Category — Bands

Weezer’s, Drummer Patrick Wilson, says the band will be heading back to the studio to record their seventh studio album this November. They plan to work a Jacknife Lee, a producer who worked on a few tracks from the Red Album, including “Troublemaker” and “Pork and Beans.” Wilson says they have already begun working on songs, sending everything they come up with to Lee. Sounds like they must be working on some new songs, though according to Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, “some will be covers, others will be previously released Weezer tracks.

“We might do them acoustically or with an orchestra,” he said. “I’m thinking about something like ‘Slave’ or ‘December’ from Maladroit and maybe some old songs. I see us doing heavy versions of emotional songs.”

While some people might be annoyed that they would release older songs on a supposedly new album, I think it actually sounds interesting. Perhaps a reinterpretation of their better material would be more worthy listening material than just another cookie cutter single.

As for the album title, apparently Pat Wilson is a fan of doing it rainbow style, admitting, “if I had my way, we would just use colors from now on, then we wouldn’t have to think about titles. We must’ve had a hundred titles for the (’Red’) record, and none of them felt right so we just gave up and said, ‘OK, let’s just make a color.” Hopefully with the time they gain from not thinking too hard about album titles, they can think harder about how they can write a decent song (a.k.a how much they have to pay to make Matt Sharp re-join the band).

This year in Minehead, UK, All Tomorrow’s Parties is hosting Nightmare Before Christmas, a festival curated by none other than The Melvins and Mike Patton.

The festival starts on Friday, December 5th and goes through Sunday the 7th. The lineup, (at least for my tastes), is awesome.

The Melvins, Fantomas, Isis, Squarepusher, Butthole Surfers, Big Business, Dalek, The Black Heart Procession, Mastodon, The Damned, The Meat Puppets, Os Mutantes, Joe Lally and Monotonix are all bands I would love to see, especially on one bill.

The only problem with the festival is that a lot of fans here in the states aren’t going to be able to make it. As soon as this event occurs and other sites start to get some coverage up I will try and compile it here.

ATP Official Site.

The Smashing Pumpkins are gearing up to release a double-disc DVD set entitled “If All Goes Wrong” on November 11th.

According to pitchforkmedia…”The first disc features the titular documentary, which chronicles the band’s reunion and live residencies in San Francisco and Asheville, North Carolina last year through interviews with band members, fans, journalists, and other musicians. Also on the disc: a featurette about Pumpkins fans called Voices of the Ghost Children and, inexplicably, an interview with the Who’s Pete Townshend.”

The 2nd disc features “The Fillmore Residency”, performances from the bands residency at The Fillmore in San Francisco. The 2nd disc also contains 5 bonus tracks from the Fillmore performances.

This seems like the perfect Christmas gift for Smashing Pumpkins fans. It is obvious at this point that former members James Iha and D’Arcy refused Billy Corgan’s reunion offer. To me, having them on board is what would truly have made it a Smashing Pumpkins reunion.

A while back info about the Fender Jazzmaster 50th Anniversary Concert in NYC was posted here, well the event took place and Pitchforkmedia.com managed to get some good photos up on their site.

It seems like somewhat of a big event to have for a Fender guitar but it’s an important one. The Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar proved to be incredibly influential during the formative years of alternative rock. Bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine and countless others would go on to re-popularize the Jazzmaster and Jaguar.

During the early 90’s Jazzmasters and Jaguars were largely regarded as surf-music guitars by most players. As a result you could buy high-quality vintage versions of these guitars for around $200 or $300. As a result of their popularity vintage models now routinely sell for thousands of dollars. I’m pretty sure they’ll do a similar event for the 50th anniversary of the Fender Jaguar as well.

According to his spokesman, Richard Wright, a founding member and keyboardist of Pink Floyd, died yesterday at the age of 65 after a short battle with cancer.

Wright not only played keyboards in the band, but also wrote and sang several songs from their most popular albums during the mid-70’s, such as “Dark Side of the Moon “ and Wish You Were Here.” Some of he better-known songs include “The Great Gig In The Sky,” and “Us And Them.”

David Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s guitarist and singer, referred to Wright as “gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognized Pink Floyd sound.

“Like Rick, I don’t find it easy to express my feelings in words, but I loved him and will miss him enormously. I have never played with anyone quite like him,” he said.

Gilmour goes on to express his belief that Pink Floyd’s greatest moments were with Wright “in full force.”

Richard Wright’s death comes just two years after Syd Barrett, the founding member and former singer and guitarist of Pink Floyd. Since that time, many tributes have popped up in his honor, such as the upcoming album Like Black Holes In The Sky: The Tribute to Syd Barrett, which includes bands like Jesu Kylesa and can be streamed in full on myspace. I’m sure it is only a matter of time before we see similar tributes to Wright.

