Look, I know it's hard for bands to hang onto their glory days. But for the life of me, I don't know why anyone would want to subject themselves to this. Have you seen this video of Van Halen ruining "Jump" at the Greensboro stop on their 2007 tour? Maybe you need a reminder—take a listen. It is the WORST thing you will ever see and hear.

The painfully out-of-tune guitar and backing track are only part of the problem. Take a look at the four-minute mark and tell me what David Lee Roth is doing. Seriously. What is David Lee Roth doing??

Agh. This makes me miss Gary Cherone. And don't get me started on poor Michael Anthony.

• Dear Jerry, I hate you. Signed, me.

I'm always looking for a millionaire dollar book pitch (Hot, gay Vampires that crave a good, hard staking! What? It's been done before?) so I can bail on this sinking ship and join the lucrative and profitable world of publishing.

Since Gaydracula is out (it gets better, buddy), looks like it's time for plan B: a book devoted entirely to Grateful Dead artwork that stoned hippies draw on envelopes. Now to sit back and let the Dead Head nostalgia money roll in...

Since the band's earliest days, Grateful Dead staff saved tens of thousands of decorated ticket-request envelopes sent to them by Dead Heads hoping to capture the ticketing staff’s attention with their mind-bending designs. These envelopes are inspirational and hugely insightful, not to mention brilliantly illustrated and unique within the world of rock. Now, for the first time in print, these unique pieces of art have found a home.

Crap.

From author, rock historian, and the Dead Head of all Dead Heads, Paul Grushkin, Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail collects more than 300 of these mind-blowing envelope masterpieces, all presented in 14 thematic chapters.

Are you ready to have your fucking mind-blown... by an envelope? I sure am. Of the "14 thematic chapters," 13 are devoted to "Dancing Bears and Skulls With Roses and Some Shit" with the final chapter being an epilogue.

Some notes about this email: When the publicist mentions "Andrew" I believe they think that I'm Andrew R. Tonry (Zoltar finally made my one wish come true!) and despite what the opening sentence says, I have never talked with this person. More importantly, I have no need for Tone® Body Wash. My skin is fucking immaculate®©™.

Hi Ned/Andrew,

It was great speaking with you and I look forward to potentially working with you on this giveaway opportunity. Below is the concert ticket giveaway opportunity that I believe would be a great fit for your readers on behalf of the Tone® Body Wash Backstage Pass Series featuring Sara Bareilles

We’d love to offer you the following prize package to give away on your site or through your social media handles as you see fit.

— Two-Six tickets to the 08/16 Sara Bareilles concert in Tulsa.
— A sample of Tone's latest products, including their new Tone® Vino Moisture Body Wash with Crushed Grape and Shea Butter

Please let me know if this is this something you would be interested in? As this is coming up quite quickly, we'd appreciate if you could let us know at your earliest convenience.

Thanks much!

So, uh, anyone want to go to Tulsa?

Enemy to both local designers and shoppers with good taste, Urban Outfitters is now selling this "Blood is the New Black Metal Bears" Distressed Tank Top. It's a lovely top for any lady with $30 to spare and the desire to wear a shirt that rips off iconic black metal pioneers Immortal. I anxiously look forward to Forever 21's new line of Mayhem-inspired corpse paint for tween girls.

After the jump, a snappy little Immortal tune to score your online shopping excursion. Black Metal bitches be shopping, y'all!

Continue reading »

Jakob Dylan, you can step down now. The Dylan lineage has now given us a new punchline: Pablo Dylan. Yes, the very same up-and-coming emcee that recorded "Top of the World" and declared "Bitch I'm gonna get that crown, while I'm at it I might reinvent sound." Evidently sound is reinvented by sounding like a Drake knockoff. Anyway, Pablo gave an interview where he talks about his grandpappy:

“I mean, really, my grandfather, I consider him the Jay-Z of his time, and he definitely has a legacy that a lot of people look up to," Pablo Dylan told AllHipHop.com in an exclusive interview.

Does that make Joan Baez the Beyonce of her time? I am so confused right now.

Ugh.

Grammy® Award-winning artist Weezer announces The Weezer Cruise. Taking to the ocean January 19-23, 2012, The Weezer Cruise is a music festival-at-sea curated by Weezer on the Carnival Destiny sailing from Miami to the island of Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico.

Along with Weezer and 2,500 passengers, The Weezer Cruise will feature fifteen bands performing shows around the ship through the day and night, festival-style. Weezer will perform on the pool deck as the ship pulls out and then again in the indoor main theater.

In addition to Weezer, there will be performances from Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Gene Ween and Dave Dreiwitz, Wavves, The Antlers, Yuck, Free Energy, Boom Bip, J. Mascis, Lou Barlow, Keepaway, Ozma, The Nervous Wreckords, The Knocks, Sleeper Agent, and Yacht Rock Review.

