Set a course for Toronto

May 25, 2005

This year’s North by Northeast (NXNE) Festival in weekend destination Toronto has announced their list of invited artists, who will (barring “subject to change” changes) play live shows between the festival dates of June 8 through June 12. The event will officially begin on June 8, with a noon kick-off concert at Nathan Phillips Square, with funksters God Made Me Funky headlining. The first official night of band showcases begins the next day on June 9, with Martha Wainwright also performing at 7 pm; June 10 will see The Dears perform at The Phoenix Concert Theatre; and June 11 will feature New York Dolls member David Johansen and crew live at 7 pm, also at The Phoenix; and the weekend will close out with a party at The El Mocambo on Sunday. The exhaustive list of additional performers includes the Shout Out Louds, Tariq, Hector On Stilts, Better Off Dead, The Lost Cause, and The Ramen...

In spite of lead singer Darius Rucker’s apparent, er, has-been status (c’mon, c’mon, you did recognize him in that rather frightening Burger King commercial, didn’t you?), his band, Hootie and the Blowfish, are still going strong, and are, in fact, prepping to embark on a U.S. summer tour, in the midst of which they’ll release a new studio album. Kicking off in mid-July, the tour will make stops in San Diego (7/13), Sterling Heights, MI (7/30), Clarkston, MI (7/31), Atlanta, GA (8/13), Atlantic City, NJ (8/25), and at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival on September 10. Their new album, Looking for Lucky, was recorded with longtime Hootie producer Don Gehman and will hit stores on August 9...

Folk rock duo the Indigo Girls have put together an 18-track collection of rare tracks titled Rarities that’s due out on June 14 via Legacy Records. The set will include several of the Girls’ versions of cover songs, including their takes on the Clash’s “Clampdown” and the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band,” as well as a couple of previously unreleased tunes (“Winthrop” and “Let Me Go Easy”) and a collaboration with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. In support of the new disc, the duo will kick off a six-week summer tour in early June in Charlotte, North Carolina...

Both the Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo summer festival shows have been busybusybusy adding more bands and performers to their schedules to make those kinda high ticket prices really worthwhile - on the Lollapalooza front, concert attendees can now expect to see recent adds International Noise Conspiracy, Ben Kweller, The Ponys, and Drive-By Truckers on the roster along with the likes of the Pixies, Death Cab for Cutie, Dashboard Confessional, and Weezer. And Bonnaroo roadtrippers will now be treated to Kings of Leon, De La Soul, Galactic, and Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters as well as the new collective band The Word, which will include John Medeski, Robert Randolph, and members of the North Mississippi Allstars...
MINI BUZZ:
Over 50,000 concertgoers attended Audioslave’s May 6 show in Havana, at what was said to be the very first American open-air rock concert in Cuba...
A new music video for Ben Folds’ single “Landed” can now be viewed in streaming video at his website, www.benfolds.com...
Britney Spears has just committed to her second film role (this one just acting, no singing) in the upcoming auto racing movie Trading Paint; the screenplay for Trading Paint was reportedly written by the same person who wrote Bram Stoker’s Dracula...
Lo-fi music maker Smog has announced that he’ll release his eleventh album, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love, on May 30...
Good Charlotte drummer Chris Wilson has left the band due to “personal health reasons”...
And, in Music Humor News, fans of Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand are petitioning online for singer Alex Kapranos - who recently cut his locks into a shorter crop - to grow his hair back out into the fringe style he helped repopularize...

New on CD: Pray for the Soul of Betty’s eponymous debut disc, featuring (cough cough) Constantine from American Idol... Lucinda Williams’ Live at the Fillmore... Detroiter Kem’s Album II... System of a Down’s Mezmerize... Bowling for Soup’s Almost Pt. 1 super-single... and Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods... ON DVD: Son Volt’s Live from Austin, TX... also Richard Thompson’s Live from Austin, TX... Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation: London Invasion 1987... and Huey Lewis and the News - Live at 25*... and that’s the buzz for this week’s Modern Rock.

Questions, comments, rants, raves about this column or your fave artists? Send ‘em to Kristi at modernrocker@gmail.com!