The only Hasidic reggae star since – well, ever – will be bringing the word to fans across the U.S. over the next few months. Matisyahu has recently announced a string of dates from July through September.
Matisyahu’s tour begins on July 9 at Philadelphia’s World Caf
Indie rock touchstones Iron & Wine and Calexico have teamed for a seven-song EP, “In the Reins,” which will be released Sept. 20 via Overcoat Recordings. The two acts are also planning a collaborative tour, which will hit the West Coast in October and visit the East Coast in December.
“We’ve actually been trying to do this project for a couple of years,” Iron & Wine principal Sam Beam tells Billboard.com. “Calexico’s tour schedule is pretty intense, but we finally did it. We ended up using some of my old songs that either didn’t make it on my first two records or were out and about on the Internet. We tried to reinterpret them in new ways for people that may have heard them already.”
To read more, visit billboard.com.
The Slip have begun recording their latest collection of songs for a new album. The band is working with engineer and co-producer Matthew Ellard (Billy Bragg and Wilco, Elliot Smith, Morphine) on this latest project which according to the band
BitTorrent users, beware: Your download may include adware and spyware.
Purveyors of the applications that produce pop-up ads on PC screens and track browsing habits have discovered BitTorrent as a new distribution channel. According to observers of the trend, videos and music that hide adware and spyware are increasingly being offered for download on various BitTorrent Web sites.
BitTorrent has grown into one of the most widely used means of downloading files such as movies or software. Unlike peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa, eDonkey and the original Napster, no central search technology exists for BitTorrent. Instead, links to specific files are posted on Web sites.
While applications such as Kazaa have long been associated with adware and spyware, BitTorrent has not. Until now, that is. Chris Boyd, a security researcher who runs the Vital Security Web site, said he found adware and spyware hiding in BitTorrent files.
In one case, an episode of the Fox TV show “Family Guy” was bundled with several pieces of known adware, according to Boyd. “Under that kind of load, a midrange PC can easily go under,” Boyd said. Both spyware and adware are known to hurt PC performance because they use PC resources to run.
In other examples, music files and porn videos came bundled with adware or spyware, Boyd said in an e-mail interview. He suspects that online marketers have launched campaigns to get their software installed on more desktops using BitTorrent.
“This is one of the most egregious spyware infestations that we have seen,” said Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt Software, a maker of anti-spyware software. “It is a major concern. It is going to riddle your system with pop-ups, slow your system down and potentially cause system instability.”
Full story: cnet.com
Today, Billy Corgan took an ad out in the Chicago Tribune, on the day his latest solo album, TheFutureEmbrace, hit the shelves. In it, he describes how the album represents Chicago and how it represents hope and is music to stand and fight for. Corgan mentions that he has made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. Corgan writes,
Motley Crue is one of 65 bands that were reportedly turned down by organizers to appear at the July 2 Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park, according to The Scotsman. The show’s promoter told the newspaper, “We simply don’t have room for them.” Along with the five previously announced shows in Philadelphia, London, Berlin, Paris and Rome, additional concerts in Toronto, Tokyo and Johannesburg were expected to be confirmed this past Friday (June 17).
The worldwide event will feature acts like Coldplay, Linkin Park, the Dave Matthews Band, Bon Jovi, the Cure, Elton John, Keane, the Killers, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Muse, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, REM, Snoop Dogg, Sting, U2, Snow Patrol, Brian Wilson, Crosby Stills and Nash, Faith Hill and event organizer Bob Geldof.
Live 8 is aimed at increasing awareness of poverty and hunger in Africa, while pressuring world leaders at the upcoming G8 Conference to “make poverty history.”
Motley Crue is currently on tour in Europe, and returns to North America for summer shows beginning July 24 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Source yahoo.com.
Natalie Merchant is recording an undetermined number of new songs for forthcoming two-disc Warner Bros. compilation of her solo work. “The deadline is mid-July, so I should expect it to be released in the early fall,” she writes on her official Web site.
The artist is also designing the packaging for the set. In addition to such well-known songs as “Jealousy” and “Carnival,” also expected are B-sides, live recordings and songs Merchant has contributed to various benefit albums over the years.
Since leaving the major-label world, the former 10,000 Maniacs singer has taken a low-key approach to career, releasing “The House Carpenter’s Daughter” in 2003 on her own Myth America label and devoting her energies to motherhood. Beyond the month-long outing launched in support of that release, Merchant says she has no plans for hitting the road anytime soon. “Touring with a baby is a bit more complicated and exhausting (for everyone),” she writes on the site. “So I have to be realistic.”