Since the real Weezer disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle following the release of Pinkerton, this is less a cruise and more an expedition to discover what really happened to the once-beloved band.

It's also the first—of many—signs that those who grew up in the '90s are now entering into the nostalgia cruise demographic. If you told 15-year-old me that I was going to someday write about a Weezer cruise that features Sebadoh I'd be stunned.

Then I'd question why you traveled back in time to tell me such unimportant news.

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey: Hey ninja, the trailer for the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos is now online. How about you post it?
Me: Oh, I don't know. I think I'm off the Juggalo "beat."
Wm.™ Steven Humphrey: Excuse me?
Me: I'm just tired of it. It's like covering Keyboard Cat.
Wm.™ Steven Humphrey: Wait, what's wrong with Keyboard Cat?
Me: Uh, nothing.
Wm.™ Steven Humphrey: Post this video or I will kill your family while wearing this.

Hey Galactic Haters, hope you enjoy all 27 minutes of this. Vanilla Ice is in it. He pronounces "earth" as "errrf."

No hyperbole here. We really want to know. Has there ever been a worse band than Design the Skyline? The "Experimental/Deathcore/Electronica" band is the latest signee to Victory "We Run the Streets" Records and are clearly the new Beatles. Describing their sound is tough, but it's akin to the noise a litter of puppies would make if forcefully shoved through a wood chipper.

If you can make it through this video, you deserve a prize.

• Do NOT line dance to this man's music

Low. The line danceability is low.

Country Partner and line Danceability: Low (Dance floor is standing room only for this show

That above quote is from the fine folks at the Jubitz Truck Stop Ponderosa Lounge who are hosting Aaron Lewis, the onetime frontman for Fred Durst-endorsed sensitive nü-metal act Staind, this Thursday night. Contrary to what you think, Lewis is not actually driving a truck these days, he's performing country music. First Gwyneth, and now this. Why won't you people just leave country music alone?

Anyway, do whatever you want at this show, just don't line dance.

Good news, freedom-loving American patriots: Our shores are now safe from the godless scourge of adorable British twee bands invading our precious soil with their sweet songs about holding hands:

From Allo Darlin', who were scheduled to be at Holocene this Wednesday:

Hi everyone. We are devastated to let you know that due to problems with our US visas we have to cancel the first part of our tour. Our visas will have come through by the time we are meant to play NYC on the 8th June. This is terrible and there is nothing we can do - we have never cancelled anything before. The shows WILL be re-scheduled. We are so sorry

We'll let you know when a new date is announced. USA! USA!

LISTEN:

Allo Darlin' - "Tallulah"

UPDATE:
In honor of the fallen twee comrades, the show will still go on! Sean Flinn & The Royal We and John Heart Jackie will still be performing Wednesday night, and they will be joined by Nick Jaina as well. The cover has been lowered to $5.

In the April Fools issue of Interview magazine, whose glossy pages are catching the light on newsstands somewhere near you, you can find a curious dredging of Lil' Wayne's brain, care of Paris Hilton (with lucky sap Dimitri Ehrlich acting as moderator—something unspeakably perverse wishes I could have taken his place).

I'm not sure exactly why I'm saying this to you, but it's worth a read. (You can find a hearty chunk of an excerpt if you click there). Yes, Hilton's questions are mostly shit and yes, Wayne's answers are certainly typical (although—plot twist!—I didn't expect him to say he kept sharks as pets).

However, there are some finer moments worth recognizing. For instance, what's not to appreciate about Wayne's—no Lil' necessary when we're talking business—metaphor regarding his extracurricular music-listening (which doesn't even exist!)

WAYNE: Honestly, I don't listen to nobody else's music but my own. It's kind of like sports to me. You don't see Kobe Bryant at a LeBron James game-he just works on his own game. And that's what I do. I only listen to me, so I can criticize and analyze and all those things.

Another notable: when Hilton and Wayne commiserate about their various stints in solitary confinement—Wayne for possession of an illegal iPod (presumably full of his own music), and Hilton for safety precautions; they didn't want her organizing the other prisoners for another run of My New BFF. Jail is hard enough.

HILTON: How happy are you to have your freedom now?

WAYNE: Words cannot explain.

HILTON: Yeah, I know how you feel. [laughs] It's the best feeling in the world when you come out.

The best/worst part? When Hilton takes Wayne's hand and drags him through a trash alley of interrogations—"What's your sign?" "What do you dream about?" "Do you have Twitter?", thus prompting Ehrlich to cut in and ask the two about their future goals.

