Epic. Fail. At the Tony Awards after Poison finished their guitar-wanking set singer Bret Michaels walked head-first into a lowering backdrop. The reality star and hair-club-for-men member took a definitive face-plant and broke his nose. José laughs at his misfortune.
The record label Warp Records is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a commemorative box set. The set will include five CDs, five 10" records, and a 192-page book. The packaging is complete but they have yet to release a definitive track listing. José is expecting some Aphex twin b-sides.
Former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic is running for office again. This time his sights are set on the desk of the county clerk of Wahkiakum County, WA. Novoselic, has spent much of his post-Nirvana career meaningfully in local politics. Presently he lists his party affiliation as the non-partisan organization “Grange.” Nice beard dude.
Portland band Nurses have signed with record label Dead Oceans. Their first release on the label, Apple's Acre is scheduled for August 4th. Dead Oceans has posted an MP3 here.
Clear Channel and Front Line Management are trying to attract listeners to internet radio thru celebrity branding. The platform is called Artist Personal Experience (a.p.e.) radio. The program will launches this July. Participating artists include the Eagles, Christina Aguileraand Weezer. Aguilera's playlist will include songs from Santigold, Black Sabbath and Etta James. Weezers will include Will Smith, Lawrence Welk, and Stryper.
Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson got tapped to give the keynote speech at the UCLA College of Letters and Science commencement. On Friday Delson was came into sub for actor James Franco, who bowed out at the last minute. Delson is an actual UCLA graduate so the invite isn’t random. He graduated in 1999 with a BA in Communications.
Collective Soul is releasing it’s first album in three years. The album Rabbit is coming out on Roadrunner on August 25. It was recorded at vocalist Ed Roland’s Lake House studio. José had to look that up because they haven’t sold a platinum record in a decade.
On April 7th Jimmy Eat World is releasing a digital-only Clarity Live. The album is a live recording of their 1999 album recorded this February in Arizona. If you don’t remember, take word from Jose. Clarity was their last good album. That makes this worth listening to.
Rumors were confirmed this week that Rivers Cuomo will be collaborating with Rainn Wilson of the TV program The Office. Their joint effort will be released as a solo CD/DVD due out April 28th. The rest of Weezer is not even slightly jealous.
Brakebrakesbrakes (aka The Brakes) will be releasing Touchdown their 3rd album on April 21st. The album, produced by the Delgados' drummer Paul Savage, comes out on Fat Cat records in the U.S.
You’ve probably read that drummer Jimmy Chamberlin has left the Smashing Pumpkins. This time Billy Corgan has responded by holding open auditions Friday, April 10 in Los Angeles. Please submit resumes and video links to pumpkinsdrummer@gmail.com.
New Kids On The Blockare back from the dead and have announced a summer tour. The “Full Service Tour” starts May 28th in Atlanta and ends July 18 in Dallas. Tour mates Jabbawockeez are expected to help attract that chomo-bait crowd they enjoyed in the 1980s.
Malawian judge Esmie Chombo ruled that Madonna would not be allowed to adopt a second child. His ruling was based on a state statute requiring adopters to reside in Malawi for a minimum of 18 months. The question of course is why this law wasn’t invoked the first time. Madonna is now considering purchasing the entire nation of Malawi.
Metalcore band Zao has announced that they will only press 8000 copies of their new album Awake? The remaining sales will be all digital. The release is scheduled for May 5th on Ferret Music.
Minneapolis-based alt-country act the Jayhawkshave reunited for two shows this summer. One show at Barcelona's Primavera Sound Festival on May 30 and one at Minneapolis's Basilica Block Party on July 10. No other dates are scheduled but an appearance at Bonnaroo is rumored.
Earlier this year, you might all remember my diatribe of disgust over Weezer, or their sixth album, or the third one commonly known by its color scheme. Never in my life was I ready to just tell Weezer to hang it up, for them to just, um, bow out gracefully (gracefully is definitely not the word I should use here because it's hard for a band to bow out gracefully from an album that is, pardon my french, shit.) So then a few months rolls by, my copy of the album is sold back to my independent retailer for a few bucks, and I go about my life. That is until rumor has it that Rivers Cuomo was going to release a second set of demos and home recordings, titled Alone II, following up Alone, which came out a year ago this week.
Amazon announced it first, and Pitchfork noted it. Then the cover art was discovered: the same alone patch adorning this time a picture of a teen Rivers with some nice teased 1980s metal hair. I wasn't interested - when Alone came out last year, it held my attention for all of five minutes. "This Is The Way" was a god awful song that would not be on Weezer the following year and with good reason, "Blast Off!" and "Longtime Sunshine" were Songs From The Black Hole that I had for years, but could now have in pristine and clear audio quality. I quickly discarded that record, too.
