There’s a new website called Six Degrees of Black Sabbath. Essentially, it’s Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only with musicians. The title is kinda odd, as you can name any two artists in music history and the site will attempt to connect them in as few moves as possible – with or without Sabbath. For example, it jumped from Buddy Holly to Six Feet Under in 15 steps. It’s quite the fascinating site in terms…
Here are the stats of Billboard for this past week. Some bad, some good, some are just fascinating. First the bad news: Only 5.32 million albums were sold last week. Compare that to the 6.07m from the week previous, and the 5.89m from the comparable week in 2009. Year to date sales are at 115.1m, compared to 127.9m this time last year, which is a 10% drop. The worst news of the week: Justin Bieber…
Yet another example of why everyone outside of the RIAA hates the RIAA has come to light. It seems that our favorite Association has found a new way to make back the money its owed from illegal downloading. Instead of suing downloaders, the RIAA has decided to go after the downloading clients, specifically LimeWire. …And the RIAA won. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, for the Southern District of New York, on Tuesday granted summary judgment…
Spencer Elden, the kid on the cover of Nevermind, is now 19. He’s a starving artist – of course he is – and, in this candid three-minute interview, admits, “Everyone out there in the world has seen my penis.” In the short piece, Elden explains how the photo shoot went down for the iconic album cover, as well as his own art and style. It’s a good way to spend a few minutes. Nirvana Baby,…
The legendary Pixies frontman has put his entire solo catalog on his site for free. As he proudly proclaims on the site, The site here has been re-vamped a bit. I am most excited about our new player. It has all of the solo releases at the moment. You can play and listen at your leisure. We are hoping to load other releases (Pixies, b-side compilations, etc.) in the future. Which, I must say, is…
Another week sees another new album streaming before its release date. This time around, the band in question is the beloved Brooklyn indie collective The National and the band’s newest effort, High Violet. The New York Times website is hosting the stream and offers a fascinating bio of the band as well. It’s as stirring as 2007’s Boxer. My initial reaction is that this may well be the band’s defining record. It’s that good. If…
The prog band currently has its newest effort, Year of the Black Rainbow, up on its MySpace page to enjoy. It’s due out tomorrow so if you like it, go get it. I’ve never tried to understand the storyline that has gone since The Second Stage Turbine Blade. I just really think that C&C know how to write a fucking great hook and rock the hell out. If you are able to follow the story,…
The influential post-punkers have asked fans to help finance their newest endeavor, Content, via donations. They chose pledgemusic.com, and you can see the project for yourself (and perhaps throw some change their way). While you can purchase a standard version this summer when the album comes out, a donation now will actually get you some tempting goodies (as well as the album). Depending upon how generous you are, you can receive extras like: signed album…
I just find the following story fascinating on so many levels. Sony Music is alleging that Beyoncé committed piracy due to her own music videos being on YouTube. Specifically, Sony is taking issue with “Single Ladies” existing on her official YouTube account. If you go to it, “Ladies” has been replaced with a disclaimer reading: “This video contains content from Sony Music Entertainment, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds” (with “your…
So the Jersey punks – who put out the best album of 2008, the title track of which I gushed about last November – have put the title track from their forthcoming album, American Slang, up on their MySpace site. It’s the next logical step in the band’s sonic evolution. That is, they retain the punk style of Sink of Swim and the ’70s soul-tempered nature of The ’59 Sound while adding a dash of…
Steve Lampiris