We talk about the new material found on the collection, working with producers Mitch Easter and Joe Boyd during the band’s early career, why the band chose I.R.S. records, and what it was like training a three legged dog to walk after drummer Bill Berry’s departure in 1997.

More information can be found on R.E.M.’s Facebook page as well as Mike Mills’ personal Facebook page.

Featured Music:
01. R.E.M. – “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”
02. R.E.M. – “Pilgrimage”
03. R.E.M. – “Near Wild”
04. R.E.M. – “Heaven”

Audiography Episode 025 – “Mike Mills (of R.E.M.)” 
Written and Produced by Len Comaratta

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Are you enjoying Audiography? Subscribe to the Podcast via iTunes!

A true sin in this world is ignoring art. But we do. Our world works too fast. Our eyes have too big of stomachs. We digest without reflecting. We rely on our subconscious to dig deeper. This is life in the modern world. Our main priority: time. There is no greater asset. Though, here’s a piece of irony: A real piece of art is a physical representation of time. So, what’s our excuse? Don’t worry, you don’t have to answer. Just an introduction, really.

Here’s the real meat: A couple years ago, I tapped my closest friend Cap Blackard to direct the art here on Consequence of Sound. In our four-plus year existence, the site’s never looked better, and he’s to credit for that. This doesn’t surprise me, though. In fact, you could say that was my plan all along.

Fun fact: In sixth grade, the two of us attended an incredibly pretentious private school, where art was restricted to the art room. Style didn’t exist, only uniforms. Despite these stuffy restrictions, Cap went on to win the top art award at the end of the academic year. Sitting there in the pew (yes, a church pew) watching him receive the award, I remember feeling both happy and slightly envious. I was stoked for my best friend, but, hey, it was sixth grade and I wanted a trophy, too. After all, my earlier days in tee ball didn’t necessarily stock my bookshelves with gold.

Instead, I became one of his biggest fans, and over the years, I’ve closely watched Cap grow as an artist. These days, it’s hard to keep up. He never stops creating. To quote the late Kyle Reese, “That’s ALL he does! You can’t stop him!” To help with the workload, he’s tagged some exceptional talent. His assistant (and CoS Senior Staff Writer) Drew Litowitz came in with a full house of cards, submitting a couple of this year’s best works. While his other associates have also produced some fantastic pieces, as well.

So, don’t be a sinner. Take a goddamn minute out of your day, and soak up the art – all 30 pieces (complete with liner notes).

-Michael Roffman
President/Editor-in-Chief 

The Decemberists

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: The Decemberists – The King Is Dead

I love The Decemberists and was glad to get a chance to do something around their latest release. Not having a chance to listen to the album I went off what I knew. I’d heard that the title The King is Dead may be a reference to The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead. I adapted the Smiths album cover to instead feature Decemberists front man Colin Meloy and added in a yellow forest background as seen on the Decemberists cover, re-staging the somewhat romantic posturing as a like-wise romantic wistful forest reclining. -Cap Blackard

Bright Eyes

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Bright Eyes – The People’s Key

Nothing too complex behind this piece. The fire colors and design were inspired by the album cover and the image itself is riffing off Bright Eyes’ name and the album title. Done with inks and watercolors. -Cap Blackard

Radiohead

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured art for: Album Review: Radiohead – The King of Limbs

This was my first piece as Assistant Art Director. From the moment I first heard The King of Limbs, I knew I wanted to convey the record’s dubbed-out, fractal, frenetic, rhythmically reflective sound. I also wanted to focus on how those aesthetics relate to the tree from which the record finds its name. Since it took four years of hibernation to create the record, I show Thom Yorke crawling from the roots of the old tree like some psychotic patient, with magpies in the trees, lotus flowers on the ground – the line work scratched and inverted in a chaotic, disorienting world of echo. The unsettling thing about this piece, though, is that I drew it far before I saw any of the artwork found in the Universal Sigh or the record’s newspaper addition, and it is ridiculously similar to the line work and style of those drawings, specifically the way Stanley Donwood and Dr. Tchok handled the trees. Eerie. -Drew Litowitz

The Strokes

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: The Strokes – Angles

Consequence of Sound got a copy of Angles waaaaay before any of us expected to and we wanted to be the first to break it. In lieu of the time crunch, I did a manipulation of an older photo of mine that I felt meshed with the geometry of both the album cover and the album’s sound. This is from a series I did of the most incredible public structure I’ve ever seen: The Plantation Fashion Mall. Now closed and abandoned, I was allowed to shoot the building to preserve its magnificence. Its glass domes and palatial architecture are the glory of late ’80s and early ’90s Florida incarnate.

I used Photoshop to tailor the image to Angles adding in some bold colors to match the album cover. This was my last series to date on a traditional film camera. The grain of the film aided in creating a beautiful watercolor-like aspect to the feature image. -Cap Blackard

R.E.M.

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now

Originally, I was going to do this piece by bleaching dark paper, but I ended up buying the wrong kind of bleach and it had practically no reaction. So I opted for some very wet watercolor work with the intention of creating an abstract foundation for an edited version of my reference photo of Michael Stipe. The hardest whites are liquid paper, and the overlay worked out pretty well after some filters and sculpting.

The severe whites and blacks as well as the presence of lines and the marigold and yellow are references to the album cover for Collapse Into Now. -Cap Blackard

Foo Fighters

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

This is the first piece of photography I’ve done specifically for the CoS feature image. Since the first music videos accompanying this album were all recorded on VHS, I decided to incorporate tape into the image. The photo was taken on a garage floor with discarded cigarettes and matchsticks to add to a grungy feel.

The VHS tape sacrificed for this project was of the 1980 skit comedy film, Loose Shoes. Even with Bill Murray featured in a couple of scenes the film didn’t have enough redeeming qualities to save it from my screw driver. I placed a label reading “Wasting Light” on the cassette. -Cap Blackard

Panda Bear

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured art for: Album Review: Panda Bear – Tomboy

Leading up to the much-anticipated release of Tomboy, Panda Bear released a few 7″ singles and sold tour posters and t-shirts, all with simplistic, pencil-drawn gray and white images, similar to record’s future cover art. Among these singles was “You Can Count On Me”, which featured cover art of a simple pencil rendering of a father and child. For my Tomboy illustration, I wanted to draw a portrait of Noah Lennox in graphite, to match the simple visuals Lennox had been using of late. The drawing’s minimalism and crude pencil marks show Lennox alone, totally underexposed, accompanying a record of unbearable loneliness and solitude.  -Drew Litowitz

TV On The Radio

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light

A digitally manipulated photo of a clustered flower that I took. No clue what kind it is. Normally I finish photos at a natural size and shrink them down to feature box size, but in this case what I thought were going to be some “final tweaks” on the feature image ended up being so extensive that it would’ve been a massive ordeal to redo them on the original file. There were many many many layers by the end of this piece. -Cap Blackard

Fleet Foxes

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured art for: Album Review: Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Helplessness Blues is one of the most desperately inquisitive records I’ve ever heard. For every statement, there’s Robin Pecknold with yet another existential inquiry. To express Pecknold’s anxious disillusionment, I scribed some of the record’s key lyrics around a simplistic portrait of the Fleet Foxes frontman, highlighting some of the record’s most difficult questions. The hardest one being, “WHY? The result looks something like a bathroom stall graffiti portrait, used as some sort of shrine. I think that about fits the bill. -Drew Litowitz

The Cars

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: The Cars – Move Like This

A rare instance where I did the feature art and wrote the article. This is a collage, mostly sampling from mid ’90s DC comics (read: disposable) with a few other pieces from newer issues that were damaged, as well as an old issue of Disney Adventures. Images of cars were cut out and assembled then painted over with acrylic. The colors red, yellow, green, and blue pertain to the album’s cover. When I scanned the piece I wrapped it in plastic wrap 1) because it was still wet and 2) because I thought it might look cool. The gloss of the plastic wrap ended up being a bit overwhelming on the whole, and I prefer the non-plastic version. However, the picture I ended up using as the feature image is a cropped version of the plastic wrap version. You can see the full size plastic version here. -Cap Blackard

Moby

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Moby – Destroyed

This drawing started on a paper tablecloth at a Moroccan restaurant in Chicago (the Moby head to the left, drawn without reference) and CoS President/Editor-in-Chief Michael Roffman insisted that it be used for the featured image. I crumpled it up and abused it in my purse for a couple weeks before sitting down to finish it adding layers of inks, charcoal, white paint and liquid paper. The larger Moby head was drawn with reference after I’d rorschached the paper. The general feel of the images was derived from Destroyed‘s theme of stark loneliness. -Cap Blackard

Summer Tours

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: The 15 Hottest Summer Tours of 2011

I wanted something that summoned the spirits of summer traveling in North America: big rigs, deep forests, tropical coasts, a funky car covered in luggage, and a mysterious sun-soaked crow spirit (a byproduct of reading dystopian America graphic novel Puma Blues and its art by Michael Zulli). This piece started with loose pencils, water colored over, then inked with a broken and spewing Pilot Razor Point pen, and finally, accented with a white paint pen and liquid paper. -Cap Blackard

Lady Gaga

Artist: Virginia McCarthy & Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Lady Gaga – Born This Way

The illustration pencils and inks are by good friend, talented illustrator, and frequent collaborator, Virginia McCarthy. I provided the colors. A strange Gaga creature leads former Gaga outfits in a choreographed dance number emulating the “Born This Way” music video. The “Born This Way” video was in many ways such a stark departure from the visual complexity of her previous videos that this seemed a pertinent comparison to make – with those previous video’s costumes following the simply and scantily dressed Gaga form. The coloring and background was done in Photoshop. -Cap Blackard

Bon Iver

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Bon Iver – Bon Iver

Going into this piece I took ideas from both the cover for Bon Iver – a kaleidoscopic kind of Bob Ross painting of pastoral landscapes and farm houses. As well as the exceptional music video for the then new track, “Calgary“. It’s got a recurring bed/sleep and couplehood theme. I smooshed all those ideas together for this image.

The face isn’t frontman, Justin Vernon, but he does kind of have ’70s hair, so that’s where that came from. The background was laid in with no linework underneath it. The figures were put in with blue line, painted over, and the final lines for the whole piece were done in charcoal. -Cap Blackard

Incubus

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Incubus – If Not Now, When?

When I do feature illustrations for CoS, I always look into the album and the band’s recent goings on. Sometimes I have a good familiarity with the artist(s), sometimes not so much. I always strive to keep elements of the band’s latest project imbued into the feature art. This one side steps a bit. The cover for If Not Now, When? is a black and white photograph with a decent amount of grain to it. I knew I wanted a piece that was relatively monochromatic that would either have natural grain, or that I’d add grain to. In looking into the meaning behind the album’s name and the title track, I decided to take it into an alternate direction, riffing off how I’d choose to interpret the album title. In this case- how long until animals take on human traits or humans take on animal’s? -Cap Blackard

Portugal. The Man

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Portugal. The Man – In the Mountain, In the Cloud

The man’s face was a doodle drawn in my sketch book, pretty much actual size in the full size picture. Done with a ballpoint pen. It wasn’t originally intended to be part of the feature art but while playing with it it seemed like an interesting fit. I changed the color of the drawing’s lines to reflect the line drawing color of the album art. The photo was taken by me at Apollo Beach on Florida’s Space Coast. -Cap Blackard

Jay-Z & Kanye West

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Rise to the Throne: The Collaborative Highlights of Jay-Z and Kanye West

This was actually the first feature illustration I did for CoS, back in fall 2010. I mixed up which album was coming out and did a piece for Watch The Throne and not My Dark Twisted Fantasy. So though my first piece of published feature art was for last year’s Daft Punk, this was the first drawn. Rapper Astronautalis is now the proud owner of the original watercolor of this piece. -Cap Blackard

Stephen Malkmus

Artist: Virginia McCarthy
Featured art for: Interview: Stephen Malkmus

Borrowing the building-side painting look from Mirror Traffic‘s album art, Virginia created this strangely sinister portrait of Malkmus. A pencil illustration overlaid with digital paint. I came in and overlaid it onto a beat-up cardboard texture to give it a similar street-side texture to the album art.  -Cap Blackard

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers – I’m With You

Riffing off the cover for I’m With You, with a fly perched on a pill capsule, I ended up with a fly version of Anthony Kiedis vomiting up pills into Flea’s mouth. Sure, why not?

