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Ot was only a matter of time. But hey, thank God on high that Stone Temple Pilots have regrouped. What’s more, the band is taking it out on the road for a summer tour of 0f dates. In the meantime, Scott Weiland’s “other” band Velvet Revolver is finishing up its European tour, but since Scotty and drummer Matt Sorum are acting all bitchy towards one another, there may be no more of that group in the near future. |
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Hello once again! It’s time to check out some of the latest CDs arriving this week once again here at your friendly ESDMusic news depot. Let’s get to it, then, shall we? We shall, indeed. The Apples in Stereo return this week with Electronic Projects for Musicians. Feel free to hear some of it on the band’s MySpace page. Danger Mouse produced the latest from The Black Keys entitled Attack & Release, hitting the shelves today. For the full lowdown, peep the tale over at Billboard. Brand spanking new “hip hop supergroup” Dino-5 featuring Prince Paul, Chali 2na, Lady Bug Mecca, Scratch, and Wordsworth ship out their debut effort called Baby Loves Hip Hop Presents Dino-5. Groove to some cuts at the group’s label page. Kylie Minogue is back with X, previously released in the UK last November. Hopefully it’s a little better than Body Language was. Listen to it over at Kylie’s MySpace. Moby’s new one, Last Night finally arrives. Good or bad? You decide! Have a listen to it here. Accelerate, the new and highly-praised album by R.E.M. is available for your money. Not sure yet? Their MySpace beckons. And to cap this week off, we have Sevendust who are offering up Chapter VII: Hope & Sorrow. Need the 411, kids? Read all about it over here. |
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It’s taken Axl Rose so long to get off his arse and release Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy that it was only a matter of time that someone sought medical help. Enter…Dr. Pepper. According to the New York Post, if Axl ships the album in 2008, everyone in America - except estranged guitarists Slash and Buckethead - will receive a free can of Dr. Pepper. “It took a little patience for us to perfect Dr Pepper’s special mix of 23 ingredients, so we completely understand and empathize with Axl’s question for the perfect album,” said a company spokesperson. UPDATE: According to Rolling Stone, Axl has responded to Dr. Pepper’s offer. In a press release, Rose says, “We are surprised and very happy to have the support of Dr. Pepper with our album Chinese Democracy, as for us, this came totally out of the blue. If there is any involvement with this promotion by our record company or others, we are unaware of such at this time. And as some of Buckethead’s performances are on our album, I’ll share my Dr. Pepper with him.” |
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It’s time once again for a look at some of the latest stuff coming out on ye olde CD format this week. Dig it! Bryan Adams has an import album called 11 releasing this week. Apparently it’s another round of tunes recorded in hotels and empty theatres. Why it’s import only, I couldn’t tell ya. The B-52’s are back with Funplex. In case you didn’t know, our own David Medsker reviewed the album over at Bullz-Eye last week, giving it a solid three stars. Counting Crows are also back with Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings. I’ve heard mixed things on the album so far. So in that essence, it seems par for the course. Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple is ready for your purchase. You can check out some sounds on the band’s MySpace page. The Raconteurs’ Consolers of the Lonely is due and new. More info is available at Billboard on this somewhat already controversial release. Panic at the Disco is back with Pretty. Odd. And of course you can groove to it all you like over on the appropriate MySpace space. In case you forgot all about them, The Cardigans are releasing The Best of The Cardigans. It’s another import-only release, so chances are you haven’t thought about them much since “Lovefool” if you live in the States, right? And for some reason, even though they were already all remastered not too long ago (we even reviewed some of ‘em at B-E at the time), The Jesus and Mary Chain’s discography is more or less being regurgitated once again by Rhino. Feel free to check ‘em all out once more over at the band’s product page on Amazon. |
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…is being released tomorrow. No advance promos, and only a week’s advance buzz before the dropping of a new album entitled Consolers of the Lonely.
