Category — News

Metallica has set September 12th, a Friday, as the release date for their new album “Death Magnetic”. This is unusual as traditional release days are Monday/Tuesday for albums.

The band’s last album “St. Anger” also saw a Friday release, reasons cited for this are that it prevents leaks. How true that is, im not so sure.

The band  has also filmed a video for the first single from their new record, entitled “The Day That Never Comes” with director Thomas Vinterberg.

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Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan is once again suing someone. This time it’s a photographer who was commissioned to take photo’s and video of Billy Corgan, he claims that his work is unsatisfactory.

“According to Corgan, Cohn has only shown Billy a little bit of his footage, but what he saw “was completely unsatisfactory and not completed in a professional, workmanlike manner in accordance with the standards of a music filmmaker.”

It goes on. The Tribune reports that Corgan twists the knife a bit by claiming that Cohn “misrepresented his filmmaking expertise and does not deserve the money he was paid.” Billy’s looking for a cool $100,000 in damages, plus the return of all footage. Corgan’s lawyer says that Billy sought to use the footage to “create works in different media.”

Smashing Pumpkins original members D’arcy and James Iha are now suing Virgin Records over un-paid digital royalties. To me the Smashing Pumpkins still have not reunited, cause it would take all 4 members being together to constitute a reunion for me. After seeing stories like this about the ego-maniac Billy Corgan its no wonder why they didn’t participate in the reunion.

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Guitar Blog has a great piece up (dated July 28th, 2008) about the inappropriate use of decals on guitars. In it, several points are mentioned about how it is not only deceiving to mark a guitar with the incorrect decal, but also an insult to the guitar you may currently have..

The most commonly used decals are Fender’s, these are put on everything from strat knock-offs to guitars that don’t even closely resemble a Fender. Squier guitars are common victims of the fake decal routine but as stated at Guitar Blog, you shouldn’t be ashamed to play a Squier Guitar as some of them are great guitars in their own right.

The desire to want guitars beyond your means is something every guitarist goes through. It is only after you  see many of your musical idols performing with cheap gear that you realize the instrument isn’t usually what makes them so good, it is their playing and that is what is most important.

The first edition of the Pemberton Festival ended the other day, and while I didn’t mention the festival here previously I was interested in finding out how it went.

The main acts playing were Coldplay, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Jay-Z, Nine Inch Nails, The Flaming Lips and Death Cab For Cutie. Organization wise the festival seems to have suffered, as reported by several publications. Festival organizer, Live Nation (formerly Clear Channel) claimed that the festival was a “triumphant success.”

No matter who you believe, you can still check out some great photo’s from the event at Stereogum.

Hoping to pick up on the absence of Guitar Center’s and convenience, Best Buy has announced that they will begin carrying musical instruments. The store won’t change into solely a musical instrument retailer, but they will allocate a certain amount of space per store to instruments/musical equipment.

“The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told The Associated Press.”

“Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland.”

“When the rollout is complete, Best Buy — already considered by many investors to be a global powerhouse in the electronics retailing world — will become the second-largest instrument seller in the country based on locations.”

While I am usually weary of huge corporations in general, I really think this is a postive thing. A lot of kids in smaller towns or areas don’t have any local music stores or even Guitar Center and I can see a lot of kids getting their first guitar from a place like Best Buy.

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Dischord Records is set to release a compilation of tracks by the band Faraquet. If you don’t know of the band they were around from 1997 until 2001, they preceded Medications and featured Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter as well.

The band was known for angular guitar parts and strong hooks, and have been described by some reviewers as a cross between Fugazi and King Crimson.

The compilation entitled “Anthology 1997-98″ is available exclusively through Dischord Records online in CD, LP and MP3 formats and will be available everywhere else on July 28th. Working on the compilation re-established an interest in the band and they have reunited.

I strongly recommend checking out this band if you haven’t yet.

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Acclaimed rock band Low has some tour dates on the horizon. The band has been playing a lot of shows at festivals but these are mainly headlining dates. If you’re not familiar with the band, they blend melodic guitar with stark minimalism that creates a somber, quiet atmosphere.

08-27 Saint Paul, MN - Turf Club (Eight Is Enough benefit)
09-11 Tel Aviv, Israel - Barby Club
09-13 Dorset, England - End of the Road Festival
09-17 Chicago, IL - Epiphany (”An Evening With Low”)
09-18 Detroit, MI - UFO Factory *
09-20 Monticello, NY - Kutshers County Resort (ATP New York)
09-22 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge (”An Evening With Low”)
09-23 Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall (”An Evening With Low”)
09-24 Boston, MA - Remis Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts #

* with His Name Is Alive
# with Tulsa

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Stereogum is having  a giveaway through their monthly newsletter and this time its a guitar. The guitar in question is an Epiphone SG, not the nicest guitar ever but very nice for free!

“You can learn more about it here. Speaking of knowledge gathering, maybe you can learn a Scars On Broadway song or two. The band’s the new collaboration between System Of A Down’s Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan. They mention Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Neil Young as influences on the new material, opened for Metallica last month and have a debut out 7/29 on Interscope. Take a listen. Practice. The winner gets the guitar and a copy of Scars On Broadway’s self-titled debut.”

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Stereogum has a very interesting post up today, which essentially is a link to a bootleg of a Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks performance at The Siren Festival from July 19th.

This is interesting because not only is a pretty official website posting a bootleg, but during the performance the band played a new song, not yet released titled “Astral Facial”.

Also of note is the picture above from the post, where it appears that Stephen Malkmus is playing a Japanese Fender Stratocaster, the kind I am always looking for because of the smaller neck radius.

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Pitchfork Media has already gotten around to compiling a 2008 list and its only July! Anyway, the list is for “Overlooked Records” and includes a personal favorite of mine…Earth’s “The Bees Made Honey In The Lions Skull” and others such as “Rook” by Shearwater.

They also included the newest release by The Mae Shi, who I think are terrible hipster crap, I think the record is meant to be overlooked. Different strokes for different folks I guess, check out it out for yourself..

Overlooked Records 2008.