WELCOME… TO THE NEW YEAR: Are we… having… fun? If you don't recognize the lyric from Pate's “New Year” — and even if you do — you may want to check out the brand spankin' new Pate page at MySpace, which is currently streaming four live tracks from the band's 2003 reunion gig. And provided that the guys don't tell me to take it down, we can feature different tracks over time, maybe even offer downloads for the Pate-deprived masses who have come across the site without knowing why it exists. Note: If the Pate page does not start buffering the first song promptly, try the “standalone player.”
JOHNNY ROTTEN answers fan questions about the odds of a PiL reunion, his stint on I'm A Celebrity, latter day punks, and Idol judge Simon Cowell in a webchat for London's Sun.
THE VOLCANO SUNS had a one-off reunion in Beantown. I saw them open for someone at First Ave. (Husker Du, iirc) and Peter Prescott could beat those skins. They also guested on night six of Yo La Tengo's Hanukkah stand in Hoboken. (pics at the link)
VIC CHESTNUTT, Mark Eitzel (American Music Club), Dave Bazan (Pedro the Lion) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic) are touring together in February, including dates in Arlington, VA, Chicago, Minneapolis, and at the M-Shop in Ames, IA.
BECK: His redesigned website is currently streaming Nick Drake covers. I could have linked directly, but must credit… More Cowbell!
WHAT'S NEW, PUSSYCAT? Tom Jones is a Knight, baby, yeah! That is unusual.
BURT BACHARACH and NEIL DIAMOND have their latest albums sorta reviewed in the Village Voice.
IGGY POP liked NYC better in the '70s, when it was down and dirty. Which is exactly what I would expect from the Ig.
SEASON OF THE LIST: A few last late entries include an indie list from Donut Muse, a shockingly cool one from the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Top 90.3 of KEXP listeners, a fine Top 20 from James Eric Laczkowski, three critics' lists — including a Country list — in the Louisville Courier-Journal, five critics' lists at the Memphis Flyer (including Stephen Deusner . who also writes for Pitchfork), an eclectic list from New Times, a surprisingly cool one from the Rockford Register-Star, the Anti-Hit List's Best of '05, by John Sakamoto, which has linkage, SPIN magazine's Top 40, the Top 20 tracks from Take Your Medicine, which is killing music, lists from assorted writers for the WaPo and a Top 20 Songs from You Ain't No Picasso, which is killing music. ALSO: A whole mess of bloggers' lists have been consolidated into a Top 100 poll at Indie for Dummies.
LOOKING BACK AT 2005: The BBC has the guts to see how their predictions for hot bands of 2005 did.
OH, CANADA: The Canadian Press looks at the big splash Canucks made in the music biz last year.
COMING IN 2006: Inside Bay Area has a heads-up on January music releases. Indie Interviews focuses on Ten Texas Bands Who Will Impact 2006. A wider view is taken at the Norfolk Eastern Daily Press, which includes the Arctic Monkeys, CYHSY and some unfamiliar names I'll have to investigate.
THE ARCTIC MONKEYS: London's Observer follows the lads on tour to “to find out how it all went right.” An energetic live show is one reason — performing in front of a Stockholm crowd including Franz Ferdinand and four-fifths of The Strokes: “I wouldn't want to follow them on-stage,” murmurs a Stroke in the darkness.
COLDPLAY: Their new CD is so copy protected that it won't play in Macintoshes, some PCs, DVD players and car stereos. Their record label apparenty has not considered that one reason album sales are down is that it's getting harder and harder to listen to legally-purchased CDs.
PURE VOLUME, may not be as big as MySpace, but its indie-style focus has attracted the attention of some big players in the music business.
GARY GLITTER reportedly is offering underworld figures £60,000 to spring him from jail. It was in London's Sun, so it must be true, right?
BLUEGRASS will be a sanctioned subject of study at the Berklee College of Music next semester. Big names like Del McCoury have already come to play and teach. (The Boston Globe reporter could have used some studying herself; bluegrass wasn't born in Appalachia.)
NIC HARCOURT of KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic talks about his new book, Music Lust, to NPR, which is also streaming his 2005 Song Picks.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise inspires the Slang of the Year as decided by the editors of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. The dictionary defines “jump the couch” as exhibiting “strange or frenetic behavior.”