Dischord Records founder and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye participated in a debate/discussion with Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore at the Brooklyn Book Fair, yesterday. According to Billboard.com MacKaye and Moore discussed issues ranging from advertising and record sales to a packed audience. An excerpt from Billboard’s piece on the discussion…

“In response to the moderator’s use of the word “Google” as a verb, MacKaye began the panel with a rant about the danger of language being a branded commodity. He then discussed his band’s now-legendary $5 cover policy, saying that there are always ways for the music industry to be more efficient. At the same time, he encouraged the audience to support artists by buying their music and seeing their shows.”

“Finally, the pair addressed the hot-button issue of indie bands associating with brands. MacKaye claimed the notion that working with brands was the only way to expose music is a conceit created by advertisers, and that all bands have a choice as to whether or not to sell their songs.”

This event seems like it would’ve been really cool to attend, it doesn’t say whether or not the audience got a Q&A type setup with MacKaye or Moore but one would expect something like that to occur. It would be great to see a video or hear audio of the event, if I find out its been posted somewhere I will definitely re-post that here.

The blogosphere has been buzzing all week about Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood’s comment on BBC6 that the band has already begun to work on a new album. It seems the band doesn’t take any time off from music, having just finished a North American tour and gearing up for dates in Japan next month. “We’ve finished the main bulk of it and we’re off to Japan in a couple of weeks to finish it off,” Greenwood said.

I’m as big a fan of Radiohead as anyone, but I’m not quick to get too excited. Though some sources are saying they intend to enter the studio before the end of the month, Prefix aptly points out the fact that it could still take a while before we see or hear any new tracks, their last few albums being released about four years apart. On the other hand, the band seems to be adapting to the newer, faster, technological side of the music industry. After giving fans the option of downloading In Rainbows for free, I’m excited to see what they come up with next. Hopefully they do not heed Oasis’s advice. (At least Radiohead challenges their fans to like good music).

In other Radiohead news to not get too excited about, a ballet inspired by the band entitled Ride the Beast will open in London next month.

Last month, there was a huge news story about a blogger being arrested for leaking songs from Guns N’ Roses forthcoming “Chinese Democracy” album. This story was ridiculous in many ways, namely the fact that the FBI was involved in the arrest of the blogger and that the blogger also faces the possibility of many years in jail. This was looked at as extremely heavy-handed and very anti-fan, on the part of Guns N’ Roses. Apparently though, the Blogger’s arrest has now resulted in even more downloading of the leaked “Chinese Democracy” songs than ever before.

Website TechDirt.com has an interesting piece on this…

“Bob Lefsetz does a quick email back-and-forth with Eric Garland of BigChampagne, the company that tracks file sharing activity. Garland points out that prior to the arrest, there was almost no file sharing of the album, despite the fact that the leak happened a while back. However, since the arrest, the numbers have shot way up, as the arrest has really only served to alert the public that the album is available for download on BitTorrent.”

Now what they’re implying here is that this may have all been an elaborate viral marketing campaign perpetrated by the band and their management. This actually does make perfect sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the FBI is involved or why a fan/illegal downloader could go to jail for years. And you thought this whole “Chinese Democracy” fiasco couldn’t get more ridiculous.

This weekend at The Virgin Music Festival in Toronto (as posted about here yesterday), Noel Gallagher of Oasis was attacked on stage. It is possible that someone got fed up about Noel Gallagher bashing Radiohead, or Jay-Z or any number of other rock stars, but wow, to take it out on him in person is a little much.

The footage of the incident is available on youtube and shows Noel Gallagher getting pushed in the back very hard (at about 1:30 on the video), causing him to fall face first into his monitors. After this happens, the attacker begins to approach Liam Gallagher before he is tackled by about 5 or 6 security personnel. Pretty unbelievable.

Source.

Now, you might be asking me why I am posting about the Virgin Music Festival in Toronto (yes, I know it’s In Canada) when I never mentioned the one in Baltimore. You might also be wondering why I would bother calling it a music festival when I know full well that Jack Johnson isn’t on the lineup. But then you would have just answered your own question. At just a little more than halfway through the fest, we’ve already got an array YouTube videos to sift through. Check out footage of Foo Fighters playing Learn To Fly . And don’t forget the customary drunk guy who climbs a tree and gets kicked out . With an arguably better lineup than the Baltimore fest, I wouldn’t mind traveling the extra mileage to Toronto. All I can say is, maybe next year you’ll be seeing footage of me up in that tree.

Here are some more videos from the fest to check out:

• Bloc Party - Helicopter
• Against Me! - Trash Unreal
• Spiritualized
• MGMT - Time To Pretend