March 2004

Sonic Youth has wrapped work on its next album, “Sonic Youth Nurse.” The set is due in June via DGC/Interscope and is the follow-up to 2002’s “Murray Street.” Like that album, it was recorded at the band’s Echo Canyon studios in lower Manhattan and produced by the band with Jim O’Rourke.

According to a source, the record makes further inroads into the classic-rock sounds Sonic Youth explored on “Murray Street,” which was recorded in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Sonic Youth has a handful of tour dates on the horizon, including a March 16 appearance at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and a previously announced benefit concert April 30 at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. The group will also be on hand April 3 for the U.K.’s annual All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.

The group is continuing work on its SYR series of experimental LP releases, with the next edition set to include a recording from the 2001 All Tomorrow’s Parties fest. An expanded reissue of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo” is also in the offing.

Source billboard.com.

With the recent departure of multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach, Wilco’s touring lineup for the foreseeable future features two new players: keyboard/guitarist Pat Sansone (whom many of you know from the Autumn Defense) and guitarist Nels Cline (whom some of you may have seen sit in with the band last year at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago).

The new Wilco lineup features:

Jeff Tweedy: gtr, vox
John Stirratt: bass gtr, vox
Glenn Kotche: drums, percussion, etc.
Mikael Jorgensen: keys, laptop
Pat Sansone: keys, gtr, vox
Nels Cline: gtr
Everybody: cowbell

This version of Wilco (mach 5 maybe?) will debut in Columbia, Mo. at the Blue Note on 21 April.

March 30 will bring the long-awaited DVD release of Bob Dylan’s “MTV Unplugged” via Columbia. The video sports four songs not aired on the original 1995 MTV broadcast and also features “Love Minus Zero”/”No Limit,” which did not appear on the accompanying “MTV Unplugged” album.

As previously reported, Columbia will the same day issue the sixth volume in its Dylan “Bootleg Series” with “Live 1964: Concert at Philharmonic Hall.” The double-disc set was recorded Oct. 31, 1964 at the New York venue, two months after the release of “Another Side of Bob Dylan.”

Dylan just began a new run of North American dates and will play the first of three shows in St. Louis tonight (March 1) at the Pageant. Dates are on tap through a June 11 appearance at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn.

Source billboard.com.

Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and Ruben Blades are among the guests appearing on “The Ride,” the forthcoming new studio album from Los Lobos. Due May 4 from Hollywood Records/Mammoth Records, the 13-track collection is band’s first self-produced title in a career that stretches more than two decades.

“We’re all very proud of this album,” guitarist Louie P

In an all-around predictable evening at the Oscars (news – web sites), the ragtag heroes of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” hoisted the fantasy genre to a new artistic high Sunday, earning a record-tying 11 awards, taking best picture and sweeping each of its categories.

Peter Jackson (news), who shepherded J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga to the screen, won the best director Oscar and shared the adapted-screenplay award with his two co-writers.

“I think the fact that we had goblins and trolls and wizards and everything else made it hard for people to take it seriously,” Jackson said backstage. “I appreciate that the academy and voters tonight have seen through all that.”

Tolkien’s themes