If you head over to the band’s website, you’ll be able to read their official announcement about the album, but the key paragraphs are these: The album was mastered and completed in the first week of March. It was then taken immediately to a vinyl pressing plant. Then to a CD pressing plant. Then preparations to sell it digitally began. March 25th became the soonest date to have it available in EVERY FORMAT AT ONCE. The band have done no interviews or advertisements for this record before this announcement. The purpose: to get the album to the fans as soon as possible and as we promised. We wanted to get this record to fans, the press, radio, etc., all at the EXACT SAME TIME so that no one has an upper hand on anyone else regarding it’s availability, reception or perception. With this release, The Raconteurs are forgoing the usual months of lead time for press and radio set up, as well as forgoing the all important “first week sales.” We wanted to explore the idea of releasing an album everywhere at once and THEN marketing and promoting it thereafter. The Raconteurs would rather this release not be defined by it’s first week’s sales, pre-release promotion, or by someone defining it FOR YOU before you get to hear it. Y’know, I gotta tell ya, those final thirteen words in the above excerpt were thisclose to being a definitive “you had me, then you lost me” moment for this writer. I admit to a certain amount of excitement for Consolers of the Lonely - I liked the last album, so I’m certainly curious to hear the new record - but thanks to those thirteen words, it’s now quite clear that, for as great a concept as it is to float an album to the masses without a massive advertising campaign and see if it succeeds on its own merits, at least part of the reason for this method is to give Jack White another opportunity to make his favorite blanket statement, “Fuck those assholes in the press.” Despite the fact that the Raconteurs are clearly enjoying the coincidence of timing, let’s be quite clear about this: the quiet-is-the-new-loud method of pre-publicity is almost certainly nothing to do with Maxim’s Black Crowes review fiasco, since the decision to release Consolers via this off-the-radar method would’ve been made long before that controversy reared its head. You may recall that I branded White an asshole just last year after his comments in the NME about how journalists were idiots for believing information that was put in his band’s official press release. All you have to do is just look at those big-ass capital letters in the lines from the press release to know that White put them there; you can imagine him typing them out, then flipping off the computer screen and screaming, “Yeah! That’s right! Fuck you guys!” Okay, fair enough, White’s still got an agenda, but the closing lines of the band’s missive about the album offer a very key sentence that rescues the release methodology for me: “The Raconteurs feel very strongly that music has worth and should be treated as such.” Indeed. Which is why I say that, despite having a complete jackass in their line-up, I’m hoping very strongly that Consolers of the Lonely proves to be a successful experiment for the Raconteurs. Oh, BTW, there’s a nice piece by David Bennun about the album’s imminent release over at The Guardian’s website, where, after acknowledging that “one might even see this as a direct attack on the very existence of music journalism,” he, too, praises the idea in principle…but the best part for me were the final pair of paragraphs: “But let’s not do the Raconteurs down; just because they have the luxury of putting out their album in this fashion, it doesn’t mean they’re obliged to. They have chosen to, and good luck to them. Only a cynic would point out that when a film is released without preview screenings for critics, it’s usually because it’s so dire that it overrides the dictum about no publicity being bad publicity. And only Bill Hicks’s hated notional marketeer would view this as a marketing gimmick in itself: ‘They’re going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market, they’re very smart.’ “I prefer to think of it as a genuine attempt to preserve the pleasures of the LP in a world where the phrase ‘LP’ is (wrongly, in my view) seen as redundant. As for whether this particular LP is worthy of such a gesture, I have no idea. I haven’t heard it. Of course.“ |
