Archive for August, 2009

R.E.M. has posted a second preview of its upcoming 39-song, 2CD Live at the Olympia album, a video of the band performing Automatic for the People opener “Drive.”  Due out Oct. 26, the CD/DVD package was  culled from five nights of “working rehearsals” in Dublin in 2007 that preceded the recording of [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new albums, reissues and/or box sets due out Tuesday.
ARTIST: Magazine
RELEASE: Play: Deluxe Edition
BACKSTORY: The U.K. post-punk act’s 1981 live album gets the expanded 2CD reissue treatment in the band’s home country, with the first disc containing the original 12-track set recorded Sept. 6, 1980, at the [...]

Trent Reznor is in the midst of Nine Inch Nails’ “Wave Goodbye 1989-2009″ run of small-club farewell concerts, and he’s certainly living up to his promise to make the shows something special: Not only did the band run through 1994’s epic The Downward Spiral in its entirety last weekend in New York, but Reznor also [...]

Lou Barlow is giving fans a glimpse of his forthcoming solo album Goodnight Unknown with a 30-minute “making of” documentary posted to Merge Records’ “LouTube” page, which also will feature five individually released music videos leading up to the Oct. 6 release of the album. So far, the Sebadoh/Dinosaur Jr member has posted a video [...]

Ministry’s Al Jourgensen this week announced his spin-off band Revolting Cocks will mount its first headlining tour in two decades this fall — although that’s really just in name only, since Jourgensen’s no longer even in the band, which is comprised of all new touring members.
Formed in 1983, Jourgensen’s RevCo long as been a sort [...]

Tabloid fixture Amy Winehouse joined the reunited Specials onstage at last weekend’s V Festival in England, lending her vocals to the ska legends’ “You’re Wondering Now” and “Ghost Town.” The festival slot comes as the band continues its 30th anniversary reunion (sans founding songwriter/keyboardist Jerry Dammers), which currently is slated to wrap up with a [...]

Elvis Costello’s oft-bootlegged Live at the El Mocambo finally will receive an official commercial release next month as the first title of the singer’s new The Costello Show live-performance series of complete concert recordings.
The 14-track live album captures Costello and the Attractions’ March 6, 1978, concert at Toronto’s El Mocambo club, as broadcast by CHUM-FM. [...]

R.E.M. is offering fans a preview of its upcoming 39-song, 2CD Live at the Olympia album with a video of the set’s opening track, Accelerate cut “Living Well is the Best Revenge.” The video is from the bonus DVD that will be packaged with the deluxe version of the live album, due out Oct. [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new albums, reissues and/or box sets due out Tuesday.
ARTIST: The Smiths
RELEASES: The Smiths, Meat is Murder, The Queen is Dead, Strangeways Here We Come
BACKSTORY: Yes, these are the vinyl reissues Morrissey doesn’t want you to buy. Rhino Records this week releases new 180-gram vinyl editions of [...]

Kudos to “120 Minutes” creator/host Dave Kendall for tracking down and posting a copy of the long-forgotten early-’90s parody song “Really Stupid,” which poked fun at the Brit VJ by sampling his voice (”Do you ever wake up in the morning and think… I am really stupid?”) over a sampled riff from AC/DC’s “Back in [...]

Bernard Sumner’s New Order spinoff Bad Lieutenant this week posted its first single, “Sink or Swim,” on the band’s MySpace page in advance of its official Sept. 28 release.
Hear “Sink or Swim” here.
Beginning Aug. 28, the band — featuring Sumner, late-era New Order guitarist Phil Cunningham and singer-guitarist Jake Evans of UK act  Rambo and [...]

While U2 still hasn’t unveiled the tracklist for its forthcoming deluxe reissue of The Unforgettable Fire, Bono and The Edge did discuss the project publicly for the first time — and preview one of the set’s unreleased tracks — during a visit to BBC Radio 1 this week.
Until this week, the band had only announced [...]