Marc Hogan

Sunday, September 11, 2011

WATCH: Feist Debuts Five Songs Live

News Article
SPIN.com
September 6, 2011
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Fans in the Los Angeles area who paid attention to their Twitter feeds ahead of the holiday weekend got a sneak preview of Feist's new album Metals, arriving October 4. The Canadian singer-songwriter debuted new songs in unannounced show Friday night at the Del Monte Townhouse in Venice, CA. The blog Rock Is a Girl's Best Friend posted videos from the performance, which you can watch below.

As Rock Is a Girl's Best Friend points out, Feist first hinted at the venue for this "secret" performance in a Twitter message. "Anyone in Los Angeles will probably have a good time tonight if they can find this place by 10pm..." she wrote, followed by a photo of the Townhouse's glowing sign.

The surprise performance featured the the breezy, sumptuous "How Come You Never Go There," plus other Metals songs "Woe Be," "A Commotion," "Graveyard," and "Bittersweet Melodies." As Consequence of Sound observes, Feist is backed live by Vermont folkies Mountain Man.

In July, SPIN caught a first listen to the new Feist album. Pegging "Woe Be" as a highlight, we compared the song to Carole King and Leonard Cohen alike: "If any track has the potential to break big like [2007 album The Reminder's] '1234', it's this one."

WATCH: Feist, "How Come You Never Go There"

WATCH: Feist, "Woe Be"

WATCH: Feist, "A Commotion"

WATCH: Feist: "Graveyard"

WATCH: Feist: "Bittersweet Melodies"

My Chemical Romance Fire Drummer for 'Stealing'

News Article
SPIN.com
September 6, 2011
Link

My Chemical Romance has fired drummer Michael Pedicone from the band over an alleged theft, the New Jersey rockers announced on their website.

Pedicone "was caught red handed stealing from the band and confessed to police after our show last night in Auburn, Washington," guitarist Frank Iero wrote. "We are heartbroken and sick to our stomachs over this entire situation." As The New York Times' Arts Beat blog points out, what exactly Pedicone stands accused of stealing remains unclear. The band said it has no plans to press charges.

Pedicone was MCR's third drummer, joining the group late last year after the band parted ways with previous drummer Bob Bryar. "What happened is more complicated than it sounds but I did make a mistake," Pedicone responded on Twitter. "It was never my intention to hurt this band or all of you...It was an error in judgment based on a whole other situation that's way deeper but this does not define me." Original drummer Matt Pelissier left in 2004.

As of MCR's show Saturday in Utah, the band had already replaced Pedicone with Dead Country's Jarrod Alexander, MTV reports. The band has yet to reveal whether Alexander will replace Pedicone permanently or only on tour. Alexander's former bands include Death by Stereo and Suicide File.

MCR is currently on a tour with pop-punk vets Blink-182 that runs into October. "Blink is one of the bands we've looked up to and always respected. There are a lot of similarities in how we came up," MCR bassist Mikey Way recently told SPIN. "We both came out of scenes that we didn't really fit in, but we all came into our own and did our own thing." MCR kicked off the tour with a set that was heavy on older material.

Billie Joe Armstrong Kicked Off Airplane

News Article
SPIN.com
September 6, 2011
Link

Not everybody was sitting pretty over the holiday weekend. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong says wearing his pants too low kept him off his Southwest Airlines flight.

Armstrong aired his frustration in a Twitter message. "Just got kicked off a southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!" he wrote Thursday night. "What the fuck? No joke!"

As ABC reports, the singer for the San Francisco Bay Area pop-punk band was boarding a plane from Oakland to Burbank, CA, when a flight attendant came up and said to pull up his pants. According to an ABC producer who was on the flight, Armstrong at first brushed off the request, saying, "Don't you have better things to worry about than that?" After the flight attendant reiterated her instruction and warned Armstrong he could be kicked off the plane, Armstrong reportedly said, "I'm just trying to get to my fucking seat." At that point, Armstrong and a traveling companion were given the boot.

Southwest Airlines quickly replied to Armstrong's Twitter complaint with its own message. "Very sorry for your experience tonight, someone from our Customer Relations Team will reach out to you to get more details," the company said.

Armstrong ultimately opted to take the next flight, Southwest later told ABC. "As soon as we became aware of what had happened, we reached out to apologize for this customer's experience," a Southwest representative said. "He elected to take the next flight. We followed up with this customer and involved employees to get more details and, in our latest conversations, understand from the customer the situation was resolved to his satisfaction."

Last month, Green Day treated fans in Costa Mesa, CA, to one of the band's smallest club gigs in years. The set included 15 new songs, two of which resourceful fans managed to capture on video despite strict security for the event. Hear acoustic ballad "Amy" (a likely Amy Winehouse tribute) and riotous punk tune "Last Gang in Town" here.

Covers That Beat the Originals

Feature

eMusic
July 27, 2011
Link

Grace Jones, “Walking in the Rain” (Flash and the Pan)
Grace Jones called her 1981-82 world tour “A One Man Show.” That sly nod to her androgynous appearance and multi-faceted persona was rarely more appropriate than on this opening cut from 1981′s Nightclubbing. For her post-disco breakout album, Jones returned to the ace rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, plus another set of covers (Iggy Pop, Brian Ferry) as impeccably chic as the ones on 1980′s Warm Leatherette. And then there was “Walking in the Rain.” Applying a slick dub-funk makeover to not the Ronettes, not Love Unlimited, not even old Johnny Ray, but Australian new-wavers Flash and the Pan, Jones speaks the words, “Feeling like a woman/ Looking like a man,” and they’re transformed. She forgets to add, “Sounding fabulous.”

Wilson Pickett, “Hey Jude” (The Beatles)
Before “Hey Jude,” Duane Allman was an occasional session man so obscure the credits list him as David Allman. Afterward, he was a full-time Muscle Shoals mainstay, recording with the likes of Aretha Franklin; by the end of 1969, the Allman Brothers Band was playing New York’s legendary Fillmore East. Allman’s career-launching solo is a big part of this cover’s appeal, but equally important is Pickett’s stirring vocal, peaking with a raspy howl that makes Paul McCartney’s screaming original sound like his inside voice. Take a British pop song, change it into soul, change that into guitar-blazing Southern rock — and make it better.

Saint Etienne, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (Neil Young)
If it’s true Neil Young wrote “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” for Graham Nash — who’d recently broken up with Joni Mitchell — then it’s no wonder someone else would make the tender folk-rock ballad their own. On Saint Etienne’s 1990 debut single, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs turn the slowly waltzing original into a 4/4 dance-pop number driven by splashy piano, dub bass, and early singer Moira Lambert, whose fragile delivery has an innocence that eventual replacement Sarah Cracknell’s knowing sophistication could never quite share. “I was always thinking/ Games that I was playing,” Lambert repeats. If you want her, she’ll be in the club.

courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com