This started with me working on a rough layout concept in Photoshop, where I completed the piece. For this image’s use in the feature box, it holds up really well. View it larger and my Photoshopping technique gets a bit transparent. It’d be nice to find the time to do an analogue version of this some day. -Cap Blackard

Lil Wayne

Artist: Bianca Triozzi
Featured art for: Album Review: Lil Wayne – Tha Carter IV

Bianca took the truly lil’ Lil’ Wayne from the cover of Tha Carter IV and age-progressed him to current day Carter. Sharing a Twin Peaks fanaticism with myself and Michael Roffman, she thought she’d drop the rapper into his own personal Black Lodge, complete with an armless statue sporting Nicki Minaj hair. This piece was all analog. -Cap Blackard

St. Vincent

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured artwork for: Album Review: St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

On the outside, Annie Clark is adorable, petite, and elegantly beautiful. She’s every hipster’s dream-wife. But, her meticulously chaotic soundscapes stand in stark contrast to her outward appearance. I wanted to play with that concept. To show the perfect, cute Clark with an almost sinister look on her face, her crazed hair, and a little bit of blood on her surgical gloves (“Surgeon”), just a taste of what her latest record has to offer. Her perfection marred only slightly by the blood on her hands from cutting herself open and crafting one of the year’s best albums. -Drew Litowitz

Wilco

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured artwork for: Album Review: Wilco – The Whole Love

“The Art of Almost” and The Whole Love were the two phrases which led me to this minimal graphic. Using the “charging” symbol from an iPod or iPhone as a launching point, I created a worn, distressed heart, “almost” filled with love, but still well on its way to getting there. -Drew Litowitz

Ryan Adams

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured artwork for: Album Review: Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire

Ashes. Fire. Roses. Using symbols commonly associated with Ryan Adams, and the record’s album art for inspiration, I wanted to create an image in which everything burned together into one fiery mess. Adams sits to the left, watching roses and a tropical forest burn right before his eyes. For such a dark, beautiful record, I think it gets the job done. -Drew Litowitz

October Party

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured artwork for: Consequence of Sound’s October Party in Brooklyn

For his birthday a couple years ago, indie rapper, Jackson, aka Ms. Paintbrush of Grand Buffet put a call out on his Tumblr for a gift wish. He wanted people to send him images of Jay Leno carjacking a seahorse. I was happy to oblige and sent him linework intending to color it soon after. Fast forward to this October and I finally got around to coloring it. This was simultaneous to being assigned our CMJ-timed October party poster and the image felt like a good fit for a concert poster. I’d done some “save the date” ad graphics leading up to the announcement of the party. They were simple, sepia-toned, text based images. Working the more bold, marker-colored seahorse graphic into that color scheme took some trial and error with different layering styles before I felt that it matched the feel of the rest of the poster. For the curious, the albums floating thin the seahorse’s car are Slave to the Rhythm and Tin Machine. You can see the original illustration with Jay Leno and the seahorse here. -Cap Blackard

Tom Waits

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Check Out: Are You Bad As Tom Waits?

This art was not just intended as the feature image for Waits’ Bad Like Me, but also CoS’ “Bad Like Me” Quiz. Inspired by that feature, I thought I’d make a carnival-style quiz machine to test your badness. This is a digital photo collage amalgamating many separate and very unrelated elements. The body of the machine is an antique, derelict Coke machine. You can check out a large, non-animated version here. -Cap Blackard

Coldplay

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto

I read that the WWII White Rose Movement was one of Chris Martin’s inspirations with this album, so I went with that image for the feature. There’s a memorial for the Movement that’s a very amorphous rose made from tiles set into the ground. I liked the notion, and based off that, I went for a similar idea with a fractured, but still recognizable look. The color scheme comes from the more prominent hues of the album art. Lots of texture layering for the background. This is an all-digital collage. -Cap Blackard

Lou Reed & Metallica

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured art for: Album Review: Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu

No comment. – Drew Litowitz

The Beach Boys

Artist: Drew Litowitz
Featured art for: Album Review: The Beach Boys – The Smile Sessions

With my SMiLE graphic, I took the concept of a “lost” album to its logical pop culture counter-part. Parodying the well-known promotional image for ABC’s Lost, instead of Matt Fox and Evangeline Lilly in front of the bold Typeface, the five Beach Boys walk ominously along a dark beach, surfboard in hands. The scene’s high contrast gives the image a somber tone, the board looking almost coffin-like, with the Boys Beach marching towards an answer to the mystery of one of pop’s greatest enigmas. I knew I could have gone with something more along the lines of the album’s iconic cover, but I wanted to try something different. There was darkness behind the scenes, and I wanted to get at the legend of it all. Surf’s Up, indeed. -Drew Litowitz

David Lynch

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: David Lynch’s 20 Weirdest Musical Moments

For this graphic, I wanted to juxtapose some well-loved Lynchian images. The central image is of Dennis Hopper’s deranged, blue velvet obsessed criminal, Frank Booth. Eleanor Edwards photographed me with her blue velvet bathing suit shoved in my mouth. The rest of the images are all Twin Peaks- the zig-zag floor of the Black Lodge, splattered with garmonbozia, and a forest of Douglas Firs showing through underneath. -Cap Blackard

Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow

Artist: Cap Blackard
Featured art for: Album Review: Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow

Kate Bush is among my shortlist of all-time favorite artists. She’s a magical being in a woman’s body – people say variations of that all the time. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s true. I was really excited to get to do some feature art for 50 Words for Snow.

The first thing I attempted to do for this was to commission a local ice sculptor to do a rendition of Bush’s face, which I would light and photograph. Unfortunately, and as expected, ice sculpting was too expensive to pull that off. The illustration was easily something I could’ve lost myself in, with intricate details and so on. If I had allowed more time for myself I may have gone there. I mean, it’s Kate Bush! Instead I went for a more guttural, organic approach: I started with a broad, wedged pen and went at it abstractly. After creating a template for the piece that way, I went over it with a white paint pen, giving Bush’s face more depth and detail. Then grey markers, then more paint, then smaller ink pens, then more grey, then more paint.

Someday I hope to make something more grand based on Bush’s work. But it’s a start. -Cap Blackard

Now that R.E.M. have called it quits, so too does its fan club. But not without one last gift. Since 1998, the group has offered holiday exclusives to its die-hard fanbase; in the past, this has led to Christmas cover songs, 7″ singles, and rare tracks with former drummer Bill Berry. This year, however, R.E.M. has issued a pair of live tracks stripped from their final tour: “Perfect Circle”  (recorded 8/30/08 in London) and “Life and How To Live It” (recorded 11/18/08, the group’s final concert). Check out both at Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Don’t forget, the group’s latest collection, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011, is currently in stores.

Two decades from now, how do you think 2011 will be remembered? As the year we lost Amy Winehouse? How about the year three of music’s most iconic outfits – The White Stripes, R.E.M., and LCD Soundsystem — all decided to call it quits? Maybe Lana Del Rey will prove a sustainable force and then we can all tell our children about the great collagen debate of 2011. Or try to explain to them how two rock and roll hall of famers came together to create the worst piece of music imaginable.

Yeah, 2011 was a fucking weird year. Like, a total mindfuck. We lost some great ones, both literally and figuratively, and we wrote or read about them in between stories about Wayne Coyne’s gummy fetus and Nick Oliveri’s standoff with a S.W.A.T. team. Along the way, we were presented with a legal way to listen to a jazilion songs for free, watched that dude from Nine Inch Nails win an Oscar, and witnessed the return of not just Kate Bush and Tom Waits, but Jeff Mangum as well. Yet, at the end of the day, Lana Del Rey’s collagen lips and Odd Future’s misogynistic tendencies won the award for stories with the longest shelf life on my Twitter feed.

Then again, four weeks from now it’ll be 2012′s turn and who knows what that year has in store. Maybe some scientist will be able to revive Jim Morrison’s frozen head so that we can have a true collaboration between The Doors and Skrillex. Whatever the case may be, Consequence of Sound will be here, 24/7/365, ready to bring you all the major headlines. Until then, though, we remember the last 12 months, categorized by themes, in the pages that follow. And, as always, thanks for reading.

– Alex Young
Publisher

R.I.P.: The Ones We Lost in 2011

Amy Winehouse (1983-2011): The soulful, sultry songstress was the first British female to win five Grammy awards. Unfortunately, she also became a member of the infamous “27 Club” when police found her dead in her London home on July 23rd. An autopsy later confirmed her death as the result of accidental alcohol poisoning.

Clarence Clemons (1942-2011): Founding member and saxophonist of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Clemons was a larger-than-life figure, and he’ll forever be remembered for his solos on “Jungleland” and “Born to Run”. Clemons died on June 18th from complications caused by a stroke. He was 69.

Bert Jansch (1943-2011): Acclaimed Scottish folk singer who was both a celebrated solo musician and member of the band Pentangle. Jansch died on October 5th following a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 67.

Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011): A celebrated musician, poet, and author who was largely credited as one of the leading influences of hip-hop and neo soul. Scott-Heron died on May 27th. He was 62.

Heavy D (1967-2011): The founding member and leader of Heavy D & the Boyz helped bridge the worlds of hip-hop and R&B in the ’90s before transitioning to a career in film. Heavy D (born Dwight Arrington Myers) died on November 8th reportedly from complications of pneumonia. He was 44.

Nate Dogg (1969-2011): West coast crooner collaborated with Dr. Dre, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg. Nate Dogg (born Nathaniel Hale) died from complications of multiple strokes on March 15th. He was 41.

Poly Styrene (1957-2011): The former singer of X-Ray Spek was described as the “archetype for the modern-day feminist punk.” Styrene died on April 25th following a battle with breast cancer. She was 53.

Trish Keenan (1968-2011): Founding member and singer of British electronic band Broadcast. Keenan died from complications with pneumonia on January 14th. She was 42.

Hubert Sumlin (1931-2011): Legendary guitarist and longtime collaborator of blues icon Howlin’ Wolf is ranked at number forty-three in the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Sumlin died on December 4th. He was 80.

Cory Smoot: (1977-2011): Guitarist for the shock rock band GWAR was the longest-serving member to play the character Flattus Maximus. Smoot was found dead on the band’s tour bus on November 3rd; as of December 5th, his cause of death is still unknown. He was 34.

DJ Mehdi (1977-2011): French hip-hop and electro producer was a member of Ed Banger Records and collaborated with Chromeo, Cassius, and Carte Blanche. DJ Mehdi (born Mehdi Favéris-Essadi) died on September 13th when the roof of his Paris home collapsed during a friend’s birthday party. He was 34.

Michael “Würzel” Burston (1949-2011): The former Army corporal served as guitarist for Motörhead from 1984-1995. Würzel died from complications of heart disease on July 9th. He was 61.

Mike Starr (1966-2011): The founding member and bassist of Alice in Chains contributed to two studio albums — including the 1992 classic Dirt — before departing in 1993. Starr was found dead on March 8th, with an autopsy later finding traces of drugs in his system. He was 44.

Suze Rotolo (1943-2011): The former girlfriend of Bob Dylan inspired many of the songwriter’s early love songs and appeared on the iconic cover of his 1963 classic, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Rotolo died of lung cancer on February 25th. She was 67.

Gerard Smith (1974-2011): The TV on the Radio bassist appeared on the band’s celebrated albums Return to Cookie Mountain, Dear Science, and Nine Types of Light. Smith died from lung cancer on April 20th. He was 36.

John Barry (1933-2011): The Academy Award-winning composer soundtracked 12 James Bond films between 1962 and 1987 in addition to Born Free, The Lion in Winter, and Out of Africa. Barry died of a heart attack on January 30th. He was 77.

