We may be in a recession, but even when the economy is in the toilet, you still need to have great music. That's why we invented "Bargain Spins," a new feature that focuses on overlooked albums that also happen to be available in every used or bargain bin in every record store in the country (and if you don't have a record store in your town anymore, you can still find them discounted in most every digital music store or on sites like Half.com). So enjoy some great records you might have missed.
James' Pick: Air, 10,000 Hz Legend, (2001): Have you ever wanted to stick your junk in a DAT machine? Get randy with a Roland 808? No? Well, as it turns out, neither have most people, and therein lies the problem with 10,000 Hz Legend, a darkly atmospheric, strangely horny album specifically designed to encourage that kind of man-on-machine coupling. A startling shift from the sunnier climes Air explored on their 1998 breakout Moon Safari, the confounding Legend is populated with decidedly creepy fare like "How Does It Make You Feel?" (which features a desperate robot breathlessly cooing "Let's have an extended play together") and the moody "Sex Born Poison," which is most notable for its use of lines like "Shoot, use your gun of life/ I'm not afraid to die in your arms." Not surprisingly, it weirded out pretty much everybody, which makes it a bargain bin staple to this day. But now, some eight years removed from its initial release, I'm here to praise it. Legend is required listening because it has informed everything Air have done ever since, as they continue to dive deeper into mood-drenched soundscapes and gently tweak sexual standards on albums like Pocket Symphony and this year's Love 2. There's great stuff to be found here — particularly "The Vagabond" (featuring a cameo by Beck) and "Radian" — provided you don't mind the occasional robo-boner.
Kyle's Pick: The Strokes, Room on Fire (2003): There are a lot of end-of-decade lists coming out right now, and one of the albums that people are name-checking is Is This It, the 2001 debut from the Strokes. Almost nobody ever mentions Room on Fire, the band's much-maligned second effort. Read more...
The World Series kicks off tomorrow night, with the New York Yankees squaring off against the Philadelphia Phillies. But today is an important day in baseball history, especially if you grew up rooting for Dwight Evans in a New England suburb. On October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox finally snapped an eight decade run of futility and won their first World Series since 1918, finishing off the St. Louis Cardinals in four straight games. Though it was an emotional run for the Red Sox, the 2004 World Series may be one of the most anti-climatic of all time. In the four game sweep, the Cardinals were never really in any of the games, and the Red Sox had already overcome incredible odds during the American League Championship Series, where they won four straight games after sitting on the brink of elimination against the Yankees. The playoffs that year were full of extra-inning tilts, incredible comebacks, dramatic home runs and pitcher Curt Schilling's famous bloody sock. The Red Sox didn't have to wait another 86 years to bring home another championship, as they won again in 2007 (also via a four game sweep, against the Colorado Rockies).
One of the greatest moments from the 2004 World Series had very little to do with the games themselves, but rather with Fox, the network that broadcasts baseball's championship every year. After the final game ended (with pitcher Keith Foulke snagging an easy ground ball and flipping it to first baseman Doug Mientkeiwicz for an easy out), Fox put together a highlight package to commemorate Boston's miraculous run through the playoffs. The song they used to score that montage? Beck's "The Golden Age," from his moody 2002 breakup album Sea Change. The song was probably chosen because of one lyric — "Let the golden age begin" — but Fox should really pay attention to context, as "The Golden Age" is about escape and depression (the official chorus is "These days I barely get by/I don't even try"). Fox tends to do that a lot on their sports broadcasts — a few years back during one of their Sunday NFL shows, they aired a package about Eli Manning fumbling, and the song they used to underscore it was Good Charlotte's "Hold On," which as it turns out is not about clutching pigskin but rather about suicide.
Anyway, inappropriate context aside, "The Golden Age" remains a wonderful little sad-eyed ballad with a trippy video. Enjoy.
Muse really, really want to make it big in America. I mean, this a group whose singer/guitarist Matthew Bellamy recently told Spin magazine, "We'd like to be remembered amongst the best bands in the history of rock. It's necessary to have sustained success in this country for that to happen."
But the British band doesn't want it bad enough to cozy up to an endorsement from Fox News weeping head Glenn Beck, who was singing Muse's praises last month for what he saw as their apocalyptic, one-world order warning on their new album, The Resistance. No sooner had Beck big-upped his paranoid android buddies in the prog trio than he reported that their people called him and asked that he rescind his endorsement. Or did they? On Monday, we found out that Beck was just kidding when he claimed that Muse had put the kibosh on his kudos.
While a Beck endorsement might not put them over the top, popularity-wise, in the U.S., if their retraction request had been real, it would have put them in some impressive company in terms of bands who've asked conservative powerhouses to lay off using or praising their music. There was a flood of these no-thank-yous in last year's presidential election, most of them aimed at failed Republican nominee Senator John McCain.
The Vietnam war hero got pwned by no less than half a dozen acts during his presidential bid, from the Foo Fighters, Van Halen and Heart to John Mellencamp and Jackson Browne.
Classic rockers Boston also fired off an angry missive to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, asking the former Baptist minister to stop using their 1975 hit "More Than a Feeling" during his rallies.
