Susan Boyle notches the most CD preorders in history while pundits fume...

By Fred Mills

With Britain's Got Talent/YouTube sensation Susan Boyle's debut album I Dreamed A Dream officially released today in the UK and tomorrow in the US, pundits across the globe are in a mad race to see who can bend and elongate their necks and gaze at their navels the closest. Early returns suggest that bloom is off the rose, with reviewers generally weighing in negatively.

London's Guardian was downright catty, calling the album "no mere bunch of songs; it is a commemorative mug of a major national event, rendered as a silver gewgaw that plays music. It would be instructive to see a Venn diagram showing the overlap between purchasers of I Dreamed a Dream and those buying Lady Gaga's album, The Fame Monster. Or, indeed, the overlap between SuBo and any other record at all... The very best thing about I Dreamed a Dream is that Boyle is mercifully restrained throughout. A little vibrato is as close as she comes to over-emoting."

The NY Daily News actually seems unnaturally preoccupied with Boyle's sex life (or lack thereof), writing, "There's something placid and naive about most of these performances. Despite her age, Boyle's voice carries little experience of yearning and less of sex. It may not be the voice of someone who's never been kissed (to paraphrase her), but it's clearly one of someone who seldom has."

And CNN.com, though typically even-handed (there are no true "critics" at CNN, just reporters who occasionally insert an opinion into their news stories), calls the record "something of a hotch-potch crowd-pleaser... Technically, Boyle does the job. Her voice. Can she sing? Yes. Is she outstanding? No. She's ... fine. And that's the problem. Listening to Boyle's record feels strangely monochrome. Her fame's roots lie not in her talent, but in the few short minutes that she overturned our perceptions of those who deserve fame: she is a foil to the young and the beautiful."

Talk about damning with faint praise. Well, in a unique twist that could only happen in 2009, Boyle gets the last laugh - preemptively. Amazon.com is reporting that the album is their most preordered CD to date; that is, in history. Apparently preorders began coming in months ago, while the buzz was still, er, buzzing about Boyle, and while actual sales figures won't be announced until the end of the week, bets are that the record will hit platinum status pretty early on.

In a statement, Columbia Records chairman Steve Barnett noted, "One of the things that is so unique about Susan Boyle is her ability to touch people around the world."

With over 300 million YouTube views and counting, that's what you call the kind of global reach that no music critic could every possibly hope to impact. Sheesh... my fellow scribes and I think we need to find another career path.

Only Dylan Interview To Be Released In Conjunction With Artist's Christmas In The Heart Album.

By Blurt Staff

Bob Dylan's only interview in conjunction with the release of his Christmas In The Heart album will be syndicated worldwide through the International Network Of Street Papers (INSP) beginning today.  Completed earlier this month with journalist Bill Flanagan, the wide-ranging interview includes Dylan's thoughts on all things Christmas, including his favorite holiday songs, special presents, the making of his new album, Pretty Boy Floyd and Babe Ruth.

     According to the INSP, Street papers offer a unique route out of poverty. In recent years, they have become increasingly recognized for their relevance to the developing world. By combining a sustainable social enterprise model with an independent media voice, street papers provide an enterprising means to address poverty and freedom of expression.

Go to the INSP website to find out what the newspaper nearest you is. The link to US papers is here.

     As announced earlier, all of Bob Dylan's royalties from sales Christmas In The Heart will be donated to Feeding America in the United States, Crisis in the United Kingdom, and the World Food Programme in 80 developing nations around the world. 

The first video from Christmas In The Heart, for "Must Be Santa," has just been released and is available for viewing on http://bobdylan.com. 

Pavement ATP is already sold out, kids...

By Fred Mills

Punters are literally agog at the talent that's recently been announced for the 2010 All Tomorrow's Parties events - and some are also weeping at the new that one of them is already SOLD OUT.

