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Musical Movie Moments, Grizzly Bear, Cutout Bin, Fugitive Emu |
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Friday, October 13, 2006 - 08:20 AM Posted by: kbade
THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE... ...with THE TOP 40 MUSIC MOMENTS IN FILM HISTORY, according to Bullz-Eye, though they are really listing rock music moments. The self-imposed rules barred some I would list, like "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. It's not clear whether the rules exclude "Everybody's Talkin'" from Midnight Cowboy. Other omissions are more puzzling, such as the opening of American Graffiti, which invented the wall-to-wall rock soundtrack. Nothing from The Blues Brothers? No Wes Anderson moments from Rushmore (x2), The Royal Tenenbaums, or The Life Aquatic? No Big Lebowski? No "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" from Full Metal Jacket? No "Born to be Wild" from Easy Rider? Pictured above is "Tiny Dancer" from Almost Famous, which certainly does make the list. THE PITCHFORK DRINKING GAME: It is Friday, after all... (via Stereogum.) GRIZZLY BEAR did a short World Cafe set now streaming from NPR. Ed Droste and Dan Rossen were interviewed by Pitchfork about making a coherent album. Droste also spoke recently to the San Francisco Bay Guardian about recording in his mother's home, the Yellow House of the disc's title, but refuse to dish about his straight bandmates' tour antics. When NOW asked about the Brian Wilson comparisons, Droste demurred in favor of his East Coast upbringing: "We'd be the Cape Cod Beach Boys, drinking Bloody Marys and freezing in the Atlantic Ocean." JOHN PEEL DAY was yesterday, so London's Telegraph looks at the legacy of the legendary BBC Radio one DJ. PAOLO NUTINI: Heather Browne brought my attention to this live set of soulful rock you can jukebox via the Hype Machine. Paolo sounds much older and much less Scottish than you might expect. SEEN YOUR VIDEO: Actor Hal Sparks was joined by Dennis De Young on "Come Sail Away" for Celebrity Duets. I know. I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. WILCO: Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest, a live DVD by Jeff Tweedy, is coming October 24th. The audio tracks of all the songs featured on the DVD also will be available for anyone who purchases Sunken Treasure to download for free. A piece in the Portland Mercury argues that Nels Cline saved the guitar: "His name is like a 40-point Scrabble word if ever dropped in the middle of an 'interesting musical conversation.'" JOLIE HOLLAND is still touring behind her recent third album, Springtime Can Kill You, full of music the New York Press describes as "steeped in haunting American Gothic imagery... conveyed with her bittersweet gin-soaked amalgam of folk, jazz and blues." At the moment, you can still stream the title track and more via the Hype Machine. CAT POWER is the new face of Chanel jewelry. No, really. DAVID BOWIE is teaming up with SpongeBob SquarePants. No, really. THE CUTOUT BIN: This Friday's fortuitous finds from the Hype Machine include: Soul Brothers Six - Some Kind Of Wonderful; The Hold Steady - Stuck Between Stations; The Cars - Moving In Stereo; The Beatles - Hey Bulldog; Hoodoo Gurus - Tojo; Okkervil River - For Real (live); The Louvin Brothers - The Christian Life; Rolling Stones - Time is on My Side; The Clash - Rudie Can't Fail; Weezer - Uptown Girl; Zombies - Tell Her No; Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side; and The Beach Boys - I Just Wasn't Made For These Times. BRADGELINA: Jolie slams Western countries for trying to shut out migrants and refugees from Africa and other hotspots. Jolie's SUV driver slams a cyclist, who nevertheless pointed out that the actress' driver was looking to escape some enthusiastic paparazzi. I don't know whether the cyclist meant X17 which was on the scene. NOW SHOWING: This week's wide releases include The Grudge 2 and WWE wrestler John Cena's The Marine, neither of which seems to have been screened for critics. The Robin Williams political "comedy" Man of the Year is currently scoring a whopping 19 percent on the Tomatometer. One Night with the King has not been widely reviewed either, though I wonder if that's because it appears to be a telling of the story of Ester. Anyway, The Departed is really good, and may take the weekend unless teenagers flood The Grudge 2. MAD MEL UPDATE: Gibson was not sounding all that contrite with Diane Sawyer