Then again, maybe if Hillary Clinton had gotten the smackdown from Celine Dion, things would have been different.
By Cara Alwill
It seems like you can't throw a stone without hitting some kind of supergroup lately. The likes of Chickenfoot (Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith, guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani and former Van Halen members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony) and the planned Trent Reznor/Gary Numan collaboration have brought together like-minded artists from disparate backgrounds and so far produced some interesting results. The latest marriage of rock royalty sees Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke joining forces with Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist Mauro Refosco (who has worked with They Might Be Giants and David Byrne). Yorke made the announcement on Radiohead's website earlier today that the group will make its live debut this Sunday and Monday, October 4 and 5, at Los Angeles' venerable Orpheum Theatre.
"In the past couple of weeks I've been getting a band together for fun to play The Eraser stuff live and the new songs to see if it could work," Yorke wrote. "We don't really have a name and the set will not be very long, but come and check it out if you are in the area."
Though Yorke has spent much of his time recently performing solo, and this new musical alliance should satiate his desire to bring The Eraser to the stage with a full band. Considering Yorke recently called his new song "The Hollow Earth" a "bass monster," Flea should be able to put his magical touch on that and other songs on the album.
By Matt Paco
New Zealand rocker Ladyhawke may sing about Paris burning, but on Wednesday it was New York City that was on fire. At the headliner of the "Perez Hilton Presents" concert at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza, Ladyhawke was well-worth her witching-hour performance, featuring crowd-friendly renditions of "Back of the Van" and "My Delirium." Unfortunately, fellow co-headliner Ida Maria was a no-show because of illness. No matter. The two surprises Hilton pulled out of his sleeve certainly made up for it.
"I'm marveling that I was able to pull it off, because I've never put on a tour before," Hilton told MTV News. "The reason why I'm doing the tour, the reason I have a record label, the reason why I write about music on my Web site is because I think music lovers like sharing good music with other music lovers."
Hilton opened his show with pop-rocker Frankmusik, a synth-obsessive from London who instantly captured the crowd's attention with his energetic antics and catchy '80s-inspired tracks like "Gotta Boyfriend" and "Time Will Tell."
"I was lucky enough to be one of the people [Perez] brought over. It's really great for me, because it's my first time in the East Coast," said Frankmusik.
Last-minute surprise act Little Boots hit the stage sans her band mates (they were stuck across town) and performed solo with only a piano to accompany her. She thanked Hilton with a run through a haunting cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and was followed by another surprise in Kat DeLuna, whose high-octane hip-swirling show made the walls sweat.
Self-proclaimed "filthy party band" Semi Precious Weapons killed it. "This is rock and roll — pull your f---ing tits out!" beckoned frontman Justin Tranter, who gave fierce face, body and voice to tracks like "Put a Diamond in It" and "Sticky With Champagne." Traipsing from the stage to the elevated platform and back and doing reverse pull-ups with the crowd below, Tranter summed up the evening: "This show proved two things tonight. One: rock and roll is not dead. Two: New York is not dead."
The MTV Video Music Awards are just a few short days away, and though there is all sorts of buzz surrounding the performances, the parties and the New York-centric stunts that will be happening all this week into Sunday's broadcast, it's important to remember that the reason the biggest stars in music will gather in Radio City Music Hall is to see who wins the coveted Moonman in each of the 15 categories. We'll be taking a look at each of the top categories this week, starting today with the Best Male Video award. The nominees are Eminem's "We Made You," Jay-Z's "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)," T.I.'s "Live Your Life," Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent" and Kanye West's "Love Lockdown."
Best Male Video has been around since the first Video Music Awards in 1984, where David Bowie's "China Girl" beat out Billy Joel, Lionel Richie, Herbie Hancock and Michael Jackson for the prize. Past winners of the award include legends like Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Will Smith and Beck, as well as recent noisemakers Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake.
Two of the men nominated for the award this year have already won it, as Eminem took home the Moonman for Best Male Video at 2000's event for "The Real Slim Shady" and again in 2002 for "Without Me," while Kanye West took home the Best Male Video prize in 2005 for "Jesus Walks." Jay-Z's "99 Problems" snagged a nomination for Best Male Video in 2004 but lost out to Usher (though he still grabbed four awards — including Best Rap Video — that same year). This is the fourth consecutive Best Male nomination for T.I. (who has never won a Moonman in any category) and the second year in a row that Ne-Yo has been nominated for an award (he lost out to Pussycat Dolls in the Best Dancing in a Video category).
Of the five videos, Jay-Z's is the newest and the one with the most buzz. "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)" is on The Blueprint 3, which hits the streets today. The next newest comes from Eminem, whose album dropped earlier this year and whose first single "We Made You" announced the return of Slim Shady to the top of the music world. The other three clips all come from 2008 albums (Kanye West's performance of "Love Lockdown" even closed last year's show). So it seems like it will be a showdown between Eminem and Jigga, though the person who has the best chance of scoring a Moonman in this category is director Anthony Mandler, who helmed both "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)" and T.I.'s "Live Your Life."
