When they weren’t teasing us with a Webcast that’s taking forever to play on our computers, Radiohead were very busy making other headlines today. For one, the band’s management attacked a widely cited report by comScore claiming that 62 percent of people who downloaded In Rainbows didn’t pay a cent. “In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band’s website, it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales,” the statement reads, adding that the band “confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.” In other news, it’s been confirmed that the CD and vinyl release of In Rainbows will become available in non-North American music stores on December 31st. The album’s ninth track, “Jigsaw Falling Into Place,” will also serve as the first single, which will be released on January 14th. No details regarding the single’s B-sides or formats have been announced. The CD and vinyl In Rainbows will hit shelves a little more than three weeks after the discbox — which costs $80 and contains the CD, vinyl and a bonus disc — hits mailboxes on or around December 3rd.

Music, Recordings | No Comments »

• Britney Spears may have gotten schooled on the U.S. charts by the Eagles, but she has secured the number-one spot in Europe, Canada and Ireland and even set a new record for digital sales in the States. Spears has officially sold more digital albums in her first week of release than any other female artist, and Blackout is still at the top of the iTunes chart [UPDATE: She was just dethroned by Angels & Airwaves]. At least that’s something to keep her spirits up when Kevin Federline hauls her back to court.

• Nominees for November 29th’s first J.A.M. awards, where Jam Master Jay’s foundation will honor artists with “outstanding efforts in promoting social justice, arts and music,” have been revealed and include Nelly, Kanye West and Wyclef Jean.

• Festivals 2008 Update: Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park is hoping to curate a “multi-day, multi-stage outdoor concert festival for Summer 2008″ and is working with the producers of Austin City Limits to achieve that goal. The Stagecoach Country Music Festival will take place May 3-4th and feature the Judds’ first performance since 2000 in addition to Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw and Big & Rich. That weekend will also host emo extravaganza the Bamboozle, which will announce its first acts this afternoon at 5 PM. Next year’s Coachella will take place April 25th-27th with artist announcements expected next year, Billboard reports.

• Fans are calling the Sex Pistols‘ first reunion show in London last night “dire” and “shoddy” (and the band reportedly started their set thirty minutes late). The gigs are the band’s first in four years, excluding a small warm-up performance at an L.A. club last month.

• The Smoking Gun has unearthed another iconic rock star mugshot, this one of a vampire-esque David Bowie following his 1976 arrest for felony pot possession in upstate New York.

Music, Concerts, Recordings | No Comments »

• At a press conference announcing his partnership with Ciroc vodka, Diddy said last week’s claims that he threw a punch in a New York club over a woman were “just totally overblown … I don’t fight over girls.” Diddy did admit, “I am a human being and I will get into an argument at times,” and said police have looked into the situation. NYPD sources told Reuters he could face a misdemeanor assault charge.

• Police responded to a profanity complaint at Missouri State University earlier this month when a student band covering Against Me!’s “Baby, I’m an Anarchist” delivered the line “I was burning that fucker and stringing my black flag high.” According to the school’s Expressive Activity Policy, the concert was held in a designated “free speech zone” that allows free expression for all, excluding those that are “obscene, defamatory or incites violence.”

• University of Kansas students were relieved when spray-painted graffiti declaring “10.23.07″ turned out to be promotion for Coheed and Cambria’s new album and not, as rumored, the date of a school shooting. Someone had shot out windows of a campus dorm during the school’s fall break, leading to a large scare when the graffiti appeared.

• Alan Ellis, the creator of BitTorrent site OiNK who was arrested earlier this week, said his site is “no different to something like Google,” explaining to U.K.’s The Daily Telegraph, “If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any OiNK users break the law. People don’t pay to use the site.”

• Portishead are close to finishing their third album, according to what keyboardist Geoff Barrow wrote in the band’s blog, Pitchfork reports. Barrow theorized “one more day should do it,” earlier this week, indicating the band was almost done completing artwork selection and “getting live stuff together.”

Music, Recordings | No Comments »

Kentuckian Maurice Foreman claims that Kid Rock’s “So Hott,” the first single from Rock N Roll Jesus, is a direct rip-off of Foreman’s “Slow Death,” which was supposedly copyrighted back in 1997. The evidence, according to Foreman, is that Rock sings “So Hott” three times in the chorus (just like in “Slow Death”!) and that the two songs have near-identical lead guitar riffs. We listened to both songs, and Foreman’s claims are just straight up ridiculous. First off, Foreman’s song sounds like it was recorded on some eight-track tape-era medium. The chances that Rock by some miracle heard this Kentucky mountain man’s basement tape and felt inspired is less likely than a Kid Rock/Tommy Lee VMA rematch. That is, unless Rock is a member of some BitTorrent site that specializes in southern rock wanna-bes. If you’re gonna sue Kid Rock, at least think of something more creative.

Music, Recordings | No Comments »

If you thought Pink Floyd had exhausted all their fortieth anniversary surprises after they unleashed their three-disc The Piper at the Gates of Dawn reissue, think again. The band is releasing the massive Oh By The Way, which culls together all of the band’s proper studio albums into one box set. Technically, the band formed around 1965, making them forty-two, but this belated birthday present makes up for the oversight. Each compact disc is repackaged in mini-vinyl reproductions, complete with all the posters and postcards and dust jackets that accompanied the original records, except tiny-sized. They even brought back the original, iconic Dark Side of the Moon album cover for the first time since 1993, which is enough to warrant purchase. While the set includes every studio album from Piper to 1994’s The Division Bell, it curiously lacks the must-have rarities collection Relics. Storm Thorgersen, who is responsible for the majority of PF’s most well known artwork, was even employed to design the new cover. There are additional rumors that there might be an accompanying DVD featuring interviews and live performances. The set is out December 4th, giving people adequate time to wrap this behemoth in time for the holidays.

Music, Recordings | No Comments »

Death Cab for Cutie can be forgiven for taking an abnormally long time working on the follow-up to 2005’s Plans. The usually prolific band maybe needed to take a breath after pumping out five studio albums in seven years. Or maybe the tardiness can be blamed on the U.S. government. More on that in the next paragraph. In an entry on his official blog, Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla says that the band is six songs into the new, Jack Kerouac-inspired album and “it’s pretty weird and pretty spectacular.” Walla cites one song as a “ten minute long Can jam,” a reference to the Krautrock pioneers, which does sound pretty weird and pretty spectacular. There might have been even more progress on the new album, however, had it not been for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. For those who didn’t know, Walla recorded his upcoming solo album Field Manual in Vancouver. On September 19th, an employee at the British Columbian studio was to drive down to Seattle with the songs in order to get them mixed. The truncated version of a long, long story is that U.S. Customs seized the hard drive containing Walla’s songs because they were improperly declared at the border near Blaine, Washington. Evidently, hard drives give border cops the woolies. The hard drive underwent intense computer forensic scrutiny before being returned to the border checkpoint from whence it came (Walla has made water-boarding jokes about it), and has been sitting on a shelf at Peace Arch station for over a month. Walla says no government officials notified his people in that time (even though Homeland Security insists they made three phone calls to pick up the device). If the drive is in a customs office in Washington State, how can the album still come out in January, you ask? Thank the miracle that is the mail. Hippowest, the studio handling the sessions, shipped Walla the mixes, giving him adequate time to listen to the tapes. It also made the hard drive sitting in the customs station unnecessary, unless some gutsy DCFC fan wants to bust in there and get a first listen to the unmixed solo songs of Chris Walla.

Music, Recordings | No Comments »