With iTunes now the third-largest music retailer in the country and the "big box" stores selling nearly two-thirds of all new CDs, things are getting weird, with more exclusive releases snuggling up with previously unlikely bedfellows. Starbucks and Universal Music have announced an upcoming album of Sonic Youth covers entitled Hits Are for Squares, with contributions by actress Chloe Sevigny, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and comedian David Cross. In even more disturbing news, Billy Corgan is forcing fans of Smashing Pumpkins to purchase three slightly different versions of the upcoming Zeitgeist CD if they want all the bonus tracks that close out the disc. With the standard version featuring 12 tracks, does the search for the special rarities head you toward a hip, independent retailer? Unfortunately not, as fans are instead aimed towards iTunes, Best Buy, and Target for "Stellar," "Death From Above," and the title track. One more reason to jump for the iTunes set on pre-sale is a bonus pack of five Pumpkins songs covered by Panic At the Disco, The Bravery, +44, Test Your Reflex, and The Academy Is. Look for the various configurations of CDs and LP vinyls to sport different color combinations on their sleeves.
Robyn Hitchcock, one of the three greatest living songwriters (in my humble opinion), is having a good year. With a handful of new reissues, two cool live benefit tributes, the Sundance Channel documentary Sex, Food, Death, & Insects, and an upcoming visit to IFC's Henry Rollins Show, there's not a better time to discover the acid wit and romantic entomology of this psychedelic spiritual son of John Lennon and Syd Barrett. This past December Hitchcock & His Heavy Friends brought down the house in London's Three Kings pub as the band performed Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in its entirety, raising more than 4,000 pounds for the charitable Doctors Without Borders organization.
Now resigned to "classic rock" status, two of the 1980s' biggest arena-rocking bands are back next week with all-new cover collections. Poison passes - thankfully - on the eyeshadow and puckers up with Poison'd on Capitol Records, featuring eight new sessions and other rarities including a take on the Kiss party anthem "Rock & Roll All Nite," from 1987's Less Than Zero soundtrack. The party-people-pleasing set list features Alice Cooper's "I Never Cry," Tom Petty's "I Need to Know," The Cars' "Just What I Needed," and the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See."
Mark your calendars and beg your local record store to hold you a copy of the June 6 NME magazine, as that week's issue will come with a limited-edition white-wax seven-inch of The White Stripes' new single, "Icky Thump." While the UK retail CD and seven-inch single bear the rare B sides "Catch Hell Blues" and "Baby Brother," respectively, the NME bonus bears an artistic, etched flip side instead of another song.
The double-wides are rocking in Trailercana, a boogie-down ruckus from Antsy McClain & the Trailer Park Troubadours due next week on DPR Records. Growing up in a Kentucky trailer park named Pine View Heights, McClain knows his propane tanks, weeds, cinder blocks, and plastic fruit on the kitchen table, wrapping his kitschy wit around fun songs including "Living in Aluminum," "Joan of Arkansas," "Prozac Made Me Stay," and "KOA Refugee." A handful of friends attempt to class up the joint - from Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac to Bobby Cochran of Steppenwolf to Tommy Smothers - but there's no stopping the down-home wisdom of "I Was Just Flipped Off by a Silver Haired Old Lady With a 'Honk If You Love Jesus' Bumper Sticker on the Bumper of Her Car." Part Arlo Guthrie, part Jimmy Buffett, part Ray Stevens, and part Timbuk 3's Pat McDonald, McClain's humorous skew on the tornado-prone continues in his third book, It Takes a Trailer Park.
Steven Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and The Sopranos) has laid hands on two swaggering CD collections due this coming Tuesday from his new Wicked Cool Record Co. imprint - near-religious extravaganzas that dust the weak and electrify the willing. Fueled by the playlists of his syndicated radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage, the 15 personally selected tracks on The Coolest Songs in the World: Vol. 1 are each monsters in their own right. Blasting off with cosmic power-poppers The Shazam, Cincinnati's favorite sons The Greenhornes, and the wigged-out frenzy of The Forty Fives, the CD also features the snarling Ellie Vie fronting The Charms from Boston, a Mooney Suzuki rouser from 2002, and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's prophetic "Whatever Happened to My Rock & Roll." The sweaty, dangerous fun continues in CBGB OMFUG FOREVER, a tribute to the iconic, now-shuttered club with liner notes by Lenny Kaye. Sixteen tracks made the cut, with hits such as Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone" from 1978 and The Damned's "New Rose" from 1977, along with a few rare songs including Japanese bonus tracks from Green Day and U2 (which covers The Ramones' "Beat on the Brat").
The sacred fairgrounds of the Monterey Pop and Monterey Jazz festivals will bear new children in June and July with an expanded reissue of the 1967 pop festival and a new label debuting unreleased jazz treasures. Hot off a new documentary that recently screened at SXSW, Starbucks and Razor & Tie Records are teaming up for the two-disc Monterey International Pop Festival, highlighted by previously unreleased songs by Buffalo Springfield and Simon & Garfunkel. And kicking off with its first five CDs in July, Monterey Jazz Festival Records taps into Louis Armstrong from 1958, Miles Davis from 1963, Thelonious Monk from 1964, and Shirley Horn and Grover Washington Jr., each from 1994.
With Spider-Man 3 swinging into theaters on May 4, next week the soundtrack comes calling in a variety of packages. Featuring exclusive songs from Snow Patrol, Wolfmother, The Walkmen, and The Killers, the soundtrack includes a track from the Flaming Lips that has my mind salivating with possibility at the title "The Supreme Being Teaches Spider-Man How to Be in Love." A limited-edition eight-inch box set is made to resemble Spidey's rubberized suit, with a 32-page hardcover book, collectible cards, and one more Flaming Lips song, as the band rips through the "Theme from Spider-Man." Turntable spinners aren't left out, either, as a two-LP gatefold set and a series of four different picture discs are due from Record Collection Records. Spider-Man fever is also burning up Broadway, as Tony Award winner Julie Taymor (of Lion King fame) is working with Bono and The Edge of U2 on an upcoming live-theatre production.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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