on GMA. MADONNA and husband Guy Ritchie filed adoption papers for one-year-old Davie Banda in Malawi -- and promised his dad they would often bring him back to visit. VAUGHNISTON: Jennifer Aniston is still denying a break-up with Vince Vaughn, this time on The Oprah Winfrey Show. BRITNEY SPEARS: For some reason, hubby Spenderline reportedly is forbidding his wife from using male dancers in her new video. Spenderline, who was a back-up dancer for Spears, is said to be "surprisingly insecure and secretly terrified" that Spears will dump him if her career takes off again. The only part of that I doubt is the "surprisingly." ALEC BALDWIN lets nothing stand in his way. Not an airplane crashing into a building. Not a condom. Nothing. Got that!? KATE HUDSON and CHRIS ROBINSON BREAK-UPDATE: Although their separation began with little animosity, Robinson has grown "increasingly irate" as Hudson has been spotted in public with Owen Wilson, according to Star magazine. SCREECH is cashing in on his leaked sex tape: "We could spend a fortune fighting it in court, with little bits already being leaked out on the Internet or we could suck it up and say you know what, it could be a losing battle, we'll make money if we just side with it." This may be his best acting ever. ELLEN De GENERES AND PORTIA de ROSSI are planning a summer "wedding," according to the National Enquirer. RACHEL BILSON: The O.C. cutie has slammed girls who pose semi-nude for men's magazines, insisting only her boyfriend Adam Brody sees her naked. Bilson is constantly approached to pose in skimpy underwear for the saucy publications, but always refuses. Tight tops and panties? Sure. A see-through top? Maybe. But skimpy underwear? No way. MICKEY, MINNIE and GOOFY have their own smutty video. Needless to say, it's been yanked from YouTube. UPDATE: At the moment, some video can be found at DailyMotion. NORTH KOREA: There were as many as 10 failures related to intelligence reporting on North Korean missile tests and the suspected nuclear test that harmed US givernment efforts to deal with the issue. I'm shocked. Past stumbles have included missing chances to detect or stop the 9/11 attacks, faulty assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs both before the Gulf War and before the 2003 invasion, the failure to predict the 1998 round of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, and overly optimistic predictions of the Iraqi reaction to a US invasion. Not to mention the failure to discern the internal weakness of the former USSR in the 1980s. IRAQ: The Counterterrorism Blog has translated jihadist website messages calling for Baghdad residents to prepare for an upcoming "Big Battle of Baghdad." The L.A. Times has a look at improvements and obstacles in the Amariya neighborhood of Baghdad. Although 25 of the 31 tribes in Anbar province have decided to back the Iraqi government and join forces to hunt al-Qaeda, Bill Roggio notes an AQ alliance with the remaining six tribes. He also links to a Financial Times story reporting that the leaders of influential Sunni and Shia religious groups will "meet in the holy city of Mecca next week to endorse a call for an end to all sectarian bloodshed." ISLAM IN EUROPE: The New York Times reports that centrists and progressives across Europe are becoming disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence. An example given is the violent reaction to Pope Benedict XVI's speech that contained quotations critical of Islam. Another example not mentioned would be the radical Muslims in France's housing estates waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day, causing the Interior Ministry to ask for armored cars. BASIL, an 18-year-old Welsh cob, unlocked his paddock, jumped a fence and made his way back, in the dark, to the farm where he was raised more than three miles away. ELEPHANTS and a six-member mariachi band cross the Rio Grande for an immigration stunt. WORMS: California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work so that the creatures can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost. Aren't they concerned about workplace stress? DOGS scream for ice cream. The Good Humor Man is there. A 100-LB. EMU gave police in a St. Louis suburb a mighty run, confounding them all six times someone reported the ostrich-like beast bugging motorists last weekend along busy Illinois Route 3. The operative word there is "gave." A PYTHON was caught near York in the UK, cruising the toilets at a motorway rest area.
