You may notice the Twitter shit in my sidebar. You may also remember five or six of us “covering” Lollapalooza with Twitter texts last year. You may also also remember it turning to complete shit once everyone got drunk and thought they were funny. That may happen again this year, but for now it’s only one person — one super secret special person with backstage / VIP access. Not special enough to have gotten me a free goddamn pass for the weekend, but special enough to provide “updates about bands with synthesizers and fake British accents,” as well as “candid back-stage commentary; like which bands do coke off of guns, and which choose the more socially acceptable whore-back”. So maybe pay attention to that little window. Or don’t.

Keith Thompson. Zach Curd. Desktop. This is some of that super gay type shit with electronics that you all know I love. Electronics! You can officially start hating it…now.

I was going to do the same thing I did with Pitchfork Festival and list all the Lollapalooza bands playing Detroit this weekend as they pass through this shithole the Midwest, but…um…nobody’s coming. Well, almost nobody:
•Margot & The Nuclear So-So’s are playing Saint Andrews tonight with The Silent Years, Friendly Foes and Silverghost. Hopefully Silverghost brings some of those 7″s I didn’t feel like carrying around at CityFest.
•The Go! Team plays the Magic Stick on Saturday with Thunderbirds Are Now! and Deastro!. Anyone else worried that place clears out after Deastro! and TAN!?
•Witchcraft is playing The Stick with Dead Child and Bluesong. I know nothing about these bands.
•The Black Keys and The Kills are playing in Toledo on Saturday. That almost counts, right? We’re almost as cool as Toledo…right?
•And tomorrow night’s Gutter Twins show is canceled, so yeah…salt in the wound.
This’ll be the first year in a long time that I won’t be attending Lollapalooza (outside of the one year it was canceled) so those of you who go, let me know how it was. Especially Yeasayer, Chromeo, Santogold and Does It Offend You, Yeah?…I think I’ve seen everyone else on the bill.

Just in case anyone was getting any smart ideas, Metro Times has announced that Blowout 2009 will be happening the first week in March. This, unfortunately, prevents any repeat of last year’s hilarious debacle — which means someone else better step up and give me something to laugh at for the next year. I’ve added the usual Wed-Sat dates into my sidebar so you now have 215 days to not plan anything else on those nights. No word yet on if “all kinds of new stuff in the works” includes my spoken word performance.

In other local festival news, Melody has Hamtramck’s Labor Day Festival lineup. This festival is my favorite, favorite, favorite freak show in the entire world. Not the musicians, but the people in attendance. This is better people-watching than airports, strip clubs, flea markets and Denny’s at 4am. Seriously. Spend a few hours observing the carnies, the Middle Eastern mafia, bloated drunk Pole-Locks and those fourteen year-old whores who hang out near the carnival rides. I’m not joking.

Almost as good as CakeFarts.

Here’s another example of why you’ll never see legitimate advertisers on this site: CakeFarts. Please don’t watch this at work. As far as I can tell, this is not very old…so I apologize if you’ve seen it a hundred times and have already held CakeFart contests at your weekend barbecues.

Internet, I love you.

(Be patient with the link as the site is having bandwidth issues. There’s also a mirror here.)

Did you miss 4th Street Fair? Still wondering whether it was the organizers’ “disappearing” funds or the city’s fault that killed it this summer? Me too. Either way, here’s a well-done video about the fair…hopefully it’s not an obituary and we’ll see it come back to life next year.

Remember my PAS/CAL “review” from a few weeks ago? Pitchfork reviewed it yesterday and gave it a 7.7, whatever that means. Metro Times wrote something about it today but there’s a picture on top of the words on top of more words, so I can’t read the first three paragraphs — but it seems they like it as well. It also sort-of answers the “Are they still a band?” and “Why is he leaving Detroit?” questions. Where am I going with this? Oh yeah…everyone likes the new PAS/CAL album and “You Were Too Old For Me” is Pop Song of the Year so far.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Sometimes people ask me why I don’t cover certain topics. Usually it’s because I’m either lazy or it’s already been done a million eight times — and there’s no topping that eighth link: “No one’s heard the song yet, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s whiney sounding.” And LOLZ at that photo caption.

