Karl THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:
WOLFGANG'S VAULT: According to the Wall Street Journal, Bill Sagan picked up a ton of vintage rock posters, photos. shirts, tickets and other memorabilia when Bill Graham Presents sold out to Clear Channel. Word has it that Sagan is working on the audio and video as well.
FRIDAY TIMEWASTER: From last year, penguin diving.
LESLIE FEIST has more tour dates, including a stop at the fabled M-Shop in Ames. Fellow BSSer Jason Collett will be opening most of the gigs. Feist has audio at her redesigned website.
KRISTEN HERSH is offering a free EP from her current band, 50 Foot Wave, to attract “earballs.” Hersh writes: “It's an experiment. Who knows how it will go? Wheee!”
PETER JESPERSON, the man who discovered The Replacements and co-founded Twin/Tone Records, is now a Senior VP and A&R rep for maverick indie label New West Records, where he handles Drive-By Truckers, the Austin City Limits catalog, and much more. And he uses one of my favorite phrases, “who'd a-thunk?”
SXSW 2006 has announced a partial lineup, as if The Arctic Monkeys, Belle and Sebastian, The Boy Least Likely To, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Neko Case, Cat Power, The Earlies, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Go! Team, Clarence Frogman Henry, The Plimsouls, Robert Pollard, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Tom Verlaine, and many, many more, along with events featuring Neil Young, kd lang, Sam Moore, the Pretenders, Judy Collins, Billy Bragg, and Kris Krisofferson weren't enough to whet your appetite.
SEASON OF THE LIST: Filter has Top Tens from Finn Cohen of The Nein, Clearlake, Odd Nosdam of cLOUDDEAD and The Like. The A.V. Club has seven “best ofs” from the staff.
THE ATTORNEYS are (with an occasional misfire) making with the early 80's new wave sounds with two pages at MySpace. Check 'em out, if you're in the mood for that sound; some of the stuff on the second page is very Brit Nouveau.
THE WHITE STRIPES: Jack complains that other bands are adopting the band's red, white and black color scheme. Jack is also working on a commercial for Coca-Cola, which I believe used the same scheme even before the Stripes. So did Pate.
OKKERVIL RIVER scores an 8.2 on the Pitchfork for the Black Sheep Boy Appendix EP. You can hear some of the initial Black Sheep Boy album at MySpace and the OR website.
JOY DIVISION: New Order are working on new material for Control, the long-awaited biopic of the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.
RHETT MILLER: The Old 97's frontman talks about his upcoming album, The Believer (due Feb. 28), at Rolling Stone.
COLDPLAY frontman Chris Martin is jabbed repeatedly by former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown. For example, he thinks the current Coldplay album “sounds so much like Echo & the Bunnymen that it amazes him how they've got away with it. (I thought it was the Jesus and Mary Chain that picked up where your precious Echo left off.)
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The troubled singer is slammed for wasting his life on drugs… by Ozzy Osbourne. Ouch. And Doherty’s former drug dealer has begged him to have an HIV test — after being diagnosed with the virus himself. Not a good weekend for ol' Pete.
KING KONG: Universal has to be a little nervous at the 9.8 million opening, but I would think that a 60-65 million weekend would be quite good for a three hour film. USA Today has some of the fun facts for fanboys to which I alluded in my mini-review yesterday. Naomi Watts tells Dark Horizons that she might slow down and start a family; wonder if Liev Schreiber knows about this… ALSO: Boing-Boing hooks you up to inter-species romance.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Kong mays also benefit from the other movies opening wide this weekend are faring poorly on the Tomatometer.
BRITNEY SPEARS reclaimed the top spot on Yahoo's annual list of the most-searched for terms on the Internet. But photo searches favored Jessica Simpson and the French Hotel.
MORGAN FREEMAN says the concept of a month dedicated to black history is “ridiculous” in an interview on CBS' 60 Minutes to air Sunday. “I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history.”
GEORGE W. BUSH HATES WHITE PEOPLE: Although the 2000 Census shows New Orleans was 28 percent white, caucasians appear to make up 41 percent of the dead from Hurricane Katrina. Maybe Kanye West should have a sitdown with Morgan Freeman.
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE and JONATHAN SCHAECH just announced they're getting divorced, but she's already seeing Alaskan fisherman/rocker/skateboarder Lee Grivas? I keep imagining Schaech calling her a smelly pirate hooker, but not in a good way.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY is doing an underwater photo shoot for the Water Aid charity. After diving into the tank used for the James Bond films at Pinewood Studios, Knightley joked, “I don’t think I’ve got the right assets for a Bond film — but maybe I’ll become a scuba diver after this shoot!”
GLORIA STEINEM criticizes Hugh Hefner and gets criticized for it by Muslim groups.
TERI HATCHER gets an apology from the National Enquirer over the story that she used a van in her driveway for sex romps. I'm also sorry that's not true.
50 CENT: I think Perez Hilton is implying something about the gangsta. NTTAWWT.
SETVE GUTTENBERG: I know, I know… but this interview may be the funniest thing he's done in decades: “From 1980 to 1990, I shot more films than any other actor in the Screen Actors Guild apart from Gene Hackman. Everyone keeps asking me that stupid question: 'What are you doing?' I say: 'Why do I need to do anything? I'm rich…'” And he's just warming up.
CARMEN ELECTRA: It looks like Santa thinks she's been a bad girl. And not in a good way.
RACHEL McADAMS and RYAN GOSLING: The Notebook co-stars may be thinking about engagement rings, but some (by which I mean me) are more interested in her wardrobe malfunction at the premiere of The Family Stone.
IRAQ: The election went off without serious incident. Particularly encouraging was high turnout by Sunni Arabs, such as the reported 70 percent turnout in Fallujah and as high as 83 percent in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, with voting in large numbers even in hotbeds of insurgent activity such as Ramadi and Haqlaniya. Indeed, Sunni militants said they would defend polling stations in cities like Ramadi against al Qaeda and other groups who vowed to disrupt the vote. Pajamas Media has a roundup from Iraqi journalists and bloggers in a number of provinces. Bill Roggio has a photo of turnout in Barwana, which is near Haqlaniyah and Haditha. The press runs headlines like “After Iraq vote success, now for the hard part,” as though building a constitutional representative democracy in the heart of the Middle East in 1,000 days is easy. The New York Times, while stressing the coming struggle between Islamist and secular factions (wow, that's news), did manage to quote retired airline mechanic Zuhiar al-Zahawi, one of many Sunnis who sat out the elections in January but voted Thursday: “We will talk to each other, and we will connect with each other, and we will weave the country together like a piece of cloth.”
GOOGLE MUSIC is a a new service intended to give searchers fast links to song lyrics, musical artists and CD titles on the main search results page. How long until the RIAA sues Google?
EDU-BLOGGING: Almost forgot that the 45th Carnival of Education is online.
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS: King penguins at a zoo in northern Japan are gaining weight, so the keepers are forcing them to march, but not in a Bataan sort of way.
FROGS: Your dumb criminal story of the day is the fools who poached frogs in France.
AN OHIO POLICE DOG is being sued by a convicted drug dealer for alleged civil rights violations. Last Thursday, Andi the German shepherd was informed of the suit, sort of. With a paw print, the dog “signed” the paper indicating he had been formally served with the complaint.
CHICKEN RUN: After a truck carrying thousands of broody hens lost its load in rural Ireland, 7,000 chickens began to lay eggs on the highway, creating a hazardous slick and traffic chaos.