Mikey Welsh (1971-2011): The former Weezer bassist appeared on the band’s 2001 The Green Album. Welsh was found dead on October 8th. He was 40.

Welcome Back: 2011′s Reunions

Photo by Colin Athens

While 2011 was a particularly harsh year for band breakups (see the next slide), at least Pulp came back. Long a dream on festival message boards, the legendary UK outfit finally reunited in the summer of 2011 for their first live performances in nine years. Our own Frank Mojica was at the band’s comeback show at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound and declared it “an explosive set that cemented Pulp’s status as the essential festival band of 2011 and will be remembered as fondly and regarded as definitive as their Glastonbury 1995 performance.”

However, Pulp wasn’t the only celebrated outfit to return in 2011. Buffalo Springfield — the folk rock supergroup comprised of Richie Furay, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young — reunited after 43 years for a brief West coast tour and headlining performance at Bonnaroo. Wrote our own Carson O’Shoney of their Bonnaroo appearance: “Even those who weren’t familiar with the band’s work were surely impressed. Seeing Neil Young wail on guitar is simply one of the better things in all of music. But the final three knockout punches of ‘Broken Arrow’, ‘For What It’s Worth’, and ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ were what really solidified it as one of the best sets of the weekend.”

Other 2011 reunions:

After inciting a riot during their first live performance in five years at South by Southwest, hard-hitting Canadian outfit Death From Above 1979 played any and every summer festival, including Coachella, Sasquatch!, Quebec City Summer Fest, Lollapalooza, FYF Fest, ACL, and Treasure Island.

Post-punk icons New Order reunited after five years with a pair of benefit shows in Europe.

Mazzy Star unleashed a two-song single, their first pieces of new music in 15 years.

Ben Folds reunited Ben Folds Five for their first new material in a decade.

UK glam rock outfit The Darkness reunited for their first live performance since 2006 at UK’s Download Festival.

In celebration of their 45th anniversary, The Monkees hit the road for their first live performances since 1997. Unfortunately, the final eight dates of their trek were canceled “due to internal group issues and conflicts.”

Chicago’s own Hum delivered their first performance in a decade.

San Diego-based post-hardcore outfit Hot Snakes reunited at ATP’s Nightmare Before Christmas in December.

Austin, TX, noise rock pioneers Scratch Acid toured extensively for the first time in over two decades.

NYC punk band D-Generation hit the road in the fall for their first performances since 1999. A new album is also in the works.

Mexico City rock band Caifanes reunited after 15 years for a performance at Coachella.

The End of An Era: 2011′s Breakups

Bands, like trends, come and go. Some last for decades with deep catalogs, and others only survive a couple years with an album or two. Their presence has a lasting impact on our lives and ears, and thus their disbandment has the same. To the greats we lost this year: Thanks for the tunes. -Ben Kaye

R.E.M. (1981-2011): Seminal, legendary, and unequaled, Georgia’s alternative rock icons ended their career after three decades. From their 1983 debut, Murmur, to their 2011 finale, Collapse Into Now, to the world’s first GIF album cover, the band exemplified how to be successful, innovative, and cool while remaining uncompromising. Their legacy will be felt for decades more to come.

The White Stripes (1997-2011): One of the greatest bands of the era, this garage blues-rock duo left an indelible mark on music with six albums. Jack White will continue on in his myriad of forms, but The White Stripes will be remembered as the band that started it all and his most widely celebrated triumph.

LCD Soundsystem (2001-2011): These modern dance-punk virtuosos left us with three full-lengths and a year-long swan song, culminating in a finale at Madison Square Garden. And we still wish we were getting more.

Rilo Kiley (1998-2011): Fourteen years of indie rock ended rather unceremoniously. Regardless, their sophomore full-length, The Execution of All Things, will go down as one of the best albums of the last decade.

The Stills (2000-2011): These Canadian indie rockers released three albums over 10 years. They will likely be best remembered for 2008’s Juno Award-winning Oceans Will Rise.

The Academy Is… (2003-2011): These Warped Tour regulars dispersed while in the process of recording album #4. At least they got to tour with KISS before it ended.

Dear and the Headlights (2005-2011): Two full-lengths and extensive touring proved too much for this Arizona indie pop rock band. Scared by all the lights.

The Felix Culpa (2003-2011): Unsung heroes of the Midwest post-hardcore scene. Despite the success of last year’s self-released sophomore effort, Sever Your Roots, there will be no more happy mistakes.

Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (1984-2011): Founding members of Sonic Youth and godparents of indie rock. What the power couple’s separation means for their iconic band is yet to be seen, though side projects abound.

Ben Gibbard and Zooey Deschanel (2009-2011): This pair of indie darlings split after only two years of marriage amidst heavy work schedules for each. While separations are always sad, we can’t help but swoon over the idea that Deschanel is technically available…

Digital Takeover

On July 14, 2011, millions of music fans sighed in relief: Spotify hit U.S. shores, and the end of the war on music drew closer to its end. Now, that’s not entirely true – the labels still aren’t too happy, neither are the artists – but the idea that “music is free” has never been more agreed upon until now. Thanks to Spotify, users can legally check out a variety of new releases in addition to a fully digestible catalog that spans everyone from ABBA to John Zorn, at any time — even on their phones, though that option will cost them. But it’s a price that many will pay, simply because it’s the way of the future.

It’s the death of the mp3 and the dawn of the truly, strictly digital age, where music listeners can immerse themselves in digital clouds of music. This year, Apple, Amazon, and Google Music all introduced similar formats, asking users to upload their collections into digital lockers, where they’ll always have access. Anywhere. Anytime. Where else can you go from there?

How about interactivity? Online forums evolved this year, too. “You should check this band out” is so passe. Instead, online users are opting for more media savvy formats, where they can turn their textual suggestions into aural delights. Through a service like Turntable.fm, which surfaced earlier this year, users now create rooms, throwing online soirees, where they DJ their own stations. All of this comes at little to no price and with zero trouble (although, there are always exceptions). So, it’s been a pretty transitive year in the music industry. A game changer, if you will. -Michael Roffman

An Odd Future, Indeed.

There’s that wonderful exchange at the end of Batman Begins, when Lt. Gordon digresses on The Caped Crusader’s influence over Gotham City, calling attention to like-minded criminals with a “taste for the theatrical,” stating plainly, “You really started something.” So true of the internet. Most of the time, you’ll find a chunky, melting pot of deep-seeded opinions, but sometimes, just sometimes, they all come together to agree on something. That’s when true change is had. And it can happen overnight.

Case in point: Odd Future and Lana Del Rey.

Controversy played a big role in the successes of these two – the former because of obscenities, the latter because of collagen – but, really, it only fueled it. The real credit, however, goes to the blogosphere. It’s the classic “she tells her friends” routine – only to an ungodly nth degree. One blog hypes a track, one site swears by another, and all of a sudden you’re trending on social networks nationwide, then worldwide, then… yeah, it sort of stops there. It’s nothing new. That’s the true nature of a fad (see: Trapper Keepers, Pogs, LA Gear). But, it’s never seen extremes such as this.

And as polarizing as these acts may be – “Aren’t they being misogynistic?”; “She’s not real! Her real name’s Lizzy Grant! OMFG, hate her!!1!” – it’s the way they came to fruition that’s far more interesting. It reveals a true power within the internet, one that may or may not be good. Regardless of its moral worth, though, it’s here to stay. As the Joker, essentially a by-product of Batman, ominously declared in the film’s follow-up, “There’s no going back. You’ve changed things… forever.” Yep. Deal with it, folks. -Michael Roffman

The Return of R&B

Some guy somewhere jokingly called it “PBR&B” and that gained traction for a little while — R&B for “hipsters.” If we take one thing away from this, let it be this: The resurgence and strength of R&B in 2011 had nothing to do with “hipsters,” a word I apologetically use here (and if I had two wishes for Christmas this year, it would be that I never hear that word again). The strength of The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, The-Dream, How To Dress Well, Active Child, and tangentially Drake this year was born from little else than a defibrillator to a dormant art form using a bit of indie sentiment.

The Weeknd’s sudden and (not so) mysterious arrival drew the highest peak in the EKG chart with the hedonistic, dripping-wet jams of his House of Balloons mixtape, sampling Beach House and Siouxsie and the Banshees, which of course reached across the aisle to white tumblrites more ostensibly than Aaliyah and R. Kelly ever did in the 90’s. From there, Frank Ocean bowed out of producing pop hits for Biebs and made known his association with OFWGKTA for his Nostalgia Ultra mixtape, a damp and druggy confessional. Kanye took a liking to him, as well.

The cross-cultural movement was just as strong for Active Child’s choir-boy jams and How To Dress Well’s shrouded pangs, both of whom collaborated with each other on the song “Playing House”. There are many more artists working with these tools: production rooted in current trends, voices like butter, beats like woah. Perhaps the response to the hidden vocals of last year’s genre de l’année Chillwave is that these artists are putting the spotlight back on the soul of the human voice.  -Jeremy D. Larson

The Return of the Legacy Act

It’s been seven years since Tom Waits released his 23rd album, six years since Kate Bush released her 9th, and 13 years since Jeff Mangum (as Neutral Milk Hotel) released his second. Not all acts that resurface have to have page-long catalogs, and like Mangum, not all comebacks have to include new material, but these three artists made the biggest impact in 2011 after some time away from the spotlight.

Not even just away from the spotlight, but in some cases purposefully reclusive. Before this year, Jeff Mangum appearances were becoming lore, like seeing the face of Mother Mary in a Crunchwrap Supreme. Mangum only did some one-off shows in barns or was seen looming backstage at some gig. But last January, he announced his reemergence for ATP New Jersey at the “I’ll Be Your Mirror” event — a festival! He went from barns to a major festival in like a year! He then went on a small U.S. tour and released a career-spanning Neutral Milk Hotel box set, and there are no signs of him stopping with tour dates already stretching into 2012.

For Kate Bush, pace is the trick. With 10 albums in over 30 years, we’re running on her press cycle — releasing her babies into the world only when they’re ready to leave the nest. With a flurry (ahem), she dropped two albums in 2011 — her self-explanatory Director’s Cut and her acclaimed new studio album, 50 Words for Snow. With no tour or late-night performances, Bush is still staying out of the limelight for now. But it’s not like she needs the press.

And then there’s the categorical Tom Waits, doing his thing for the 24th time with not a hint of phoning it in. Bad As Me is another trophy for his buckling shelf and his most commercially successful album to date, peaking at #6 on the U.S. Billboard charts. Twenty-four albums in 37 years with rarely a misstep or an eye roll, soundtracking movies, musicals, German surrealist plays, and with his release this year, he’s only further cementing himself as an American cultural icon. We await for “Waitsian” to be added to dictionaries. -Jeremy D. Larson

The Return of Radiohead

Photo by Nate Slevin

It’s a predicament: A member of Radiohead posts something online (e.g. new track, obscure art, a haiku-like blog entry, et al.), and you’re a.) out at lunch, b.) four hours into a deep sleep, or c.) at your own wedding. Whatever the situation, you’re finding the closest computer and fast. That sort of conundrum plagues every blogger’s life annually, but especially in 2011. As of today, Consequence of Sound has 10 pages of Radiohead-related news for this year alone. Quite a lot. To think, it all started in the eye-tweaking, early morning hours of February 14th, 2011. That’s when the group announced the release of their eighth LP, The King of Limbs, set to deliver only four days later. Naturally, the ‘net exploded soon after; in fact, as one reader put it that morning, “I just pooped my pants.”

That reaction turned sour (or just downright polarizing) when the LP eventually surfaced. Some complained about its length (a copious 37 minutes), speculating on a second part (which never materialized), while others wondered where the band went, calling it a Yorke-centric effort. A week after it was announced, Consequence of Sound awarded the album four stars, hailing it as “one of their most absorbing efforts to date.” (Currently, the album has a Metacritic score of 80.) Despite the general acclaim, critics everywhere levied their slight disappointment between their words.

