott Smith outsider as she said, and I would say that the movie works very well for people like her. It introduces them to Elliott’s beautiful music and charming character, someone who just wanted to write songs and record them, someone who was living for his art
Did you see what I see? While it is true Tom Waits did the talk show rounds back in 2012, even so, Waits on Letterman is gonna be as big as it gets. This will be Waits tenth appearance with Dave since 1983, and it will include an interview which should be as heartbreaking as everything else we’ve seen over the past month.
I was never a risk taker. While other kids were smoking dope, popping pills, discovering the pleasure points of the human body, sniffing gas, and skipping school, I was doing homework assignments and making sure the living room furniture didn’t feel neglected.
Over heard at Amoeba during the signing of ‘The Waterfall’, the new album of the band My Morning Jacket on Friday night: ‘my favorite artists are My Morning Jacket, Bob Dylan, and Björk’… Really? I thought, in this order? Whatever works for you!
According to the brand they will be The Magic Whip flavour is “a dairy vanilla custard ice cream rippled with raspberry sauce.” The brand have also promised a unique Blur download with each ice cream sold.
All humans have valid feelings and rights! I want to use my voice as a megaphone to young people everywhere and encourage human evolution. No one should have to hide who they really are, no matter what his or her name, gender or status. That’s why Happy Hippies are here to say that every life is valuable!
I have to accept that his greatness hasn’t managed to survive the decades intact. So maybe he is very much of his time, maybe he was such a cusp superstar, such a harbinger of the new century, he hasn’t quite managed to move forward. But songs as great as “All Apologies”, “Heart Shape Box” “Negative Creep” “About A Girl”… maybe they are ripe for re-discovery for the voice of a generation, beyond it all
The larger mention of MDMA applies to Electric Daisy Carnival or Ultra Music Festival, and it was again very expected, whereas Burning Man is more into psychedelic drugs, like mushrooms, DMT and LSD, because they need all their creative potential. Otherwise Coachella go-ers are not that stoned after all, but they are the first cocaine users, just followed by Mad Decent Block Party attendees.
In 2015, when, if Prince chose to, he could write, record and release a song in an hour, we are still wauiting for his response to the civil unrest in Baltimore. And when we get it, he is releasing the song via Tidal to absolutely insure that 99.9% of the people who hear his great moment of protest HAS TO STEAL IT.
We love the old feel and sound of studio recordings that were tracked to tape and aimed to emulate that vibe on this recording. In this type of recording process, electrical currents produce different patterns of magnetism in the tape, so the word was quite relevant throughout
Hot Chocolate had the distinction of performing truly soulful UK disco, they sounded like nobody else as they stretched their way through 15 hits in the 1970s and while I never saw them live on stage, Hot Chocolate exuded a more knowing egotism then either the white disco of the Bee Gees, or the more universal black disco of Tavares. They were like the last line of defense before Chic changed the landscape
