Karl 
RADIOHEAD debuted a new song, “All I Need,” in Chicago and it's turned up on YouTube (for now). The sound, which is surprisingly good for a bootleg video, has also turned up on the Hype Machine.
TOP OF THE POPS: The venerable BBC music showcase that inspired songs from The Kinks and The Smithereens, has been cancelled after a 42 year run that began with the Rolling Stones, who sang “I Wanna Be Your Man.”
CENTRO-MATIC frontman Will Johnson tells PopMatters, “everything artistic stands at that brink of total confusion and possible failure versus falling to the other side of something truly memorable and exciting to your heart.” He also talks about the latest Cento-Matic album, Fort Recovery, his other projects and more. PopMatters also has a bunch 'o' Centro-Matic MP3 links for you.
FIERY FURNACES: The brother-sister act got an audio feature on Fresh Air that's streaming from NPR. Their latest album, Bitter Tea just got a nice write-up in the City Pages of the Twin Cities, on top of generally favorable reviews via Metacritic. You can stream 'em via the Hype Machine.
DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE: Q magazine's manufacture of a buzz band on MySpace is the jumping-off point for a piece in London's Guardian surveying rock hype going back to “Colonel” Tom Parker.
CALEXICO: Joey Burns tailors his explanation of the band's sound to his audience: “People ask what kind of music we play,” he says. “Since I live in Tucson, if I'm talking to a border patrol agent in Arizona, I start mentioning pedal steel or trumpets. If I'm talking to an indie rocker, I mention Smog, Latin Playboys or Manu Chao as influences.” You can stream 'em via the Hype Machine.
HYLOZOISTS is an instrumental orch-pop ensemble comprised of members of the Sadies, Tricky Woo and other bands, but multi-instrumentalist/producer/arranger Paul Aucoin tells NOW that the band has its own distinct sound. That seems true, based on the tracks streaming from MySpace, some but not all of which feature those multiple vibraphones.
RICHARD ASHCROFT: The former Verve frontman was arrested after bursting into a local youth club near his wife's home and demanding to work with teenagers. Apparently, alcohol was involved.
TILLY & THE WALL: Flagpole maintains that the band's second LP, Bottoms of Barrels, erases the claims of gimmickry that inevitably follow when you have a tap dancer instead of a drummer. The band is on the Team Love label, which allows bands to post tracks online. You can download the whole album for free via the label's website.
THE CUTOUT BIN: Here's another helping of tracks found on the Hype Machine while I was looking for something else. The Who – “A Quick one, While He's Away” (check out John Entwistle's bass); The Lyres – “Help You Ann” (a neo-garage classic); The Velvet Underground – “White Light/White Heat” (oh, to have Nanook of the North's cover); Nico – “These Days” (co-written by Jackson Browne, iirc); Billy Bragg – “Accident Waiting to Happen” (Billy rawks out with a band); Fountains Of Wayne – “…Baby one More Time” (yep, that song); The Wonders – “That Thing You Do” (written by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains Of Wayne); The Mountain Goats – “You're So Vain” (yep, that song); The Kinks – “Waterloo Sunset” (an all-time great song); Marvin Gaye – “Can I Get a Witness” (an all-time great performer).
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS: Former Libertines Carl Barat and Gary Powell are members of this band, which just secured a US release of their debut disc, Waterloo through Interscope August 8th, to coincide with a mini-tour of the States. But why wait until then, when you can stream them from the Hype Machine?
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: Stereogum received pics from a Swedish reader of Barat and Powell's former bandmate getting into a bar brawl in Stockholm. And he's planning to publish his diaries, detailing his music career, battle with drugs and brief, turbulent relationship with Kate Moss. The singer failed to attend an event at London's Boogaloo pub to celebrate the deal.
BRITNEY SPEARS and Spenderline recently went on vacation in Florida, but Spears reportedly rented two houses so they didn’t have to stay together, according to In Touch Weekly. Meanwhile, US Weekly had experts analyze Spears’s body language during her sit-down with Matt Lauer on Dateline NBC. Former FBI polygraph examiner and criminal profiler Jack Timarco thought she wasn't being honest when she said her marriage was fabulous; he also flagged her non-denial that she banished Spenderline to the basement of their home. Adding to the friction is Spenderline wanting their baby's “manny” fired.
JAMES BLUNT awakens a five-year-old girl from a coma. Usually, his music has the opposite effect. And I would say that even if he hadn't bagged Petra Nemcova with it.
BRADGELINA: Jolie's CNN interview beat all cable-news competition in the slot, doubling viewers and tripling the coveted 25-54 demo. But the L.A. Times called it a milestone marking CNN's turn away from real news coverage. And to rub it in, the paper ran “How to Shop for Kids the Brangelina Way,” based on Jolie's comment that she and Pitt are “looking at different countries” from which to adopt their next child. fishbowlNY notes that Forbes magazine has fallen into Jolie's “exclusive” trap.
