Author Archives: David A. Cobb

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is offering a free song, Whenever You’re Ready, via its website.

Click here for more information. Not sure how long it’ll be there.

If you head over to the newly redesigned Richard Ashcroft website, there’s a special Christmas Eve interview posted for fans to check out.

I haven’t heard the entire album yet, but what I have heard is pretty good — much better than the last record. You can also view the video for the first single while you’re there.

There’s some buzz over on the Richard Ashcroft message board.

Happy Christmas! Enjoy.

Found this online:

Is your skin raw from repeated attempts to scrub yourself out of the shame spiral brought on by watching “Britney and Kevin: Chaotic”? Well, take comfort, y’all — you’re not alone.

Critics, apparently unable to handle the truth according to the Federlines, have delivered an evisceration of the shaky, flaky reality series not seen since the debut of “Hello, Larry.”

Seems they were unimpressed by Britney’s unparalleled talent for making goofy pig faces and tossing off such bon mots as, “Our sex is so good — ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy,” and, “They look like boobs, but they’re not. They’re my knees.”

Not even Kevin’s deep thoughts on marriage (“I don’t believe in it”) or the video evidence that the greasy ex-dancer does, in fact, bathe could win them over.

Here are some of the critical lowlights:

Variety: “A self-indulgent, mindless piece of drivel … a visual assault of nauseating camera angles, likely to upset even the most desensitized TV viewer … It makes Jessica and Nick look like Mensa candidates.”

The Washington Post: “There’s no danger of anyone ever dumbing it down. A dumber downer would potentially be lethal. It would have to be buried in lead for 10,000 years, like nuclear waste … An execrable mess by absolutely any standard, though of course these days the idea of standards is just all too uncool. It was America’s crummiest home video.”

Entertainment Weekly: “Career suicide by videocam … The truth is not only that she’s vapid, but that she’s self-obsessed to a dangerous degree.”

The Hollywood Reporter: “Spears comes across like a party-hearty college girl with her shaky-cam, finger-up-her-nose, close-up-of-her-pores, leering video snippets.”

The Boston Globe: “It’s just a tedious public exercise in self-importance and striptease.”

Television Without Pity: “The show is like an extremely boring car crash: It sucks and really nothing at all happens in the end, but nevertheless you can’t look away — the only true entertainment value being the constant and very real threat that at any minute either of Britney’s gigantic bodyguards might kick the [bleep] out of K. Fed, whom they obviously hate.”

Yee-ouch. Viewers seemed to agree with the brutal assessments: “Chaotic” finished dead last in its time slot.

Awesome.

Found this online:

Elton John says that Eminem is on par with Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger. In the new issue of Rolling Stone, the rapper is listed in the magazine’s second “Immortals” edition, featuring another 50 of the greatest figures of rock ‘n’ roll with appreciations written by other artists. In his immortalizing of Eminem, John writes that he got goose bumps when he first rehearsed with him for their performance at the 2001 Grammy Awards.

“From the start, I’ve always admired Eminem’s thinking,” John writes. “That’s the reason I wanted to appear on the Grammys with him when I was asked, despite all the nonsense talked about his being homophobic.

“Let the Boy Georges and the George Michaels of the world get up in a twist about it if they don’t have the intelligence to see his intelligence.”

Other contributors include Dave Matthews writing on Radiohead, Trey Anastasio on Frank Zappa, Beck on Hank Williams, David Bowie on Nine Inch Nails and Mos Def on Miles Davis.

The original top 50 “Immortals” were listed by Rolling Stone in 2004. Topping the ranks were the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley.

The following U.S. tour dates have been announced. I envy those near any of the cities listed.

May 1 – Coachella Festival (Indio, CA)
May 2 – San Francisco @ Fillmore
May 3 ? San Francisco @ Fillmore
May 5 – Portland @ Roseland
May 6 – Seattle @ Showbox
May 7 – Vancouver @ Commodore
May 10 – Minneapolis @ Quest
May 11 – Chicago @ Metro
May 12 ? Chicago @ Metro
May 14 – Toronto @ Phoenix
May 16 – Boston @ Avalon
May 17 ? NYC @ Irving Plaza
May 18 ? NYC @ Irving Plaza
May 20 ? Washington DC @ 9:30 Club
May 21 ? Philadelphia @ tba

Enjoy.

Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant are currently locked in a studio in Liverpool recording the new Echo & The Bunnymen album. It has a provisional release date of late Spring 2005. No title has been finalized.

More information on the Bunnymen can be found on the band’s website.