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Robyn Hitchcock, New Releases, Smithereens, The Birds   Printer-friendly page   Send this story to someone
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 08:00 AM
Posted by: kbade

Karl

ROBYN HITCHCOCK was joined by Peter Buck and Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson on "Flesh Number One (Beetle Dennis)" for the Yep Roc Showcase at SxSW (Thanks, Stereogum.).  SUPER BONUS:  Someone named "gordo73" has posted (sometimes incomplete) clips of Hitchcock & the Venus 3 playing "Give It to the Soft Boys," Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play" and the Magnum Force-inspired "(A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs," among others.

JOE BOYD, who has (among other things) managed a Muddy Waters tour, booked Pink Floyd and produced acts including Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake and R.E.M., had Robyn Hitchcock play a reading from his newly-released memoirs.  Boyd is interviewed at the link.

NEW RELEASES:  The Johnny Marr-enhanced Modest Mouse is among the albums streaming via AOL proper, while Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, LCD Soundsystem and others are streaming via Spinner.  Indie violinist Andrew Bird releases the seemingly more accessible Armchair Apocrypha album.  There are stateside releases of albums from two misnamed bands -- the insanely happy Swedsh collective I'm From Barcelona and the more dour French quartet Cyann & Ben.  On a local (to me) note,  The Ponys Turn the Lights Out for Matador Records.  And female duo The Pierces harmonize their way through the folk and cabaret tinged pop on 13 Tales of Love and Revenge.

PHIL SPECTOR:  Jury selection began on Monday in the murder trial of pioneering rock producer Phil Spector, who came to court in L.A. sporting a new blond, Beatles-style shag, instead of the spectacular Jewfro he wore to the preliminary hearings.  One of his attorneys, Bruce Cutler -- who successfully defended mafia chieftain John Gotti three times -- predicts an acquittal, natch, even though the jury will hear testimony of other women who said Spector has threatened them with a gun.  E! Online has a helpful trial primer.  NPR has an audio feature explaining Spector's famed "Wall of Sound" production technique.

THE SMITHEREENS played the World Cafe on Friday, so you can stream the gig from NPR now.  The band's latest album is a cover of Meet the Beatles, but they also mine their own catalog for this show, inlcuding a new singalong.

TWOFER TUESDAY:  The only thing more evil than the cast of Anchorman is the dreaded original version, which is rumored to be what broke Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in that secret CIA prison.

GENE SIMMONS might want to put the KISS makeup back on until the swelling from his face lift subsides.  Pic at the link.

LONEY, DEAR:  Emil Svanägen is increasingly called on to translate his home-recorded melodies into full-blown live performance material -- not an easy thing for someone who misses having someone to have coffee with more than having bandmates.  PopMatters has embedded audio and video in its feature.

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN:  Members of the British "project" talk to Pitchfork about songwriting, role-playing, war, and their collective legacies.

PENNY LANE is named after James Penny, a slave trader and investor in 11 voyages that took 500 to 600 captives at a time to the New World -- but the approach of the March 25 anniversary of the British parliamentary act that abolished the slave trade in Britain's colonies 200 years ago is not moving Liverpool's city council to change the name.

BRADGELINA:  Jolie jetted to Hanoi to get a visa for her newly-adopted son.  Reuters has video.

BRITNEY SPEARS was caught romping in the bushes of her rehab center with a mystery man, according to Britain's uber-reliable Daily Star.

TOM-KAT UPDATE:  Cruise, Holmes and the Tom-Kitten celebrated St. Patrick's Day, including a wearing of the green.  Then Cruise drug the family straight to the Celebrity Centre of Scientology where they spent the remainder of the afternoon.

JOHN TRAVOLTA and Erika Christensen were set to open Church of Scientology outreach centers in religiously conservative Plant City and downtown St. Petersburg, FL.

ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS STILL DEAD, but a bidding war has broken out over her lost diaries, in which she talks about a pregnancy scare in the early 1990s, her drug use and her love for late husband, octagenarian billionaire J Howard Marshall.  FOX News claims that Dr. Khristine Eroshevich wanted to be Smith's Dr. Feelgood; coincidentally, Dr. Eroshevich was invoking patient-doctor confidentiality on Entertainment Tonight.  And a judge who heard evidence on baby Dannilyn's DNA paternity test was busted on charges of possessing marijuana.