Yelle at The Magic Stick? Should be an awesomely gay French-pop time!

FIRST!

Um…where’s the screaming that should be there at the :46 and :56 marks? Did they really release a toned-down version of this song in hopes of putting out a hit radio single? This is irritating.

Jack White + Alecia Keys?

I’ll take that.  That one coke song that Jack wrote was awesome, so I’m sure this will be alright by the fans.
remember that?
[display_podcast]

Do you like articles?  Good.

This was taken from THIS ARTICLE.  Go read it.

How indie ate itself

1977: The Buzzcocks release their Spiral Scratch EP on their DIY label, New Hormones. Pop historians will refer to it as the first indie record

1986: NME and Rough Trade compile and release C86, the cassette (featuring, among others, Primal Scream, The Soup Dragons and Half Man Half Biscuit) that defines the indie genre

1987: The Smiths leave independent label Rough Trade after four albums and sign a more lucrative deal with EMI, then split acrimoniously before they record a note

1990: The Stone Roses, led by singer Ian Brown stage a Woodstock for the baggys generation – a huge gig at Spike Island in Widnes. Among the 27,000 fans is a young Noel Gallagher

1992: Alan McGee sells half of Creation Records to Sony for £2.5m. Later, Nude is sold to Sony, Factory to London Records, Go!Discs to Phonogram and Food to EMI

1993: Indie fans Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley take over Radio One’s high-profile Evening Session slot and make it their own. Blur release their second album, Modern Life is Rubbish. According to John Harris, the author of The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of British Rock, this is the first true Britpop album. Alan McGee goes to Glasgow venue King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut to see his label’s act 18 Wheeler play, and discovers a little band called Oasis

1995: Blur and Oasis release singles in the same week (”Country House” and “Roll With It”) in what NME bills as a “British heavyweight championship”. Blur win the immediate battle to reach number one, but Oasis win the war: their album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, sells 18m copies worldwide

1997: Oasis’s third album, Be Here Now, is bloated and ugly. Blur by Blur sounds American. Britpop dies a belated death

2001: New York hipsters The Strokes release Is This It. Everyone forgets about Britain

2002: The Libertines release their debut, Up The Bracket. Shambling guitars become chic again

2004: Snow Patrol’s Final Straw and Keane’s Hopes and Fears top the album charts. Indie reaches a low point

2006: Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not becomes the fastest-selling debut album in chart history. The major labels snap up every 17-year-old guikookstar player in the land

2008: Scouting For Girls’ debut album reaches Number One. Indie eats itself

“The Silent Years make music Elliot Smith would be proud of.”
NPR’s latest “All Songs Considered” program includes The Silent Years’ new-ish song, “On Our Way Home.” Take a listen here (there’s also a new NOMO track) or on their MySpace page.

It won’t officially be released until August 19, but you can get the new Walkmen album, which is really fucking good, for $5 right here. And given that all five dollars of that $5 will be going toward the “Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in honor of Luca Vasallo, who is seven months old and doing a great job fighting a very difficult disease,” you’d be a total jerk for not paying for the files you’ve already stolen. (these are 320kbps mp3s)

The MPAA, ignoring the fact that The Dark Knight was available online within a day of its release, credits the film’s box office success to their anti-piracy tactics not, you know, the fact that it’s a great film. Everyone everywhere is delusional.
I saw The Dark Knight this past Sunday at an IMAX theater. I’m not sure if it’s any different in regular theaters, but the constant low rumbling and bass-heavy score made it close to impossible to understand anything Christian Bale was saying when he used his special Batman Whisper-Growl voice. This served as my yearly reminder to just wait until the DVD release for anything I want to see. A thirteen dollar ticket with no rewind feature? What a scam.

I’ve decided the new Faint album, while it’s clearly their least-good, isn’t as terrible as everyone is saying. I think it’s just that The Presets out-Fainted them earlier this year with “Apocalypso”. Watch their (Presets) new video, “Talk Like That”.