November 7, 2007

Is it just us or does it seem like every nearly living legendary rock star is currently on tour? Just take a look at the recent schedule for Madison Square Garden: In a one-month period, Stevie Wonder, The Police, Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen will all have played the self-proclaimed World’s Most Famous Arena.

Prices for all of these shows are expensive as hell, but luckily you can “try before you buy” thanks to the tapers who have made downloads of recent shows by all of those artists easy to find. We want you to make an informed decision about spending your hard-earned paycheck, so we’ve devoted this edition of Grousing The Aisles to three Hall of Fame acts that have been tearing it up lately.

Bruce Springsteen 11/04/2007 DAUD [FLAC, MP3 ]:

Photo via Tinkerbell 4406

Most ignorant jamfans think that Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band play the same setlist every night, but that simply isn’t the case. On Sunday night in Cleveland, for example, Springsteen debuted two songs from his vast repertoire for the first time on his lengthy fall tour. The first well-played bustout was the Dylanesque rocker It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City off of Greetings In Asbury Park. Be True, a fast tempo River-era B-side, which also hadn’t been played on the tour, followed soon after to excite the crowd.

Obviously there are some songs Bruce plays every night, because everyone who attends one of his shows deserves to see Born To Run. The Boss is also playing the shit out of a number of tracks from his new album, including the poppy Radio Nowhere and the bittersweet Girls in Their Summer Clothes. Yet Springsteen did an incredible job mixing things up in Cleveland, playing at least one song from every E-Street album except for The River. You can find audience tapes from each show of this tour, but we recommend you check out this show from Cleveland for the varied setlist and crisp recording. Read on for seven more downloads…

If someone would have told me a month ago that the biggest album sales controversy in the music industry during the first week of November 2007 would involve Britney Spears

NPR has completely outdone itself this time: The media folks yesterday launched a new website promoting the best of public radio music. The diverse new site contains free streams and features on a wide variety of artists ranging from classical violin player Joshua Bell to alt-rockers The New Pornographers. But it’s Monitor Mix — a blog written by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein — that wins the award for coolest feature on the new website. Check it.

• The Week Daily addresses the state of the music industry
• Legendary house DJ/producer Kenny Dope remixes Sharon Jones and the Dap-kings’ Keep On Looking
• Now you can finally buy your own Ghostface Killa doll [via tds]
• Done deal: Universal Pictures secured the rights to use Nirvana’s music in a forthcoming biopic about Kurt Cobain
• Prince fansites fight back against the purple one’s litigious ways
• A little exhaustion is good for creativity: The White Stripes used their time off the road to record some new songs and film a video
• Gothamist interviews Pitchfork faves Tokyo Police Club
• Marco Benevento announced a January residency at Sullivan Hall in NYC
• Derek Trucks balances life between families
• HeadCount plans to register 200,000 voters at concerts
• Gogol Bordello brought Gypsy Punk to Terminal 5
• Gene Ween documented the recording of La Cucaracha [via Wilson]

And, finally, try your luck at Rolling Stone’s Almost-Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz to see if you could beat Neeko’s high score of 39…it really is almost impossible.