Source billboard.com.
John Popper, Chan Kinchla, Brendan Hill, Tad Kinchla and Ben Wilson – will release their eighth studio album and Vanguard Records debut,
Vancouver-based indie rockers the New Pornographers will release their third album, Twin Cinema, on August 23rd. Fans will get a taste of new tunes, and a reworked lineup, on a mini-tour this month.
While the band enjoys a large arsenal of players — sometimes upwards of eight — the newest member has a familial connection: Kathryn Calder, who sings and plays piano, is also frontman A.C. Newman’s niece.
“Neko [Case] can’t make the June shows, so Kathryn’s going to be the girl,” Newman says. “So we’re going to be kind of like the Fiery Furnaces — the relatives band [laughs].”
The band will be debut a handful of Twin Cinema tracks on the tour. “I think it’s kind of cruel to give your audience an entire album’s worth of new songs before they’ve heard the album,” says Newman, “so we’ll do about six or seven.”
According to Newman, the new songs reflect the Pornographers’ desire to expand their sound. “I’ve always wanted to make a really epic, epic record,” he says, “the equivalent of some 1,000-page historical novel — but within the space of forty-five minutes.”
The album’s title is about a shift in perspective. “The whole Twin Cinema idea was about going through some upheaval in your life,” says Newman, “where all of a sudden your everyday life looks completely different to you because you’re seeing it through different eyes.”
After the record’s release, the band will hit the road for a more expansive tour featuring yet another lineup change: Dan Bejar, who records and writes with the group, will join the Pornographers live for the first time. His band, Destroyer, will also serve as the opening act.
Newman sighs, “Yeah, the fall tour is going to be a totally supercharged Pornographers lineup that will probably never exist again.”
New Pornographers tour dates:
6/22: Hoboken, NJ, Maxwell’s
6/23: Hoboken, NJ, Maxwell’s
6/24: Lancaster, PA, Chameleon Club
6/25: Brooklyn, NY, Prospect Park Celebrate Brooklyn
6/26: Northampton, MA, Pearl Street
9/23: Vancouver, Commodore Ballroom
9/27: San Francisco, Bimbo’s 365 Club
9/28: San Francisco, Bimbo’s 365 Club
9/29: Los Angeles, Henry Fonda Theater
10/07: Newport, KY, Southgate House
10/08: Kalamazoo, MI, Club Soda
10/11: Boston, The Roxy
10/20: Chicago, Metro
Source rollingstone.com.
The Ramones and the Grateful Dead will both be feted with multi-disc summer releases from Rhino.
Due Aug. 16, the box set “Weird Tales of the Ramones” will compile 85 tracks onto three discs of music and include the DVD debut of “Lifestyles of the Ramones.” Originally issued in 1990, the latter rounds up the band’s complete Sire music video collection, bolstered by six clips the Ramones made during their run on the MCA-affiliated Radioactive label.
Musically, “Weird Tales” pulls highlights from 1976’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” through 1996’s “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.,” including such classics as “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Rockaway Beach,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School,” “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” and “I Wanna Live.” Also featured are the band’s covers of the Searchers’ “Needles and Pins,” the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” and Love’s “7 And 7 Is.”
The box will also include a comic book featuring the work of 25 top graphic novel/comic artists, including Rick Altergott (“Doofus”), Sergio Aragones (Mad magazine), Bill Griffiths (“Zippy the Pinhead”), Xaime Hernandez (“Love and Rockets”) and John Holmstrom. In addition to Punk magazine, Holmstrom has to his credit illustrations on the back cover and throughout the liner notes of the Ramones’ 1977 album “Rocket To Russia” and the cover of the following year’s “Road to Ruin.”
Meanwhile, on July 12, Rhino will release the two-disc Grateful Dead concert set “Truckin’ up to Buffalo, July 4, 1989.” The soundtrack to the Monterey Video DVD of the same name features audio taken from the show’s 24-track analog master tapes and mastered in HDCD.
This version of the Dead — guitarist/singers Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, bassist/vocalist Phil Lesh and keyboardist/vocalist Brent Mydland — was enjoying resurgent popularity, still riding the wave of the 1987 single “Touch of Grey,” which reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100. This summer tour came in advance of “Built To Last,” which would be the band’s final studio album.
To accompany the music, the “Truckin'” package features rare photos of the band and liner notes written by Blair Jackson, publisher of the Dead fanzine “The Golden Road” and author of the biography “Garcia: An American Life.”
Source billboard.com.
