All four original members of the influential punk pioneer band The Sex Pistols - John aka “Johnny Rotten” Lydon, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, and Paul Cook - have confirmed that they’ll be playing a one-off concert in the UK to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of their 1977 album, Never Mind the Bollocks, It’s The Sex Pistols. (Famed Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious wasn’t an original member - he actually replaced Matlock during the band’s most well-known phase.) The Pistols were known for their groundbreaking punk sound and authority-mocking tunes such as “Anarchy in the UK,” “Pretty Vacant,” and “God Save the Queen.” The disc will be re-released to mark the anniversary, and the band, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, will take the stage on November 8th at London’s Brixton Academy...
The Swerve Festival is veering in to the Los Angeles area next week, so if you’re going to be in L.A., make sure to stop by and check it out, yo. Featuring a mix of headliners and newbie bands, the shows will take place both at L.A.’s famed Echoplex and at the Barnsdall Art Park, and - bonus! - the Barnsdall shows are free. Performers set to appear include Illinois, Oh No! Oh My!, Snowden, DeVotchKa, The Black Angels, and We Are Scientists; and you also won’t want to miss Swerve’s late-night afterparty, which will also take place at the Echoplex on Saturday night, and will feature Brazilian hip-hop funkster Bonde Do Role, LA Riots, DJ Franki Chan, and The Toxic Avenger. There’ll be films, art, activity labs, and meet-the-artist sessions, too; find out more at www.swervefestival.com...
Swedish garage-rockers The Hives are doing a rather mismatched tour alongside alt-soul-rockers Maroon 5, probably in an effort to promote their (The Hives’, that is) upcoming album The Black and White Album, which is due out on October 9th. The Hives are doing a lot of shoulder-rubbing with the soulsters lately, being as that they tapped the likes of Pharrell Williams and Timbaland as producers on their new disc, probably a follow-up from their previous Timbaland collaboration, the track “Throw it on Me.” Hives/Maroons tour dates will include stops in Detroit (9/29), Rosemont IL (10/2), Toronto (10/3), NYC (10/9 and 10/10), Boston (10/14 and 10/15), and Seattle (11/1); the tour will wrap up in San Diego...
And Nick Drake’s previously out-of-print boxed set, Fruit Tree, will be released in limited-edition form (10,000 copies only) on November 6th. The reissued edition will contain all 3 of Drake’s albums, Pink Moon,Five Leaves Left, and Bryter Layter.The set will also include the Drake bio-doc A Skin Too Few, which chronicles both Drake’s musicianship and his all-too-soon death. The tracklisting will include songs “Saturday Sun,” “River Man,” “Poor Boy,” “Harvest Breed,” “One of These Things First,” and, of course, “Pink Moon”...
MODERN ROCK LINK OF THE WEEK: This year’s CMJ fest is prepping for go, with the event scheduled for October 16th through the 20th in NYC, as usual. This year’s acts include Spoon, British Sea Power, Radio 4, Octopus Project, Xiu Xiu, Simian Mobile Disco, Mute Math, Band of Horses, and many, many more - get the details at
www.cmj.com/marathon...
MINI BUZZ:
This year’s MTV Video Music Awards were even more tepid and misguided than last year; this year saw lackluster hosts, a now-legendary unimpressive performance from Britney, and valient attempts at entertainment from the likes of Foo Fighters (who brought along Gnarls Barkley frontman Cee-Lo) and Justin Timberlake, who were hampered by MTV’s trendy (read: bad and jittery) camera work and lack of focus on music - hey, that’s what the “M” in MTV is supposed to stand for, isn’t it, guys?...
Singer-songwriter Annie Lennox is set to tour beginning October 8th in San Diego in promotion of her new album, Songs of Mass Destruction, out October 2nd on Arista...
Emo-rappers Gym Class Heroes will be touring, too, beginning October 18th in Columbus, Ohio, and continuing through Grand Rapids MI (10/19), Chicago (10/20), Dallas (10/24), and Memphis (10/27)...
And a third tour announcement for this week, namely that vintage rockers Earl Greyhound will hop on the tour bus as the opening act for Chris Cornell...
LCD Soundsystem have chosen September 18th as the release date for their A Bunch of Stuffrelease, which features Franz Ferdinand’s cover of “All My Friends” plus remixes of four songs from LCD’s second album, Sounds of Silver...
And sorry, fans in Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto; Kaiser Chiefs have cancelled the bulk of their fall tour dates in favor of re-entering the recording studio - the only dates left on their docket for this autumn is their NYC show at The Beacon Theater on September 29th...
ON CD... James Blunt’s All the Lost Souls... Ben Lee’s Ripe... KT Tunstall’s Drastic Fantastic... Athlete’s Beyond the Neighbourhood... Foo Fighters’ Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace... and Matt Pond, PA’s Last Light... ON DVD... The Polyphonic Spree: Live from Austin, TX... U2 - PopMart Live from Mexico City... The Criterion Collection release of The Threepenny Opera... and Marianne Faithfull’s Dreaming My Dreams... and that’s the buzz for this week’s Modern Rock.
