• Lock up your children! Al Jourgensen is back with a new incarnation of his Revolting Cocks side project, a crazy runaway locomotive loaded with a wild who's who of guest stars. Released this coming Tuesday on his artist-controlled imprint, 13th Planet Records, Cocked & Loaded kicks off with "Fire Engine," a long-lost song written with Iggy Pop in the early 1980s.
The story of Stanley Dural Jr. is the story of a kid who hated his father's music. His dad was an accordion player, and he would play the instrument in their Louisiana home before and after his job as an auto mechanic.
• What do you do when your former record label compiles a greatest-hits package without your blessing? David Lowery, Johnny Hickman, and their comrades in Cracker took the dispute head-on, re-recording 13 of their own personally selected "best of" tracks and releasing them on the same day with another label.

Tumatoe Catch-Up

For a guy with the blues, Duke Tumatoe is remarkably upbeat. In a recent phone interview, the musician observed, "Life is inherently taken too seriously," and he's spent most of his career - the last 20 years headlining Dr.
• Need a fix of that old-time tent-revival rock-and-roll religion? Come join the sweat and grind manic art-rock of the Make-Up in its new live CD, and raise your hands high as the nervous spirit whips the Black Cat nightclub crowd into an epileptic frenzy.
From the jungle of Puerto Rico to America’s heartland, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra transported the audience with its renditions of several very different yet similarly influenced composers on February 4. Guest conductor Harvey Felder invited the audience at the almost-packed Centennial Hall to experience the art of three fairly modern composers who wrote music based on their heritage.
• I've been waiting for a songwriter to succinctly sum up the universal sorrow of the Iraq war without pointing fingers like a self-righteous lunatic. So God bless Graham Parker, one of the world's greatest songwriting treasures, for getting it right in a new song that I think everyone can agree on: "2,000 Funerals.
The new band Patio has never played a public show. Yet it's fair to say that a large number of people will be interested in the four-piece outfit. Patio features singer-guitarist Pat Willis, drummer-singer Erik Wilson, bassist Dan Olds, and sax player Derrick Reid.
• Elliott Smith gets a posthumous salute next week with To: Elliott From: Portland as fellow sons and daughters of his hometown interpret their favorite songs from this tortured singer/songwriter, who left this world under mysterious circumstances in 2003.
On ICYC Live 2005, there's a track by the Iowa City world-music ensemble Euforquestra called "Tramba" that illustrates what's so great about live recordings: In a live setting, anything can happen, and strange things often do.

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