Pixies’ Joey Santiago teams up with Nike
Joey Santiago of the Pixies has hooked up with Nike to compose the music for an upcoming documentary that the company is producing. The film will involved football, but not the one played in the states with pigskin. While the pairing might seem a little odd to some, Santiago is no stranger to the world of commercial scores. He has done work for shows like Weeds and Undeclared, as well as films like Crime and Punishment in Suburbia. Santiago’s most recent project, Nike Presents: Blood, Sweat and Tears: Football in the Rough will be released in installments via NikeFootball.com. Nike... read more
American Music Club tours, ushers in The Golden Age
With ninth LP The Golden Age out this week on Merge Records, American Music Club will keep bounding through Europe on dates scheduled throughout the rest of February and March. Early spring will see the rockers back in the U.S., with a cross-country tour kicking off in their hometown of San Francisco on April 2. Tour stops include: February 20 - Gijon, Spain @ Acapulco (casino) 21 - Madrid, Spain @ In-Somni Festival - Caracol 22 - Bilbao, Spain @ In-Somni Festival - Kafe Antzokia 23 - Barcelona, Spain @ In-Somni Festival - Apolo 24 - Bielefeld, Germany @ Forum... read more
Bill Maher and Ben Stein facing off with religious docs
With an election on the horizon, films in 2008 seem weirdly apolitical when compared with 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11. That's only at first glance, though, as it seems that two different documentaries later this year will adopt a religious theme in extremely different ways. Arriving in April, the first of these films will be Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stein's film focuses on scientists who have been fired or silenced due to religious beliefs or support of intelligent design. Check out the trailer below: Hitting the U.S. in limited release in June (though releasing in France in April), Bill... read more
Under house arrest, T.I. making progress on Paper Trail
Somewhere in Georgia's Henry County, tucked away in his home with a 24 hour GPS system monitoring his every move, lives an (allegedly) unarmed and sober rapper named T.I. (née Clifford Harris Jr.). The 27-year-old was recently arrested when cops found him (allegedly) in possession of three machine guns, two silencers and three other firearms that were in the car he was driving and six additional firearms which were found in his home. Harris managed to get himself out of jail last October on $3 million bond. And according to a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the rapper also known... read more
Indie retailers to celebrate Record Store Day on April 19
Goodie bags? Freebies? Music? Special events of some other as-yet-unspecified kind? Supporting local business? Sign us up! Saturday, April 19, 2008 will be a celebration of the vinyl, plastic and paper variety at your local independent music store. According to RecordStoreDay.com, "On this day, all of these stores will simultaneously link and act as one with the purpose of celebrating the culture and unique place that they occupy both in their local communities and nationally." Many respected artists have already stamped the event with their approval. Among them was Paul McCartney, who said, "There’s nothing as glamorous to me as... read more
Kelsey Grammer scrooges Hollywood a second time
Kelsey Grammer seems to have created a precedent for himself. His character Dr. Frasier Crane helped dictate the success of three beloved sitcoms: Cheers, Wings and, naturally, Frasier. But now, Grammer is returning to play the part of Scrooge on the big screen for a second time. Unlike Hallmark’s 2004 version, however, this carol will be a satirical take on life in America, particularly taking on the likes (or dislikes, depending on how you look at it) of Hollywood. David Zucker, who directed comedies such as Airplane! and Scary Movie 4, is coordinating the project along with Stephen McEveety. Zucker... read more
Sunset Rubdown announces spring tour dates
It's out of the bag—Brooklyn Vegan reports that Sunset Rubdown will play a show billed as “The Secret Society” at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. The Canadian band will follow it up with a brief stop in familiar territory and a European tour after that: March 27 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple 30 - Toronto, Ontario @ Lee's Palace May 16 - Minehead, U.K. @ All Tomorrow's Parties 17 - Minehead, U.K. @ All Tomorrow's Parties 18 - Minehead, U.K. @ All Tomorrow's Parties 19 - Manchester, U.K. @ Moho Live 20 - Dublin, Ireland @ Crawdaddy 21 -... read more
Dead Meadow hits the road
You’ve got to hand it to Dead Meadow. For connoisseurs of “stoner rock,” the band sure has set up quite the ambitious tour. Yes, the good ship Dead Meadow keeps chugging along on in support of Old Growth, the band's newest record. After hitting up some of the southern states, the guys will hop the pond to Amsterdam—where they’ll visit Anne Frank’s house, go to the Waterlooplein open air market, and do nothing that happens to be illegal here in the U.S.—and quite a few major stops in Europe. After a brief repose from their European debauchery, they'll return to... read more
Paste's editor-in-chief debates Juno with Greg Kot
It's no industry secret that indie-teen-pregnancy flick Juno and its quirky, Kimya Dawson-led soundtrack have been opening hearts and wallets across America. The Oscar-nominated film surpassed the $125 million mark last weekend, making it the "biggest specialty hit in six years" and by far the highest-grossing runner in this year's Best Picture race, according to Variety. But Juno's accompanying album—the first #1 hit record in the history of its label, Rhino—apparently sounds less sweet and more cloying when played in the Chicago area. Or, even more specifically, in the vicinity of two of the city's nationally-known music critics, the Chicago... read more
NBC announces plans to schedule year-round television
[Above: The cast of NBC's The Office] Back in 1991, Fox, a then-fledgling network, unveiled a revolutionary plan to show new episodes of its struggling teen drama Beverly Hills 90210 over the summer. Critics were astounded. Who would watch TV over the summer? Wouldn't most folks rather spend the warm nights outside enjoying nature, rather than plopped in front of the tube? Of course not. After all, this is America! Land of the free and home of the obese! Sandwiches for all! We kid, of course...but mostly because we're worried about CIA operatives silencing our dissenting voice. ANYWAY... 90210's summer... read more
Restless in Peace: No Depression ceases publication
Today groundbreaking alt.country magazine No Depression announced its upcoming May/June issue—the publication's 75th—will be its last. This makes us very, very sad. No Depression isn’t just a wonderful magazine full of love and respect for, if you’ll allow us, Signs of Life in authentic American music with a focus on alt.country. It’s a magazine that has eschewed the mainstream media's focus on celebrity as adamantly as anyone, choosing instead to highlight great music. No Depression actually means quite a lot to us here at Paste. We’re music fans and “No Dep” has been a key source of great information... read more
TVT Records to claim Chapter 11 bankruptcy?
