Hitting the U.S. and Europe in coming months

Spoon's next album, Transference, is due January 25 in Europe via Anti- and January 26 in North America via Merge. And in the coming months, lucky folks in the U.S. and Europe will get a chance to hear Spoon play some of these songs live. Spoon's catalog of spiky new wave jams is already pretty huge, and they've always been totally smooth and on-point onstage, so you're pretty much guaranteed a good night out if you hit up one of these shows.

All dates are below.

Spoon:

12-03 Kansas City, MO - Midland Theatre
12-04 Boston, MA - Orpheum Theatre #
12-11 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom *
12-12 La Jolla, CA - RIMAC Arena
12-31 Milwaukee, WI - Riverside Theatre !
02-14 Glasgow, Scotland - King Tut's
02-15 Manchester, England - Academy 3
02-16 London, England - Electric Ballroom
02-18 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
02-19 Cologne, Germany - Luxor
02-20 Berlin, Germany - Frannz Club

# with Phoenix, Passion Pit
* with Black Joe Lewis
! with Jay Reatard

Arctic Monkeys' Matt Helders has revealed that the band have already discussed the recording of their next album – although they plan to take time out before gearing up work on it.

The drummer told BBC 6music that the band, currently on tour in the UK, plan to whittle down potential songs for the album further down the line.

"We're already talking about when we can record again, but I still enjoy being on tour as well," he said.

He added: "It's good to have time to work stuff out, then at least you can start doing the quality control before and actually record what you think is decent, rather than recording hundreds of songs to then find out you only like 10 of them."

Two websites that previously sold and streamed songs by The Beatles have been closed down indefinitely by a US judge.

BlueBeat and Basebeat started selling individual tracks for as little as 25 cents (15p) earlier this month. The band's record label EMI won a preliminary court injunction ruling the site had been selling the tracks unlawfully.

Now US District Judge John F Walter has prohibited both sites and their owner, Hank Risan, from streaming or selling songs by the Fab Four and other artists, including Lily Allen and Coldplay, for good.

A court date had been set for Friday (November 20) but the judge ruled on the issue beforehand based on pleadings by attorneys for Risan and the music label.

EMI claimed the sites were selling high-quality versions of copyrighted songs, which had never been legally released digitally, reports Associated Press.

Risan defended the company saying the songs being sold had been re-recorded – making them exempt from copyright. He claimed the tracks were both different to the original recordings and identical in sound, thanks to a new technology called "psycho-acoustic simulation".

However, the judge presiding over the case ruled that Risan hadn't been able to back up his claim.

Following the initial proceedings, it was announced The Beatles' remastered back catalogue is set to be released next month on a new format – an apple-shaped USB device.

Truth be told, I’ve been hunting for news like this for weeks now, scouring the Interwebs for new signs of life from Interpol—aside from Paul Banks’ slightly underwhelming pseudo solo album and Carlos D’s film career, of course. And just when the most that I could hope for was a speculative “?” post (Arcade Fire one was a hit, right?), drummer Sam Fogarino dropped the “new record” bomb on Paste. Boom:

“The new record falls back towards the first,” Fogarino told Justin Jacobs. “In trying to move forward, there was an unspoken realization that you can’t let go of your sonic-defining tag.”

The good news: Interpol’s upcoming 4th LP is due out in early 2010 and it’s a throwback to their breakthrough Turn On the Bright Lights. There is one unsettling new bit about Courtney Love showing up in the studio, but no worries! She simply yelled, “And he was a fucking shrimp farmer!” and walked out. No credit cards were exchanged or anything.

For more deets go thataway.