If you had your sights set on the British ATP, to be held May 14-16 at Butlin's Holiday Centre in Minehead, you're out of luck. No doubt a huge factor in the speedy ticket sales was when Pavement was announced at the guest curator. In addition to Pavement, appearing will be Mission of Burma, Calexico, Broken Social Scene and the Walkmen, plus 17 others. The complete lineup:

Broken Social Scene
Mission Of Burma
Calexico
The Raincoats
The Fiery Furnaces
The Walkmen
Omar Souleyman + Sublime Frequencies
Atlas Sound
Grails
The Drones
Saccharine Trust
The Clean
Wooden Shjips
Sic Alps
Pierced Arrows
Spiral Stairs
Blitzen Trapper
The 3ds
Marble Valley
The Authorities
Wildbirds And Peacedrums

Meanwhile, you might want to consider queuing up for tix for the U.S. ATP, taking place Sept. 3 - 5  at Kutsher's Country Club in Monticello, NY.

In particular, the Sept. 3 installment of the event's "Don't Look Back" series promises to be the wildest ever. As you may have surmised from the AWESOME poster above, it will feature these artists and these albums, performed in their entirety:

Stooges - Raw Power

The Scientists - Blood Red River

Sleep - Holy Mountain

Mudhoney - Superfuzz Bigmuff

Other artists performing that weekend will be announced soon. Note that while tickets are available, lodging reservations appear to be going fast, so don't delay.

Also sold out is the Dec. 4-6 "Nightmare Before Christmas" ATP curated by My Bloody Valentine, along with the Dec. 11 - 13 "Ten Years of ATP," both in Britain. The Dec. 7 - 10 "In Between Days" (also Britain) featuring Lightning Bolt, Mum, Apse, Polvo, Dirty 3 and others is still showing tickets as available. And the other May event, May 7 - 9, curated by Matt Groening and featuring the Boredoms, the Raincoats, Danielson, Toumani Diabate and more, hasn't sold out yet either.

Your contacts:

Main site: http://www.atpfestival.com/

ATP UK w/Pavement: http://www.atpfestival.com/events/pavement.php

ATP US w/Stooges:  http://www.atpfestival.com/events/atpnewyork2010.php

Not quite a remix... not quite a remake... not sure exactly WHAT to call it...

By Blurt Staff

Amid all the brouhaha over that supposed feud going on between Beck and the Fiery Furnaces' Matt Friedberger (go here if you're not up on that... ultimately, it's kinda boring, however... rock beefs just don't have the same pizazz as hip-hop ones...), pretty much everyone overlooked the fact that the Furnaces just announced the impending release of a new album - their second in barely six months. It's to be a digital-only title, issued by Thrill Jockey, and can be nabbed at the label's website.

Fans already know that the Furnaces have been reworking, rearranging, and rewriting their songs live since they first started touring in 2003.  They have taken this practice one step further on the new record, Take Me Round Again.  Recorded separately this past July in Michigan and New York, Matt and Eleanor each recorded 6 songs that originally appeared on I'm Going Away (issued in July). All that remains the same are the words. 

Eleanor: "I've gotten into the habit of rewriting songs Matt has written, just as a way of practicing and singing at home.  Originally, I had wanted to record a folk-style record called Eleanor Friedberger sings the songs of the Fiery Furnaces.  I thought it would make a nice greatest hits record, but reworking I'm Going Away before it even came out seemed a lot more exciting."

Matthew:  "After asking people to send us their re-write of I'm Going Away before having heard it (http://www.thefieryfurnaces.com/site/deaf-descriptions/), I thought we owed it to them to make an actual alternate version of the record.  And not just leave all the new arranging for live shows." 

Speaking of live shows, the Furnaces are in Denver tonight, and then starting on Dec. 4 will be dong a string of shows in the New York area, eventually landing in Chicago on Dec. 30 and 31 to ring in the New Year. Dates are here.

The mind just boggles at the marketing possibilities... Rock over Gary, Indiana!

By Blurt Staff

Okay, okay, we're whupping that intern who wrote the headline - we don't mean to imply that Jacko and Wes are on the same DVD. But hey, if it caught your attention...

The good culture-vultures over at MVD Visual have announced the impending release of DVDs from both deceased entertainers. The first, Wesley Willis' Joy Rides, arrives on Dec. 8 and is described as following "the life of the prolific and controversial artist on his journey from obscurity to fame. [It] won the Gold Hugo for the Chicago Award at the 2008 Chicago International Film Festival [and premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2008 and has since been shown at various other festivals, including Noise Pop and SXSW.