BRADGELINA UPDATE: Pitt and Jolie are keen to buy a home in France, and have viewed a 127-year-old property once owned by legendary fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent. Meanwhile, Pitt was snubbed by Courtney Cox at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
NICOLE KIDMAN and KEITH URBAN are rumored to be building a mansion in Nashville.
LAZY SUNDAY: Slate thinks the Chronicles of Narnia rap won't save Saturday Night Live, but could save hip-hop: “Rather than lampoon today's artists, Samberg and Parnell evoke old-school rap. The whole presentation—the lyrics, the flow, and the aesthetic—owes more to New York rappers from the '80s than to anything that's getting made today. The way they trade rhymes and enunciate the end of each line—'You can call us Aaron Burr / From the way we're droppin' HAM-IL-TONS'—recalls the delivery of 1980s artists like Run-DMC. The production values, New York street scenes, and silly similes call to mind early Beastie Boys tracks. Really, is 'I've got mad hits like I was Rod Carew' any less ridiculous than 'I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling'?”
JOHNNY DEPP tops IMDb's STARmeter 25 stars for 2005, based on the actual search behavior of its over 30 million users.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY is the Queen of the “Brit Pack” — young Brits who feature prominently in the IMDb STARmeter list above.
MUNICH: Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board thinks screenwriter Tony Kusher should have followed his own advice: “If you start with an ax to grind, then you write a bad play or movie.”
SIENNA MILLER is touted for the next Bond girl by new Bond Daniel Craig, who was rumored to have had a fling with Miller during her period of turmoil with Jude Law.
CELEB on CELEB GOSSIP is unseemly, but doubly amusing in a pot-calling-the-kettle-black sorta way.
DONALD TRUMP is being wooed by the NY GOP to run against state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for Governor. I think the Donald has already figured out that a germophobe should not go into the hand-shaking and baby-kissing business.
KATHERINE HEIGL of Grey's Anatomy talks about the the show's post-Superbowl push. Egotastic is not a fan of the show, but likes her relative lack of wardobe.
250 POUNDS OF SILLY PUTTY: The folks at Google have a little too much time (and putty) on their hands.
HURRICANE KATRINA: The most comprehensive information available to date indicates that the victims weren't disproportionately poor or African-American. What would Kanye say?
A RISING TIDE lifts all boats. Although wealth remains highly stratified, by almost all measures, Census Bureau data show rising well-being for all of society. More than 92 percent of Americans below the poverty line said they had enough food, as of 1998. Some 86 percent said they had no unmet need for a doctor. Where fewer than 20 percent of homes in poverty had computers in 1992, nearly 60 percent did in 2002 — more than own dishwashers.
IRAQ: Gas and electricity are harder to come by in Baghdad, as attacks on Iraqis working on US-backed reconstruction projects are at a record high. The latest Iraq Index shows overall electricity near the prewar peak. The figures from Iraq Body Count show a steady decline in civilian casualties this year, the exception being August, when nearly 1,000 were trampled on a bridge. Bill Roggio looks at likely changes in the nature of military operations going forward. Though you probably heard about 16-year-old Hassan Ferris' trip to Iraq (a/k/a Hassan Ferris's Day Off), you may want to read the kid's essay and Iraqi blogger Mohammed's reaction. Finally, an Iraqi baby with life-threatening spina bifida arrived in the US on Saturday for medical treatment after being sent by US soldiers who found her during a raid on her family's home. This is one of many stories of the troops helping Iraqi kids get medical help in the US.
SURVEILLANCE: The New York Times's Public editor finds the paper's explanation for delaying the NSA surveillance story for about a year woefully inadequate. The Washington Post reports that the NSA shared some of the info (on request) with the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security. Considering the post-9/11 criticism of the govt's failure to “connect the dots,” I'm not surprised.
WOMAN MARRIES A DOLPHIN: A male dolphin named Cindy. NTTAWWT.
YEAR IN REVIEW: Reuters rounds up its wackier animal stories.
A PACK OF ANGRY CHIHUAHUAS attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home after a traffic stop. Hey, they warned him to drop the Chalupa…
DOG HOARDING: One woman, 17 dogs, two in the freezer, one autopsied.
RABBITS INVADE the west coast of Tazmania.
GATORS: Two men were charged for releasing Reggie the alligator into Lake Machado, where he remains at large. New West visits a gator farm in Colorado.