But that hardly stalled the group. Since 2007′s event release of In Rainbows, the UK collective has stayed ahead of the curve, and this year was no different. Things just got weird. They issued a free newspaper, their “Lotus Flower” video sent dance enthusiasts on edge, and Yorke started hitting the DJ scene hard. But, on the other hand, they struck all the right nerves by releasing an exclusive Record Store Day 7″, “surprising” festivalgoers at Glastonbury, endorsing an album of remixes, and media blitzing NYC for a week (which included stops at Fallon, SNL, The Colbert Report, and two sold-out nights at The Roseland Ballroom). It doesn’t look like it’ll end for 2012, either, what with another LP and a proper tour on the way. That’s okay, though. Our stomachs, sleep schedules, and loved ones won’t appreciate it, but hey, more Radiohead, right? As the old adage with this group goes, “Stay tuned.” -Michael Roffman

The Day Trent Reznor Won An Oscar

When first approached by director David Fincher to score his film about the founding of Facebook, Trent Reznor had just wrapped up Nine Inch Nails’ lengthy farewell tour and was planning to take time off. However, as Reznor later explained, “When I actually read the script and realized what he was up to, I said goodbye to that free time I had planned.” Undoubtedly attracted by the film’s sentiments on isolation, greed, and entitlement (all familiar issues to the Nine Inch Nails frontman), Reznor graciously accepted his new role as film composer.

Teaming with longtime collaborator Atticus Ross, the duo would go on to create a masterpiece of “alternative-rock infused ambient electronic music” that as our Drew Litowitz writes, “mimics the anxious ambivalence that Sorkin’s script and Fincher’s direction convey so similarly.”  The score amplified the angst and turmoil that accompanied the success of Mark Zuckerberg. For a movie with no ostensible “action” sequences, the score built tension to great heights alongside Aaron Sorkin’s signature verbose script. One question remained: Would movie critics give praise to an outside artist who once sang, “God is dead and no one cares/ if there’s a hell, I’ll see you there”?

With 15 nominations for Best Original Score, it seemed Reznor and Ross had created a score that struck an international cord. Even after winning the Golden Globe, skeptics wondered if The Academy would give Reznor and Ross the Oscar over perennial favorites Hans Zimmer and Alexandre Desplat. All doubt dissipated when Nicole Kidman and the all-too-pleased Hugh Jackman called the duo up to accept each one’s first Academy Award. “Wow, is this really happening?” Reznor asked during his acceptance speech.

Reznor’s now working on the score for the Fincher-directed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Will he need to make more room on his trophy shelf? Plus, with an alt-rock artist taking home the coveted award, might Reznor’s win, combined with the efforts of Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers, be incentive for more contemporary artists to try their hand at composing film scores? We’d like to hope so. -Derek Staples

Who is Arcade Fire??!!?

Sunday, February 13, 2011. Talk about a tumultuous 24-hour news cycle: Hours before Radiohead resurfaced to wreak havoc on the ‘net with The King of Limbs (see page nine), Arcade Fire walked home with a Grammy for Album of the Year for their 2010 album, The Suburbs. As Win Butler & Co. cooked up an impromptu cut of “Ready to Start” over the ceremony’s closing credits, fingers raced across keyboards, mouses clicked, and emotions ran wild. Some praised the news – Kanye West tweeted, “#Arcade fire!!!!!!!!!! There is hope!!! I feel like we all won when something like this happens! FUCKING AWESOME!” – while others, many others, updated their Facebook and Twitter accounts in utter confusion. Thus, one of 2011′s most popular internet memes came to fruition: Who Is Arcade Fire??!!?

For days following the Grammys, the widely celebrated Tumblr account reposted countless social media updates from users everywhere, all of whom had no clue who these Canadian indie rockers were. Some were angry, some were frustrated, and some felt victimized – as if the Grammys robbed Lady Antebellum, Eminem, Lady Gaga, or Katy Perry of a truer win. Naturally, as with anything this insubstantial to normal, everyday life, the wake calmed and most of the anger turned to curiosity. This partly speaks for the thousands upon thousands of fans that arrived in droves to catch them headline festivals, or take over their nearby venues. Creation through chaos, so to speak.

So, while recent Grammy-nominee Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) might think otherwise, the Grammys proved that they do still hold some weight, turning an indie rock icon into a household name. Admittedly, you might not appreciate your mother keeping The Suburbs on rotation with Taylor Swift, but hey, it’s an improvement, right? Yep, Jimbo: “Strange days have found us.” -Michael Roffman

Lulu and more WTF collaborations

We’re generally all for unique, head-turning collaborations, but some instances of teamwork insanity in 2011 really had us going “WTF?” For instance, just last week director Darren Aronofsky glorified Lou Reed and Metallica’s Lulu, which our own Jeremy D. Larson so bluntly described as ”a complete failure on every tangible and intangible level of its existence,” with a music video for “The View”. But not even a video by a top-notch director can save an album doomed by its concept and only further hindered by poor production that awkwardly abandons Reed’s vocals on top of the mix

If Metallica and Lou Reed would have spent a bit more time exploring other odd collabos of 2011, they possibly could have avoided their joint tragedy all together. Back in July, SuperHeavy, the supergroup made up of Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Dave Stewart, A. R. Rahman, and Damian Marley, dropped their first single, “Miracle Worker”. The bloated, inorganic track felt stapled together, with many critics and listeners calling it a marketing ploy by Warner Music Group.

Then in August, profanities flew left and right when we were presented with this picture of Jack White and Insane Clown Posse. If the pic wasn’t awful enough, whoever chose to listen to the White-produced “Leck Mich Im Arsch” and “Mountain Girls” were subjected to ICP at their crudest and most bizarre. Once again, we were left with two very important questions: Was this some maniacal plan each shared during their days in Michigan, or was this collaboration the strange payoff of a backroom bet?

Arguably, Re:Generation takes the prize for most “WTF”-worthy collaboration. Presented by the Hyundai Volster, the concept of Re:Generation was to explore jazz, R&B, country, classical, and rock through the eyes of five modern DJ/producers. Pairings included the Crystal Method and Martha Reeves, Pretty Lights, Leann Rimes, and Ralph Stanley, and the most noteworthy, Skrillex and the remaining members of The Doors. All that bass resonating from “Breakin’ a Sweat” had Jim Morrison rolling in his Parisian grave.

Here’s hoping 2012 finally brings us that Celebrity: Apprentice-inspired boy band featuring Meat Loaf, Lil Jon, and Mark McGrath. -Derek Staples

The Year of the Gummy Fetus

This past January, the often-unconventional Flaming Lips did something decidedly conventional: re-sign with Warner Bros. Records for a multi-year deal. However, with the deal came a newfound level of creative freedom, which Wayne Coyne and co. used to build their wildest and wackiest year to date. Seriously, some weird stuff’s ahead.

The band’s 2011 was marked by decidedly gimmicky ploys to sell music. If they weren’t schlepping tunes inside of gummy skulls or gummy female anatomy, they were creating songs that were six and 24 hours long (though proceeds from those massive, massive “songs” did go toward charity). That, or the group was busy crafting tunes about copulating blobs with the use of YouTube. Some of their releases, like where they wrote people’s name into songs, were decidedly hokey (even if, once again, they were for a good cause). If there were any legit music-making endeavors, like collabos with Prefuse 73, Neon Indian, and Lightning Bolt, not to mention super-shows with Weezer and Yeasayer, they were outshined by graveyard gigs and playing human Whack-A-Mole with SUNY students. If it made headlines while generating mass confusion this year, The Flaming Lips were undoubtedly behind it.

There’s no way to catalog these decisions and projects as true artistic exploration. If anything, nearly everything the band did this year were either jokes and goofs or absurd, almost harebrained marketing schemes. But when someone gives the inmates the keys to the asylum, should anyone be surprised when they smear the walls in green paint and dress up like penguins? We, for one, applaud Wayne Coyne and company for doing what they do best: entertaining us with their increasingly batshit hijinks. Here’s to the kooky things the band will cook up in 2012. -Chris Coplan

Stage Collapses

In the span of two months between July and August 2011, a freak trend hit the music world. Four stages in three separate countries collapsed, killing a total of 11 and injuring many more. The first collapse occurred on July 17th at the Ottawa Bluesfest, where strong winds caused the festival’s main stage to implode 20 minutes into Cheap Trick’s set. Gusts blew the stage backwards, which pushed the scaffold to teeter under the force. Three people were reported injured, and the remainder of the fest – one headlining spot by Death Cab for Cutie – was canceled.

Then, just weeks later on August 7th, a similar occurrence befell Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Brady District Block Party. Moments before local heroes The Flaming Lips were scheduled to go on, a lighting rig was struck by wind and fell into the stage. Though the stage was evacuated beforehand, preventing injury to fans, band members, and road crew, some $800,000 worth of the Lips’ equipment was damaged or destroyed.

The summer festival circuit’s worst incident occurred six days later during country duo Sugarland’s set at the Indiana State Fair. A massive gust of wind toppled the stage, sending steel scaffolding, lighting, and sound equipment into the audience. The destruction of the stage had come just minutes after organizers had announced the storm and outlined evacuation plans. Seven people died as a result of the collapse, with another 44 receiving treatment for various injuries at nearby hospitals.

The fourth and final collapse took place on August 18th at the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, Belgium. As Chicago-based indie rock band Smith Westerns were playing on The Chateau Stage, bursts of wind uprooted trees and collapsed several festival tents. The band was evacuated offstage just prior to its collapse. (A second construct, the Shelter stage, was also damaged by weather.) Four people were killed, with another 75 reported injured. The festival, scheduled to run until the 20th, was canceled Friday morning (August 19th).

Late last month, in the aftermath of the incident in Indiana, 51 individuals connected to the collapse sued Sugarland, concert promoters, and those who built the stage for breach of reasonable care. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. A state-sponsored investigation of the collapse will be completed before the case moves forward.

On a more positive note, following the tragedies, fans, musicians, journalists, and festival promoters alike have all emerged to sound the call for increased safety measures, demanding better crowd accommodation and weather preparedness. While festivals will always contend with X-factors, better preparation can only benefit subsequent summer festival seasons. -Chris Coplan

And the Rest…

Clearly, as you’ve just read, a lot of things happened to the musical landscape in 2011. Some occurrences, though, were so darn awesome, head-turning, or just downright strange that they can’t be classified anywhere else. So, here they are, the rest of the biggest news stories of the year. -Ben Kaye

Kanye: The Musical: Ya know, this was probably bound to happen. Students at Australia’s Sydney University told the tale of Ye, from making beats for Jay-Z to his solo ascension, in this September production “about a guy who took a shot at the throne and didn’t miss.”

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks hold a “blowjob” contest: Seems the lyrics to “Senator” weren’t exactly FCC-approved. The line “I know what the senator wants/what the senator wants is a blowjob” needed a rewrite for the radio, so Malkmus reached out to fans for help. Turns out the senator actually wanted a corndog (who doesn’t?).

Bon Iver Day: Even a perfunctory listen to Bon Iver’s music reveals Justin Vernon’s strong affections for Wisconsin. That love was returned on July 22nd when Milwaukee’s Mayor Tom Barrett christened the day “Bon Iver Day” in celebration of Bon Iver’s WI ties, musical accomplishments, and the beginning of their world tour.

Beavis and Butt-Head: America’s favorite slackers/social commentators returned to MTV this year for all-new animated episodes. With a whole new slew of modern musicians and pop-culture to mock, this news… hee… errm.. uhh huhuhuh… rules.

2011: A Rock Odyssey featuring Jack White: For three epic nights, Stephen Colbert joined Jack White at the musician’s Third Man Records. The goal was to revive Colbert’s “music career,” and it ended up giving us three awesome segments, a Catholicism-off, and a duet of The Star-Spangled Banner.

Nick Oliveri arrested after S.W.A.T. standoff: When his girlfriend called the police, ex-Queens of the Stoneage/current Kyuss Lives! bassist Nick Oliveri refused to let her leave the residence or let the cops in. Four hours and a L.A. county S.W.A.T. team later, he was arrested for felony domestic violence. While the case awaits trial, Kyuss still lives, though Oliveri, out on $100,000 bail, won’t be joining them for any international tour dates.

