Category: Artists (Page 196 of 262)

We hate it when our friends become…members of Modest Mouse?!

August 9, 2006 / Deb Medsker

File under ‘strange but true’: Johnny Marr has officially joined Modest Mouse.

Seems an odd fit, at best…but at least the members of Modest Mouse acknowledge how ridiculously blessed they are to have landed the famed former Smiths guitarist:

In an interview with “Rolling Stone,” Brock said Marr “made a cautious commitment to write and record with us, and then the tighter we got, he was like ‘OK, let’s tour too.'”

Modest Mouse, with newby Marr, will tour in support of their forthcoming album, “We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank,” which Marr helped write and record.

Brock told “Rolling Stone” that after the decision to have Marr tour with the Modest Mouse, “he was pretty much a member of the band—not pretty much. He’s a full blown member of the band. It’s really fuckin’ nice.”

Really fuckin’ nice. Still somewhat of an understatement (particularly since the phrase “lucky bastards” appears nowhere in that sentence)…but it’s a start.

Alternative, Artists, News

Step in doggie doo…

August 2, 2006 / Deb Medsker

…or listen to James Blunt sing “You’re Beautiful” just one more time?

It’s a tough call, isn’t it? Hard to find the upside in either one…and yet, in a poll conducted by London tabloid The Mirror, a majority of UK music fans voted James Blunt more annoying than stepping in dog poo, suffering from heat rash, and having a bad hair day — among many, many other things.

Click here for the full list of items the Brits find less annoying than James Blunt … and watch where you step.

Artists, Pop

“You told the same joke to me too many times…”

August 2, 2006 / Will Harris

And the joke this time – and a not very funny one, at that – is that, for the third time, Elvis Costello’s early catalog…his first 11 albums, to be specific…are being reissued, this time by Universal Music Enterprises. Shockingly, although the albums were previously put out in special editions by Rykodisc and Rhino (the latter including an entire second disc’s worth of bonus tracks), Universal assures us that these will be the “definitive reissues.”

Backed into a corner, Costello admitted he’d spent the money from the Rykodisc and Rhino reissues maintaining his nasty Faberge Egg habit.

Equally, I can assure Universal that, although I have all of Elvis’s albums (and, quite frankly, have had no real aversion to sticking with the Ryko reissues of those initial 11 albums, bonus disc or not) and have seen him live multiple times, there’s just no way in Hell that I’m going to buy these things again.

By the way, the above lyric is from Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ “It’s Time,” from All This Useless Beauty, an album not included in the reissues. (It’s from 1996.) Still, it was that or once again use Morrissey’s all-too-apropros line, “Reissue, repackage, repackage…”

Artists, External Music, News, Pop, Rock