NATALIE PORTMAN'S supposed nude scenes in the upcoming Goya's Ghost are scary, not sexy.  At least she didn't have to shave her head for these torture scenes, though she gets groped by the clergy again.  Egotastic has video at the link.

THE FRENCH HOTEL photographed in a very, very compromising position with Gnarls Barkley's Cee-Lo?  It looks more like a bit of celebrity fauxtogrpahy.  Either way, it's crazy.

RALPH FINNES was urged to take an AIDS test after the stewardess who seduced him on a Qantas jet admitted she had previously worked as a high-class prostitute.  Ironically, the day after their liason, Finnes was scheduled for engagements in Indian villages, which included "preaching" about the dangers of AIDS and the need to engage in safe sex.

REESE & RYAN BREAK-UPDATE:  NW magazine is reigniting rumors with a claim that Ryan Phillippe spent the night at Ashlee Simpson's house over the weekend after the two met during a night out.  Ryan's publicist has denied the rumours.

CATE BLANCHETT has signed on to star in the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones adventures.

PIRATES of the CARIBBEAN:  The trailer for At World's End has been posted at Yahoo! Movies.  Mild spoilers, esp. if you have not seen the second movie.  There's a bonus clip also.

WALEED MOHAMMED BIN ATTASH confessed to planning the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in the Gulf of Aden in Yemen in October 2000.

IRAN is threatening to retaliate in Europe for what it claims is a daring undercover operation by western intelligence services to kidnap senior officers in its Revolutionary Guard, who seem to be going missing in Iraq: "We've got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks. Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis."  Tehran also barred UN inspectors from visiting an underground bunker where it is building an industrial-scale plant to make enriched uranium.

IRAQ in the MEDIA:  To mark the fourth anniversary of the invasion, ABC News, USA Today, and the BBC joined forces to produce reports of "lost hope," based on a German poll of Iraqi public opinion.  Though a year of sectarian violence probably makes Iraqis more pessimistic, a look at page 37 of the full poll results shows the poll greatly oversampled Sunni Arabs who are, by all accounts, the most dissatisfied with post-Saddam Iraq-and unsurprisingly so, as they were the beneficiaries of Sadaam's despotic regime.  As the USA Today correctly reports that Sunni Arabs are 15%-20% of the population, you might think at least that paper would have noticed Sunni Arabs made up 35% of those polled.  Even with that huge flaw the poll shows that while 80% oppose the US troop presence, about 65% don't want the US to leave.  Moreover, most did not think Iraq was in a civil war and want a unified and democratic future.  UPDATE:  This shoddy poll was helping drag down US troop morale in Baghdad Monday night.  I do not know how some in the media sleep at night. 

IRAQ:  Al Qaeda marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion by setting off bombs in Kirkuk and Baghdad, killing 26.  Late Monday, US and Iraqi troops engaged in a major operation as part of the crackdown in the volatile Hurriyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad, state television said.  In Huseiba, a village just outside of Ramadi, the locals "cleansed" their town of armed gangs after al Qaeda tried to force a young boy to join them.  IraqSlogger relays a local report that former Prime Minister Alawi is negotiating with members of the governing United Iraqi Coalition in hopes of poaching members from the ruling coalition to bring down the Maliki government.  Slogger also reports that US Army medics established an ad hoc medical clinic in Sadr City on Saturday, trying to service the needs of locals who most often rely on members of Sadr's Mahdi Organization for healthcare.  Michael J. Totten is blogging further progress in the Kurdish north since his last visit, with plenty of pics.

A CROW has attacked three mothers at a British primary school.  It's just the beginning, you know.  BTW, my parents (probably unwisely) took me to see that movie when it was in the theaters.  I laughed through the whole flick.  Which tells you something about me.

A STOLEN CROCODILE was found sitting in a car passenger seat, while the driver recovered from a suspected epileptic fit, in Frankston, Australia.

A SUICIDE SQUIRREL blacked out 13,000 households in Tucson, AZ.  Meanwhile a North Carolina paper profiles a squirrel sympathizer.

GLOW-IN-THE-DARK BUNNIES have been produced by geneticists in France inserting a gene from a fluorescent jellyfish into a rabbit's egg.

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