Mic Todd arrested for armed robbery: On tour with Soundgarden, Coheed and Cambria bassist Mic Todd went out and robbed a Walgreens in Attleboro, MA, by telling the pharmacist he had a bomb. He was arrested that night at the Comcast Center on charges of armed robbery and unlawful possession of prescription narcotics. A month later, he was looking for a new band.

Courtney Love dates SALEM’s Jack Donoghue: So, Courtney Love thinks Dave Grohl is a dick, but witch-house is sexy. You know, sometimes I just don’t understand that woman.

Metallica Monopoly: Because nothing says “metal” like family game night.

Luther Campbell runs for mayor of Miami-Dade County: Admittedly, it takes some cajones to choose the eighth-most populous county in the country as your first foray into politics. Probably takes more to try to tax strippers. He lost, by the way.

Joe Jonas says he’s influenced by Daft Punk: The middle Jo Bro cites Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy work as an influence on his solo debut. So, in essence, you’re saying this led to this.

Since the band has split, R.E.M. can’t promote their latest release – Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011 - with any sort of performance. Instead, Michael Stipe has been making the late night rounds. Last week, he partied with Stephen Colbert and Brian Eno, singing some Bill Withers. Last night, the fiesta-of-sorts continued on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where Stipe and Fallon discussed the new collection, looking back on previous songs, and the origin of the breakup. ”The three of us arrived at it, kind of organically,” Stipe added. “When we were on tour in 2008, it kind of became an option.” Interestingly enough, the former frontman points out that the cover of this year’s Collapse Into Now hinted at the break up: “I’m waving good bye on the cover. Nobody got that.”

As if that weren’t enough, Stipe joined Fallon, Martin Short, and The Muppets’ own Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy for a little game of Password. Just wait for the “yoga” moment. Pretty incredible. Sigh, we’ve asked it once and we’ll ask it again, “Why hasn’t J-Fal won an Emmy yet?” Seriously. Check out the clips below (via The Audio Perv), and then let yourself fall into that much-deserved R.E.M. kick.

Interview:

Password w/ Martin Short & The Muppets:

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011 is currently available everywhere.

Let’s start with the new package… the new greatest hits album, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage. The title tells it all, your summation of 30 years of rock and roll?

Well, it’s funny; that was a phrase Peter used to describe us back, I think, in the late 80s. I’m not sure of the exact date of origin, but you know, it is. The thing you take away from that is love rock and roll as we do, but don’t take it too seriously. It is the most important and least important thing in the world in many ways.

With the new song “We All Go Back to Where We Belong”, is there an intention behind the title? Was that song actually written with knowledge of the band’s demise or breakup?

Yeah, both that and “Hallelujah” lyrically were written knowing that; and actually, “We All Go Back to Where We Belong” was originally written on piano for Collapse Into Now, but we couldn’t figure out a way to make it work, but I really wanted Michael to finish it for this retrospective, so I went at it from guitar instead of piano. I kind of rewrote it on guitar and changed it around from the piano song it was, and it turned out to be much more accessible for Michael, so we’ve got this beautiful song now.

And the third track is “Month of Saturdays”…

Yeah, that was something I was messing around with back in the recording of Collapse Into Now. I was thinking of Pylon and my friend Randy Bewley, who was killed not long ago, and I was thinking, “Well, you know this is kind of a Pylon kind of guitar sound, guitar line here,” and I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but Michael liked it enough to put the lyrics on it. I like it because it reflects the goofy side of R.E.M., which was often overlooked by people in the years. We were always having fun, and a lot of that got overlooked because people thought we were this really serious band, but believe me, we were laughing as much as anybody else.

Any chance of “Hallelujah” and “A Month of Saturdays” being released?

As singles, I have no idea. That is entirely up to the record company. If they want to, it’ll be fine with me.

So, all three of these songs weren’t necessarily cutting room scraps from the last album sessions. They were things you couldn’t really complete but wanted to.

Oh, exactly. No, they were things we really liked. Some songs just tend to come out and take about as long to write as it does to play ‘em; others require a lot of wrangling. “We All Go Back to Where We Belong” took a lot of work, but because I believed in it and I knew there was a good song in there, I just kept wrestling with it until it got to a point where Michael could relate to it and be inspired by it.

You said that you were trying to get Michael to finish it. As long as I’ve been alive, it’s always been Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, then obviously Buck/Mills/Stipe. How do you approach the songwriting as all four of you or all three of you to get the song to be a Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe or Buck/Mills/Stipe song rather than a Mills song or a Stipe song or a Buck song?

From the very beginning, Peter said, you know, when we first started having to have song credits, he said we were gonna split them equally. I said, “Why would we do that? I don’t care about the money, but I want the credit if I write the song.” And he said, “Yeah, I understand that.” But being the historian that he was already, he said nothing breaks a band up faster than the songwriters getting all the money. So, he said we’re gonna share. And then in fact it turned out to be a truth because we did all write the songs. Everybody contributed to every song, whether we actually physically wrote it or not. Everybody had enough of a hand in the sound of it to make the splitting of the credits make perfect sense. And it does keep a band together, because if one or two guys write all the songs and they make all the money, the other guys are gonna be resentful, and that is not healthy.

Like with The Beatles.

The Beatles are a prime example of that, certainly; but I love the fact that we made the decision with the idea of avoiding tension, and yet it turned out to be correct and accurate in fact as well as in thought.

Photo by Anton Corbijn.

Over the course of three decades together, you’ve been a unit. It’s never seemed to be one personality, even though Michael Stipe’s personality certainly outshines the other three, R.E.M. itself always seemed to have its own unified front.

Oh, absolutely. When we got together the idea was that we were a band, you know. When you’re starting out, you’re taking your stuff out there on the road. And you’re playing it for people who don’t know you and may or may not even care that you’re there. You have to prove yourself night after night after night, and so you’re kind of a gang. A gang of four or five people who are out there, and the only people you have are each other. You’re the ones that believe in each other, and maybe no one else does at that point, so the only support you have is each other. And that tends to give you that unified front, and we’ve always felt it should be that way from the very beginning. Whatever disputes we may have, they stay in-house.

With that in mind, when Bill Berry decided to leave the band in ’97, did you as a band even contemplate possibly ending?

Yeah, of course, we did. We looked at it. What we found was that there was a dynamic that went on with Bill in the band that was completely shifted when he left, and we didn’t really expect that. Everybody has different ways of working, and Bill actually helped balance that out. As any relationship will over the years, you have to step back and talk about it and say, “Do we want to keep going? If we do, here’s what we have to do in order to do it correctly.” There were two or three of those, I’d say, major ones, over the course of our career, and that’s how you keep going. Whether it’s a marriage, a friendship, or a business relationship, those things are necessary every once in a while just to make sure you are all still pulling in the same direction.

Michael Stipe said, “A three-legged dog is still a dog. It just has to learn to run differently.”

Exactly, well said. And a three-legged table can be a little wobbly unless you balance it out right.

So, how did you decide to go on as a three-piece as it were, rather than have a full-time replacement?

We never wanted to replace Bill; there’s no replacing Bill in the sense of “band member.”  We were lucky enough to find Joey Waronker and Bill Rieflin, who were not only great drummers, but they fit with R.E.M. And not every great drummer could do that. We didn’t want to replace Bill. It felt disrespectful, and that’s not who we were. So, in our minds, it was still R.E.M., but R.E.M. was a different band after Bill left, and we weren’t trying to pretend we were the same band because we weren’t.

What was the reason for two videos for the latest single? And why the Andy Warhol Screen Test approach?

Michael is the visual artist in the band. Peter and I don’t care about videos as long as we don’t have to be in them. We clearly get final approval, but we trust Michael’s vision, and we know how much he enjoys it. So, we let him go out and do whatever he wanted, and as long as we feel it represents the band in a way of class and integrity, we are certainly fine with that. You know, three and a half minutes of Kirsten Dunst is not a problem.

No. Or even John Giorno.

What is his last name again?

Giorno.

Giorno, yeah, that’s it, John Giorno. He’s the one; you know he was the guy in Sleep, Andy Warhol’s eight hours of a guy sleeping. That was him. So, that’s again a little bit of a full circle.

A return to form.

Yep.

So, I guess that explains why we hardly ever see band members in the videos. You guys consciously did not want to be in the videos.

Yeah. I mean, Peter and I never got into this business to be actors. It’s not what we wanted to do. I personally resent the fact that videos exist ever anyway. Music exists for you to create pictures in your head. When all of a sudden you got some video director showing you the pictures you have in your head, I found that offensive. To a great extent, I still do. Given that, I’m proud of all our videos; we did great videos. Michael has an incredible visual sense. The ones he did by himself are fantastic; the ones he had help with he picked really good people to work with. So, you can make them an art form, and I think we did. Nonetheless, just the fact that record companies needed them as a cheap promo item, or not even cheap; some of those videos cost millions of dollars. But the fact that they saw them as a promo, and for me they took away from the essence of what songs are and music is supposed to do.

Let’s go back, if you don’t mind, to 1983. Do you remember the first time you were on Letterman?

Yeah, sure.

Was that “So. Central Rain”? No, “Radio Free Europe”…

I think we did two. I think we did “Radio Free Europe” and “So. Central Rain”, except “So. Central Rain” didn’t even have a title at that point. If you watch the clip, you see Letterman coming out and talking to Peter and I, and he was like, “What was the name of that song?” You can’t hear what we say, but Letterman goes, “Doesn’t have a name? Too new to be named, okay.”

So, when you guys joined up with I.R.S., was there a reason that you decided to go with I.R.S. versus other independent labels?

We liked what I.R.S. was doing. We agreed with their work ethic. We didn’t want an advance; they didn’t want to give an advance. They agreed to let us do things our way with minimal interference. There was certainly a connection in that Ian Copeland was one of Bill Berry’s and my best friends. He ran our booking agency, and his brother ran I.R.S. So that was a nice familial connection, but really that had little to do with it. In the end, it was mostly because we appreciated their ethic and the fact that they would kind of leave us alone.

Whose decision was it to work with Mitch Easter back in the beginning?

I believe he was suggested to us by Peter Holsapple, who we had become friends with. That was when we established our bona fides with I.R.S. Records. They wanted us to work with this name producer that we knew was not a good idea. So, we wanted Mitch, and so what we agreed to do, we did a demo song, one song with Mitch and one with the other producer. And the demo we did with Mitch is the version of “Pilgrimage” that is on the record, so it was pretty clear who was right about the producer.

So, there was obviously a conscious decision around the time of Fables… to change the direction of the band wasn’t there?

Not so much the direction. We had worked with Mitch and Don twice, and that was enough. They’re still good friends to this day, so it wasn’t anything weird. We wanted to try a different producer, a different sound. Peter liked Joe Boyd from all his work with Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention. We weren’t trying to change the sound, per say. We just wanted to work with a different producer.  As it turned out, the sound was a combination of factors: Joe Boyd’s production, the engineer’s type of engineering, the weird funky studio in London that we worked in, the headspace we were all in, which was pretty dismal at that time. You know, we made a record that was dark and murky and is a lot of people’s favorite.

I think it’s a great album. At the time of that album’s making and release was also around the time that all the R.E.M. clones started filtering their way through college radio, and I was always curious as if that was a reason why you shifted a little with Fables.

You know, it’s not. I was never really aware of any R.E.M. clones. I never really caught on to people trying to emulate our sound…

Really?

We were not trying to throw other bands off the scent. We were just recording the songs that we had in the best way we could, but due to the combination of studio and producer and headspace, we got this particularly dark record, which we all love. I think it’s great. The experience of making it was really tough. It wasn’t Joe Boyd’s fault. I consider him a friend to this day, but it was tough being in London and tough working in that studio.

How about with Document? Was it a little bit easier?

Document was great. Scott Litt was clearly a great fit for us, and we had a lot of fun making that record.