"A Chicago native, Wesley Willis became an underground rock icon, revered artist and hero to many before his untimely death in 2003. Termed by some as an "outsider artist" due to his schizophrenia, the film examines Wesley's ability to draw people in despite his intimidating facade. Through his force of personality and his artistic talents, Wesley's music and art attracted people from all walks of life. Greeting people with a headbutt and a request to say "rah" and "roh", Wesley quickly stood out in a crowd. Through interviews with friends and footage from the last four years of Wesley's life, a portrait emerges of a man whose day-to-day existence was wrought with pain and joy. Although his life was troubled, Wesley never stopped creating. He continued to draw pictures and write songs up until his death."

There will be a series of free screenings for the DVD too; view the trailer below.

PHILADELPHIA - Monday Nov 30
 Midnight Screening of Wesley Willis's Joy Rides
 National Mechanics Bar & Restaurant Old City Philadelphia
22 S 3rd St - Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.nationalmechanics.com
 
(With music by Bobo, Personae Joe Melchiorre, Technophobes, and more!)
 
 
CHICAGO - Sunday, December 6th at 7pm
 The Empty Bottle
1035 N Western Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
www.emptybottle.com
 
(With music following the screening.)
 
 
BROOKLYN - Monday, December 7th at 8pm
 Glasslands Gallery
289 Kent Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.glasslands.com
 
(With music by Teenage Prayers and Eric Lindley)

Meanwhile, lso arriving Dec. 8 is Michael Jackson - Life & Times Of The King Of Pop 1958-2009. Jackson's last days and Memorial Service are captured in this 79-minute film. Wilson Ebiye, President and CEO of Rock City Entertainment (who teamed with MVD for the project), said in a statement, "The Life and Times of the King of Pop 1958-2009 is a great companion piece to This Is It. The film is a concerted effort to preserve and protect Michael's legacy of humanitarianism, peace and love."

 
Life & Times Of The King Of Pop 1958-2009 features appearances at the Memorial Service by a wide-ranging cast of celebrities and entertainers such as Usher, Janet Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, The Jacksons, Berry Gordy, Brooke Shields, Magic Johnson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie.

Uh-huh. Well, we're putting our money on the Wesley Willis flick for entertainment and archival value... rock over Gary, Indiana, Wes!

Manu, that's who! Promises to be way more interesting than that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25^th anniversary concert airing the 29^th on HBO...

By Blurt Staff

Latin/worldbeat alt-rocker Manu Chao's Baionarena will make its U.S. television premiere on Friday, November 27th at NBC's bilingual youth network mun2. The one-hour "mun2 Presents: Manu Chao" special will air Friday, November 27th at 12am midnight ET/PT, and will repeat on Sunday November 29th at 11pm ET/PT (as well as additional dates throughout December). Holamun2.com is also streaming an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour diary over the next week at holamun2.com/manuchao.

"Manu represents what's great about music: it transcends language, class and politics," said Flavio Morales (VP Programming for mun2) in a statement.  "Offering his music to our mun2 audience really speaks to the duality we as Latinos live everyday."

The  Baionarena double live album/DVD set will be released nationally on December 1^st via the Nacional label. The album was recorded last year in Bayonne, France. Highlights among the 33 tracks include Chao classics like "Clandestino," "La Vida Tombola," "Mala Vida," "La Primavera" and "Welcome to Tijuana." (Baionarena will be released in both standard and limited edition deluxe formats, the latter available on January 12th).

 
Baionarena is the follow-up to the Latin Grammy-winning studio album, La Radiolina, which has been certified Gold and has now sold over a million copies worldwide.

 
In other recent news, Chao has released a "La Colifata" benefit project, now available for a "pay what you want" donation at http://VivalaColifata.org, about which we previously brought you details - read more of our coverage here.

Most eagerly awaited remaster (and maybe some ace concert footage...) of the entire Boss canon? Hey, as good as those Japanese reissues were a few years ago, they were not specifically remasters, just fancy-packaged things, so... Yeah. We're good.