Questions, comments, rants, raves, suggestions on this column or your fave musicians? Send ‘em to Kristi at modernrocker@gmail.com
The Swerve Festival is veering in to the Los Angeles area next week, so if you’re going to be in L.A., make sure to stop by and check it out, yo. Featuring a mix of headliners and newbie bands, the shows will take place both at L.A.’s famed Echoplex and at the Barnsdall Art Park, and - bonus! - the Barnsdall shows are free. Performers set to appear include Illinois, Oh No! Oh My!, Snowden, DeVotchKa, The Black Angels, and We Are Scientists; and you also won’t want to miss Swerve’s late-night afterparty, which will also take place at the Echoplex on Saturday night, and will feature Brazilian hip-hop funkster Bonde Do Role, LA Riots, DJ Franki Chan, and The Toxic Avenger. There’ll be films, art, activity labs, and meet-the-artist sessions, too; find out more at www.swervefestival.com...
Swedish garage-rockers The Hives are doing a rather mismatched tour alongside alt-soul-rockers Maroon 5, probably in an effort to promote their (The Hives’, that is) upcoming album The Black and White Album, which is due out on October 9th. The Hives are doing a lot of shoulder-rubbing with the soulsters lately, being as that they tapped the likes of Pharrell Williams and Timbaland as producers on their new disc, probably a follow-up from their previous Timbaland collaboration, the track “Throw it on Me.” Hives/Maroons tour dates will include stops in Detroit (9/29), Rosemont IL (10/2), Toronto (10/3), NYC (10/9 and 10/10), Boston (10/14 and 10/15), and Seattle (11/1); the tour will wrap up in San Diego...
And Nick Drake’s previously out-of-print boxed set, Fruit Tree, will be released in limited-edition form (10,000 copies only) on November 6th. The reissued edition will contain all 3 of Drake’s albums, Pink Moon,Five Leaves Left, and Bryter Layter.The set will also include the Drake bio-doc A Skin Too Few, which chronicles both Drake’s musicianship and his all-too-soon death. The tracklisting will include songs “Saturday Sun,” “River Man,” “Poor Boy,” “Harvest Breed,” “One of These Things First,” and, of course, “Pink Moon”...
MODERN ROCK LINK OF THE WEEK: This year’s CMJ fest is prepping for go, with the event scheduled for October 16th through the 20th in NYC, as usual. This year’s acts include Spoon, British Sea Power, Radio 4, Octopus Project, Xiu Xiu, Simian Mobile Disco, Mute Math, Band of Horses, and many, many more - get the details at
www.cmj.com/marathon...
MINI BUZZ:
This year’s MTV Video Music Awards were even more tepid and misguided than last year; this year saw lackluster hosts, a now-legendary unimpressive performance from Britney, and valient attempts at entertainment from the likes of Foo Fighters (who brought along Gnarls Barkley frontman Cee-Lo) and Justin Timberlake, who were hampered by MTV’s trendy (read: bad and jittery) camera work and lack of focus on music - hey, that’s what the “M” in MTV is supposed to stand for, isn’t it, guys?...
Singer-songwriter Annie Lennox is set to tour beginning October 8th in San Diego in promotion of her new album, Songs of Mass Destruction, out October 2nd on Arista...
Emo-rappers Gym Class Heroes will be touring, too, beginning October 18th in Columbus, Ohio, and continuing through Grand Rapids MI (10/19), Chicago (10/20), Dallas (10/24), and Memphis (10/27)...
And a third tour announcement for this week, namely that vintage rockers Earl Greyhound will hop on the tour bus as the opening act for Chris Cornell...
LCD Soundsystem have chosen September 18th as the release date for their A Bunch of Stuffrelease, which features Franz Ferdinand’s cover of “All My Friends” plus remixes of four songs from LCD’s second album, Sounds of Silver...
And sorry, fans in Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto; Kaiser Chiefs have cancelled the bulk of their fall tour dates in favor of re-entering the recording studio - the only dates left on their docket for this autumn is their NYC show at The Beacon Theater on September 29th...
ON CD... James Blunt’s All the Lost Souls... Ben Lee’s Ripe... KT Tunstall’s Drastic Fantastic... Athlete’s Beyond the Neighbourhood... Foo Fighters’ Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace... and Matt Pond, PA’s Last Light... ON DVD... The Polyphonic Spree: Live from Austin, TX... U2 - PopMart Live from Mexico City... The Criterion Collection release of The Threepenny Opera... and Marianne Faithfull’s Dreaming My Dreams... and that’s the buzz for this week’s Modern Rock.
Questions, comments, rants, raves, suggestions on this column or your fave musicians? Send ‘em to Kristi at modernrocker@gmail.com