Topic: Karl

ARCADE FIRE covers "Uncontrollable Urge" in Hollywood. Plus, the Devo original, for Twofer Monday or something.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS: The soundtrack to the next Coen Bros movie is streaming at NPR.

CATE LE BON is advance streaming her third album, Mug Museum. NPR drops Tom Verlaine and Nico references.

SONGS: OHIA is streaming the 10th anniversary edition of The Magnolia Electric Co.

PAPA: The new project from former Girls drummer Darren Weiss streams Tender Madness.

M.I.A. is streaming Matangi. Not really my thing, but I felt like I should mention it, y'know?

MONTH OF THE DEAD: A free Grateful Dead track every day this month.

ANDREW BIRD drops the title track for the I Want To See Pulaski At Night EP.

SEBADOH drops "No Wound" as a B-side. Because who cares what's on the flip side of a record? I do.

BOOKER T & THE MG's: "Green Onions," live in '68.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND talks to The Guardian about playing the Hollywood Bowl, songwriting, and more...

ISLANDS: Nick Thornbury talks to NOW about becoming more selective, songwriting, his evolution as a musician, and more.

SONGS FOR SLIM becomes a two-disc comp with bonus tracks, including contributions by Peter Holsapple and Soul Asylum.

MIDLAKE's guitarist Eric Pulido steps up to the mic, and talks to Stereogum about taking on vocal duties.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Ender's Game tops the chart with 28 million, which is better than other recent efforts to start Young Adult franchises, but a number that will require good overseas biz against a 110 million budget. And with Thor: The Dark World (which already grossed 109 million in overseas markets) coming this Friday, Ender may have a tough time finding legs here. (In fairness, there really wasn't a perfect weekend to open Ender's Game between this weekend and year's end. It's competitive out there.)  Bad Grandpa places with 20.5 million, which is solid and gives a 62 million total against a 15 million budget for the Jackass spinoff.  Last Vegas shows with a 16.5 million debut against a 28 million budget, a bit better than predicted, if no Wild Hogs.  Free Birds opens in the fourt slot with 16.2 million, perhaps suggesting a tale about Turkeys at Thanksgiving made some parents uncomfortable.  Gravity rounds out the Top 5 with another 13.1 million and a 219.2 million domestic total against a 100 million budget (remarkably good for a fifth weekend, btw).  Below the fold, Captain Phillips takes sixth with 8.5 million and fading hopes of cracking 100 million domestic.  And 12 Years A Slave moved up to No. 7 on just 410 screens; it opens wide this Friday.

ABOUT TIME also opens wide this Friday.  Given the marketing emphasizing it's the latest from Richard Curtis, there will be more Love, Actually comparisons from critics than possibly imaginable, but they will mostly miss the mark. Love, Actually-- a film I have seen more times than I care to admit -- is based around the simple idea of stripping down the basic 3-act rom-com to three scenes, packing a bunch of them into one movie, and hoping the viewer doesn't die of diabetic shock.  About Time is a film with plenty of sentiment, but not as over-the-top in its method. And it's only partly a rom-com; the other part -- involving time travel -- is a much more effective, much less expensive version of Cloud Atlas.  Curtis has assembled a solid ensemble cast, including Curtis vet Bill Nighy (doing his Nighy thing) and newcomers like Tom Hollander.  Although Domhall Gleeson does just fine in the lead role, it's fair to say co-star Rachel McAdams gets most of the marketing, and she's very good as acting adorable.  Plus, after The Time-Traveler's Wife and Midnight In Paris, it's impressive that she's found roles varying so much in this niche. I'm not going to dissect the potential time-travel problems in the film, as Bruce Willis successfully convinced me in Looper that such talk is simply not worth it.  I didn't care for the degree to which Curtis beats the viewer over the head with his message at the end of About Time, but it's a nice enough message, and what comes before is funny and charming enough that you still leave with a spring in your step.  I'd even say About Time is worth your time, but that's just brutal; I wouldn't do that to you.

MILEY CYRUS: Currently twerking Benji Madden.

CHRIS BROWN admits he has anger management issues, the first step in his latest quest for judicial leniency.

LINDSAY LOHAN was paid to host a Halloween party; the casino wants its money back.