By Fred Mills

Bruce Springsteen's manager Jon Landau, speaking to RollingStone.com yesterday, indicated that the much-rumored, much-anticipated remastered/box set edition of his classic '78 album Darkness On the Edge of Town is about "93 per cent done" - essentially confirming that the project is a "go" for 2010, although Landau didn't disclose a projected release date.

"It's absolutely fantastic and there are just some finishing touches that we need to turn our attention to and finalize and we'll get it out there," Landau said, adding that in addition to the original album finally getting the remastering treatment, is will include " a new documentary about the making of the LP, as well as live footage from the 1978 tour."

Those of us already in possession of professionally-shot, high-quality footage from that tour can only imagine what lurks in the CBS vaults. Needless to say, with appetites whetted by the Born To Run CD/DVD box that came out a few years ago, this amounts to some of the biggest Boss news to date.

Speaking to BLURT about all this, Backstreets magazine editor Chris Phillips agrees, saying, "It's always bittersweet when a Springsteen tour comes to an end, and especially this time, considering it's the last we'll see of the E Street Band for at least a while. And the last dance is just a few days away. But if coming off the road gives Bruce a chance to get back to work on this stuff, that's a heck of a silver lining.

"The Darkness box has been in the works for awhile - we're talking years, not months. And it in particular is something we've been jonesing for, certainly since the album's 30th anniversary last year. Out of all the albums in his catalog, Darkness is the one most in need of remastering. And of course the 1978 tour is legendary, so finally getting some more official live material from that period has been at the top of many fans' lists. Video-wise, it remains to be seen what there might be to represent the tour; I'd be surprised if Bruce has an uncirculated complete Darkness show up his sleeve like the Hammersmith '75 film for Born to Run. But if this thing is anything like the 30th anniversary Born to Run box -- and signs point to yes -- it's going to be a must-have."

Manager Landau further indicated to RS that a concert DVD from the Working on a Dream tour should be ready soon (and prior to the Darkness box). "We're working on some different approaches to a DVD for this tour. We'll release it sometime fairly soon, post-Christmas," he said.

Springsteen and the E Street band will conclude their two-year long Dream tour this Sunday, Nov. 22,  in Buffalo  - no, there will not be a final show in Ohio - where they'll perform as part of the show the complete 1973 album Greetings From Asbury Park.

Latest, acclaimed, album gets "reinvented" as a video album to be released via iTunes. See trailer, below.

By Blurt Staff

The Decemberists' recent album - some pundits are calling it an "epic song cycle," while the BLURT reviewer simply said "it stands up to the best" of rock's classic thematic records - The Hazards Of Love gets reinvented as a full-length video album now: Here Come The Waves: The Hazards Of Love Visualized is  released on December 1 exclusively through iTunes.

Here Come The Waves, which was debuted live in Los Angeles in October to rave reviews, is a collaboration with four filmmakers - Guilherme Marcondes, Julia Pott, Peter Sluszka and Santa Maria - each of whom created original animation to accompany a section of the music. The animations were produced by Flux and Hornet.

Check out the brief teaser trailer below.

What's interesting are some of the comments that have already been posted by fans at YouTube (go HERE), among them "One of the best shows I have EVER seen, and that says a lot. This was seriously amazing, I can't stop thinking about it!" and "This is going to be so amazing i cant wait until december!" (Actually the "If anyone sneaked a video past the security people, please post it!" comment is pretty cool too... but we digress...)

Anyway, Billboard has already weighed in, calling it "a stunning new ‘visualizer' of four seamlessly-sequenced psychedelic videos inspired by the album's different acts," adding that "the visuals function as impressionistic landscapes and atmospheres evocative of the unfolding drama like a richly imagined liquid lightshow." And the Los Angeles Times gushed, "a tumbling series of visuals with four distinct aesthetic styles. Peter Sluszka's ultra-slow motion capture of exploding mushrooms and elegantly disseminating seed pods... Julia Pott's line art of wolves and foxes hovering in geometric constellations... Guilherme Marcondes' renderings of skeletons caught among leafless branches and verdant human arms that unfurl like ferns... Santa Maria provides context...with cosmic, computer-generated vistas, cartoons of splintering bones."

Hey, we are all about tumbling series of visuals! This might be the best reason all year to get on iTunes... meanwhile, next stop: Tales From Topographic Oceans: The Broadway Play...

