Sunday, April 8, 2007

Year Zero, Imagine, April Fools Day


What do all of these things have in common? They all took place in music this week,

NIN/Trent Reznor have a new release called 'Year Zero' which tells of an Orwellian America in the not to distant future and will be debuting on April 17th. They are using a form of guerrilla marketing where clues contained in the bands t-shirts spell out web site addresses that lead to an internet scavenger hunt fans can access the sites by adding the .COM suffix. A t-shirt with "anotherversionofthetruth.com" leads one to a website that tells more about the content of the upcoming disc. USB drives with copies of the songs have been found in the bathrooms at venue's where the band has performed. In Lisbon, Portugal a fan found a drive with the song "My Violent Heart" another fan in Barcelona, Spain found a drive with "Me I'm not' and in Manchester, England a drive containing "In this Twilight." Fans have swapped the songs and posted them on blogs and despite warnings from the RIAA the entire album has yet to be leaked online.
NIN/Reznor have always been a group that tries new ideas with their material whether it is the first Cd 'Pretty Hate Machine' which made Ministry and Nitzer Eb less interesting and made them sound like noise. The 1999 NIN release 'The Fragile' although not commercially successful was a creative comment on the music scene in a time of the "boy bands, pop divas" and general lack of talented bands that were popular at the time.




A group that has enjoyed popularity regardless of what they have do from using an accordion as a principal instrument and releasing two children's disc in the past two years are readying a new rock album They Might Be Giants are to release a disc titled 'The Else' and will contain 13 tracks some of the songs will be produced by the Dust Brothers who they have worked with on a 1993 remix of "Snail Shell."

John Flansburgh said that they came up with a couple of ways to work on the new songs, "we got loops from early on in the process, a huge collection of delightful drum loops. That's how we started a bunch of tracks." The Dust Brothers then came to New York and helped them re-assess the things we demoed and written on our own. New songs that received the producers treatment were "Take out the Trash" however, "I'm Impressed" is just John Flansburgh and John Linnell but it reflects working with the Dust Brothers.
TMBG will spend two weeks in May previewing the new material beginning May 3 in New Market NH and wrapping up May 19th in San Diego, CA at the Belly Up Tavern.





The upright piano that John Lennon wrote the song "Imagine" is on tour and this time it will be photographed on the hotel balcony where Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed on April 4,1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. It was recently photographed on the grassy knoll near Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas where President John F. Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963. The piano will also visit the World Trade Center site in New York City, Federal Building site in Oklahoma, and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tx. The theme of the photographs are about peace and how the song Imagine was a message from Lennon to humankind about why peace is important. The piano is owned by George Michael and he is planning on making a documentary of the tour and the photographs of the sites. Putting them in a book with the proceeds going to charities for peace.




Keith Richards caused a stir this week when he stated that in 2002 after his father died he took his cremated remains mixed them with a bit of cocaine and snorted the concoction. The Disney company was upset when they heard about this not because Keith is doing drugs but because he will be the father of Jack Sparrow in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 3 due in theaters this summer.
Later this week Richards said that he was joking being that it was April Fools Day whether he did this or not may explain why he fell out of tree a few years ago while on vacation in Fiji


The annual Lollapalooza Festival will take place in Chicago's Grant Park August 3-5, 2007.Pearl Jam are slated to headline the final night of the festival which will be the band's only scheduled appearance for this year. Tickets are expected to go quickly and a three day pass to the festival will cost $165. Tickets can be purchased at Lollapalooza.com

Below a list of acts that are to perform.


Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Disco Biscuits
Kanye West
She Wants Revenge
Manu Chao
The Dresden Dolls
Wilco
Reverend Horton Heat
Death Cab For Cutie
The Smoking Popes
The Raconteurs
Andrew Bird
Gnarls Barkley
Stars
The Flaming Lips
Cursive
Ween
Blackalilcious
My Morning Jacket
Editors
Queens of the Stone Age
Lyrics Born
The Shins
Lady Soverign
Common
Calexico
Matisyahu
Feist
Ryan Adams
Aqualung
Umphrey's McGee
The Hold Steady
Sonic Youth
The Go! Team
Ben Kweller
Mates of State
Violent Femmes
Pepper
Thievery Corporation
Particle
Sleater-Kinney
The Red Walls
Nickel Creek
Mule Math
Blues Traveler
Wolfmother
Broken Social Scene
Sparta
The New Pornographers
The Subways
Iron & Wine
Of Montreal
Poi Dog Pondering
Blue October
Coheed and Cambria
The Secret Machines
Built To Spill


upcoming birthdays for April 9-April, 15 2007

April 9
Carl Lee Perkins ( 1932 – 1998)
American pioneer of rockabilly music,
a mix of rhythm and blues and country
music that evolved at Sun Records in Memphis in the early 1950

Gerard Way (1977)
frontman, lead vocalist
and co-founder of the
band My Chemical Romance

Albert Hammond, Jr. (1980)
musician and member of
the indie rock band The Strokes.