N.Y. Post

A game of chicken is starting to hurt EMI‘s ability to attract talent. Sources said that artists have become wary of signing with the music company because of the battle between private-equity firm Terra Firma and Citigroup over restructuring EMI‘s debt….According to sources inside and outside EMI, musicians are concerned that the company doesn’t have the money to properly market their material—most of the cash flow EMI generates is being used to service $4 billion in debt held by Citigroup….said one source at the label: “To the extent that they can’t put money behind records, that makes new signings all the more difficult.”...Another red flag for artists is the high executive turnover rate at EMI. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma, has replaced 80 of EMI‘s top 100 executives since taking over the label in 2007. Terra Firma itself at one point had as many as 40 executives at EMI, though that number is now down to 10…Indeed, as music industry outsiders, Hands and EMI boss Elio Leoni-Sceti are seen as liabilities themselves…

TheDeal.com:

Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) remain deadlocked about the capitalization of EMI Group Ltd. But at least one professional observer expects the standoff to end with a shove that pushes the London-based music company into the welcoming arms of Warner Music Group Corp….Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital LLC, posited just such an outcome in a Tuesday research update, citing what appear to be inexorable forces….The bank rejected the offer, leaving Greenfield to conclude “the best way for Citigroup to maximize the value of the debt it holds in EMI is to push for a break-up of the company, selling EMI‘s recorded music division to Warner Music and either leaving Terra Firma with EMI‘s music publishing arm or auctioning the asset to another bidder.”


Digital Music News:

One option is to simply liquidate. Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield recently recommended that course of action in a note issued Tuesday. “We continue to believe the best way for Citigroup to maximize the value of the debt it holds in EMI is to push for a break-up of the company, selling EMI‘s recorded music division to Warner Music and either leaving Terra Firma with EMI‘s music publishing arm or auctioning the asset to another bidder,” Greenfield relayed. ...Over the next few months, Terra is likely to meet its covenants, thanks partly to Beatles reissues and licensing initiatives. Just recently, the company was described as ‘barely’ meeting its financial deadlines by one well-placed executive, thanks partly to equity injections by Terra.

Former Velvet Underground members Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule will make an extremely rare joint public appearance on Dec. 8 at the New York Public Library. The three will discuss the Velvet Underground's music and legacy with rock journalist David Fricke as part of the "LIVE from the NYPL" series.

The unprecedented reunion of the legendary New York band comes on the heels of the publication of "The Velvet Underground: New York Art," a new compendium of previously unseen photographs, poster and cover designs by Andy Warhol, Lou Reed's handwritten music and lyrics, underground press clippings and other reviews, flyers, handbills and posters. The book, published by famed Italian book house Rizzoli, contains a recorded conversation between Reed and Tucker as well as contributions from Vaclav Havel and Jon Savage.

The event will take place in New York City at the Celeste Bartos Forum in the NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 5th Ave. and 42nd St. General admission tickets are $25, and $15 tickets are available for library donors, students and seniors through the NYPL website.

The original Velvet Underground lineup included John Cale, Sterling Morrison and vocalist Nico. The group's debut album, often referred to as "the banana album" from its distinctive pop art cover, was produced by Andy Warhol and includes rock and roll classics like "Heroin," "All Tomorrow's Parties," "Venus in Furs," "I'll Be Your Mirror," "Femme Fatale," "Black Angel's Death Song," and "Sunday Morning.". Cale left the band in 1968 and was replaced by Doug Yule. The group split in the early 1970s, though re-formed briefly with Cale in the early 1990s. Nico died in 1988, and Sterling Morrison died in 1995.

As lead singer and lyricist with X, Exene Cervenka was (and is) one of the great firebrands of West Coast punk rock, fusing pure energy and a wild, unfettered eloquence in a way that was totally her own. But after X broke up for a while in the late 1980s, Cervenka recorded a pair of excellent acoustic-based albums, Old Wives Tales and Running Sacred, that proved she could express herself just as strongly without the speed and volume of her old band. After diving back into the fast-loud stuff with her bands Auntie Christ, the Original Sinners, and the reunited X, Cervenka has returned to acoustic music with 2009's Somewhere Gone, an album that fuses spare folk melodies that suggest she's been listening to the Harry Smith anthology with bittersweet country accents that somehow make Cervenka's lyrics cut even deeper. The socio-political insights that dominated much of Cervenka's music of the '90s and the new millennium are less obvious on Somewhere Gone, but as a lyricist Cervenka remains a keen observer of the human condition, and her beat-influenced lyrics reveal an intense honesty and emotional force in her sometimes abstract wordplay, while "Honest Mistake" is a story of love which refuses to go right that ranks with her best work with X. And this album is one of Cervenka's great moments as a vocalist, merging the sweet and sour sides of her voice while displaying a control and a gift for subtle detail that stands comfortably beside the best work of her career. Cervenka produced Somewhere Gone and plays simple but steady guitar on most of the tunes, with Jason Edge, Amy Farris, and Cindy Wasserman helping to flesh out the elemental but often lovely arrangements. Somewhere Gone is a different animal from Cervenka's acoustic music of the late '80s and early '90s, at once simpler, riskier, and more confident, and it captures one of the great wild talents of her generation in strong and impressive form, still unafraid to take her talent in new directions after more than a quarter-century of blazing trails.