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Howdy doody, dear fans of fresh new CD releases! Here are some of the latest and greatest arriving on your favorite music store’s shelves this week: The A.K.A.s (Are Everywhere!) are releasing Everybody Makes Some Noise! today. Have a listen over at the band’s MySpace page. Bone Thugs returns with the new Still Creepin’ on Ah Come Up. Interesting title. You must call her “Dame” Shirley Bassey now, kids. The Dame’s latest disc, Get the Party Started is finally being released in the US this week. Bullz-Eye’s own Will Harris gave his review on the disc for us last week. Daniel Lanois’ Here Is What Is is heading your way this week, it is, it is! For the official B-E opinion, go check out Jeff Giles’ review of said disc, won’t you? What? You say Meat Loaf’s back again? This is news indeed! Yes, Mr. Loaf has done up the soundtrack for “In Search of Paradise.” More info on the project can be gleaned right here. The Switches’ Lay Down the Law hits the shelves today. I wrote it up last year, actually. But hey, listen to it here on the band’s MySpace. Danity Kane’s Welcome to the Dollhouse is arriving today. Again, the band has a MySpace haunt to check out the sounds. And to top it all off, Groove Armada is back with Soundboy Rock, another previously UK-only release finally making the rouns here in the States. Where can you hear it? Why, a MySpace page designed by the band, of course! |
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Catch her while she’s not having a psychotic moment and give her some money! Yes, Britney Spears will be appearing on the March 24 episode of “How I Met Your Mother.” Spears will be playing a “mousy” receptionist named Abby. Haha! Putting Brit-Brit in a low key “semi-unattractive” role is comedy gold. Set your stopwatches to see how long this latest comeback will last. |
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It’s time once again for the weekly dose of what’s new on the CD racks, so let’s get straight to it shall we? Cassettes Won’t Listen’s Small Time Machine is out today. Our own Jeff Giles reviewed the album last week at Bullz-Eye. Rapper Fat Joe is back with The Elephant in the Room. More info is available at Billboard.com. The Presidents of the United States of America are back once again with their new one entitled These are the Good Times People. Former Young Fresh Fellow Kurt Bloch produces. Hear the new sounds on PUSA’s MySpace. Snoop Dogg also returns to the fold this week with Ego Trippin’. Snoop’s MySpace page is the place to have a listen. The unstoppable juggernaut NOW That’s What I Call Music! series is back, with number 27 all ready to be ordered. Finally, both The Cranberries and Ohio Players have their own two-disc Gold collections out this week, while The Zombies’ Odessey & Oracle gets the deluxe “40th Anniversary Edition” treatment. Find out all about that right here. |
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After some deep soul searching, or whatever they’re calling it these days, former Destiny’s Child member Kelly Rowland got her breasts enlarged. She went from an A to a B cup, if you must know. The reason? She was tired of not fitting into her tops. Sez Rowland, ” I was sick of not fitting into my tops,” she says. “There was this one really hot House of Dereon top — I just wanted to fill that out!” |
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Welcome back for our second installment of New Tunes on Tuesday. There are quite a few big releases coming out today, so let’s get straight to it, shall we? Kicking things off we have Bauhaus’ new and final album Go Away White. Yours truly wrote up his thoughts on the disc last week on Bullz-Eye. And while there are some glimmers of the old days intact, for the most part this affair is more miss than hit. Only if you’ve been under the proverbial rock could you not have heard about the big stink caused when “Maxim” published a review from The Black Crowes’ Warpaint without the critic who wrote it having heard the entire album beforehand. At any rate, this album is now out to discover. For the official lowdown, head to the band’s official webpage. Black 47’s Iraq is hitting the racks today. Our own Jim Washington gives the album a solid 3 out of 5 stars, noting that “The band’s populist bent shines through on Iraq, which gains some momentum as it goes along. It helps to know that many of the songs are based on experiences of the band’s fans serving in the military overseas. ” Carlene Carter is back this week with Stronger. Fans can get a listen to the album over at Carlene’s official MySpace page. Flogging Molly also returns, this time with the album Float. Lead singer Dave King notes that, “Our last album was quite a meandering piece of songs.” This time around, the band cranked out 11 tracks and got the job done efficiently. Check it on Flogging Molly’s MySpace. For you Elvis Costello fans out there, Universal is releasing a two-disc “Deluxe Edition” of E.C.’s second album This Year’s Model, following in the footsteps of the simiarly deluxed-up My Aim Is True from last year. Seriously, how many more times is Costello’s catalogue going to be resold? Read all the gory details here. In slightly far more interesting reissue news, Michael Nesmith’s The Wichita Train Whistle Sings and Timerider are being packaged together and reissued this week. Amazon has an order page for it, but be wary: as any Beatle fan knows something like this is usually a quickie ripoff by a company looking to make a quick buck. Wrapping things up, we also have Michael McDonald (Soul Speak), Alan Jackson (Good Time), and the BoDeans (Still). |
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Bands now have another option when deciding how to promote their stuff. The iTunes link look like a good idea.
