Music Shuffle: March 20
Clarkson tops the charts, Reznor strikes again (with Jane's Addiction!) and Pearl Jam goes all out
Top 5 Billboard Albums
Kelly Clarkson’s All I Ever Wanted cut U2's party short by selling 254,000 copies, blasting her to #1 on the Billboard album chart. The-Dream’s second album Love vs. Money sold a full 100,000 fewer copies than Clarkson’s album, but enough to land the #2 spot. U2’s No Line on the Horizon dropped down to #3, while J. Holiday’s Round 2 debuted at #4 and Taylor Swift’s record-smashing Fearless lands at #5.
Billboard Hot 100 Update
Flo Rida’s “Right Round” is enjoying its fifth week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, followed by T.I. feat. Justin Timberlake’s “Dead and Gone,” which stays steady at #2 for another week. Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face” holds #3, while Soulja Boy feat. Sammie’s “Kiss Me Through the Phone” stays in its #4 position and Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” leaps four spots to No. 5. What a shitty song title.
Whoring the sacred doesn't always pay. Nirvana's back catalog is raking in far less licensing money than predicted. Three years ago, Kurt Cobain’s widow Courtney Love sold a full 50% stake in Nirvana's music publishing rights for a reported $50 million. As you can see by her progress from that point until now - namely her final transition into plastic surgery frenzied, pill-popping freakshow joke of the industry - she's put the money to good use.
The buyer of the publishing rights, Primary Wave, has so far earned only $2.3 million on licenses. Evidently they have yet to reach a deal with girls' deodorant. Guitar Hero evidently paid $50,000 for just one Nirvana song, 'Breed'. By comparison, they paid $5 million for 24 songs by Aerosmith. You do the math.
Meanwhile, Primary Wave has licensed 13 Nirvana songs to film and television productions for an estimated $480,000, compared to Jonas Brothers, who made around $1 million for 105 licenses in 2008 alone. Nirvana fans consider this good news, no doubt; the worst fate we could collectively imagine befalling the soundtrack to our youth would be in some lame-ass commercial. However, industry experts believe it indicates something else. They're claiming that Primary Wave may have misjudged their commercial adaptability.
Phish has already recorded demo versions of 20 songs for a new album, and, according to Rolling Stone, the band will rejoin producer Steve Lillywhite in the studio in April to begin recording.
They've also announced a slew of additional tour dates, but I've never been in the habit of promoting concerts by bands that ask police to arrest 200 of their own fans at a show, so let's move on.
The Decemberists teamed up with Gomez to give the SXSW Music & Media Conference a blazing launch on Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. The two groups, both of which are promoting new albums, performed at a SXSW Film Festival-closing party sponsored by the IFC channel and only attended by about 450 people. 300 of those had gained admission via a public giveaway earlier in the day, making it one of the biggest-buzz tickets of the week.
Gomez played a group of new songs from its forthcoming A New Tide, which hits on March 31 and hasn't leaked yet (from what I can find). ''We're here to inaugurate South By Southwest,'' the group's Tom Gray told the Pangea crowd, which the British quintet did during their hourlong set. Gomez first played the Austin festival 11 years ago.
The Decemberists' hour-and-a-half set, on the other hand, was a fan's wet dream. Frontman Colin Meloy led the band through blistering renditions of '''The Apology Song,'' ''Record Year For Rainfall,'' ''Billy Liar,'' ''O New England," ''The Soldiering Life'' and ''Days of Elaine" before closing with an epic rendition of ''The Mariners Revenge.''
They also paid tribute to St. Patrick's Day with a cover of the Pogues' ''Sickbed of Cuchulainn,'' also covering the Velvet Underground's ''I'm Sticking With You,'' during which frontman Colin Malloy switched to drums.
If you haven't heard it yet or read our review, The Decemberists' new album, Hazards of Love, is not to be missed. A folk-opera masterpiece if there ever was one.
50 Cent has failed to ignite beefs with just about everyone, until Rick Ross recently took the bait - but now Lil' Wayne is taking the fight to him. Truth be told, I have no f**king idea what I'm talking about, because 50 Cent is a genital wart on the music industry and there is far too much quality product out there to worry about what his opportunistically confrontational ass is up to. But I realize that many of our beloved readers may feel differently about 50, so I won't keep you in the dark. I'll just let someone else break it down.
Idolator reports: What better way to pick on 50 Cent than in a track called "Let's Talk Money"? Lil' Wayne delivers the dis, guesting on a number from the late Pimp C, with T-Pain.
XXL reports that Lil' Wayne is hesitant to get involved in a beef with Fitty (50? Fif?), yet the line "That n***a Pimp called me before he left/this bitch told me keep doin' ya thing and don't tell 50 shit" seems to indicate that he's not afraid to take a lyrical poke at him every now and then. (I'm digging T-Pain's swingy chorus more, though.)
There you have it. Oh yes, and he's putting out two albums this year, just like Eminem. Can't wait.
Pearl Jam will release a remixed, super-charged version of Ten, the group's debut album and the first offering in a two-year catalog re-release campaign. A new version of previously unpublished early sizzler "Brother," one of six unreleased songs on the set remixed by Pearl Jam's longtime producer Brendan O'Brien, shot to #1 on Billboard's Hot Modern Rock Tracks radio play chart.
In early May, CBS's "Cold Case" will have Pearl Jam-only soundtracked episodes for its two-part season finale. Pearl Jam is one of only 10 artists to be exclusively featured by "Cold Case," and the first to be featured in more than one episode. Overall, 16 Pearl Jam songs will be used on the shows, including several from "Ten."