Two major news outlets, NPR and CNN, are covering in varying yet similar fashion the handful of Chinese bands coming to the US, both wondering if the whole Communist stigma will affect the Western-influenced bands’ reception in the US. As long as the music sounds good, right?

NPR:

America is used to exporting its culture. It’s called soft power, this ability to dominate the tastes of people in other countries. So an American band touring in China isn’t such a big deal. But a Chinese rock band taking the stage in New York?

That’s new. Everything about China’s emerging rock scene is new — except for its inspiration. And one of the biggest rock bands in China right now has decidedly old-school roots.

Lost In New York

The members of P.K. 14 are lost in Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood. They’re searching for a store that sells used musical equipment. Lead singer Yang Hai Song doesn’t stand out at all here, what with his tight peacoat, black skinny jeans and black framed glasses. Inside Main Drag Music, the band is trying to pick an amplifier for the night’s show. They ask the clerk how each one is different. The floors are crowded with amplifiers, the musicians’ eyes are wide, and they’re giggling madly. The amp they like is bright orange, manufactured by the Orange Music Electronic Company.

They’ll take two.

“It’s quite hard to find secondhand music store in China. Everything’s new,” says Yang. “So it’s very hard to find the ‘70s, ‘60s. We have no history. We have no history, so we just find a new one. But it’s very hard to find orange.”

The ‘60s is widely considered the heyday of rock ‘n’ roll in the West. Yang says that Beijing’s rock-music development is in its own ” ‘70s” now. There isn’t much to look back on.

Yang is 36. He’s restless, jerky, like a character in a silent movie — constantly smoking and jumping about.

“When we were growing up,” he says, “everything’s changing very fast. End of the Cultural Revolution and beginning of the economy revolution. It’s like, you think of the McDonald’s, it’s exist[ed] a long time… Actually, no. Actually, it exists a very short time. Past 20 years, it’s crazy in China. It’s chaos.”

CNN:

Two of China’s hottest up-and-coming rock bands—Carsick Cars and P.K. 14—are taking their first steps on a whirlwind American music tour to showcase the Asian giant’s latest export: rock ‘n’ roll.

The bands, along with a gaggle of other musical outfits, will hit nine cities—from New York to Chapel Hill, North Carolina—as they embark on their first official tour of the United States.

“We’re going to play to a different audience and we don’t know if they can accept us, especially as we will sing in Chinese, so we don’t know,” he said.

If buzz is any indication, Yan Haisong has nothing to worry about. The bands’ arrival has generated healthy anticipatory chatter on popular American music blogs and in the media, from Time Out New York to the Village Voice. Reporters and music junkies heaped on pre-show praise, with Time Out calling the tour a “roster of artists” that is “currently at the forefront of a national movement, pushing contemporary Chinese rock toward international acclaim.”

Considered to be largely underground and experimental, the Chinese rock ‘n’ roll scene has come a long way and is expanding fast. Just five decades ago, popular Chinese music was constricted to revolutionary songs and ballads approved by the government. Today, the scene has opened dramatically, welcoming in a variety of genres ranging from classical to heavy metal.

When Jack White produced and performed on Loretta Lynn’s brilliant Van Lear Rose album, he not only proved that his skills as an exuberant frontman could be just as affecting from outside the spotlight, but he also showed the world that a 70-something-year-old country music legend could still rock out as hard as the Guitar Center generation. Well, a lot has happened since then (White’s started two more bands, a record label, a studio, etc.) and now Jack’s found another living legend to work with.

NewOK’s Gene Triplett recently spoke to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Wanda Jackson, aka the Queen of Rockabilly, while she was en route to Nashville to begin work on an album produced by the man behind Third Man himself.