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Beck's Puppet Show, Live YLT, CvB and BtS, Badfinger, and Free Bubba |
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Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 08:00 AM Posted by: kbade
BECK tells Jam! Music how he came to include the low-budget DVD and sticker set with his latest album, The Information -- extras that disqualified the album from the UK charts. He also talks about touring with his puppet show, as you can see in the video for "Nausea." THE RAMONES' story may be coming to the big screen. According to Variety, producer Rory Rosegarten has bought the movie rights to the book, I Slept With Joey Ramone, an authorized biography written by the late Ramone's brother Mickey Leigh and punk rock writer Legs McNeil. Of course, when you put "Ramones" and "movie" in the same sentence, my mind immediately drifts back to "Rock N' Roll High School." YO LA TENGO visited The Current, so you can stream a brief set from MPR. Ira Kaplan talks about his old and new faves, including his AC/DC guitar pick, for Pitchfork's "Guest List." James McNew recently spoke to Canada's Gazette about a variety of topics including differences in artists' creative impulses: "John Mayer. He
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Frank Black, Album Covers, Ides of March, Your Brain on Music, and Rocky! |
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Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - 08:00 AM Posted by: kbade
FRANK BLACK is back on the solo track and prolific to boot, though he puts it in perspective to the Houston Chronicle: "But didn't Elvis Costello write an album a day or something like that? I don't feel that prolific. I guess I sort of spit out one a year." Which is as good an excuse as any to watch "Headache" again. THE NEW YORK DOLLS have announced tour dates. If you can't wait to see them, most of the video links I compiled in July are still good. BATTLE of the ALBUM COVERS is a Terry-Gilliamesque animation that has the 'net abuzz, in case you missed it. Possibly NSFW. WOXY, the indie internet station returned yesterday, in conjunction with a plan to allow members of LaLa.com to create their own radio stations for free public streaming. Details at C|Net. I'M FROM BARCELONA frontman Emanuel was interviewed by Absolut Noise about the band's name (taken from Fawlty Towers), his day job and the buzz resulting from the video for "We're From Barcelona." Actually, the video for "Collection of Stamps" is alright, too. THE YOU TUBE DEAL: Coolfer Glenn notes those who think Google is nuts to buy the site. WHO'S LEFT lists "Music You Should Hear" for Amazon. And it seems like "What's Leftover" should be the title for the next Townshend solo album. SEEN YOUR VIDEO: It might be that this song backed the radio promos for Chicago Bears football for many years. It might be the media frenzy over FoleyGate. Either way, I had a hankering to hear "Vehicle" by the Ides of March. Being a music geek, I'm compelled to add that the song was sung and written by Berwyn, IL native Jim Peterik. THE WRENS: Pitchfork and Billboard have follow-up stories on the Wrens reissue news that Chromewaves reported last week. Pitchfork has more of the backstory, and suggests that "the matter of who, exactly, will be profiting from the sales of these reissues is still a sore subject." You can get a head start on all the Wrens goodness via the Hype Machine. THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC is a book by record producer (Stevie Wonder, Chris Issak) turned neuroscientist Daniel Levitin that covers a variety of topics, including the link between music and emotion, "earworm," why certain songs burn into the soul when we're young (it's science made Shrevie) and more. David Byrne and The Arcade Fire recently visited his lab. You can stream an hour Levitin did on MPR to promote the book. REM: Marathonpacks has a review of the latest IRS compilation, with YouTube and MP3 links. (thx again, Chromewaves.) THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: Speaking of REM, NP frontman Carl Newman tells ChartAttack that the band's fourth album should be their Lifes Rich Pageant. (no thx, Chromewaves... I already found this one!) WHAM is reuniting for a Christmas concert at London's Wembley Arena. Cue Darth! SCARLETT JOHANSSON tells Allure magazine that she is "not promiscuous," but not a "serial monogamist, either." And she gets tested twice a year. MAD MEL UPDATE: In advance clips from his upcoming GMA interview with Diane Sawyer, Gibson calls his anti-Semitic rant "just the stupid rambling of a drunkard." Which, to paraphrase Wanda Sykes, is a bit of an unfair slur against alcohol. Drinking too much by itself does not cause anti-Semitic ranting. Mel needs to try harder. BARBRA STREISAND tells her audience to STFU before delivering her message of tolerance. Not even The New York Times found the Bush-bashing funny, so it must have been pretty awful. BRITNEY SPEARS may want to divorce Spenderline after he was busted with three strippers in his Las Vegas hotel room, but that ten million dollar prenup is a big disincentive. JESSICA ALBA tells Elle magazine -- among other things -- that she doesn't dress for men or undress for movies. BRADGELINA: Pitt and Jolie have made a 100K donation to the Daniel Pearl Foundation in memory of the American journalist who was kidnapped and eventually killed in Pakistan in February 2002. The couple arrived last week in Pune, India, to film the Pearl biopic, A Mighty Heart, based on the book written by the journalist's widow, Mariane Pearl, whom Jolie portrays in the film. LINDSAY LOHAN in an action movie? Her mother says, "I would like to see her in a kickboxing movie. She could do it." No doubt. VAUGHNISTON: After Jennifer Aniston denies rumors of a split, Vaughn is caught canoodling a mystery blonde in London. Pic at the link. KIRSTEN DUNST wants to quit Hollywood and go back to school. KEITH OLBERMANN is not just bad in bed -- he's so bad in bed a woman has started a blog on the subject. LOST'S Evangeline Lilly and Dominic Monaghan are reportedly planning to get married next summer. Evie and her Hobbit were caught canoodling From Here To Eternity style by the paparazzi, but you might prefer to go straight to the Lilly cheesecake. TED TURNER tells the National Press Club that when Pres. Bush said "Either you
