Oct. 22, 1964: EMI rejects audition from the “High Numbers.” They change name to “The Who.” “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” live in 1965. Pete Townshend totally rips off Trail of Dead there at the end. (via fark)

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Maps’ latest single has a gauzy shoegaze feel to it and a strangely incongruous accompanying video. We Can Create came out in June on Mute.

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You’ve probably heard by now that The Hives are touring with Maroon 5. This oddball pairing is more likely the result of Maroon 5’s handlers trying to think of a way to lure open-minded, fence-riding “alternative” kids to its arena tour than it is the brainchild of a shirtless save-for-a-silk-vest Adam Levine sipping an [...]

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Something like 75% of Condé Nast’s most venerable publication’s readership - the always studious, perpetually thorough The New Yorker - doesn’t even live on the island they’re reading about. (Shit, I live worlds apart in Columbia, South Carolina and still can’t bring myself to cancel my subscription.) When it comes to art, music, theatre and [...]

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This live version of “Jump” recorded a few weeks ago at Van Halen’s reunion tour stop in Greensboro, NC is such a train wreck it’s uncomfortable to watch. According to RW370, who originally posted the video, the keyboard is running at 48k instead of 44.1k, which makes the notes 1.5 semi-tones sharp, so poor [...]

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As though Revenge weren’t embarrassing enough, Joy Division and New Order bass legend Peter Hook went on to create Monaco during New Order’s lengthiest hiatus in the late 1990’s. The band was a rubbish New Order impression at best, cashing in on the aforementioned hiatus with singles that closely mimicked New Order’s hybrid mix of organic and [...]

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PJ Harvey’s insanely brief tour promoting White Chalk at least allowed for one national television appearance, so the rest of us, who don’t live in L.A. or New York, could see what she’s up to. So, for her performance on Jay Leno Tuesday night, she was draped in black and played alone with an autoharp, [...]

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Saw The Shins last night in Charleston, SC at The Plex. What a shit venue. It’s an old movie theater that has been converted into a swamp of heat and smoke with no incline backing away from the stage. And parking was a total nightmare clusterfuck. Not the band’s fault, of course, and all was [...]

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My favorite Swede, Jens Lekman, recently stopped by the WNYC studios to chat and play a track from his new album, Night Falls over Kortedala, as well as a cover of Paul Simon, sans Chevy Chase?!.

(From the new record: Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo)

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Blender’s lists always need to be taken with an extra grain of salt, but this one  sort of semi-accurately collects a handful of the some of the worst offenders. The order just seems a bit jumbled. I mean Sting certainly has over-stepped the bounds of pretentiousness on more than one occasion (name-dropping Nabokov was bad enough, but mispronouncing [...]

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The Catbird seat has done your homework and mocked your blog by compiling the projected nominees for the ever-predictable, year-end best-of lists. Everyone knows these lists are meaningless and arbitrary, but everyone seems to compile them anyway. So, if you’ve been lazy this year and want to make sure you’re catering to fleeting tastes of [...]

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While the following words should’ve been an intertitle in that Van Hagar video where Eddie shows us he can wank off just as hard on the ivories, unfortunately they’re not:
Riiight now, somewhere in the Stuyvesant Heights section of Brooklyn, a pandrogyne noise pioneer is cursing God and weeping uncontrollably – unsure if s/he can even [...]

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So, it’s not quite the X-rated debauchery it was hyped to be, but Duran Duran’s new video for “Falling Down”, the first single off the forthcoming Red Carpet Massacre, is indeed a head-scratcher. I’m not sure I have the plot straight, but a sleaze bag in a limo drops off his girlfriend at some sort [...]

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As far as hippies go, Joni Mitchell has got to be damn-near one of the brightest yet most ill-tempered ones. But you can’t condemn her wayward hippie beginnings too much because, back when she hit the folk scene, being a hippie was actually somewhat subversive- a far cry from the lame, washed up cliché [...]

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Canadian folk-singer Bob Wiseman opened for Feist (back on the web already?) on her European tour, and on the last night she joined him on stage for his last song, “You Don’t Love Me”, to play drums. This clip is interesting in no other way.

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An astounding performance by Sinéad O’Connor at the Pinkpop festival in 1988. It’s almost disturbing watching her teeter on the brink of a complete meltdown. She seems so innocent and small with that shaved head, as she’s swallowed up by the stage and the enormous crowd, but she belts out the song with that unmistakable [...]

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Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles have collaborated on a new song. Just being in the same room with these two people at the same time would in all likelihood cause any innocent bystander to imbibe heaps of illegal substances, while indirectly catching a contact high of considerable measure. By some miracle, Winehouse, Doherty, and his bandmates [...]

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 …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is set to embark on yet another round of touring for its under-achieving, fifth long-player, So Divided, which has been on shelves the better part of a year. The band is hitting colleges with Adult Swim’s fictional metal band, Dethklok from Metalocalypse fame, whose debut record The Dethalbum [...]

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My loathing of The Killers knows no bounds, but I can at least understand why Hot Fuss was a hit. If it’s dancey in a safe “alternative” cushion kind of way and it sounds even a whiff like vintage Duran Duran, people will buy it. I get it. Sam’s Town, however, is another story. [...]

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I half expected this video to be a montage of dogs catching fish in some creek, while the bearded members of Band of Horses drank beer in slow motion.

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