RYAN GOSLING & EVA MENDES are fighting. Apparently, she's the jealous type.

MICHELLE MONAGHAN and her husband Peter White welcomed their second child.

JENNIFER MORRISON & SEBASTIAN STAN, co-stars of Once Upon a Time, are officially broken up.

COURTNEY STODDEN, 19-year-old attention-seeker, splits from her 53-year-old husband. Whoda thunkit?

PAMELA ANDERSON ran the NYC Marathon, presumably in slow motion.

YEMEN: More than 58 people were killed during clashes between Houthi rebels and Salafists in Dammaj in Saada province. The government has called for a ceasefire, and the International Red Cross said it has been denied access to Dammaj.

LIBYA: Prime Minister Zeidan said Italy will start conducting aerial and electronic surveillance of Libya's borders, from Owaynat, in the southeast near Sudan, all the way to the Libyan-Tunisian-Algerian border in the northwest.

SYRIA: A rebel media center in Raqqah closed its offices in protest against the torture of an activist by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham.

IRAQ: After his first meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in nearly two years, President Obama said al Qaeda has recently become more active in Iraq. Al-Maliki asked Washington for military equipment and counterterrorism support.

BABY DUCKS ON A WATERSLIDE: Let's go to the video.

AN ALLIGATOR was detained at O'Hare International Airport on Friday.

A MYSTERIOUS WILD BOAR roaming an island in Guernsey could have swum there from France.

WHEN MONKEYS ATTACK: Blame the cat, the dog and the egg salad sandwich.

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

... with THE BYRDS! The turning of the seasons had me in the mood for this rare live threefer of "Turn! Turn! Turn!", "Bells of Rhymney" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", introduced by... David McCallum? There are more screaming girls, plus go-go dancers when they hit Shivaree for "All I Really Want to Do" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better."  There are even more dancers when they cover "Long Tall Sally" and "Not Fade Away" for Shindig! on June 23, 1965, while I'm pretty sure that's Ed Wynn introducing "Chimes of Freedom."

OKKERVIL RIVER palyed a Tiny Desk Concert at the offices of NPR.

NEKO CASE, along with Eric Bachmann and Kelly Hogan, played a Halloween Tiny Desk Concert in costume.She's also profiled by Under the Radar.

THAO & THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN played live at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival.

MATT POND played live at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival.

EASYBEATS: The fish, the barrel, the smoking gun!

JAMES BLAKE won the Mercury Prize, even if the presenter called him James Blunt.

LOU REED's obituary, placed in the local paper by his widow, Laurie Anderson.

FATHER JOHN MISTY: Josh Tillman talks to Rolling Stone about his score for The History of Caves, and his next LP.

GOTH IS DEAD, Long Live Goth.

CUTOUT BIN: This Friday, a tribute to the late Lou Reed is streaming from the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases are: Free Birds, currently scoring 13 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; Ender's Game, currently scoring 62 percent; and Last Vegas, scoring 42 percent.

ENDERS GAME: Part popcorn sci-fi epic, part meditation on the morality of war and the nature of leadership, with the latter improving the former. I've seens ome reviewers mention the movie doesn't grapple with the big issues as well as the novel on which the movie is based, which is often the case, though perhaps more notable here, given that visual media tends to glamorize even that which it seeks to dissect. Not having read the book, my problems are more with the plotting (which may or may not come from the book).  The inevitable compression lessens the notion of Ender -- a boy being groomed for combat against an alien race which once attacked Earth -- as a born leader.  The film does a decent job of showing Ender as strategist, but I didn't buy his ultimate solution as one that would have been unique to him.  Moreover, while the film overtly argues for the importance of empathy as a quality of military leadership, Ender has it in the final sequence to a degree foreshadowed, but requiring a hefty suspension of disbelief.  Those issues aside, Asa Butterfield (Hugo) is convincing in the lead role and gets good support from other young actors (notably Hailee Steinfeld of True Grit and Abigail Breslin) as well as the marquee roles from Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley and Viola Davis.

KRISTEN STEWART & ROBERT PATTINSON are indeed meeting five months after their split.

ASHTON KUTCHER & DEMI MOORE have settled their protracted divorce beef; he won't be paying support.

KHLOE KARDASHIAN & LAMAR ODOM are reportedly working out their marital problems after all.