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Has Trent Reznor finally lost it? No one can be sure at this point, but we do know that he’s offering up the new Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV in a variety of ways. Amongst the choices to obtain the new material are the following: *DRM-Free downloads of the first nine tracks of the album, plus a 40 page .pdf file of the artwork, etc. *A ten-dollar two-CD set, with 16-page booklet to be shipped on March 8, including immediate download with purchase. *The $75 deluxe-a-rama version, with the regular album, plus a data disc with the album in a multitude of formats, and a Blu-Ray version of the album, all featured in a hardbound fabric-covered slipcase. Whew. *And for the over the top fan who has to have everything, a $300 package that nets you the deluxe version, plus the album on a four-LP set on 180 gram vinyl, pakcaged in a fabric slipcase. This set also comes with two limited edition Cliclee prints, and the whole thing in numbered and signed by Reznor himself. Limited to 2500 copies, shipping on May 1, with one copy per customer. Ah, and Amazon is offering the album for downloadable purchase as well. Plenty of choices for fans of all stripes. |
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Yes, we know that writing about music is like dancing about architecture (even if we’re not convinced that Elvis Costello said it first), but let’s be realistic: if you’re a music fan who likes to read, you can achieve a very special level of bliss when you get the opportunity to dive into a book about music. The Bullz-Eye staff knocked their heads together and came up with a list of 45 books that span several musical genres and include autobiographies and biographies, histories of record companies and music magazines, essay collections, and straight-up reference tomes. It’s not intended to be all-encompassing, nor would we presume to call it a definitive list of the best music books of all time. It’s simply a selection of some of our personal favorites, none of which would be out of place on a music fan’s bookshelf…and you can find it right here. We also got some of the authors in on the fun, as well as some of our favorite musicians, which resulted in enough responses from folks from Kyle Vincent to Henry Rollins to warrant Rock of Pages: Celebrity Edition. But we know: we’ve missed one (or more) of your favorites. We always miss one (or more) of your favorites. So call us out already and leave a comment. We can always use another addition to our Barnes & Noble shopping list… Filed under: Rock and Pop and Alternative and Rap and Hip Hop and Country and Jazz and Music Labels and Songs and News and Artists and Videos and External Music Comments: 4 Comments |
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Hello, kids! It’s time for ESDMusic’s new feature “New Tunes on Tuesday” wherein we highlight some of the new releases coming out this week. Do enjoy. First up, it’s The Cowboy Junkies’ Trinity Revisited, a one CD/one DVD package that features the Junkies’ going back and “revisiting” their breakthrough album The Trinity Session 20 years later, with special guests Ryan Adams, Vic Chesnutt, and Natalie Merchant. Read all about it here on the band’s official website. Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree also makes its debut this week. Our own David Medsker gave his own four-star review of the album here on Bullz-Eye last week, and as we all know, Dave’s a trustworthy fellow when it comes to groovy music. Janet Jackson is also rejoining us this week with her new album Discipline that will be available in both a standard and “deluxe” editions, the latter featuring the video for “Feedback” as well as other multimedia clips. You can hear the new song by visiting Janet’s Myspace page. Dolly Parton’s new album Backwoods Barbie is releasing today. The album is her “first mainstream country album in more than 17 years.” Seems like that should be news that old fans can rejoice over. The first single from the album is “Better Get to Livin.” The album is tied in to Dolly launching her own label. You can check out all the news over at Billboard regarding this new venture. Wrapping up the majorly majors, we have the return of Erykah Badu, who is releasing New AmErykah this week. The first single from the album is called “Honey” and you can listen to it right here. Other releases this week include Donny Osmond’s From Donny…With Love (a mix of ’70s covers and reworks of his own past hits); Diane Schuur’s Some Other Time; Death Angel’s Killing Season, and Algebra’s Purpose. |
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Coming as no surprise to anyone, Diddy recently appeared on David Letterman’s show expressing an interest in becoming a big time Hollywood actor. Per the report, Besides action-packed adventure, the rapper-producer’s ideal film roles would also include “making love to beautiful women” and “very emotional, heart-wrenching scenes.” Yeeeeeah. Or maybe he could just appear in the next sequel to “Friday” or team up with Vin Diesel, a similarly-minded “actor” and create something memorable. |
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