But when they announced the songs for Alone II, my interests were piqued. Why you ask? Because of the songs making up this one actually have a little bit more substance. Songs like "Purification of Water" and "Walt Disney" have been favorites of mine for what feel like several years, songs that pre-date my formative years. The home demo of "Paper Face" is quite fun. Rivers first version of "My Brain Is Working Overtime" is also a half decent gem from around 1999-2000 and a song Weezer would play when they first got back to playing out. And as I listen, hell, even the newer songs demo'd just last year, the piano ballad "My Day Is Coming" and "I Don't Want To Let You Go" make me wonder why the hell is Scott Shriner singing lead on a Weezer album!? A few more songs from the Black Hole emerged, but nothing special, as collectively they make up but two and a half minutes of the disc.
But what might be the gem among all this? Cuomo's take on "I Can't Stop Partying". Written by Mr. Janet Jackson, aka Jermaine Dupri, Cuomo cut the track this year and has a serious take on a song that features the line "I gotta have Patron / I gotta have the E / I gotta have a lot of pretty girls around me". The best part of it all though? The Wurlitzer that's hiding underneath the double-tracked vocals just above the drums.
So what am I trying to say? This is acutally good! And you know why that is? Because it's all in the past. Cuomo says he has enough material to make a couple more of these, which is what he should just stick to. Let your fans peer through the archives, songs that you wrote about yourself, and not about vicarious things like hash pipes and dope noses.
Download: "I Can't Stop Partying" [mp3] // [Buy Here]
The election is over but music and politics met again this week. George W. Bush Jr. appointed country singer Lee Greenwood chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA.) This is as apt a decision as appointing Charleton Heston as head of the Pentagon. Lee Greenwood's main claim to fame is writing the popular but schlocky "God Bless the U.S.A." Greenwood is scheduled to be sworn in Nov. 17.
Jack Bruce of Cream got wasted and unleashed some feisty words from the podium. The occasion was the Marshall Classic Rock & Roll Of Honor and Bruce was to accept the award for Classic Album for Cream’s Disraeli Gears. After “thank you,” Jack added “Fuck off, Zeppelin, you’re crap. You’ve always been crap and you’ll never be anything else. Cream is 10 times the band that Led Zeppelin is.” …But José likes to sit back when geezers talk smack.
Before Halloween Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump planned to set a Guinness World Record for record for most Interviews on radio in a 24 Hour Period. José can’t say if that’s a legitimate category or not. But they started at 3 a.m. PST on Halloween and continued until for 24 hours. The previous record was 57 stations in 24 hours. FOB complete 72 interviews. FOB has submitted documentation to Guinness and await formal certification that they are losers.
Chino Moreno recently confirmed that Deftones bassist Chi Cheng has been hospitalized following a serious car accident. Warner Bros. also confirmed his condition in a statement that said Cheng was in "serious but stable condition" Details are limited.
Jack White has had to cancel a few appointments due to injury. On tour with The Raconteurs vigorous head-banging inflamed a disc in his neck. Among the canceled events is his scheduled appearance at the MTV Europe Music Awards. José says rock more, dance less.
Rivers Cuomo is set to release another set of home demos this month. Alone II: The Home Recordings Of Rivers Cuomo is slated for release on November 25th. The Weezer-front man is rumored to have cut one song "Can't Stop Partying" with R&B producer Jermaine Dupri. José is entertaining the possibility this will be worse than the Red Album.
None other than Jermaine Jackson has announced a Jackson 5 reunion. At a TV industry function in Sydney, he told attending members of the press that “Janet, Michael, Marlon, Tito, Randy and the whole Jackson family is getting back together. He confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the fam is already in the studio in preparation for a 2009 tour.
After a year of touring on a 7-inch, Narrows has finished recording their debut LP. The album yet untitled, was mastered by Matt Bayles. It’s due for an early 2009 release on Deathwish. The bands line up sports Ryan Frederiksen from These Arms Are Snakes, and Dave Verellen of Botch. José is pretty peeved that some n00b deleted their Wikipedia page.
Weezer recently stopped by AOL for one of those live sessions and boy is it .. interesting to say the least.
Sticking mostly to material from the recently release sixth overall, third self-titled effort more notably known as The Red Album due to its color modification, the band also revisited Pinkerton fave, "Why Bother?", which featured guitarist Brian Bell on lead vocals. This move made me prompt the question, 'Gee, Weezer, why bot--" Ha ha ha, I am funny, oh yes.
The other songs were weird choices if I may say so, outside of lead single "Pork & Beans" and "Troublemaker", as the band played deluxe bonus tracks "King" (lead by bassist Scott Shriner) and the iTunes only bonus track that is actually a demo from Make Believe, Brian Bell's "It's Easy," which I actually .. don't .. mind. Even though I hate to admit it.
