Karl 
SILVER JEWS frontman David Berman talks to the Chicago Tribune (Metromix) about overcoming his tour anxiety, what his rabbi said about having other Jews in the band, and getting hit on by Tina Louise from Gilligan's Island.
RAY DAVIES: The former Kinks frontman thinks Paul McCartney should abandon the middle of the road to either make stripped down music, or go to the other end of the spectrum and work with Andrew Lloyd Webber.
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO gets a hefty career profile in Harp, including his moments on the edge of death from multiple health maladies.
CHUCK BERRY: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, the Chuck Berry movie masterminded by the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards, is due in June, as both a two-disc “Special Edition” and a four-disc “Ultimate Edition.” The latter will include an hour-plus roundtable with Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley discussing their shared experiences for the first time.
TEDDY THOMPSON (yes, the son of Richard and Linda) had his NYC gig interrupted by a police raid that was part of a city-wide narcotics crackdown. But the show must go on, so Teddy took his guitar to the streets. You can stream some clips from MySpace and see him tomorrow on Conan O'Brien's show.
THE NATIONAL: Singer Matt Berninger talked with CokeMachineGlow about songwriting, the band's evolving sound, the role of bloggers in the band's quasi-success, touring with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and plenty more. You can hear 'em on MySpace.
SEEN YOUR VIDEO: Since American Idol was assaulting the Queen catalog the other night, let's revisit “Killer Queen” a live take of “Somebody To Love,” the video for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” with David Bowie on “Under Pressure” and yes, even “Bohemian Rhapsody.” BONUS: “Flash!” Ah-ah! He's incredible!
THE RACONTEURS: The Washington Post dug their US debut: “So what we've got here sounds suspiciously like a rock hipster's version of a supergroup, that dreaded hybrid beast — half man, half hype — that rarely exceeds the sum of its individual parts. (One word, party people: Asia.) But the Raconteurs seem ready to beat the supergroup rap, in large measure because there's an underlying sincerity about this enterprise. The songs are sludgy and soulful without seeming particularly calculated. Plus, these guys appear to love what they're doing.”
LESLIE FEIST gives SPIN a progress report on the remix album and her next new album. You can stream a couple of Feist tunes from SPIN, also. Plus, there's All Things Feist, a new fan blog that seems to be killing music with live boots.
YO LA TENGO: If you didn't kill music by downloading the covers the band did on WFMU earlier this year, or if you're looking for more, I note that YTL is now selling Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics, a compilation from their WFMU covers gigs from 1996-2003.
BILLY BRAGG wants to be Googled.
STEELY DAN: At PopMatters, Will Layman asks: Is Steely Dan a cheesy, clownish, processed outfit that laid the groundwork for smoove jazz, or a band of triumphantly uncool “anti-rock” nerd heroes?
PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE: The troubled singer failed to turn up to court for a review of his drug rehab after being delayed following a concert in France. Ex Brit-soaper Danniella Westbrook and former Gossard model Sophie Anderton — both recovering addicts — are slagging Doherty and warning Moss to ditch him. The supposedly sober supermodel was spotted getting cozy with her Calvin Klein ad campaign co-star Jamie Dornan, “touching and whispering in one another's ear all night,” as a spy told the NYDN. Lindsay Lohan huddled with him also. Maybe that's why Dornan's ex, Keira Knightley, warned Sienna Miller that he's a heartbreaker. BONUS: Moss looks really flexible in sculpture.
JOHN TRAVOLTA and KELLY PRESTON: Five sources reportedly believe the couple's 14-year-old son is autistic, but is not being conventionally treated, due to the Scientological teaching against psychiatry.
MADONNA hubby Guy Ritchie spends every spare second judo fighting down at his local dojo and is planning a men-only holiday with best mate Jason Stratham this May in Chicago. So, how's the marriage going?
OPRAH WINFREY is channeling a little Gordon Gekko: “I was coming back from Africa on one of my trips. I had taken one of my wealthy friends with me. She said, 'Don't you just feel guilty? Don't you just feel terrible?' I said, 'No, I don't. I do not know how me being destitute is going to help them.'”
JUNE POINTER, the youngest of the Pointer Sisters, has died of cancer at 52.
JESSICA SIMPSON and LINDSAY LOHAN reportedly bared their claws at a bar in L.A. I would care more if Jell-O was involved.
JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT denies that she rates an “eight” out of ten in the sack.