When you guys decided to go to Warner Brothers, was that more based on initially a distribution deal?  That they could get you international distribution?

That was a lot of it. I.R.S. had no presence in Europe. We really wanted to come to Europe and see if our music would translate, not in a literal sense of the term. We wanted to see if the Europeans could appreciate it, and I.R.S. had no presence at all, and we wanted to come to Europe, and while we enjoyed playing to American servicemen based in Mannheim, Germany, we wanted to see if we could get a bigger audience just to see how our music would go over. Warners not only had that European presence we were looking for, but they were clearly an artist-oriented label. They had Moe Austin and Lenny Wannaker in charge, clearly two guys who cared as much about the music as they did about the money. They had people like Neil Young and Van Dyke Parks on the label who were not making any money, but they were great artists. We said, “That’s the kind of label we want to associate with — something that’s not about the bottom line.” We could have gotten more money elsewhere, but that’s not what we were after.

Some people have considered your vocals and harmonies, especially with Michael Stipe on songs like “Superman”, to be the band’s secret weapon. J. Edward Keyes, who is a critic, and Stewart Mason, who is a reviewer as well, both have suggested solo albums by you. In fact, Stewart Mason suggested it in his review of “Near Wild Heaven”, which is almost 20 years old. Any thoughts to doing a solo album now that R.E.M. is done?

Right. Yeah, I’ll probably do one sooner or later. Right now what I’m looking forward to is writing some songs with some guys I know that I really like and respect and want to hang out with and work with. That’s probably next up, but I’d say some time fairly soon, I’ll start working on a solo record. If I think it measures up to standards, I’ll put it out.

Everywhere I look… I’ve been a fan since the early-mid 80s…

Cool.

I’m old.

You and me both…

But the name… I know what R.E.M. stands for biologically, scientifically. But I could have sworn in the documentary Inside Out, the old documentary on the Athens scene back in the day, that somebody said they just saw the letters written on a wall after a party.

No. I’ll give you the definitive story on that. What happened was we were looking for a name, so we had these plywood walls of this crappy place in this deconsecrated church where some of us were living, and we had pieces of chalk lying around. Whenever our friends came over, we had them write down suggestions for names on the walls. None of those turned out to be usable. So, we were sitting around one night before one of our first two or three shows, by this point we had to have a name of some sort, and Michael had a dictionary. He was literally opening it up and stabbing his finger down on words. Like the fourth or fifth one was R.E.M., and we said, “What does that mean?” And he said, “Well rapid eye movement is the dream stage of sleep,” and we said, “We’ll take it.”

Photo by Keith Carter.

When a band calls it a day or an artist retires, their previous records tend to receive a boom in sales. It’s human nature. We always want to see what we missed out on, so we can regret not having been there earlier — an impossible feeling of nostalgia for something you never were part of. With R.E.M., the likely suspects for purchase are Document, Out of Time, and Automatic for the People. They contain the biggest hits from a popular culture point of view (and two of those albums are essential), but none of those has “Gardening at Night” on it.

Enter the tracklist to Part Lies. A casual listener isn’t going to flip open their laptop, head over to iTunes, and search for “New Test Leper”. In a perfect world, everyone would be doing that, but a perfect world we do not live in. So there’s “New Test Leper”, popping up after R.E.M.’s last commercial mega hit, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”. Thanks to this compilation’s sequencing, the stadium rock of “Kenneth” is followed with the lines “I can’t say that I love Jesus.” Welcome to the land of R.E.M., newbie. Part pop, part political, part dumb, part thoughtful.

R.E.M.’s early years were actually all pop, with little politics. Perhaps if we could understand one word coming out of Michael Stipe’s mouth, the opinion would be a wee bit different. Regardless, the band’s run on I.R.S. is one of the greatest in recorded music. Every album is represented here from that time, so kudos to I.R.S. for letting Warner Bros. include these tracks in this compilation. The upper-register mumbles within the jangle-pop masterpiece “Gardening at Night” provide a good example of the old “R.E.M. sound.” It’s a good introduction to someone coming into the band for the first time and lays the groundwork for much of Part Lies’ first disc.

And what a first disc it is. Guitarist Peter Buck serves up his pop-punk-by-way-of-The-Byrds. In addition to the rollicking rhythm section, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry even provide stirring harmonies to Stipe’s lead vocals and often mysterious lyrics. Their various stylings whisk and wind their way through the classic Murmur, with its best song (“Sitting Still”) thankfully included. Reckoning found the band avoiding the sophomore slump, with the haunting apologies of “So. Central Rain” and the barfly sing-along “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” providing evidence.

Reps from Fables of the Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant continue the hot streak, offering up the pounding “Driver 8” and the stirring harmonies of “Fall on Me”. The band’s breakthrough into the mainstream is unquestionably Document, and the two reasons for that are included in Part Lies as well. Even those green (pun kind of intended) to R.E.M.’s back catalog know “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”. And before we know it, we enter the Warner Bros. years.

The woefully underrated Out of Time gets its representation here, and the band was kind (or cruel) enough to include the never-performed “Shiny Happy People”. The song was a big hit back in the day, and it makes complete sense to include it here. To balance its presence, the Buck-powered, Stipe-angry “Country Feedback” appears immediately before. The band’s final unanimously acclaimed album, Automatic for the People, is here, too. The big hits (“Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon”) are among the first tracks on disc two. But it’s what comes after that makes this compilation truly worthwhile.

You may now be thinking, “More worthwhile than Automatic and the I.R.S. years? Blasphemy!” But take into consideration those who have not heard much of the Athens band aside from their singles from the late eighties and early nineties. Up’s “At My Most Beautiful” may be the most beautiful song the band has ever written. Reveal’s “Imitation of Life” may imitate the chords from “Man on the Moon”, but it’s really just as triumphant. If new listeners missed out the first time, they can hear the recent, charging “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” and the intimate “Überlin” to understand that the band still had something left in the tank and could have gone on.

But they won’t be going on. We should be at peace with that. In recent weeks, Stipe and Mills have been giving interviews overseas, in which they seem to still get along and be absolutely content. That’s what we all want at the end of the day, when we call it a day. Part Lies is a goodbye to the fans who have been around for years but a hello to those who missed out the first time ‘round. And that is all truth.

Essential Tracks: “Sitting Still”, “At My Most Beautiful”, and “Überlin”

Brian Eno, world-renowned genius. Stephen Colbert, national treasure. On Thursday night, the two wildly diversive minds collided on The Colbert Report. There, Eno digressed on his current and forthcoming inventions, more specifically the basis behind his new EP, Panic of Looking, and the complexity of his latest masterpiece, 77 Million Paintings. The latter installment, which we recently observed at this year’s Moogfest, offered an extraordinary challenge for Colbert, who asked Eno how long it would take to see each of the 77 million paintings. Eno replied, ”If you waited about 400 million years, you might see the complete repertoire.” Naturally, Colbert wasn’t dissuaded by the number.

Following the interview, Colbert stepped aside to discuss R.E.M.‘s forthcoming greatest hits package, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011, surprising everyone by bringing out the band’s frontman Michael Stipe. After literally placing Stipe on his own rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame shelf, Colbert brought Eno back out, and the three of them finished the show with a charming cover of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me”. Funnily enough, it was the same track that only moments before Colbert had asked Eno to sing in the near future. Perhaps time really isn’t a problem for the host.

Check out video replays for Eno’s interview and the performance of “Lean on Me” below.

Stephen Colbert, Brian Eno, Michael Stipe – “Lean on Me” (Bill Withers cover):

Brian Eno Interview:

Your tax dollars at work: NPR is streaming three of next week’s big releases one week early. Leading the way is R.E.M.’s post-breakup compilation, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982–2011. Due out November 15th via Capitol Records, the two-disc set comprises material from the band’s entire back catalogue, as well as three new tracks (“A Month of Saturdays, “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”, and “Hallelujah”). It also comes sporting the “first-ever GIF album cover.” Click here to stream it in full.

Also up for grabs is the debut album from Donald Glover’s hip hop alter ego Childish Gambino, the 13-track Camp. The album is officially out November 15th via Glassnote Records, but you can now stream it here.

Finally, Welsh indie rockers Los Campesinos! will release their fourth album, Hello Sadness, on November 15th via Arts & Crafts. Click here to stream the album’s 10 tracks.

Here’s your chance to watch Kirsten Dunst smile while R.E.M.’s final single, “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”, plays in background.

The ‘Kirsten Version’ is actually the first of two videos unveiled by the band. The ‘John Version’ stars performance artist John Giorno, who pulls off the confused look better than anyone. Click here to check that one out.

As previously reported, ”We All Go Back To Where We Belong” is one of three previously unreleased songs packaged in R.E.M.’s retrospective compilation, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011. The two-disc set hits stores on November 15th via Warner Bros.

Since 1985, Neil Young has hosted his annual Bridge School Benefit, bringing together an assortment of artists for a two-day festival that supports the Hillsborough, CA-based school, which assists children with severe speech and physical impairments. This year’s inclusion, set to take place this weekend at The Shoreline Amphitheatre on October 22-23rd, marks the event’s 25th anniversary, and to celebrate Young has tagged the likes of Beck, Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Eddie Vedder, and many more. However, unlike previous years, the organizers are ensuring millions witness the event.

To start, Saturday’s festivities will be webcast online for the first-time ever. Thanks to Facebook and YouTube, fans will be able to watch the surefire spectacle from the comfort of their own home. A special landing page has been designed by Facebook that allows users to interact while experiencing the event. In fact, those actually in attendance at the show will be able to upload content and messages to share amongst those watching from home. Visit the respective pages at Facebook or YouTube for more information, and peep the trailer for the event below. An exact webcast schedule is still to be announced.

Then, on October 24th, there’s the CD/DVD release of The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition. This collection digs deep into the benefit’s history, featuring appearances from Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, The Who, Band of Horses, Thom Yorke,  Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and many, many more musical elite. You can pre-order the DVD set here and the CD set here. NPR Music is streaming the two-disc album portion in its entirety until next Tuesday.

And while your puny 32″ flat-screen and sub-par sound system may be enough to enjoy the all-star footage, the organizers are offering one better: on the day of the CD/DVD release (once again, 10/24), movie theaters across the nation will air the effort’s concert  film. Check out the entire listing of cities and locations below; all showings kick off at 7 p.m. For more information on tickets, head here. The trailer for the release is also available below.

The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition Theater Locations:
Atlanta, GA @ Midtown
Austin, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Lakecreek
Boston, MA @ Kendall
Chicago, IL @ Century
Dallas, TX @ TBC
Denver, CO @ Mayan
Los Angeles, CA @ The Laemmle Santa Monica
Madison, WI @ Sundance
Milwaukee, WI @ Oriental
Minneapolis, MN @ Edina
New York City, NY @ Sunshine
Philadelphia, PA @ Ritz Bourse
Pleasantville, NY @ Jacob Burns
Portland, ME @ Nickelodeon
Portland, OR @ Hollywood Theatre
San Diego, CA @ Hillcrest
San Francisco, CA @ Embarcadero
Santa Cruz, CA @ Nickelodeon
Santa Rosa, CA @ Summerfield
Seattle, WA @ Harvard Exit
Silver Spring, MD @ AFI Silver Theatre
Washington, DC @ E Street

When discussing the music of Pete & Pete, it all starts with Polaris. The wonderfully ’90s theme song “Hey Sandy” was penned by Mark Mulcahy, originally the frontman for Miracle Legion (a group compared to R.E.M., even as they opened for Bjork’s Sugarcubes). But when Nickelodeon needed a house band for their grungy new show about brotherly love, Mulcahy brought together Polaris, and the rest is history. The title track still pops into many a twentysomething or thirtysomething’s head and gets stuck for days, despite the indecipherability of one line. While Mulcahy has been forthcoming with almost every lyric, the third line (after “Hey smilin’ strange, you’re looking happily deranged”) has never been revealed. Theories abound, but the happy medium we’ve found is to just mumble out some nonsense.