On Saturday (March 21), VH1 Classic will air "Pearl Jam Ten Revisited," a 30-minute look back at the album, with original videos, the television debut of the uncensored "Jeremy" video, as well as archival interview footage of the band.
PJ drummer Matt Cameron will also be on hand for a live session of Rock Band 2 at 7:00 p.m. EST on Friday March 27. XBox Live Gold Members will be able to play the game live with Cameron by sending a friend request to Gamertag "Pearl Jam GWF" and being online 30 min. before start time.
Trent Reznor has done it again. Around 9:07am today, the Nine Inch Nails frontman announced in a Twitter post that fans could go to http://www.ninja2009.com/ to download a free tour sampler that included two new(ish) songs from each of the acts on the bill. The tracklist is as follows:
Jane's Addiction: Chip Away
Street Sweeper: Clap for the Killers
Nine Inch Nails: Non-Entity
Nine Inch Nails: Not So Pretty Now
Street Sweeper: The Oath
Jane's Addiction: Whores
The two Jane's tracks are both songs that fans will recognize from 1987's self-titled live release, but were never properly recorded until Trent Reznor and Alan Moulder stepped in.
"Just to get some creative juice flowing- we went into the studio for about two weeks," Perry Farrell tells Billboard.com. "We had the idea to re-record two tunes, just because they'd never been done officially in the studio. And we had some fun writing some new things. A handful that are close to finished, but not quite done. But there's no rush to put anything out at this point."
Street Sweeper is the new passion project from Boots Riley and Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello. They've got a new album coming out soon, the songs sound exciting and fresh, and they're touring with NIN/JA right now. Check 'em out.
The download site appears to be down, but given Reznor's dedication to his passion and his fans, I expect that problem to be fixed very shortly.
This was going to be the spot where I talked about Mötley Crüe's new Crüe Fest tour, talking about how awesome they are and how everybody should go see them and the bands they support. Then I remembered that this isn't 1989. Dr. Feelgood was a blazing inferno of awesome, but that was a fifth of a century ago. Now they're about as relevant as Sir Mix-A-Lot, and they're touring with bands so pathetically testosterone-overloaded and venereal that they should have mobile STD clinics on-site. Buckcherry? Drowing Pool? How many singers has Drowning Pool had now? Three? Four? Who cares? They suck.
“On the first Crüe Fest, the economy was pretty much the same as it is now, and it didn’t seem like it affected sales at all,” says frontman Vince Neil. “I think people still want to go out and have a good time, listening to some good rock music, and maybe forget about the shitty economy, have a couple of beers, and let loose.” Same as it is now? Where the fuck was he last summerr? Because I distinctly remember not being able to see fire on all five horizons back then. The word "bailout" was something that made you think of a boat or an escaped date-rape attempt.
Still, those bastards make it hard to walk away without hesitation. “We had talked about doing Dr. Feelgood in its entirety… well, we had actually wrestled with that, Shout at the Devil, Girls, Girls, Girls, and when we decided on Feelgood, it was only after that that we realized it was 20 years,” bassist Nikki Sixx said. “Looks like a big master plan, but it wasn’t.”
In addition, the band promised they’d start work on a new record after this summer’s Crüe Fest, and Lee confirmed that his reunited side project, Methods of Mayhem, would be returning this fall, too. Thank Christ for that! Just what the world needs: a new Methods of Mayhem record.
The strip-mining continues in the temples of our sacred musical memories, as Nowhere Boy, a biopic about John Lennon’s childhood, has been picked up by the Weinstein Company, according to Variety. The project is two weeks into filming already. Aaron Johnson, who played the young Ed Norton in The Illusionist, plays Lennon. Taking its title from Rubber Soul’s “Nowhere Man,” Nowhere Boy is being directed by Sam Taylor Wood, who helmed the Buzzcocks-inspired Love You More. The screenplay was based on the memoir written by Julia Baird, Lennon’s half-sister. “The story of John Lennon’s childhood has never been told, and now Beatles fans will be able to gain insight into his fascinating life,”
The full synopsis:
“John Lennon is an ordinary fifteen year old boy on the streets of Liverpool. Funny, smart, naughty, a real edge to him. But life is not simple for John — he grew up in a family of secrets and was raised by his Aunt Mimi from the age of five. When he is suddenly reacquainted with his mother, Julia, they form an unbreakable bond. A bitter war rages between the two sisters for John’s love. Faced with bringing it to an end, he learns the secret heartbreak of his past. But his mother gives him one great gift — music. A wayward boy finds his voice, and walks into the Beatles.”
Look for it next year.
How could you be so heartless? The judge evidently wasn't feeling the magic from Kanye's skyscraper ego earlier this week, because the egomaniac has been charged with three misdemeanors stemming from a September 2008 incident at LAX airport. The rapper had a confrontation with paparazzi that resulted in cameras being smashed and Kanye being arrested. TMZ reports that the LA City Attorney charged West with misdemeanor counts of vandalism, battery and grand theft . He's set to be arraigned April 14th.
West’s road manager/bodyguard Don Crawley was also charged with six counts: two for vandalism, two for grand theft and two for battery. According to TMZ, if convicted on all charges, West would face two-and-a-half years in prison. But you know and I know that he won't be spending a day behind bars. He could kill Shiloh Jolie-Pitt on national television and get away with it. Maybe.
Lil' Wayne has been ordered to turn over financial records for Tha Carter III after a publishing company accused the rapper of using an uncleared sample of Karma-Ann Swanepoel’s song “Once” in his track “I Feel Like Dying.” It wasn’t used on TC3, but it was performed in concert and was available as a free download on Wayne’s site to promote the album, according to XXL.