On Tuesday, TVT Records reportedly fired all but 20 staff members without a dismissal wage in preparation of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by the end of the week. Even as recently as 2006, TVT was named Billboard’s number one independent label, according to the label’s site. In the days since Steve Gottlieb founded TVT in his New York City apartment, circa 1985, the label has seen a wide range of artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Lil Jon, Guided by Voices and the Polyphonic Spree bear its insignia. But it hasn’t consistently been with pride, it seems. In recent... read more
The Police announce final tour, bring Elvis Costello along
The Police are here to teach us all a lesson. What to do after your reunion tour is named the highest-grossing of 2007? Run that sucker into the ground! To honor the news that the trio will circle North America one final time, with Elvis Costello and the Imposters in tow, Paste offers the imagined by-laws of The Police: Keep that castle-money comin'. With tickets priced at $50, $90 and $225, it's gonna take a Zenyatta of Mondatta to attend the upcoming concerts. The dates are being billed as the band's "final area appearances," but it wasn't so long ago... read more
Spore coming in Sept., complete with music by Brian Eno
In 2005, Will Wright's Spore stole the show at E3. Then the next year this happened again, as the game's "SimEverything" approach seemed nearly ready for release and looked increasingly polished. Well, it's been more than a year since then and finally the game has a release date: Sept. 7. At the very least, this should take the game off the Vaporeware awards list, and quite possibly push gaming itself a good deal forward. "We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by... read more
El-P to tour U.S. with Dizzee Rascal
Ever since El-P burst onto the underground hip-hop scene as one half of Company Flow, his talent has been obvious. (Just compare his lyrics, where he regularly rhymes words like tyrannical with mechanical, to the lyrics of any rap song on the Billboard Top 100, which rhyme words like go with...umm... go. How creative!) Last year, the lyrical linguist released his second solo album, ferociously titled I'll Sleep When You're Dead, which received rave reviews, and early this year it was reported that El-P had remixed Dizzee Rascal's song "Where Da G's." The business man in El also inked a... read more
No Doubt, Korn, Kelly Ripa featured in Duran Duran doc
[Above: Durandy and a small portion of his collection] Ask Andrew Golub (his friends call him Durandy) anything about Duran Duran's history, and chances are that the 36-year-old Seattle native has a piece of memorabilia to match up with the question. Golub's collection, amassed since 1984, consists of thousands of Duran Duran albums, books, tour programs, magazines and more. Golub's, in fact, is the largest collection of Duran Duran posters in the world, many of which the band members themselves claim to have never before seen. Although Golub's extensive online fanography contains countless images of his prized possessions, he says... read more
Throw Me the Statue readies for U.S. jaunt
A few notable things happened yesterday: Washington, Winsconsin and Hawaii held their primaries; Castro officially resigned as president of Cuba; Throw Me The Statue's album Moonbeams came out in stores. In celebration of this historic event, the recent Paste 4 to Watch selection will headline a record release show this Friday, followed by a cross-country tour: February 22 - Bellingham, Wash. @ Boundary Bay Brewery 28 - San Francisco, Calif. @ NoisePop! Fest at Great American Music Hall w/ Stellastarr March 6 - Seattle, Wash. - Neumo's w/ Arthur and Yu 12 - 3/16 - Austin, Texas @ South... read more
U2 back in the studio with Eno, Lanois
The globe-trotting members of U2 have finally returned to their home turf and are back in the studio, Billboard.com reports. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. are working on a new album in a Dublin, Ireland studio with longtime collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The band, Eno and Lanois met several times over the past year in France and Morocco, and have already produced a plethora of new material – maybe even enough for two albums, Lanois told Billboard. U2’s last album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, was released in 2004, but the band has... read more
Billy Joel adds second Shea Stadium gig
It's likely that not many people can answer with authenticity if asked for their worth in legal tender. But if you're Billy Joel, you can honestly say that someone thinks you're worth upwards of $20,000 a night. That amount is the highest listing price for a ticket on StubHub for his sold-out show at Shea Stadium. Luckily, for fans who don’t believe anything less than a car is worth that much, a second show has been added for Joel's Last Play at Shea. As previously reported, Joel was selected to headline the final Shea concert. Fans took to this news... read more
Rufus Wainwright stages Blackoutsabbath for June 21
Last we heard from Rufus Wainwright, he was releasing an album of Judy Garland covers following Release The Stars. Now he's turning his attention in a different direction. March 19 will witness an un-amplified, candlie-lit Rufus playing to benefit his "Blackoutsabbath" initiative, a plan that has multitudes cutting their power for 12 hours on the Summer solstice (June 21) to make a statement about energy conservation. "This intimate concert is being held to raise awareness about Blackoutsabbath and personally lowering one's carbon footprint," Wainwright explains via BlackoutSabbath.org. He also proposes that people use their time in the dark to make... read more
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