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Twofer Tuesday, New Releases, Bowie & Davies, Albino Moose |
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006 - 08:00 AM Posted by: kbade
CAMERA OBSCURA frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell talks to Pitchfork about a variety of topics, including touring the US, technology and the significance of Lloyd Cole, who she says likes "Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken." Meanwhile, Cole tells London's Telegraph why "cool" bores him, and his favourite club is a putter. Natch, I'm pairing the "Lloyd" video with Cole's video for "Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?" NEW RELEASES: How slim are the pickins this week? Sting's album of lute music is streaming in full from AOL! Fortunately, Robert Pollard and Portastatic are streaming in full from Merge records. Chavez has a box set. Chicago's Chin Up Chin Up has released its sophomore album. A Hawk and a Hacksaw describes itself as A'cappella / Grunge / Disco House, but it's more like indie with world music (esp. eastern European) influences. And Nikki Sudden has a posthumous release. THE POLICE: Speaking of Sting, Police guitarist Andy Summers is out promoting his memoirs, One Train Later, which claims that Sting is someone who "needs to control the crew or abandon ship." Early Pate gigs used to include early Police songs like "So Lonely." GOOGLE BUYS YOU TUBE for 1.65 billion dollars, shortly after YouTube brokered a deal with media companies to counter the threat of copyright-infringement lawsuits. The buzz seems to be that copyright owners may be given the choice of filtering content off of YouTube or using it to target advertising. The latter would be the smarter move... and better for this site, natch. PAUL WESTERBERG has designed his own guitar, which is for sale at Amazon and (soon) Wal-Mart: "You're not going to sound like your guitar hero on this thing, unless that hero is you." THE HOLD STEADY gets a profile in the Village Voice in which the writer -- and some of the band -- seem to be getting slightly irritated by the Springsteen comparisons. You can still stream the album from Vagrant Records. SEEN YOUR VIDEO: David Bowie joins Ray Davies for "Waterloo Sunset" live at the Tibet House Benefit at Carnegie Hall in 2003. CBGB (omfug) is closing Sunday with a concert by club alumna Patti Smith. THE LONG WINTERS frontman John Roderick claims it's important that his music "do work" in other peoples' lives: "There are songs out there that make people happy, simple as that, and there are songs that help people to be alright even though they
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Yardbirds, M Ward, The Decemberists, Frozen Gator and Python |
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Monday, October 09, 2006 - 01:15 PM Posted by: kbade
OUR FAST NEW HOSTING SERVICE knocked out the site on Sunday without warning, but if you're reading this, we are back, obvs. THE YARDBIRDS' "For Your Love" was a long-running staple of the Pate playlist. Eric Clapton left the band shortly after the song's release, so you can see Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page wield the axes on "Train Kept A' Rollin'" in this clip from The Blow-Up. And Beck was gone by the time of "Shapes of Things." Yu can watch the whole story in a three-segment documentary, or you can just watch them play "I'm A Man" on Hullabaloo for the go-go dancers. U2 is leaving Island Records for Mercury, because they just don't feel the label love anymore. Plus, TMZ has a picture of what the U2 Tower to be built in Dublin will look like. TOWER RECORDS is going to be liquidated. CAROLINE, NO: An R & B remake by Danish musicians makes Song of the Day at NPR. Plus the Pet Sounds podcasts at the 40th Anniversary blog now extend to that song. M WARD recently played a World Cafe set streaming now at NPR. There's plenty more to stream via the Hype Machine, including an instrumental version of Brian Wilson's "You Still Believe In Me." THE DECEMBERISTS recently played "O, Valencia" on the Peacock-net. The touring replacement for Petra Haden is a hottie. See it on YouTube before their lawyers do. BONUS: Just for the fun of it, here's Colin Meloy catching a tamborine. JIMMY BUFFETT was reportedly busted for having 100 Ecstasy tablets in his luggage at a French airport. It would explain why he can never find that lost shaker of salt. GOOGLE BUYING YOU TUBE? The rumors sweeping the internet are exaggerated. Google is apparently one of many companies making offers, but a deal doesn't seem imminent. TOM WAITS' Orphans launches an article on "rarities" albums in London's Sunday Times. ROLLING STONE magazine censors itself and takes amusing, generalized abuse at Stereogum. PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: Given that Babyshambles has had to postpone the rest of its tour so that the troubled singer can get more rehab, it seems like the offer to make him a drug counsellor is a wee bit premature. WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Martin Scorsese's star-studded gangster flick The Departed took top spot this weekend, earning an estimated 27 million -- a record for a Scorsese opening. Having seen it, I would say deservedly so; it's not Goodfellas, but it might be his best since then; I even forgive his gratuitous use of Gimme Shelter at the beginning of the film. Number two is Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which made 19.1 million -- well off the 28.1 million the 2003 remake of the original earned, but more than the 16 million budget. Number three is Open Season, which dropped a mere 33 percent -- good news for Sony. Fourth was Employee of the Month, which made 11.8 million on a 12 million budget, so we are not done with Jessica Simpson quite yet. BRADGELINA: Pitt worries that he and Jolie may have ruined Namibia's peaceful tranquility, so the couple has moved on to destroy the peaceful tanquility of Holland. Of course, things would be a little more tranquil if the couple's hired goons didn't throttle and threaten to kill the paparazzi. The good news is that Jolie wants to do more lesbian scenes, which pretty much makes it unanimous. THE McCARTNEYS: Heather Mills would like to run down the paparazzi, but knows better. KATE HUDSON and CHRIS ROBINSON BREAK-UPDATE: X17 scored pics of Hudson lunching with the Butterscotch Stallion. ANNA NICOLE SMITH: Two more men are claiming to be her baby's daddy. SCARLETT JOHNSSON: US Weekly has excerpts from her interview with Esquire magazine. Though that's really just an excuse to note that she posed in leather with a virtually naked Dita Von Tesse for Flaunt magazine. MAD MEL UPDATE: Gibson's people deny that he's off the wagon and have announced he will start his redemption tour on Good Morning America. EVA LONGORIA and TONY PARKER UPDATE: Eva wants you to see she's still with Tony. SIENNA MILLER says that monogamy is overrated. Which will come as a surprise to her nanny-banging boyfriend, Jude Law. TOM-KAT UPDATE: The current rumors are about a November wedding. JESSICA SIMPSON was caught canoodling with Employee of the Month co-star Dane Cook at the film's premiere party. MARIJUANA may stave off Alzheimer's disease. The same is being said of red wine. At least, regular consumption of either will make the Alzheimer's less noticable to family and friends. THE STATE OF LIMBO is in limbo. Get ready to lower the bar and dance underneath. NORTH KOREA probably tested a nuclear bomb. The US is analyzing seismic data, so there may be some question as to whether the test was successful. If only Kim Jong Il were not so ronery... IRAQ: Time magazine reprints a letter from a Marine officer whose "wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate." Not that you couldn't find this stuff out on Milblogs, but it's nice, anyway. Instapundit rounds up a variety of opinions on momentum in Iraq. In the Washington Post, Ann Scott Tyson writes that the number of US troops wounded has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years. Later, she reports that "military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting," glossing over the fact that the media has focused on fatalities throughout. I previously noted Ms. Tyson's shoddy reporting on Sept. 14th. COLUMBUS DAY: I get it as a holiday, so I thought a few words might be in order. Over the course of my life, I have seen the image of Columbus swing from unvarnished hero to genocidal criminal. Locales like Berkeley, CA have renamed the day "Indigenous Peoples Day. The ever-reliable Wikipedia still contains allegations of Genocide from Ward Churchill, though his bogus accounts were one of the reasons he was dismissed from Colorado University. Columbus was certainly no sweetheart, but at the end of the 15th Century, it is fair to say that Europeans often did not treat each other all that well. Moreover, before the furriners showed up, Native North and South Americans engaged in slavery, tribal massacre, infanticide, scalping, human sacrifice, and the ritual skinning of slaves for their priests to wear. It was a far less civilized time all 'round. But the West is civilized today in part because of Columbus. Some four centuries-plus later, we all are still struggling to become more civilized, but focusing criticism on the more-civilized while giving the less civilized a pass is not particularly useful to that struggle. AN ALLIGATOR was impaled by a samurai sword at a Moline Acres, MO home where another was found in a freezer, along with a four-foot python. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Video at the link. BTW, the authorities "will also be pursuing charges on whoever stabbed this alligator." A SNAKE CHARMER kissed 19 highly poisonous king cobras at Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Pattaya, Thailand, in an attempt to set a world record. I'm pretty sure there are some snake-kissing jokes to be made. Pic at the link. A CARJACKING DOG will spend a few more days in lock-up before being allowed to return to the comfort of his kennel. But will he really appreciate the difference? SCARY, DEFECATING DOGS have a small town in Nova Scotia contemplating banning man's best friends from its downtown core. IS THAT A LORIKEET IN YOUR PANTS, or are you just happy... oh, wait, it is a lorikeet...
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