Bowie returns!

And he should have stayed retired.

I'm about as big a Bowie fan as there is, so you can take my opinion with some weight when I say this is really fucking terrible. Not quite Hours terrible, but I'll reserve judgment until I hear the full album. At this point I wouldn't be able to justify spending any amount of hard earned dollars on this piece of crap.

I'm hoping this is some kind of joke. Heathen and Reality would have been a nice two-album punch to close out his long, storied, illustrious career... but this... wow.

This sucks, and I'm bummed.

Henry Rollins shills for luxury cars

I heard this TV spot last night and went:
"Huh?"

Then I checked that the voice over was who I thought it was.

It's true: Henry Rollins, hardcore punk godfather, is voicing commercials for luxury cars. I guess this kind of thing shouldn't come as a surprise, considering Gang of Four recently sold a song to Microsoft.

Still, it's kind of disappointing. Reading through Mr. Rollins' bio, I noticed that he also voiced a commercial for Apple back in 1999. So, it's nothing new for him.

Maybe he owes lots of money to the government, like Nicholas Cage. It would be hard for anyone to turn down huge sums of cash to do that kind of work, but it kinda sucks that it has to be this guy.

File under overrated

I'm not sure why critics have a huge hard-on for the buzzband 'How to Dress Well'... the songs are mediocre at best and the album itself sounds like fucking garbage. I'm sure I'm missing the point of the 'lo-fi aesthetic', but sounds this unpleasant to listen to shouldn't be paid for.

The Pitchfork review states "It feels brave, like it's going places a lot of artists in this sphere are afraid to go."... among other things that make me want to throw up in my mouth. Music recordings have become so devalued that the ephemera passing through our shitty computer speakers gets raised to the level of art. I'm a little annoyed.

Of course this could all be for moot as I'm listening to mp3s... but to that point, my friend Matt picked up the recent Ariel Pink album on CD after enjoying the mp3s for months. He was hoping for the disc to be worth the value, 14.99 or whatever the price was, which would include higher quality sound. Boy was he ever disappointed. Something about having it on CD made the music sound worse, because the expectation was that the digital hard copy would sound better than the particulate floating around the interwebs.

So that's where we are in 2010, entry level artists can't afford quality production so they're stuck with manipulating Garage Band or some other cracked software in order to get their mp3s onto the hard drives of relevant websites while so called 'legacy artists' who made their money under the old paradigm, like Trent Reznor, are able to release new material on stunning Blu-Ray 5.1 surround sound.

I know which one I prefer to spend my money on.

Please, anyone but Bon Jovi....

Even J Geils band would be better... but I guess if Madonna can make it in then the gates are open for Mr. Bon Jovi. If there was a terrible music hall of fame he'd be right at the top of my voting list.

Can't argue with the people though... hopefully whoever votes has some sense.

This year's Rock Hall nominees here.

Lady Gaga and the death of sex

Article here. Worth more than a skim.

via Vigilant Citizen

Find a way to smile

Every once in a while a band comes along that makes you say "Well, at least things can't get much worse than this", to which the response always is - "Yes, yes it can."

Hedley is that type of band. This mook-fueled puke-fest of a band, cut from very similar cloth to Ruben Studdard, has managed to make Simple Plan seem like a group of mature singer-songwriters. The Canadian Idol excretion's latest single, "Never Too Late", is making its way up the CTV music charts with the steady ease of a third-string Nickelback single.

The best part about the whole thing is their SHOT-BY-SHOT REMAKE of Duran Duran's "Rio" from 1982. I could not make this stuff up if I tried. I wish I could, because then I'd be a very, very rich person... which in Canadian music industry terms amounts to getting pulled over in your Lamb for a DUI.

In any case, I can't see how this tribute (read: ripoff) has anything to do with the British New Wave sensation. If my English language training up to grade four taught me anything, it was how to read. Applying that exact skill of reading to the lyrics of "Never Too Late", and applying the skill of "compare and contrast", we find that the two songs have less in common than ever imagined! Jacob Hoggard's whiny, cold, and calculated attempt at an emo-anthem falls flat on its eye-liner and crushed face.

But if cultural bellwether Wikipedia is any indication, the music-loving public is eating this stuff up - "The video was parodied by Canadian rock band Hedley for their song "Never Too Late."

Tough to top that one.

---

Links:

Duran Duran - Rio

Post-ironic meltdown

This is the kind of video that makes you wonder why you even woke up this morning.

Iggy & the Stooges perform at the RnR Hall of Fame ceremony. Two Madonna songs - "Burning Up", and "Ray of Light". Iggy's collaboration with Sum 41 was rock-scum-bottom for me, but this... this is something else. The Hall had a load of fucking balls asking these guys to play when they haven't even been inducted. I can only imagine Iggy heading off stage straight into his SUV back to his mansion and champagne. In the good old days, he would have been cutting his chest open with broken glass, pissing all over the stage and audience, and making lewd and lascivious comments at Madonna. The headline would have been excellent - "Godfather of Punk woos Queen of Pop".

If only.

Train wreck alert:



This is possibly... possibly... the worst thing you will see, hear, or witness all year. If you didn't think rock was dead, this video should be the final toss of dirt upon the final nail in the coffin upon the 50th bludgeon after a fall from 30,000 feet.

The world of popular music has officially imploded on itself. All is lost.

I must now go wash my eyes. My soul needs cleansing.