“They had a super album, but he didn’t have her do anything different, you know,” said Jackson, 72, of White’s Grammy-winning album with Loretta Lynn. “She just did her little Loretta Lynn songs. But he told me he’s gonna stretch me some, so we’ll see. We’ll talk later.”

According to Triplett, the pair are planning to release a digital single before tackling a full LP, which will be Jackson’s first album since Heart Trouble, a record that included collaborations with Dave Alvin, The Cramps, ex-Stray Cat Lee Rocker, and others.

You may now call Jarvis Cocker Dr. Cocker. The singer, radio show host, and animated banjo strummer received an honorary doctorate from his hometown’s Sheffield Hallam University, where he studied briefly when the school was then Sheffield Polytechnic, reports the BBC.

“I’m called a doctor now. Don’t worry, I won’t open a surgery,” Cocker said in his acceptance speech. “But I guess if you are a songwriter maybe I could have some kind of musical surgery. If you had a song with a swollen chorus, or a varicose verse, or if you need a little bit of help I could try and heal your song for you.”

It’s about time Cocker got an honorary degree, I say, ‘cause he’s been dressing like a college professor for years. Still, I think I’d rather get a lecture from Johnny Marr.

While Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar have had their share of differences since the acrimonious breakup of Uncle Tupelo, at least they now have one rather remarkable thing in common -- they've both had the opportunity to collaborate with a noted American writer who happened to be dead. In 1998, Tweedy's group Wilco joined forces with Billy Bragg on the album Mermaid Avenue, in which they set a handful of newly discovered poems by Woody Guthrie to music, and now Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie have released One Fast Move or I'm Gone, a collection of songs created for a documentary film about the fabled Beat-era writer Jack Kerouac and the troubling circumstances that inspired his 1962 novel Big Sur. For One Fast Move or I'm Gone, Farrar has taken passages from Kerouac's book and, with a bit of editing and paraphrasing, set them to original melodies, with Farrar and Gibbard trading off on the lead vocals. Though only a few of the songs actually appear in the movie, Farrar has included 12 tunes on the album, and while they don't quite tell the whole tale of alcoholic excess and spiritual despair Kerouac set down in Big Sur, the songs honor the spirit of the author, if not quite the letter of his original source. Musically, this material follows the same moody, lonesome, and expansive sound that's been Farrar's melodic trademark in his work with Son Volt and on his solo recordings, and if it hardly matches the swinging bebop jazz usually associated with the Beats (one lyric cites digging Stan Getz on the hi-fi), the bluesy undertow of this music is a good match for Kerouac's long, unblinking look into the emotional void. But while Farrar's voice is keyed well to the melodies, Gibbard's lighter and more playful tone captures the restless meter of Kerouac's writings much more comfortably than Farrar, who somehow manages to make the words of one of the most distinct literary voices of the 20th century sound like outtakes from Wide Swing Tremolo -- not bad, mind you, but not all that different from his usual work. One Fast Move or I'm Gone might have evoked Jack Kerouac more vividly with other vocalists besides Farrar, but as a composer and producer, he's done right by his lyricist, and the results are modest but rewarding.

David Bowie, Lou Reed, Talking Heads also tackled on covers album

Peter Gabriel fronted Genesis when they were astral prog travelers. He also did time as one of the weirdest, least likely pop stars of the 80s and early 90s, looking like a bank manager but cranking out hallucinatory art-funk videos like "Sledgehammer" and "Shock the Monkey". More recently, he teamed up with Hot Chip to cover Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"-- a song that namechecks Gabriel himself. Suffice to say, Gabriel's weirdo credentials are fully in place.

Early next year, he'll reemerge with an orchestral covers album that will include Gabriel's versions of songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, and the Magnetic Fields, as NME reports.

According to The Guardian, Gabriel's Scratch My Back is part of a "song-swap project" in which Gabriel will cover other people's songs, and they'll cover his. That means there's at least an outside possibility that we could hear Bon Iver take on "Red Rain"-- which would be awesome. According to NME, Scratch My Back, due January 25, is the first release in a planned series, so maybe the other folks covering Gabriel will come later.