Polaris also appeared in the classic episode “A Hard Day’s Pete”, in which Danny Tamborelli’s Little Pete happens across a song that instantly ingrains itself as his all-time favorite, Polaris’s “Summerbaby”. But in the pre-SoundHound/Google era, Little Pete has no idea what the song is and goes on a quest to find it (those were some difficult days, kids). He broadcasts his own cover over his pirate radio station, WART– pretty hip moves for a grungy little dude. Fans these days can grab Polaris’s Music From The Adventures of Pete & Pete and get that song, the title theme, and 10 other familiar tracks that should keep the nostalgia going for a while.

But the musical guest stars certainly don’t end there. Iggy Pop may be the most readily featured musician of the bunch, playing Nona’s dad, James “Pop” Mecklenberg. The punk rock wild man kept his flowing locks but played the occasionally overbearing, over-protective dad, a knowingly ironic move from a knowingly ironic decade. In “A Hard Day’s Pete”, Little Pete’s backing band featured singer/songwriter Marshall Crenshaw as electricity meter reader “Lightning” Mel Ratner. Former Sonic Youth drummer (and Ferris Bueller valet/thrill seeker) Richard Edson plays a lovelorn janitor, Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano portrays a broken substitute math teacher, and Blondie’s Debbie Harry turns out to be one of Pete’s neighbors.

Big Pete’s many crushes include singer/songwriter Juliana Hatfield as a surprisingly young lunch lady, while the utterly urban New York Dolls frontman David Johansen is a park ranger in the Pete & Pete bizarro world. Similarly twisted, rap bad boy LL Cool J turns up as a middle school teacher, while kooky B-52s vocalist Kate Pierson is a lonely suburbanite. Plus, the booking of Luscious Jackson as the band for the school dance made all of us jealous that our middle schools got Wacky Dave, DJ Extraordinaire. But in perhaps the top bill, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe plays Mr. Tastee’s competition, Captain Scrummy, purveyor of the ick-tastic Sludgecicle.

The background music proved to be just as star-studded. Beyond Polaris, the heavy inclusion of Stephin Merritt’s work (with Magnetic Fields, The Gothic Archies, and The 6ths) makes for some pretty beautifully moody ’90s moments. The Apples in Stereo, the Drop Nineteens, and Poi Dog Pondering all contribute their own magnificent gleeful, jammy eccentricities, while Chug and Racecar amp things up. To this day, very few TV shows (aimed at kids or otherwise) have displayed this level of musical mastery.

To help you revisit some of these tunes, we put together a special playlist for you via Spotify.

Check Out: Krebstar Mixtape 2000

“I woke up thinking we were free,” Michael Stipe yelps on “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”, the new single off R.E.M.’s forthcoming greatest hits package, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011. Over “coffee talk”-instrumentation, sounding stripped from some unheard of 1970′s game show, the new track sees Stipe romanticizing big picture ideas. “We all go back to where we belong,” he explains in the refrain, finally asking us, “Is this really what you want?” Is he joking? Do we have a choice here? Probably not, but check out the track at RollingStone.com and answer for yourself.

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011 hits stores November 15th via Warner Bros. In addition to “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”, the set includes two other new songs: “A Month of Saturdays” and “Hallelujah”. All three tracks were recorded with producer Jacknife Lee following the release of the band’s final LP, Collapse Into Now.

Coldplay’s cover of R.E.M.’s seminal hit “Everybody Hurts” is a touching example of a group of fans (turned superstar musicians) paying homage to a band who had an amazing 30-year run. And while there’s plenty of other bands who had similar relationships with Michael Stipe and company, the ode we’re most interested in is that of Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’ cover of the 1983 classic “Radio Free Europe”. More than being a good-time, jangly run through the number, the cover breathes a sense of history. Shot just a week after the band’s surprise break-up, it exudes the sense that Malkmus, frontman of rock weirdos Pavement, is tipping his hat to his big bros of the alternative music scene. That without their groundbreaking ways, there’d be no place for all the bands that are a little left of center. That’s got to mean more than every superstar tribute and funny Twitter reaction in the world. Check it out below via The NJ Underground.

And, because we can, the original “Radio Free Europe” (from an October 1983 appearance on David Letterman):

Malkmus and the Jicks’ most recent LP, Mirror Traffic, is out now.

Always ahead of the curve – you know, like quitting before rusting? – R.E.M. has unveiled a special GIF cover for their forthcoming greatest hits package, R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011, due out November 15th. It’s being billed as the “first-ever ” GIF album cover with the intent to “usher in a new era of album artwork.” As you can tell from above, it’s definitely not your standard JPG.

They’ve also issued a trailer for the 40-track compilation, which you can view below. The nearly three minute video drifts through the group’s 30 years, sporting clips from their always-impressive videography, under a remix of their various hits. For fans who still haven’t moved on from the news, you might want to clutch that box of Kleenex while watching. “When you’re sure you’ve had enough…” you can always push stop. See what we did there?

Don’t forget: R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011 hits stores November 15th (via Warner Bros. Records).

Each year, Neil Young opens up his Rolodex (and it’s a mighty impressive one) and calls on all his rock star friends to play his charity concert, the Bridge School Benefit. With the shindig celebrating its 25th anniversary this October, Young and the folks behind the event have compiled the concert’s best moments in three-DVD and two-CD sets aptly titled The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition. 

The DVD release includes performances from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Fleet Foxes, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, Devendra Banhart, and a plethora of other big-name acts. The third disc also includes documentaries on the concert’s history along with a bonus feature on the Bridge School.

The two-CD set features even more classic performances from the concert’s past 25 years. Artists include Willie Nelson, Pearl Jam, Thom Yorke, Metallica, Band of Horses, R.E.M. featuring Young, and much, much more.

The two releases, which also benefit the Bridge School, are in stores on October 24th. Check out a video trailer for both sets below and pre-order the DVD set here and the CD set here.

This year’s Bridge School concert goes down October 22-23rd at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA. Acts scheduled to appear include Beck, Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, Eddie Vedder, and many more. Tickets are available via LiveNation right now.

The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition DVD Tracklsit:

DVD 1
Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
Patti Smith – People Have the Power
Pearl Jam – Better Man
David Bowie – Heroes
Ben Harper – There Will Be a Light
Bob Dylan – Girl From the North Country
R.E.M – Country Feedback
Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller – Love Hurts
Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains
Devendra Banhart – At the Hope
Bonnie Raitt – The Road Is My Middle Name
Billy Idol – Rebel Yell

DVD 2
Brian Wilson – Surfin’ USA
Gillian Welch – The Way It Will Be
The Pretenders – Sense of Purpose
James Taylor – Fire and Rain
Simon and Garfunkel – America
Tom Petty – Shadow of a Doubt
Dave Matthews – Too Much
Neil Young – Crime in the City
Tom Waits – 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six
Elton John & Leon Russell – A Dream Come True
Paul McCartney – Get Back
Metallica – Disposable Heroes
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again

DVD 3
Backstage at the Bridge School Benefit Concert
The Bridge School Story

The Bridge School Concerts 25th Anniversary Edition CD Tracklist:

CD 1
Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
Dave Matthews – Too Much
No Doubt – Magic’s in the Makeup
Jack Johnson – Gone
Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Love and Only Love
Sonic Youth – Rain on Tin
Pearl Jam – Better Man
Gillian Welch – The Way It Will Be
R.E.M & Neil Young – Country Feedback
Willie Nelson – The Great Divide
Nils Lofgrin – Cry Just a Little

CD 2
Sarah McLachlan – Elsewhere
Paul McCartney – Get Back
Elton John & Leon Russell – A Dream Come True
Band of Horses – Marry Song
Metallica – Disposable Heroes
Thom Yorke – After the Gold Rush
Sheryl Crow – The Difficult Kind
Tony Bennett – Maybe This Time
CSNY – Deja Vu
Norah Jones – Jesus – Etc.
Jonathan Richman – I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar
Brian Wilson – Surfin’ USA.
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again

As previously reported, the recently disbanded R.E.M. will release a career-spanning retrospective, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011, on November 15th via Warner Bros. Records. Today, an issued press release unveiled the compilation’s artwork (see above) and its lengthy tracklist. Spanning two discs and 40 tracks, Part Lies… will include material from the band’s entire back catalog, from their time as an underground rock sensations on IRS to their mainstream superstardom while signed to Warner Bros. Records.

In addition to classics like “Radio Free Europe”, “Orange Crush”, Man On The Moon”, and Coldplay’s favorite tune “Everybody Hurts”, the compilation will also include three new songs (“A Month of Saturdays, “We All Go Back To Where We Belong”, and “Hallelujah”), which were recorded with producer Jacknife Lee following the release of their most recent LP, Collapse Into Now. “We All Go Back To Where We Belong” will serve as the lead single and will hit both the radio and record shelves on October 18th.

The compilation will also include liner notes written by R.E.M’s four founding members, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry. Said Mills in an issued statement: “Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey…We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together.”

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011 Tracklist:
Disc 1:
01. Gardening At Night
02. Radio Free Europe
03. Talk About The Passion
04. Sitting Still
05. So. Central Rain
06. (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville
07. Driver 8
08. Life And How To Live It
09. Begin The Begin
10. Fall On Me
11. Finest Worksong
12. It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
13. The One I Love
14. Stand
15 Pop Song 89
16. Get Up
17. Orange Crush
18. Losing My Religion
19. Country Feedback
20. Shiny Happy People

Disc 2:
01. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
02. Everybody Hurts
03. Man On The Moon
04. Nightswimming
05. What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?
06. New Test Leper
07. Electrolite
08. At My Most Beautiful
09. The Great Beyond
10. Imitation Of Life
11. Bad Day
12. Leaving New York
13. Living Well Is The Best Revenge
14. Supernatural Superserious
15. Überlin
16. Oh My Heart
17. Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter
18. A Month of Saturdays
19. We All Go Back To Where We Belong
20. Hallelujah

Photo by Heather Kaplan

Contrary to numerous R.E.M. essays peppering the internet lately, they are not dead. Nevertheless our friends Coldplay, ever the band to appeal to the pulse of a grieving nation, busted out a heart-rending cover of “Everybody Hurts” at Music Midtown festival in Atlanta last night. Explained Coldplay’s Chris Martin: “One of our favorite bands of all time, R.E.M., for some crazy reason have finished — and it’s sad. So with the most respect in the world… this is just to show how much they meant to us.” Catch the video below.

Back in 2006, Martin and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe teamed up to cover Joseph Arthur’s “In The Sun”, with all proceeds benefiting victims of Hurricane Katrina. Since it’s semi-related to the topic at hand, we also have that video below.

Capitalizing on tissues and tears, R.E.M. plans on releasing another greatest hits album this November. The news was first reported yesterday by RollingStone.com, and now Amazon.com lists the compilation, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982 – 2011, as due out on November 15th via Warner Bros. Records. A tracklisting has yet to be unveiled, but RollingStone.com reports that the effort will comprise a career spanning collection of hits, along with new songs finished after the band completed their most recent LP, Collapse Into Now.

We’ll keep you updated.

Legendary alternative-rock band R.E.M. is calling it quits, according to a statement just posted on their official website.

“To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.”

Update: Singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills have issued individual statements:

Mike Mills:

“During our last tour, and while making Collapse Into Now and putting together this greatest hits retrospective, we started asking ourselves, ‘what next’? Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey. We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together.

“We have always been a band in the truest sense of the word. Brothers who truly love, and respect, each other. We feel kind of like pioneers in this–there’s no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers squaring-off. We’ve made this decision together, amicably and with each other’s best interests at heart. The time just feels right.”

Michael Stipe:

“A wise man once said–’the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave.’ We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it.

“I hope our fans realize this wasn’t an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.

“We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It’s been amazing.”

Peter Buck:

“One of the things that was always so great about being in R.E.M. was the fact that the records and the songs we wrote meant as much to our fans as they did to us. It was, and still is, important to us to do right by you. Being a part of your lives has been an unbelievable gift. Thank you.