Twitter is a curious thing. Sometimes it lends a great deal of insight into the way somebody's day-to-day mind works. It can be a great platform for comedy, but it can also be a bottomless pit of inanity. But recently I've been following a particular feed that I find endlessly fascinating, and it belongs to Miley Cyrus. Her feed gets updated five to eight times a day, and most of them are filled with genuine human insight and surprising levels of sadness.
The first thing that struck me is how mundane her life appears to be (or at least the things she chooses to tweet about). But it doesn't come across as a famous person narcissistically gazing into her own navel and declaring everything about her life interesting — rather, they are the dispatches of a 16-year-old girl trying to find her way (which, if you recall, is exactly what she is). "Making dinner. AKA a peanut butter and jelly," reads a tweet from yesterday. She even tags it with a smiley-face emoticon. As one of the most famous people on the planet, you would assume that she has a private chef at her beck and call ready to prepare a shark steak sandwich for her. But no! Sometimes being 16 and famous means making yourself a PB&J in the wee hours of the morning.
Cyrus' Twitter also reveals excellent musical taste. She tips her hat to Ryan Adams, Coldplay, Colbie Caillat, Copeland and Vampire Weekend, all in the span of a handful of tweets. But she's also not self-conscious about her choices, as she recently praised Celine Dion.
But the thing that really cuts deep is the profound amount of existential angst that regularly sneaks into her tweets. Read more...
Though the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was first established in 1983, it took 12 years before it finally settled on an actual home. On September 2, 1983, Yoko Ono and Little Richard cut the ribbon to officially open the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The hall, designed by legendary architect I.M. Pei, the Hall houses seven floors of music history and memorabilia, from Keith Moon's velvet suit to Janis Joplin's 1965 Porsche. Though the criteria for getting into the Hall is sketchy at best, in recent years they've done a better job about embracing older rock pioneers from the '50s and more underground and hip-hop acts from the modern era.
This year's inductees included Jeff Beck, Little Anthony & the Imperials, Run-D.M.C., Metallica and Bobby Womack. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been slow to embrace metal, so the welcoming of Metallica is especially interesting and should open up the category to more than just them and Black Sabbath. (It seems like Slayer and Sepultura are long overdue for some proper acknowledgment.) Metallica brought speed metal to the masses and made hard music radio-friendly, but they almost certainly couldn't have gotten to the top of the metal mountain without the help of some (typically disturbing) music videos. "One" put them on the map and "Enter Sandman" gave birth to a million video clichés (though nobody did them with more conviction than the boys in Metallica), but they continue to push the envelope today. Though it was somewhat overhyped, Metallica's 2008 album Death Magnetic was a satisfying jolt of old-school metal, and the video for "The Day That Never Comes" was a grim and satisfying effort that belongs among the best rock clips ever made.
Every day a multitude of stars wanders through the halls of MTV News to talk about their latest projects and goof around with staff members. But sometimes we catch stars elsewhere, and that's why we put together Spotted!, a daily compendium of stars in the wild.
The Jonas Brothers sure know how to draw a crowd. The boys headed to Toronto, Canada, to tape a live interview with MuchMusic before their concert at the Rogers Centre. Thousands of screaming fans flooded the streets around the MuchMusic headquarters to catch a glimpse of the boy band. Elsewhere in Canada, "Twilight" stars Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Ashley Greene were spotted on the set of "Eclipse" in Vancouver. Meanwhile, after performing a sold-out show at the Hollywood Palladium this weekend, Katy Perry had time to stop and take photos with her fans — one of whom looked just like the pop star herself!
Click here to check out all the photos in their full-sized glory, as well as more photos of other celebs we spotted this weekend, like Amber Rose, Ashton Kutcher, the Kardashian sisters, Victoria and David Beckham, Jon Gosselin, and Lindsay Lohan.
The new season of "American Idol" won't premiere until January 2010, but preparations are already heating up. Paula Abdul is out as a judge, and with auditions already underway, the roster of guest judges is growing every day. Joe Jonas, Katy Perry, Mary J. Blige, Kelly Clarkson, Victoria Beckham and Shania Twain have all committed to lending their expertise to the singing competition, with more names on the way. The role of the guest judge is always tough, as there is always the worry that the chemistry between the adjudicators will be thrown off or the guest won't have as much to add as Simon or Randy. But "American Idol" is a show that likes to experiment, as evidenced by that eclectic lineup of guest stars.
The MTV Newsroom has already endorsed Joe Jonas as the favorite, but we wanted to get some outside perspective. So we hit the streets outside the MTV News offices and asked a handful of "American Idol" enthusiasts which one of the announced guest judges would be their favorite.
The nowhere-near scientific results are in, and the numbers show that Mary J. Blige slightly edges out Katy Perry for the top position with 39 percent of the vote. Perry is in a close second with 31 percent, followed by Victoria Beckham with 17 percent. Shockingly, Joe Jonas finds himself bringing up the rear with a paltry 13 percent of the vote. Many fans rallied behind Blige's experience in the industry, whereas most people credited Beckham with being sexy. By far the best endorsement was for Katy Perry, who one respondent voted for because with Abdul gone, somebody has to show up and say something crazy.