April 10

Shelby F. "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was a character actor and singer, best known for his 1958 novelty hit "Purple People Eater".

Eddie Hazel (April 10, 1950 – December 23, 1992) was a pioneering and influential guitarist in early funk music in the United States, most famous for his lead guitar work with George Clinton and Funkadelic.

Steve Gustafson (b 1957)
the bassist for the band 10,000 Maniacs

Kenneth Brian "Babyface" Edmonds ( 1958)
American R&B and pop singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, record producer, film producer, and entrepreneur.

Brian Setzer ( 1959)
American guitarist, singer and songwriter.
Stray Cats Brian Setzer Orchestra

Katrina Leskanich ( 1960)
Katrina and the Waves

Warren Justin DeMartini ( 1963)
nicknamed Torch, is
the lead guitarist for Ratt

Tim Alexander (1965)
best known as the drummer
for the rock band Primus

Kenny Lattimore (1970)
American R&B singer.
Among his most popular hits were
"Never Too Busy" and "For You".

Mike Mushok ( 1970)
guitarist and songwriter
of the hard rock/post-grunge
band Staind

Chris Carrabba ( 1975)
the lead singer and guitarist
of the acoustic-alternative
band Dashboard Confessional

Shemekia Copeland ( 1979)
American blues singer.
The daughter of blues guitarist
and singer Johnny Copeland

Bryce Soderberg (1980)
bassist for Los Angeles
rock band Lifehouse.


Liz McClarnon ( 1981 )
English singer
and member of Atomic Kitten

Mandy Moore(1984)
American pop singer and actress

April 11

Stuart Adamson ( 1958 – 2001)
was an English-born Scottish
rock guitarist, singer and songwriter
Big Country,

Lisa Stansfield (1966)
English
R&B/soul/house singer

Cerys Matthews (1969)
singer and songwriter,
Catatonia, from 1992 to 2001.

Ollie Riedel (1971)
German musician
the bass-guitarist for the band Rammstein.

Joss Stone(1987)
English soul, R&B,
blues singer, songwriter,
and occasional actress
sold over nine million albums worldwide.

April 12

Billy Vaughn (1919 - 1991)
a singer, multi-instrumentalist,
and orchestra leader.

Tiny Tim( 1932 – 1996)
b .Herbert Butros Khaury
American singer, ukulele player,
and musical archivist

Herbie Hancock ( 1940)
Academy Award and multiple
Grammy Award-winning
jazz pianist and composer


Lois Reeves (1948 )
American soul and R&B singer
most notable for being the
younger sister of
Martha Reeves
Martha and the Vandellas



David Bruce Cassidy (1950)
american actor and musician,
best known for starring in the tv
series The Partridge Family
from 1970 to 1974.


Vince Gill (1957)
American country music
musician, songwriter, and singer.

Will Sergeant (1958)
English guitarist,
best known for being
a member of Echo & the Bunnymen

Art Alexakis (1962)
singer/guitarist and songwriter
of the rock band Everclear

Amy Ray ( 1964 )
singer-songwriter
and member of the Indigo Girls

Nic Hexum ( 1970 )
vocalist and rhythm guitarist
for alternative rock band 311.

Guy Berryman (1978)
a member of the group Coldplay

April 13

Jack Casady (1944 )
the bass player for
Jefferson Airplane

April 14

Loretta Lynn (1934)
American country singer
and was one of the leading
country female vocalists
during the 1960s and 1970s


April 15

Linda Perry 1965
best known as the lead singer
and primary songwriter of 4 Non Blondes


Samantha Fox (1966 )
English former glamour model
and dance-pop singer.

Ed O'Brien (1968)
member of Radiohead.










Until next week GETOUTOFMYHEAD !

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