Composer John Metcalfe tells the BBC that the album will be recorded acoustically, and that Gabriel will stick with orchestral instruments rather than drums or guitars. Says Metcalfe: "The songs are not simply covers. They are major reinterpretations of some famous stuff. It's quite radical ..."

NME has confirmed the tracklist, and it'll be fascinating to hear what Gabriel does with these songs:

Scratch My Back:

01 Heroes (David Bowie cover)
02 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon cover)
03 Mirrorball (Elbow cover)
04 Flume (Bon Iver cover)
05 Listening Wind (Talking Heads cover)
06 The Power of the Heart (Lou Reed cover)
07 My Body Is a Cage (Arcade Fire cover)
08 The Book of Love (Magnetic Fields cover)
09 I Think It's Going to Rain Today (Randy Newman cover)
10 Après Moi (Regina Spektor cover)
11 Philadelphia (Neil Young cover)
12 Street Spirit (Radiohead cover)

You may as well write “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Presents:” before each year’s Super Bowl halftime show performer announcement, as organizers for the event are allegedly following Tom Petty in ‘08 and Bruce Springsteen this year with The Who.

According to a Sports Illustrated source (via Spinner), the two surviving original Who members, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, will entertain the millions of viewers of Super Bowl XLIV in Miami on Feb. 7 of next year. I realize that classic rock plays well in a stadium and we’re huge Who fans around here, but this seems like a strange choice. The NFL are not making an official announcement yet, so here’s hoping SI didn’t get the full scoop and there are other acts planned for the event as well. Maybe the Faces should get in on this… or Zeppelin?

Beggars have announced initial details of the planned super-deluxe Omnibus editions of The Fall's back catalogue. The first release will be the brilliant This Nation's Saving Grace, originally released in 1985.

The reissue will come in a box with accompanying notes and additional tracks from the Beggars archive. Intriguingly, these promise material from what Beggars describe as "two reels of early, rough mixes of the album recordings which lack the polish off the final mixes but have an accessible… well, roughness. Roughsticity. Rough-a-loogability – somesuch lack of refinement."

These include versions of 'Cruiser's Creek', 'Rollin' Dany' and 'Couldn't Get Ahead' which apparently feature "subtly different sonics".

Beggars add that "One of the ideas behind the Omnibus releases is to include a contemporaneous live recording of the songs but this won’t happen on this release as the master tapes for two radio recordings, from Clitheroe Castle and Bremen, have been lost or thrown out. Careless."

There will be three discs, also featuring singles, Peel Sessions and a track called 'Ma Riley'.

Beggars are currently waiting on approval from Mark E Smith for the tracklisting. Let us hope they do not feel the wrath of his bombast...

Music Radar:

“I just want New York to know, I am not leaving Aerosmith,” Tyler told the crowd at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza.

Then, turning to Joe Perry, who was appearing with his band The Joe Perry project, Tyler said, “Joe Perry, you are a man of many colors. But I, motherfucker, am the rainbow!”

The Simpsons may have landed a Coldplay guest spot for their forthcoming 20th anniversary episode, but Seth MacFarlane’s American Dad! is going a much more indie route for their next musician cameo show. In upcoming episode “My Morning Straitjacket,” lead character Stan Smith will become an obsessed groupie of My Morning Jacket.

Not only that, but, as Stewie’s Playground reports, Jim James and the rest of the band will be supplying their own voices for the animated show, which is scheduled for Nov. 22.

Bono and the Edge have found their lead for the Spider-Man musical, Run-DMC are teaming up with a Hollywood producer for a possible Broadway run, Regina Spektor is writing songs for a Sleeping Beauty adaptation, and now Green Day’s Berkeley-based American Idiot musical is bound for Broadway.

Playbill reports that a Broadway casting notice went public this week and a spokesperson confirmed: “There is a Broadway future for the show, but at this time no dates or theatre are confirmed.” Let’s hope Green Day’s producers have taken notice of Bono and the Edge’s financial troubles and are moving ahead with caution.

Meanwhile, you still have one more week to check out this to-be-Broadway musical live at the Berkeley Rep or watch the trailer below.

Pre Bon Scott AC/DC with their 1st singer Dave Evans and a VERY young Angus and Malcom Young.. Awesome! ( Who is Dave Evan's you ask? Here is your answer friends )