By Saimon Kos
This week is almost over, and there certainly isn't a shortage of big news stories to go around. Today, we took a break from the Chris Brown drama and put together a quick video of some other important Headlines of the Day.
Let's start with the Real Slim Shady, Eminem, who finally picked a release date for his hotly anticipated new studio album, Relapse.
Then there's the latest on "American Idol." We got our very own "Idol" expert, Jim Cantiello, to catch us up on what went down last night.
And finally, where there's smoke, there must be ... Arcade Fire and the Flaming Lips. Sway fills us in on this indie-rock beef as it develops.
Wayne Coyne is sort of like the 50 Cent of the indie world (minus millions of albums sold, washboard abs and nine bullet holes): The dude loves beef.
A few years back, he made waves when he blasted former tourmate Beck in an Esquire magazine interview, calling him a diva who needed someone "to put on his pants for him." Then, over the course of a single interview with the London Observer, he managed to take potshots at Beck, Richard Ashcroft and Radiohead (now that's bang for your buck). Needless to say, he's not afraid to run his mouth. And now, he's set his sights on the Arcade Fire.
In a RollingStone.com interview published on Wednesday, Coyne tore into the band.
Read more...
· "It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep..." Not Trent Reznor, though. Late Sunday, saw the release of a new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghost I-IV, online. A vocal critic of the music industry - and a recent record label free-agent - Reznor released the 36 new instrumental tunes as a digital-download only, available at Amazon MP3 and NIN.com. On his website, Reznor says that the tracks were recorded over "an intense ten week period last fall." He adds, "I'm very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference." Reznor had been teasing the release date on his site the last couple of weeks.
· Last fall, during rehearsals for the "VH1 Hip-Hop Honors" in New York, MTV News was interviewing Pharrell out in front of the venue when we ran into Chris Rock. He had just come from seeing Van Halen the night before and was desperately trying to convince Pharrell that if he ever wanted to know what pure rock 'n roll sounds like, he needed to go see Van Halen. Let's hope Pharrell got his chance, because TMZ is reporting that the remaining dates on the Van Halen tour have now been cancelled. Something about Eddie and "issues." (BTW, Chris Rock correctly remembered that VH's 5150 and Run DMC's Raising Hell were released on the same day). UPDATED: They're not cancelled, they're postponed. Um, and we corrected the proper VH album that came out in 1986!
· The Arcade Fire's Win and Will Butler, Regine Chassagne and Jeremy Gara played a free show at Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday, in support of Barack Obama. They play another free show at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland Monday night. The band's publicist said that though the Arcade Fire is known as a Canadian band, "Win and Will were born and raised in the U.S. (and spent their formative years in Texas), Regine is a dual citizen whose dad served in Vietnam, and Jeremy Gara is just a really nice Canadian who likes playing music and is sick of explaining to Americans what universal health care means." So why aren't they playing in Texas?
· Winona Ryder is engaged to be married to Rilo Kiley guitarist Blake Sennett, thus shattering the dreams of an entire generation of musicians who probably started their bands thinking they had a shot. [via Stereogum]
UPDATE: Ryder's rep denies the rumors. We'll sort it out.
