BLAKE SENNETT talks about recording his side project The Elected, which is dropping the same day as the solo album from his Rilo Kiley partner, Jenny Lewis: “I guess Jenny's Gene Simmons. So maybe I'm Paul Stanley.” You can — and should — stream a couple from the band's website, as it's pretty nifty pop music. Meanwhile, Bows + Arrows is killing music with the downloads.
NEIL YOUNG: Rolling Stone excerpts its cover story on the godfather of grunge (and alt-country?), along with a feature on “The Best Neil Young Songs You Never Heard” and an archival Young interview by Cameron Crowe.
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH announce tour dates.
WE ARE SCIENTISTS and MORNINGWOOD drew comparisons just because their albums dropped the same day. The New York Times compares their live shows, again to Morningwood's detriment. At Coolfer, Glenn updates his buzz-tracking of the two bands, which shows W.A.S. pulling away (in part due to the Scientists' UK following). Similarly, Morningwood is scoring 53 at Metacritic, while W.A.S. scores a 66.
THE WHITE STRIPES will appear on The Simpsons, though not until next season, due to the lengthy animation production cycle.
ISSAC HAYES, who is hospitalized with exhaustion in Memphis, is apparently not the cat who won't cop out…
THE NATIONAL got to play with the Boss at a NYC concert where bands performed Springsteen's Nebraska album in its entirety. Springsteen featured the National's “About Today” in the music played in venues before shows on his recent solo tour, and Aaron Dessner enthused, “It was almost absurd to me that he knows and likes our music.” But not really surprising, given that their world-weary brand of Americana has been comapred to his, not to mention everyone from Golden Smog to GbV to Nick Cave. You can stream a few from the critically acclaimed Alligator at MySpace.
RYAN ADAMS gets a Village Voice profile subtitled: “Here's more non-bad publicity for a guy who never sees it that way.”
PATTI SMITH, CAT POWER and KEVIN SHIELDS of My Bloody Valentine collaborated on a spoken word + music version of Smith's The Coral Sea.
SONY XCD DEBACLE: The security-compromising rootkit malware has been detected on military and government computer systems.
CHERRYHOLMES: The crtically acclaimed family bluegrass band gets an audio profile at NPR, along with three streaming tracks.
A LOOK AHEAD: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette previews upcoming releases from “big deal” bands, including The Flaming Lips, Wilco, Ray Davies and Prince.
BRADGELINA: Us magazine reports that Jennifer Aniston was tipped about Jolie's pregnancy by Pitt's family. Pitt's friends say that his sense of fun has returned since leaving Aniston for Jolie.
LEIF GARRETT charged with heroin possession and not looking good. The L.A. Times has the before and after shots.
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES, otoh, is looking younger all the time. Britain's Daily Mail has the before and after shots.
TERI HATCHER and GEORGE CLOONEY are playing coy about their rumored date. IIRC, Hatcher said that she had picked her Golden Globes dress to win a man, not an award.
JUST ASKING: When Page Six asks, “which cuckolded cutie suffered an additional heartbreak when she decided to abort her child?” and “which pop strumpet preferred a certain kind of sexual intercourse, which let her technically maintain her virgin status, with her various hookups before she married her current husband?”, do they think these are actually blind items?
KATE MOSS: The supposedly sober supermodel's new beau reportedly has a live-in girlfriend who is also a model. But could that have been enough to drive her into the clutches of Jack Osbourne? “A Lowdown spy reports that even Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson and Jessica Simpson were aghast as the 32-year-old mother of one bumped and ground her waif-like charms into the slimmed-down 20-year-old son of Ozzy.”
FELICITY HUFFMAN and WILLIAM H. MACY snapped getting their groove on at the InStyle Golden Globes afterparty.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Switching from Kabbalah to Hinduism?
LOHAN LOWDOWN: Less than a week after she was released from a hospital, Li-Lo is partying heartily again — but her mother insists there’s nothing to worry about. (2nd item.)
MADONNA: Friends of Madge worry that “she's working herself right into exhaustion.”
STEVEN SPIELBERG: FWIW, Matt Drudge reports the uber-director is miffed that Universal chief Stacey Snider is backing Brokeback Mountain in the Oscars campaign, at the expense of Munich.
EVANGELINE LILLY: The Lost hottie once filmed a TV commercial for a steamy chatline.
CULT OF THE iPod: Both NBC and ABC have seen a rise in viewer ratings since adding select TV shows to the iTunes Music Store.
NSA SURVEILLANCE: McSweeney's has “Selection From George W. Bush's Eavesdropping Tapes: Matthew Barney and Bjork Place an Ikea Phone Order.”
PAKISTAN: Pakistani officials now believe that al Qaeda's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was killed in last week's US missile attack. He is described by authorities as the man who ran al Qaeda's infamous Derunta training camp in Afghanistan, where he used dogs and other animals as subjects for experiments with poison and chemicals. Counterterrism expert Dan Darling reported that Abu Khabab al-Masri ran al-Qaeda’s WMD program and was likely involved in the foiled Amman WMD attack.
IRAQ: Monday was homecoming day in California for 600 soldiers of a National Guard battalion that officials said suffered the most combat casualties of any California unit since the Korean War. The battalion included some of the best milbloggers, such as Major K and Danjel Bout, the Commander of A Co, 1-184 IN, 3ID in southern Baghdad. Bill Roggio covers the shift from offensive operations to counterinsurgency operations in Anbar province.
HAMSTER and SNAKE at the Tokyo Zoo are best friends, even though the hamster's name translates as “meal.”
KAYLEE THE DOLPHIN SMUGGLED TO THE HOSPITAL in Chicago for a CT scan of her lungs. The procedure was planned like a small military operation. Because of her dorsal fin, only half of Kaylee could fit in, but it was enough to see both her lungs.
SPIDERS, CENTIPEDES and SCORPION-LIKE CREATURES were among 27 new animal species that biologists have discovered in the dark, damp caves of two Central California national parks.
PRINCESS THE CAT interrupts Jean Poole and her 9-month-old granddaughter's nap, alerting them to a fire in their mobile home.
