Yearly Archives: 2004

U2 is missing their new CD!

Speaking to U2.Com, Edge said, ‘A large slice of two years work lifted via a piece of round plastic. It doesn’t seem credible but that’s what’s just happened to us…and it was my CD.’

The CD went missing during a photo-shoot in the south of France. The band recently completed much of the recording of the highly anticipated new album in Dublin and have been involved in post-production work in France.

It will be the first new studio album from U2 since All That You Can?t Leave Behind nearly four years ago.

French police have already launched a major investigation. (full story)

Wasn’t Inspector Clouseau French? I’m sure they’ll find that disc in a jiff…

On Kazaa!

What is the Public Radio Exchange?

The Washington Post says PRX “is part radio distribution service and part peer-review resource. For a minimum $50 annual fee, a producer can post audio material on PRX for audition and licensing. Other members then listen — free — or acquire the feature or news piece for broadcast.”

PRX describes itself:

The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) is an online service for peer-review and digital distribution of public radio programming, creating a new web-based bridge between producers and stations. It is a decentralized partnership that will provide good homes to good works, more broadcast opportunities for the people who create them, and new sparks of freedom, imagination, initiative, and creative vision for a mature public radio field.

I loved London Booted so it’s no surprise I’m very excited about Parkspliced…a reimagined, remixed and mashed-up version of Blur’s Parklife.

Give to a charity and download while it’s hot.

I’m not calling it “final” because as we know with Jeff Buckley, post-death releases come out faster than you can keep up with.

Singer/songwriter Elliott Smith’s final album, “From a Basement on the Hill,” will be released Oct. 19 via Epitaph’s Anti- imprint. Smith committed suicide last October; the material he had been working on was posthumously overseen by members of his family, as well as longtime collaborator Rob Schnapf and musician Joanna Bolme. (full story)

Did I tell you that I’ll be at the San Diego Sufjan Stevens show? Please, do not cry out of jealousy.

07-23 San Diego, CA – Casbah (w/ Joanna Newsom and Liz Janes) *
07-24 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour *
07-25 Sacramento, CA – Old Ironsides *
07-28 Seattle, WA – Neumo’s *
07-29 Portland, OR – Dante’s *
07-31 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall *
08-19 New York, NY – Mercury Lounge (w/ Br. Danielson)
08-20 New York, NY – Mercury Lounge (w/ Jim Guthrie)
* with Joanna Newsom and Denison Witmer

(Dates via Pitchfork)

Jim DeRogatis is the rock critic for the Chicago Sun-Times (arguably the best thing in that paper) as well as the drummer in the Agit-prop band Vortis. I can also personally attest that he?s a swell guy. That?s why I?m really excited about his new book that?s coming out, Kill Your Idols. He basically invited a bunch of rock writers he respected to come in and tear down the supposed great albums in the rock canon. He gives a great interview that really digs into what?s wrong with rock criticism today over at mediabistro.com. When asked if he avoided rock-crits like Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone, or Kelefa Sanneh at the New York Times he had a great answer:

Yes, I have a real problem with critics who are in the club. There is definitely a lunchroom clique of hip critics. Now, mind you, we are talking about a world of geeks to begin with. There is no such thing as a cool critic. But within the geek existence of critics, there is the cheerleader jock crowd. They are the snotty elitists, they are the hipsters. And I ain’t one of them. I’ve never been one of them, and I wanted to unite the folks who are not one of them.

Read the full, great interview here.

Helmet is set to return with the release of a new album, Size Matters, and nationwide tour starting this September. Founder Page Hamilton is the only original member remaining but he’s brought out some pretty heavy hitters to round out the lineup: Chris Traynor (Orange 9mm), Frank Bello (Anthrax), John Tempesta (White Zombie).

Check out a preview of the new album (2 streaming songs) here.

A lot of people are going loopy over this method for downloading mp3s that Jeffrey Veen posted. Basically it’s a command line protocol that will allow you to download all of the mp3s a website links without having to actually go to the website manually.

So you point this sucker at randomMP3blog.com and it looks at all the links and downloads all the .mp3 files in one quick swoop. You can even program it to go to 30 CDs every day, scrape the songs, and catalog them on your computer.

Okay, that’s sort of cool. Kinda. But I think it totally misses the point of all the sites who are taking the time to actually find these mp3s. The people running these blogs take a lot of time out to write about the songs, catalog them, and sometimes even host them on their own sites. By doing this, you’re just blindly downloading everything without knowing the back story.

If that’s the case, why don’t you just load up a P2P program and download everything you can find? It serves the same purpose. Save the bandwidth for people who actually want the mp3s.

Or take it one step further. Create a program that automatically buys everything someone links to from Amazon.com. You can have your credit card and shipping information automatically in your account for quick ordering!!!

I sweartagod, this guy has THE life:

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl logged time last week behind the drum kit with Nine Inch Nails at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Calif. His contributions are expected to appear on the Trent Reznor-led act’s long-awaited new album, “Bleed Through,” due later this year via Interscope.

Eagle-eyed fans spotted Grohl on Nine Inch Nails’ in-studio Web cam, sitting behind a mixing console. His presence was also tipped off by members of rock act the Exies, who are recording their next album at the same studio.

“Last week, we had a great barbecue with Queens Of The Stone Age and this week we come in to see Dave Grohl playing drums for Nine Inch Nails,” the band wrote on its official Web site. “Is that a trip or what?!” (full story)

Okay, Dave on drums is super cool…but screw that. Let me into that Queens of the Stone Age BBQ!

Strong Sad and The Cheat direct the newest video for They Might Be Giants: Experimental Film. Their new album comes out today, too. It’s a good one. Buy it from Amazon or download the mp3s which have no DRM on the band’s official site.