BRITNEY SPEARS: The L.A. Dept. of Children and Family Services has reportedly closed its investigation into the welfare of the pop tart's child. Meanwhile, Spenderline says he will not allow his children to go into showbiz until they learn proper moral values. Otherwise, they might father illegitimate kids before taking up with someone who grew up on the Mickey Mouse Club and ends up selling her teen sex appeal in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms and PVC catsuits.
GWEN STEFANI and Gavin Rossdale are having a baby girl, or a very androgynous boy.
EWAN McGREGOR has adopted a 4-year-old girl from Mongolia. He will teach her the ways of the Force. Or be named a UN ambassador. Possibly both.
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY and PENELOPE CRUZ on the rocks?
THE WHITE HOUSE EASTER EGG ROLL is open to same sex couples, which upsets the Traditional Values Coalition.
ZACH BRAFF talks about winning a Grammy for the Garden State soundtrack, his future plans and his new obsession with Lost: “At the Golden Globes I accosted each and every member. I'm such a fan that I almost tackled some of them. Matthew Fox — I was like, 'Okay, let me get this straight. When you're in the hatch…' I don't know. I was like a weird Star Trek fan. But they are so nice and are all so cool. I spent like an hour talking to Evangeline Lilly about specific details of the show and she was like, 'Relax. I don't know.'” At least, that's what he tells galpal Mandy Moore about why he spent an hour with Evangeline Lilly.
BRADGELINA: Jolie has reportedly complained to friends that Jennifer Aniston was “milking” her split with Pitt on the Oprah Winfrey show to turn the public against the Jolie-Pitt pairing. Experts say pregnant women like Jolie should not go to Namibia due to the risk of malaria. Someone overheard Jolie say she thinks the baby is a girl, though she bought a shirt that read “BOY” on the front, along with dresses… And while Pitt has crews renovating his home around the clock, he has ordered workers to keep it quiet after dark and invited neighbors to a cocktail party to be held when the work is done.
CULT OF THE iPod: The press is calling Fisher-Price's MP3 player aimed at infants “the iTod,” but Fisher-Price almost certainly won't, or risk hearing from Apple's legal staff.
IRAN: Diplomats and experts familiar with Iran's nuke program say Iran still is far from producing any weapons-grade material needed for bombs and may be exaggerating its own progress. Of course, the same experts also say that many things about the program are unknown — including the country's intentions — and that it's unclear how reliable US or other Western intelligence estimates are. Meanwhile, Deputy Nuclear Chief Mohammad Saeedi told state-run television that plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its facility in the central town of Natanz by late 2006, then expand to 54,000 centrifuges. To put this in context, a plant of 1,500 centrifuges could produce enough bomb fuel for one weapon within three years.
IRAQ IN THE MEDIA: The Washington Post ran a story with the lede implying that Pres. Bush made claims about mobile bio labs while “intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.” Read to paragraph 12 to discover that the team that filed a field report on this was one of several, and that “Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington…” Moreover, CIA and DIA continued to believe this for a long period thereafter, because they don't change a coordinated report based on a preliminary finding in a field report. So it's no wonder the White House was mad at the WaPo and ABC for misleading reporting.
IRAQ IN THE MEDIA II: Following the National Journal story on phony war photos, Bill Roggio notes that the AP may have fallen for a phony video from Ramadi. Meanwhile, The New York Times runs a story headlined, “Deaths of U.S. Soldiers Climb Again in Iraq.” This is the second such story the paper has done in a week. As noted earlier, the NYT never did a story about five months of declining casualties and probably will not if the past week turns out to be a blip in the longer trend. Moreover, the NYT and papers like the WaPo don't report on the trends or numbers of the enemy killed, because it's a practice discredited during the Vietnam War. The editorial judgments upon which these rules of coverage are based are… what, exactly?
RAJA, Sri Lanka's most celebrated elephant, has fallen ill after eating scores of cookies, chocolates and other rich food offered to him as part of Buddhist new year celebrations.
DOG POOP: San Francisco wants to run on it. The punchline writes itself.
BURMESE PYTHONS, roughly the circumference of a telephone pole, are growing in number and in feet across South Florida. “Last year, we caught 95 pythons,” said Skip Snow, a biologist with Florida Everglades National Park. That's not counting the 13-footer that exploded after trying to eat an alligator, or two others that got loose and ate a Siamese cat and a turkey.
STOLEN BABY MEERKAT recovered, two suspects in custody.
POISONOUS SNAKES are probably a disproportionate protest of bad service at your bank.
BABY SEAL: So cute it looks like a stuffed animal. Awww…