HILTON: Me? I'd really love to finish my album, because I've been working on it for so long, but I've had so many other projects that it's hard to focus on one thing. I'd also love to just continue doing my businesses, and be more confrontational with people, because I let a lot of people get away with stuff because I don't say anything. So, personally, I wish that I would be stronger with people.

EHRLICH: Wayne, what about you?

WAYNE: I want to bank a cool $50 million at least. At the end of this year, I want to be able to say that I banked $50 million. Not generated $50 million, but actually banked $50 million.

How truly enlightening. What are your goals for the near future, Ends Hitsers?

And on a related note, can anyone point to more entertaining celebrity interview flops? Or, better yet, any instance where this relatively banal scenario—famous person interviews other famous person, finds common ground, plans future collaboration!—has actually proved thought-provoking? I can only think of one off-hand, which is this fantastic q&a session Ed Norton conducted with Bruce Sprinsteen.

Goddamnit! My new favorite band, Esben and the Witch, have canceled their debut Portland performance tonight due to being "stuck in the snow." Someone better dig them out. Unless "snow" is code for drugs. In that case, awesome.

Anyway, here is what I wrote about the band in this week's paper.

ESBEN AND THE WITCH, JULIANNA BARWICK, LOST LOCKETS
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) When the dust finally settled and the final tallboy of Lone Star was polished off, I saw nearly 50 bands at SXSW. Of all those performers—ranging from crowded Pitchfork parties to bands in half-empty clubs—not a single act could come close to Esben and the Witch. Recent additions to the Matador Records roster, the Brighton, England, trio is unassuming in stature offstage—like a group of pasty art-school dropouts, or the benchwarmers for their Quidditch team—but under the lights their ferocity was impossible to ignore. Possessing the raw fury of PJ Harvey's Rid of Me with a hearty dose of nü-goth as well, the band delivers a spirited performance that'll drive the very air from your lungs. Their debut LP, Violet Cries, can't quite capture their impassioned live performance, but don't miss out on catching them in their finest setting: onstage, right in front of your very eyes. I promise, you will not be disappointed. EZRA ACE CARAEFF

Memorize every word of that review for when the band reschedules.

• PC-PDX.COM
• The Taxpayers at the Failing House. Not pictured, the neighbors clutching their hands over their ears.

Read about it here.

Obviously you have a new favorite band. Via the AV Club:

There was a piece in NPR's Morning Edition today about Billboard's new "Social 50" chart that tracks music sales and popularity through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. At the end of the story there was a tag about what song is currently topping Billboard's Ye Old Hot 100 chart, a supposed indicator of what Mainstream America is listening to. That song is this song:

I'm not going to waste your time listing the innumerable ways this song and video are stupid, pandering and unworthy of the faintest praise because I am taking it on assumption that you also have two eyes and ears. I'm also going to assume that you, like me, are shocked that Pink - excuse me, P!nk - exists and is still raking in money by pooping the same "Let's be individuals together" dreck out of her mouth hole.

But am I being unfair? A look further down the Hot 100 makes me wonder several things: Am I the outlier and everyone I know is secretly listening to Bruno Mars and Ke$ha? Or maybe, are we the outliers and is the majority of the country doing that?

If so, who are these people? Is it strictly preteens or is the Billboard Hot 100 really indicative of median musical taste across age, location and socioeconomic identity? If not, what does this list even represent anymore in America (or maybe, what has it ever really represented)?

Hit the jump for more videos from the Hot 100's current top ten.

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You may think of the average Belle & Sebastian concertgoer as a weak, pale, non-confrontational sap, but you might be surprised at the things going on in their head:

The tire iron connects with the side of your bearded, jock-head. Then a quick, crushing kidney rupture completes the Tire Iron Justice. I then turn my attention to your shrill, yapping girlfriend. I kneecap her first. Then I pull out the bleach and while pouring it in her eyes, she keeps shutting them so I pull out a razor blade and slice her eyelids off. She can’t shut her eyes now. He starts to get up. I take the tire iron and make sure not to kill him. Just cripple him for life. Make his brain a little bit more retarded then it already was. She screams through the blood and the bleach, “Why are you doing this to us?” Why? Because you decided to talk loudly behind us at the Belle and Sebastian concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Do you even like Belle and Sebastian? We do. We drove all the way to L.A. to watch them perform at The Hollywood Bowl in 2006. They haven’t played here in four years. Do you understand what “gentle” music is? We purposely paid extra for good seats. Do you think it was a good idea to talk through “Lord Anthony”? “Fox in the Snow”? We politely asked you to be quiet once. You thought this was funny and you both kept on talking. I pull out my box cutter and remove your tongues. You’re not talking now. Your mouth can just bleed-distort. I’m in a good mood so I don’t remove your eyes. Jeez. You actually talked through “(I Believe In) Travellin' Light."

It's always the quiet ones you have to worry about. Got a secret? Tell it.