DAVID ARQUETTE had a lot to say when he drunk dialed Howard Stern.

MILEY CYRUS went as Lil Kim for Halloween.

TORI SPELLING: I told you Wednesday where this was headed. Still headed that way.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER feels a little harrassed by all the jokes about his equipment. Poor man.

SWEDEN: Haytham Rahmeh, the Syrian-born former leader of a Stockholm mosque, is said to have smuggled large quantities of weapons to Syrian rebels for the past 18 months. Rahmeh reportedly purchased the weapons primarily in Libya, but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and with the help of an organization called the Commission for Civilian Protection transported them through Turkey to Syria. He is a member of the Syrian National Council and a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

EGYPT: Muslim Brotherhood supporters called for daily protests in the lead-up to the trial of former president Morsi. His detention was extended for 15 days due to a pending investigation related to espionage charges.

PAKISTAN: Prime Minister Sharif said talks with the Pakistani Taliban have begun.

IRAQ: Five car bombs north of Baghdad killed 19 people and wounded scores more; police blamed al Qaeda.

GRAHAM THE CAT is a regular visitor to the pet shop.

A 6-FT GATOR visits the Wal-Mart.

MICRO-PIGS fail to stay micro.

HEY, ARE THOSE PUPPIES in your pants, or... oh.

LOS CAMPESINOS! drop a video for "Avocado, Baby."

ARCADE FIRE performed highlights from its new album, Reflektor, live at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. Their version of “Supersymmetry” played double tribute to the late Lou Reed.

UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA advance streams the acoustic Blue Record EP.

TENNIS advance streams the Small Sound EP.

THE MELVINS advance stream Tres Cabrones.

SUFJAN STEVENS drops a demo for "Jamilla," a 1998 in tribute to his sister.

THE FEELIES are "Slipping Into Something" that sounds inspired by Lou Reed.

LOU REED: Moe Tucker's tribute. More remembrances from Patti Smith, David Byrne, and Antony Hegarty. And The Guardian's 10 essential Lou tunes.

RAY DAVIES talks to WNYC about his new book, Americana: The Kinks, the Riff, and the Road: The Story. (Thx, LHB.)

MIKE DOUGHTY talks to PopMatters about his body of work, online feedback, new technologies, authorship and more...

SKY FERREIRA talks to Pitchfork about her recent drug arrest, her new record's unnerving artwork, and struggling to be taken seriously.

NICOLE KIDMAN reflects back on her marriage to Tom Cruise at Vanity Fair.

GEORGE CLOONEY's mystery woman is Julian Assange's barrister.

LINDSAY LOHAN & MILEY CYRUS, clubbing together? What could possibly go wrong?

CHRIS BROWN is lectured on punching people by... wait for it... Mike Tyson.

KHLOE KARDASHIAN & LAMAR ODOM went to Kanye West's L.A. concert... but they're not together.

WILL & JADA PINKETT SMITH: Trial separation?

THE JONAS BROTHERS are dunzo for now.

TORI SPELLING has financial problems. And a sex tape. You see where this is headed.

JACK NICHOLSON: Trailer sex with Meryl Streep, LSD-induced homoerotic fear fantasies, and more in a new bio of the legendary actor.

KENYA: Police said they are holding five suspects in the Westgate Mall attack, but maintain that only four gunmen carried out the siege; other authorities have said that number is too low.

EGYPT: A son of a major tribal leader in the Sinai was reportedly killed by Islamist militants for cooperating with the army.

ISRAEL: The head of military intelligence recently concluded in a document presented to Prime Minister Netanyahu that Iran "still seeks to reach the status of a nuclear threshold state."

A SEA LION steals a fisherman's prize fish.

IT'S RAINING SNAKES in Phuket Town.

GIANT GEORGE, formerly the World's Tallest Dog, has passed away. He was seven.

CAT FIGHT: He's doing it wrong.

TOM WAITS played a 10 song set  -- his first in five years -- at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit.

EDWARD SHARPE & THE MAGNETIC ZEROES stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

NEKO CASE stopped by Studio 1A at KUTX for a mini-set.

GARY NUMAN  played live at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival. 

CHERIE CURRIE (The Runaways) drops "Mr. X" ahead of her first LP in decades.

THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN: Of the many bands carrying the torch of the Velvet Underground, you could do worse than these Brits, with "Just Like Honey" and "Never Understand" capturing a bit of the VU's musical range for Twofer Tuesday, not to mention some Phil Spector and Brian Wilson.

LOU REED is remembered by -- among multitudes -- VU bandmates John Cale and Maureen Tucker, Luna's Dean Wareham, and Okkervil River's Will Sheff. ALSO: Lou Reed, consumer columnist and career counselor. PLUS: 20 great Lou Reed moments.

WHITE DENIM has an interview and TX barbeque at The Guardian.

ELLIOTT SMITH: An Oral History.

JOHN McVIE, bassist and founding member of Fleetwood Mac, has been diagnosed with cancer.

KIM KARDASHIAN: Already examining her post-childbirth vagina in the mirror and considering a naked Playboy shoot. Business as usual.

CHRIS BROWN's assault charge has been reduced to a misdemeanor.

OLIVIA WILDE & JASON SUDEIKIS are expecting their first child.

GWYNETH PALTROW: The tabloids move in on adultery rumors. This is what happens when you overreact to Vanity Fair.

BRITNEY SPEARS scares Somalian pirates. If only Capt. Phillips had known.

12 YEARS A SLAVE is causing friction between Brad Pitt and Paramount.

SYRIA: Regime forces recaptured the strategic Christian town of Sadad after heavy fighting; the al Qaeda-linked fighters who had seized it earlier are said to have withdrawn. The OPCW has inspected all but two of 23 chemical weapons sites; the remaining two are inaccessible "due to security reasons."

LIBYA: Two of the Justice Department's key witnesses in last year's terrorist attack on the US mission in Benghazi were summoned to Capitol Hill this month and grilled for hours in separate legal depositions.

ISRAEL: Authorities recently thwarted a major cyberattack that originated in China.

EGYPT: Security forces and Muslim Brotherhood supporters clashed at Al Azhar University.

RAGING BULL attacks traffic officer.

A DOG reaching for treats is blamed for starting a fire that caused some smoke damage to an apartment in Wenatchee.

AN INDONESIAN SNAKE SPA offers a unique massage treatment which involves having several pythons placed on the customer’s body.

ANOTHER "LOST WORLD" discovered in Australia. They spared no expense.

LION vs PIGEON: Who you got?

A GREAT LIGHT HAS GONE OUT:

LOU REED, iconic songwriter best known for "Walk On The Wild Side" and co-founder of the Velvet Underground, has died at 71 of liver disease.  The Rolling Stone obituary is also worth reading in its entirety, but if you are going to assert the VU was "the most influential American rock band of all time" -- quite arguably true -- how can you omit the Brian Eno riff that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years, but everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.  RS is also right to emphasize that Reed chronicled the seamy underbelly of the 60s in songs like "I'm Waiting For The Man," "Heroin," and the sadomasochistic "Venus In Furs," but two further observations are in order.  First, Reed tackled these subjects without romanticizing them the way that, say, Jim Morrisson did, which partially accounts for why the hippie demographic never really embraced the VU (East Coast/West Coast rivalry also played a part).  Second, from the outset, Reed was equally adept at songs that were pretty when light, like "Sunday Morning," or "Femme Fatale," and beautiful when deeper, as on "I'll Be Your Mirror," the latter two unforgettably rendered by teutonic chenteuse Nico.  Although FM radio would eventually admit latter-day Velvets tracks like "Sweet Jane" and "Rock And Roll" into the classic rock canon, Reed and the VU generally went unrewarded; decades later, he and fellow Velvets Mo Tucker and Doug Yule would speak at the NYPL about how the industry hated them, among other topics. 