WILLIAM SHATNER, Tom Brokaw, Regis Philbin and legendary director James Burrows are joining the Academy of Television Art & Sciences Hall of Fame. RELATED: Matt Damon may be the new Captain Kirk.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Has Andrew Morton, the infamous biographer of Princess Diana been scared off a Cruise tell-all by certain religious types? Or is he working on making it a TV special?
NICOLE KIDMAN: With her wedding to Keith Urban imminent, I've been seeing her on the infotainment TV shows. And like Tyler Durden, it's occurred to me that she is looking kinda scary lately.
JIM CARREY and JENNY McCARTHY: Caught canoodling. Obviously. And eew.
LINDSAY LOHAN and SEAN “PUFFY” COMBS allegedly had a confrontation over table space at a tres chic NYC nightclub. Page Six seemingly blames Lohan, but the NYDN's Rush & Molloy puts it on Puffy. It's Roshomon for the ridiculous.
THE APPROVAL MATRIX: New York magazine's graph of the highbrow and lowbrow spotlights the tambourine in Xtina's new song. I haven't heard it, but those who know me know I like a good tambourine almost as much as a good cowbell.
OWEN WILSON was thisclose to enlisting in the Marines, until he discovered they really don't battle lava monsters with swords.
JESSICA SIMPSON is supposedly devastated that ex-hubby Nick Lachey is dating ex-friend and ET infobabe Vanessa Minnillo. So she'll be thrilled to discover the details of the couple's trysts turning up in Star magazine and US Weekly.
REESE WITHERSPOON denies she is pregnant in a lawsuit she has filed against Star magazine.
ANNE HATHAWAY, next starring in The Devil Wears Prada, says co-star Stanley Tucci kept smacking and elbowing her breasts. She adds that “He wasn't doing it to be like a dirty old man,” but really. When she confronted him about it, “Stanley got really flustered and he said: 'What do you expect, you're flinging those melons around like it's harvest season!'” As if he didn't see her NSFW work in Brokeback Mountain and then rent Havoc.
EDU-BLOGGING: It may be summer vacation for the kids, but the 72nd Carnival Of Education is online.
IRAQ: At ITM, Omar reports on the latest bizarre rumor around Baghdad. The Coalition has transferred authority for a major portion of the northern Baghdad region to the 9th Iraqi Army Division. And it appears that the US has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003. However, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that they are thought to predate 1991 and were not in useable conditions.
IRAQ IN THE MEDIA: The New York Times ran stories today on the eight US servicemen charged with premeditated murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the shooting death of an Iraqi civilian in April, and on relatives honoring Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, one of the two US soldiers tortured and killed near Yusufiya. Sadly, these two stories are a microcosm of how the NYT and other media outlets cover US troops, which is to say they generally don't unless they are suspected of committing war crimes or are captured by the enemy (like Jessica Lynch). Senior Airman Jason D. Cunningham, a medic who remained in the burning fuselage of his aircraft after it was hit by an RPG to treat the wounded, was awarded the Air Force Cross for extraordinary heroism but got zero coverage from the paper. Colonel James Coffman, Jr. rallied his Commandos through a four-hour battle — at one point, an enemy round shattered his shooting hand and rendered his rifle inoperable, so he bandaged his hand, picked up rifles from Commando casualties and fired them with his other hand until each ran out of ammunition. He was awarded the the Distinguished Service Cross, which was noted in one sentence in the paper. Master Sgt. Donald R. Hollenbaugh won the same award for personally eliminating multiple enemy-controlled weapon positions and helping to hold off hundreds of enemy fighters while the wounded were evacuated in the first battle of Fallujah, and got zero mention in the paper. These stories, and many, many others like them, seem quite dramatic, but they are apparently not “fit to print” in the NYT. And you can bet that the same pattern holds with network TV coverage also.
FUGITIVE BEAR UPDATE: Bavarian authorities hunting Bruno, Europe's most wanted bear, have rejected an offer to lure him into a sex trap because Bruno is too young to be interested in females. Bruno has eluded his pursuers for over a month. Local hunters equipped with special traps have failed. Even a group of Finnish bear hunters with highly trained tracking dogs hasn't managed to find him, although he has become increasingly audacious, wandering into a village last Friday and sitting in front of a police station.
MONTANA GOAT UPDATE: A goat evicted from Manhattan, MT, by the town council has a new home outside the town limits.
DON'T MESS WITH THE KING: At least three villagers are reported to have been killed by lions in eastern Kenya after a Somali militia near the Kenyan border stole three cubs. It's all part of the circle of life.
COUNTRY DOGS are happier than their city counterparts, according to a new study down under.
HERRING sometimes defend themselves from killerwhales by disappearing under the cover of their own bubbly flatulence. How did that get left out of Finding Nemo?