Sharin and Sune kick out the jams, no irony necessary: Raveonettes at Bimbo's 365 Club in SF, Nov. 9.

By Zach Bloom

There's a ton of smoke and a noisy loop of guitars emitting from the P.A. as the lights dim. The band casual takes the stage in casual dress, as the loop gives way to the opening riff of "Gone Forever." It's the standout track on In And Out Of Control, the new album that sums up everything The Raveonettes have been about since their hasty inception some eight years ago.

Two things are most immediately clear as the rhythm section kicks in: theirs is a small, heavily-produced drum set (bass drum stood up like a floor tom with a tambourine attached, crash cymbal, snare) that replicates the lush "power drum" sound of the 80s, splashing with every snare hit; the other is that Sharin Foo is kind of impossibly pretty - in the ballpark of the best looking musician, period. What she does because of and in spite of her looks is the focal point of the show. No one in the audience is unaware of what she's doing or where's she's wandered off to - even (or especially) as she leans over to fiddle with her amp. Sune Rose Wagner, her male counterpart on vocals and guitar, wisely harbors no delusions of stealing the spotlight.

This is right where the Raveonettes should be. "Those were some from the vault," Foo remarks, following a string of older tunes ringing with fuzz and disaffected cool-this is highlighted by "Veronica Fever," off Whip It On, their debut mini LP. The bulk of the set, though, focuses on last years' distortion-soaked Lust Lust Lust and the new one-a bit of a redirect, veering away from the acoustic relaxation of 2005's Pretty In Black. The tender moments are meticulously placed to contrast against the ear-bleeding guitars, guaranteed to fill any vacancy. When both Foo and Wagner swap Jazzmasters (or are they Jaguars? Sue me, I can't always tell the difference) for tambourines on a stripped-down, inverted version of "Break Up Girls!," the stage feels incomplete. Playing with the crowd's anticipation, the two take their time in getting back to the guitars, swaying with the bass-line groove.

There's a scene in David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me when Laura and Donna go to an evil Canadian bar that's all strobe lights and blaring music that's probably supposed to sound like the Jesus & Mary Chain but isn't. It's a very Lynch theme, playing on the innocent memories of girl groups by corrupting it with modern noise. Employing a similar approach, "Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)" and "Suicide" anchor the second half of set. Stripped of the dark themes and lines like "Your boyfriend's mean and your mom's a bitch," (or, "Those fuckers stay in your head") the tunes are a joyous romp, and The Raveonettes play it straight. There aren't belying smirks or self-conscious wisecracks. They write about the world they see, and everyone's part of it.

Since we're also talking Colin Newman's other band, Githead, at Blurt today, let's rewind all the way back to the beginning...

By Fred Mills

Most folks have a story about the first time they heard groundbreaking, iconoclastic British punk band Wire, and so do I: In the winter of 1977/78 I was working in the distribution center of southeastern music retailers Record Bar, and with U.S. major labels gradually, if grudgingly, warming up to the then-current exports from England, a shipment from EMI one day was of great interest to me and a couple of my fellow punk-tilting employees: it included the debut album from Wire, whom we'd already been exposed to via Melody Maker and the NME. Among the shipment was a carton of sealed/cut corner promotional copies of Pink Flag intended to be sent around to the various accounts for in-store play, but as we surmised most if not all of them would be wasted - this was the South, after all, and Record Bar, though privately owned, was a mall-based chain - we convinced our supervisor to let us each take a handful of promos for ourselves.

We also set aside one for in-warehouse play. That afternoon my friend Robert furtively slipped the LP into the pile next to the stereo, and it eventually rotated to the top of the stack. Then -

 Thoom... thoom... clang... clang...

"Our own correspondent is sorry to tell

Of an uneasy time that all is not well..."

Perhaps a minute elapsed during which Pink Flag opening track "Reuters" played. Then -

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT?!?"

Talk about your uneasy times. I can honestly say I've never witnessed quite so visceral a (negative) reaction to a piece of music in my entire life as this one: almost to a man, the warehouse employees hurtled verbal abuse in the direction of the office, and the supervisor's assistant scrambled to yank the album from the turntable, summarily replacing it with a Molly Hatchet record. Sigh. Such was life at a warehouse in the seventies. But you can't say we didn't try to subvert from within.