The RS obit also names glam as one of the genres it is difficult to imagine without him; that's true as far as it goes; Reed's live Rock N' Roll Animal set, powered by the twin axes of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, was a recurring favorite at the Music Works even when I was in college a decade later. But Cameron Crowe was equally correct to argue that during his glam period, "he's trying to be Bowie, but he should just be himself."  It was as himself that Lou Reed had his impact on a slew of bands, including -- but by no means limited to -- The Cars, R.E.M., The Ramones, The Feelies, Echo & the Bunnymen, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Cowboy Junkies, and The Jesus & Mary Chain. (Online reax gathered here.) The best of these were influenced as much by Reed's almost-coversational lyrical honesty as by his musical minimalism.  I don't mean to slight Reed's later solo achievements, particularly The Blue Mask, New Sensations, and New York, but RS covers them pretty well.  I would only add I saw Reed on the New York tour and he was rock solid, with The Feelies as the opening act.  BONUS: "The Ostrich," from the pre-Velvets Primitives. DOUBLE BONUS: How Lou Reed inspired anti-communist revolutionaries like Vaclav Havel. TRIPLE BONUS: The PBS American Masters special on Reed. QUAD BONUS: Lou Reed, Live at the Paramount Theater, April 24, 2008.

SWEARIN' advance streams Surfing Strange.

MIDLAKE advance streams Antiphon.

LUSCIOUS JACKSON advance streams Magic Hour.

CUT COPY advance streams Free Your Mind.

KNICKERBOCKERS: "Lies." Someday you're gonna be lonely.

LOS CAMPESINOS! singer Gareth David tells Weekend Edition the tone of the band's new album, No Blues, reflects a step in a more optimistic direction.

BASIA BULAT talks to the HuffPost about recording Tall Tall Shadow.

PETER HOOK relives the troubled legacy of Joy Division and New Order. 

THE ELEPHANT 6 COLLECTIVE gets a history at Paste.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa tops the chart with 32 million -- big enough to dethrone Gravity, if not as big as prior Jackass flicks.Even so, a nice opening against a 15 million budget.  Gravity finally sinks to place with 20.3 million -- but that's an exceptional figure for a film after four weekends.  Currently at 199.8 million domestic, Gravity will become the first to break 200 million in October.  Captain Phillips shows with 11.8 million on a mere 28 percent drop -- but it will need those legs to break 100 million domestic.  Of course,if the competitionremains like No. 4 film The Counselor, which debuted with 8 million and a terrible "D" Cinemascore from audiences, Hanks has a chance.  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 clings to the bottom of the Top 5 with 6.1 million, continuing to make free money from the lack of competition for the family audience.  Below the fold, the Carrie remake sinks to sixth, though it may get a lift from Halloween this week.  Also, 12 Years A Slave (which I reviewed last week) takes the eighth slot, despite being on only 123 screens.

CHRIS BROWN was arrested on a felony assault charge in Washington D.C. on Sunday for allegedly attacking a man outside the W Hotel.

MARCIA WALLACE, whose four-decade television career included playing the receptionist on “The Bob Newhart Show” and Bart's fourth-grade teacher on “The Simpsons,” has died.

CHRISTINA RICCI married her boyfriend James Heerdegen in NYC on Saturday.

KIM KARDASHIAN will be given away by Bruce Jenner, despite his separation from Kim's mother (who just got ripped by the normally docile Access Hollywood).

JULIANNE HOUGH caught flak for going blackface for her Halloween costume. Orange Is The New Black; blackface not so much.

EGYPT: A complaint against former interim vice president Mohamed el Baradei for "betrayal of trust" was dismissed.

LIBYA: Assailants tried to kill the deputy head of crime prevention in Benghazi and wounded his brother; the two men are cousins of the city's recently assassinated military police chief.

AFGHANISTAN: A news report found that the staff of the US' inspector general for Afghanistan will be unable to visit sites in 80 percent of the country in 2014, so that monitoring of billions of dollars' worth of US-funded reconstruction projects will be delegated to private contractors.

IRAQ: Al Qaeda is once again setting its sights on Anbar province.

SYRIA: Opposition sources said at least 15 Hezbollah fighters were killed in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Kurdish YPG forces clashed with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, the Al Nusrah Front, and rebels in Raqqah and in Hasakah, and took over the Tal Kawjar crossing on the Iraqi border from ISIS, which had held it for months. ISIS attacks killed at least seven regime soldiers in Hama. A regime colonel of military intelligence died of injuries in Homs.

BABY QUAKER PARROTS are excited for a meal.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A militant rodent roaming a community college in northern Iowa has become the No. 1 suspect in a vandalized bicycle incident.

A BRACE OF DUCKS wandered into a CVS in Saratoga Springs.

MOUSE vs SCORPION: Who you got?