The most interesting clip comes with their performance of "Miss Sweeney," complete with Rivers Cuomo dressed in a suit, singing behind a desk to Miss Sweeney herself, whoever that poor actress is. I guess this could be the next single? Maybe this could be the treatment for the video.
You can the see rest of the performances and an interview right here.
They could easily be the subject to a several entry piece under the My Formative Years moniker, but I just don't have the heart in me to do it anymore. James Montgomery said it best, so good that people asked if I had written that. He said, rather, questioned why was it that every few years this decade that when there was a new Weezer album announced that we got excited, because we all knew we were going to be sorely let down anyway?
I was a junior in high school when Weezer (The Green Album) came out, and was left unimpressed. That fall, I collected all those live mp3's of new songs from the several legs of the Midget Tour, and awoke every morning before school to download those songs that would or would not make Maladroit. There were some good songs there - "Living Without You", "Listen Up", "How Long?" - but none of them made the album. Instead, fans were given a record Rivers Cuomo was so sick of putting together that he let the A&R people at Geffen put together the final running order.
And then, nothing for three years. The only good between Maladroit and Make Believe was the last time I saw the mighty =W=, July 27, 2002 on the Enlightenment Tour. Best Weezer show I ever saw, as they played Pinkerton almost in its entirety. No "El Scorcho," but with "Butterfly" as the third or fourth song in that night, I was mighty pleased.
So, yeah, present day. There's a new Weezer album, and it's called Weezer (The Red Album). When I first read that the single was going to be something called "Pork & Beans," I was ready to denounce what excitement and fanboyishness left, but then I heard the song. And it was good. Actually, it was pretty damn good, save for the questionable lyrics. And then I found out the music was originally written back in 1998. So much for Rivers still bringing the A-game.
What upsets me this time around? Everyone getting a stab at taking the lead during the second half of the 10-song set. I don't mind Pat Wilson singing, I dig The Special Goodness, so "Automatic" doesn't make me cringe. It's Brian Bell's nasal-y whine during "Thought I Knew" and Scott Shriner's thugish appeal on "Cold Dark World" that just take away from it. It makes me that much less of a Weezer record than it already is. It does have a few moments that shine: "Troublemaker" might share the same chords (more or less) of "The Good Life", but it sure as hell beats the "boo-ya" chorus of "Everybody Get Dangerous". I won't even touch "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived", aka "The Greatest Reason For Me To Suspend My Allegiance To This Band".
If one wants to spend a few extra bucks for another four songs and a fancy booklet with running commentary from the band, you find some songs that should be on the actual album. And maybe if they were ("The Spider", "Pig") and they replaced "Thought I Knew" and "Cold Dark World", then maybe this album wouldn't be so bad and maybe I'd be able to say it's better than anything else they've put out this decade.
Sigh. That really bothers me. How can anyone, a fan, a blogger, a critic, think that this record is better than Make Believe. If anything, it makes Make Believe look like a record that is much better than already is. I mean, that record had the awful single that crushed my hopes and then had great songs like "Freak Me Out", "Peace" and "Perfect Situation" among others.
Oh well, I hate to say it but I'm done I think. Hang it up Weezer, hang it up.
On the plus side, without "Pork & Beans" we wouldn't have this:
Buy: Weezer (The Red Album) [here] // Buy: Weezer (The Red Album) [Deluxe] [here]
On April Fools Day 2k8, it was announced that Weezer's sixth album would boar a familiar title: Weezer. In keeping tradition with Weezer albums of self-titled past, this one would be known to the world as the Red Album for the color scheme the album's art work would utilize. At first, I was thinking it was just a silly April Fools joke, especially when it was mentioned that the first single would be called "Pork And Beans," but then Karl Koch of Karl's Corner at Weezer's official site confirmed all this was indeed true. I was baffled, wanting to denounce my allegiance to Rivers Cuomo and his band that I've had for many years.
But then, this past weekend, a 30 second clip for "Pork And Beans" was made available to check out on Amazon as a precursor to the release of said single next week. And I hate to admit it, but, it's good. It sounds pretty good. Like old Weezer good. Maybe all that chatter Rivers had mention of everyone taking turns singing and hip-hop verses and swing music or whatever was all a lie. I guess that will all be answered in time.
Weezer drops June 17th. Get your first, uh, taste of "Pork And Beans" here.
Download Audio/Video Tracklisting
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Epic. Fail. At the Tony Awards after Poison finished their guitar-wanking set singer Bret Michaels walked head-first into a lowering backdrop. The reality star and hair-club-for-men member took a definitive face-plant and broke his nose. José laughs at his misfortune. 