Journalist (and BLURT contributor) Wilson Neate has his First Encounter Of A Wire Kind too: Growing up in England, in 1977 he was 12 and receiving musical transmissions from the likes of John Peel's BBC program and Radio Luxembourg, which eagerly aired the new music of the day. As he outlines in his contribution to Continuum's 33 1/3 series, Pink Flag, his initial exposure was via the single "I Am The Fly," from Wire's second LP Chairs Missing; "I didn't know what to make of the song," Neate confesses, adding that he nevertheless was smitten by its uniqueness. Soon enough he'd backtracked to score a copy of Pink Flag, never suspecting he might one day be interviewing its creators and authoring a book about it.

"A lot of great albums came out in 1977," writes Neate, "but Pink Flag is one of a handful - alongside Low, "Heroes", Before and After Science - that remain objects of fascination to me." And then Neate dispenses with the autobiographical portion of his program and proceeds to outline, in painstaking but rousingly informative fashion, exactly why Pink Flag remains such an object of fascination - to him, to the rest of us, and most of all, to the four men of Wire.

This latter component is of no minor importance, by the way; Neate was able to interview vocalist Colin Newman, guitarist Bruce Gilbert, drummer Robert Gotobed and bassist Graham Lewis at length in order to get the story leading up to and behind the making of Pink Flag. It's not as Rashomon-like as you might presume, either; Wire's subsequent history may be fraught with artistic differences and the comings-and-goings of disgruntled members, but during the early years, at least, it seems they were relatively united in their desire to (a) be different; (b) but not "different" like the punks were "different," as they all chafed at punk orthodoxy; and (c) find new ways of saying old things, i.e., "be different." And it's to Neate's credit that he untangles some of the seemingly contradictory elements of the Wire aesthetic - it's not punk, but it's minimalist, which coming on the heels of bloated ‘70s rock definitely sounded "punk" for lack of a better term; ideas were rampant among the members, but as a group Wire operated via reduction of ideas; etc. - without disappearing up an intellectual journalistic arse-hole.

Although Neate does have a propensity to analyze and dissect in almost dissertation fashion (check some of his reviews and features for BLURT), he's still mindful of spinning an entertaining tale along the way. And that, when you boil down a music volume to its essentials, is what will make or break a book. How many times have you started to get engrossed in a biography when, just as things are really picking up steam, the writer lapses into the dreaded "describe-the-album-track-by-track" syndrome and nearly (or completely) drains the narrative of color and drama?

Hold that thought: Neate's Pink Flag has an entire 60-page section titled "God Those R.P.M.: Pink Flag Track by Track," so if the thought of spending 10 or 15 minutes to read a description of a song that's only 1½ minutes in the first place floats your boat, this dinghy's for you, bro. Only kidding - Neate's well up to the task at hand, and he ably tackles each of the 21 Pink Flag tunes, mixing aural analysis with emotional context, throwing in some cultural or historical tidbits along the way (for example, the trajectory of "Three Girl Rhumba" from original LP to Elastica's 1994 riff appropriation for their hit "Connection" to a European TV commercial that had most listeners mistaking Wire for Elastica, if you can believe that), and adding occasional quotes from Wire members for additional illumination.

And as that tracks section follows some 80-odd pages outlining the history of Wire/Pink Flag - which itself is loaded with copious quotes, enough so that we can justifiably call it The Definitive And Authoritative Treatment of that period in Wire's long career - Neate's book is akin to a wholly filling two-course meal. There's even "dessert" by way of a final coda-like chapter that discusses matters surrounding the 2006 Wire box set and the Pink Flag reissue.

Bottom line: Pink Flag (the book) does Pink Flag (the album) full justice. A lot of the titles in the 33 1/3 series do similarly, but this one deserves to be recognized as one of the top entries to date, period.

***

Incidentally, I still have one of those sealed Pink Flag promos in my collection - I'm looking at it right now, in fact. Oddly, I have an urge to go play some Molly Hatchet. But I'm sure the feeling will pass...