“Mike, Michael, Bill, Bertis, and I walk away as great friends. I know I will be seeing them in the future, just as I know I will be seeing everyone who has followed us and supported us through the years. Even if it’s only in the vinyl aisle of your local record store, or standing at the back of the club: watching a group of 19 year olds trying to change the world.”

Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry, R.E.M. is widely considered to be one of the leading pioneers of alternative rock. Following years of underground success in the early to mid-’80s, the band hit it big in 1987 with the single “The One I Love”. They spent the next few years atop the charts thanks to a string of smash hit albums, including 1991′s Out of Time, 1992′s Automatic for the People, and 1994′s Monster. But after their acclaimed 1997 LP, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Berry left the band, leaving the group with a collection of polarizing efforts, namely 2004′s Around the Sun. In 2008, however, Stipe, Buck, and Mills turned heads with the critically-acclaimed Accelerate, and again with their most recent LP, this year’s Collapse Into Now. Below, you can watch the video for “Everybody Hurts”, from Automatic for the People.

Four isn’t five, but it’s also not three. One is the loneliest number, yet two is for hipsters. Seven is considered lucky, while six is the result of dividing 666 by 111. We’re okay with four — at least for now. This week — check it, September 15th, 2011 — marked the fourth anniversary of Consequence of Sound. Back in 2007, on one lazy Saturday afternoon in New York, Alex Young decided to start a blog. What you see here today is the ongoing result.

But it’s not the result that’s mind-boggling. It’s the journey. Covering four years of every major music festival — from the barbecue-laced heartburn in SXSW to the muddy confines of Bonnaroo to the concrete jungle that is Lollapalooza — or chopping out block after block of news stories or checking off each season’s album release schedule or… you get the picture. The steps count. The turns matter. The articles entertain.

Since its inception in 2007, Consequence of Sound has published nearly 17,000 articles. We’ve worked with over 100 different writers, editors, and photographers. We’ve been to almost every state in America, and elsewhere. Like we said, it’s the journey that’s mind-boggling.

And that’s why we’re okay with four — simply because we’ll be at five, six, and seven in no time. For now, though, let’s have some fun with the number, starting with four thoughts from our CEO/Publisher Alex Young and President/Editor-in-Chief Michael Roffman…

Four Thoughts From Alex Young…

4. My dream of a collaborative album between Jay-Z and Kanye West came to fruition this year.

3. My dream of a collaborative album between Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Jack White remains just that — a dream.

2. We Listen For You’s Soundcast is the best thing to hit the Internet in 2011.

1. Sorry, Chuck, but The Wire is the greatest television show ever.

Four Thoughts From Michael Roffman…

4. I’ve fallen in love with four women over the past four years: Bethany Cosentino (Best Coast), Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Lykke Li, and Heather Kaplan (CoS photographer). No particular order there. Just kidding.

3. I still subscribe to Rolling Stone. Though, when it comes to print, the best writing is in Vanity Fair or Playboy. No lie.

2. My ideal article remains to be written: Paul Westerberg announces fall tour.

1. Regardless of all the music I’ve discovered over the past four years, I still haven’t found a better song to sing along to in the shower than Toto’s “Africa”. I am open to suggestions.

Four Most Influential 4th Movements

By: Jake Cohen

4. “Mahler, Symphony No. 5, fourth movement, Adagietto”

Mahler’s output is full of stunning and painfully delicate strains. But the slow movement of his fifth symphony, purportedly written as a love letter to his new wife, may be his most sublime melody. He approaches a very classical melody with modern sound colors: A low harp accompanies low strings, which carry the tune. Mahler’s ability to express the entire emotional spectrum in his music appears in this short movement, as he traffics with joy, heartbreak, hope, pathos, and love.

3. Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, fourth movement, “March to the Scaffold”

How could anyone write a symphony after what Beethoven did in his ninth? Well, for starters, you could give your symphony a story: A love-struck artist is ultimately rebuked by the woman he loves, takes a massive amount of opium to kill himself, but instead, he just trips his face off and watches his own execution by guillotine. Berlioz was writing a perfectly nice symphony until he fell down the rabbit hole in the fourth movement, with martial drums, bone-rattling violins, celebratory crowds, and one last isolated thought of his beloved before the guillotine offs with his head. Romanticism, indeed.

2. Schoenberg, String Quartet No. 2, fourth movement

Arguably, this is the moment when classical music lost its grasp on tonality, the harmonic system that had endured for more than two centuries and on which our modern pop music is still based. Schoenberg took Wagner’s progressive harmonic language and went even further, shattering the system of keys. A soprano voice, itself an anomaly for a string quartet, sings the German words “I feel the air of another planet.” It was, quite literally, the opening to a new world of musical opportunities.

1. Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 “Choral”, fourth movement

Beethoven mind-fucked the entire 19th century when he inserted a chorus singing Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in the final movement of his final symphony. All hyperbole aside, it’s the moment when everything changed for every composer who came later. Turning his simple tune into a fugue, a Turkish march, and a solemn chorale, Beethoven proclaimed the brotherhood of all humanity in one sweeping 25-minute masterpiece.

Four Best Songs Suited for the Fantastic Four

By: Ben Kaye

4. Genesis - “Invisible Touch” (Invisible Woman)

Sue Storm has always deceived casual FF fans who just see a sexy blonde chick in skintight spandex. The truth is that she’s probably the most powerful member on the team. While Collins was speaking figuratively, Invisible Woman literally could “[reach] in and [grab] right hold of your heart.” And squeeze it ’til it popped. Her invisible force fields have almost limitless applications, and even the space gods known as Celestials have “fallen, fallen for her.” Sue used to be called “Invisible Girl”, but she adopted the “Woman” right around the time this song came out. Her massive power could really “mess up your life” and more than warrants the change.

3. Queen – “We Will Rock You” (The Thing)

A classic fight song for a classic brawler. Queen unwittingly wrote a mini-biography for Ben Grimm with this track. Growing up a poor Jewish kid in New York’s Lower East Side, Grimm was made a “hard man” at an early age by the gang murder of his older brother. After gaining his rocky visage, he turned the anger over his monstrous form into the fuel to “take on the world” as the FF’s heavy hitter. Yet still, even after decades of adventuring and super-heroing, even after time as an Avenger, deep down, The Thing just wants a bit of “peace some day” and to be regular Ben Grimm again. Until then, though, it’s clobberin’ time.

2. Boysetsfire - “Rocket Man” (Elton John cover) (Mr. Fantastic)

As it was his own theories, stubbornness, and rocket that got the team cosmically irradiated on that “timeless flight,” Reed Richards has always carried a self-alienating, lonely weight of guilt. Occasional attempts to “cure” his teammates and a preoccupation with bettering the world through science frequently ostracize his wife, Sue, and put his children, Franklin and Valeria, at great risk. Add on the family’s adventuring lifestyle, and there’s practically been “no one there to raise” the kids. In the end, Richards’ greatest flaw is his need to “[burn] out his fuse up here alone,” despite being surrounded by a loving, capable family. So why the cover version? It drives far harder than the original, and he’s still a superhero who can pack a (very enlarged) punch, after all.

James Taylor – “Fire and Rain” (Human Torch)

In memoriam: Johnny Storm, November 1965 – January 2011. The Human Torch met his death recently in Fantastic Four #587 at the hands of Annihilus and his hordes of Negative Zone aliens, marking the end of an era and the end of the team. At his own request, Torch was replaced by Spider-Man on what is now the Future Foundation. Though odds are he’ll rise from the ashes (see what happened there?) in typical comic book fashion before too long, may he rest in peace for now. This one’s for you, Johnny. Just change “Suzanne” and picture it sung in The Thing’s craggily voice.

Four Best Quartets of the Last Four Years

By: Dan Caffrey

4. Wild Flag

This may be a tad unfair in that Wild Flag is more or less a super-group consisting of Riot Grrrl matriarchs, but the all-female quartet is bar-none one of the most exciting quartets of late. With one LP, Carrie Brownstein, Janet Weiss, Mary Timony, and Rebecca Cole culled the best parts of their time from the alt-90′s and blended them into the catchiest rock record of 2011. Wild Flag never sound lazy or indulgent as many supergroups do. Their 2011 debut showed a band working together and highlighting the best in each other’s work to form a professionally balanced album with succulent rock bombs.

3. Surfer Blood

Randy Newman’s ode to Los Angeles “I Love L.A.” works so well because it embraces the City of Angels as much as it satirizes it. Surfer Blood must view Florida in the same way. With a beach bag full of catchy guitar riffage and alienated lyrics, the West Palm Beach natives clearly don’t fit in with the inherent hip-hop and death metal in the southern region of the Sunshine State, but they also can’t deny the appeal of bright harmonies and nautical imagery, which swirl all over their stellar debut, Astro Coast. In a way, perhaps they’re the most Floridian band of all, celebrating the state’s environment while sonically breaking through the cliches of its music scene.

2. Bon Iver

The locked-in-a-cabin mythology of Justin Vernon’s debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, has since been decried by its creator, who insists his recording environment wasn’t as secluded and destitute as people believe. He did, after all, have the entire series of Northern Exposure with him on DVD, which led to the Bon Iver moniker. With his second full-length, Vernon seemed determined to debunk any misconceptions, expanding his lineup to a proper four-piece and drenching the record in a lovelorn wall of sound teeming with complex traditional orchestration and even maudlin synthesizers on the closing track, which has no right to work but somehow does. The subject matter may be the same, but make no mistake: These guys are a band.

1. Vampire Weekend

With afro-percussion, a singer with a fake Spanish accent, and lyrics about the joys of Ivy League, Vampire Weekend looked destined to fail when they arrived on the scene in 2008. But they haven’t. After a whimsical yet surprisingly deep debut, the quartet of Columbia alumni avoided the sophomore slump by a landslide with their second album, Contra, shrugging off the bad vibes of their detractors by continuing to crank out thoughtful pop with sincerity, whimsy, and a lack of pretension, regardless of their backgrounds. Bonus points for rhyming horchata with balaclava.

Four Best Four-Track Recordings

By: Michael Roffman

4. Daniel Johnston – “Worried Shoes”

You can’t talk about four-track recordings without mentioning Daniel Johnston. He’s the heir to the process. To date, the bipolar songwriter has written 18 full-length albums, in addition to hundreds of songs he’s recorded solely on the four-track recorder. It’s quite a chore to listen to each one, but one particular album comes to mind: 1983′s Yip/Jump Music, namely because it’s drawn so much attention. But with good reason. It contains one of Johnston’s most iconic songs in his exhaustive back catalogue: “Worried Shoes”. It’s rough. Really rough. Some might consider it grating, but they’d be missing the point. What separates Johnston from most artists is his inherent need to do this. And with “Worried Shoes”, the melody and the lurching chord organ feel as if Johnston’s wringing out his soul. You’ve probably cried to it, but most likely when Karen O sang it for the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack. Still…

3. The Beatles – “Strawberry Fields Forever”

Chills. Just sugar-laced chills. Believe it or not, but the Fab Four actually recorded on a four-track, and for one of their most landmark releases: 1967′s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Okay, so technically they taped over a few four-track recorders, but nonetheless, they were four-tracks. Now, some might argue that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” would be a more fitting selection, especially since it contains a 4/4 beat. However, the encapsulating (and always stuffy) “Strawberry Fields Forever” shines more — at least in this particular format. The layers, the amount of scruffy detail, and its lo-fi psychedelia just coat the ceiling, man. When the cello hits during the chorus, it sounds like it was recorded in the bow of a sinking ship. And Paul McCartney’s introduction on the Mellotron! It still feels like it was carved out on some bedroom floor one soggy, foggy morning — November 24, 1966, to be exact.

2. Bruce Springsteen – “Atlantic City”

As Bruce Springsteen wrote on the liner notes of his Greatest Hits release, “Atlantic City” ran The Boss’s bill up to “…..$1050 (the cost of the 4 track Tascam recorder), mixed through an old Gibson guitar unit to a beat box.” To this day, it still feels like that. (And what do you know, it’s also four minutes long, too! Double-hitter.) Though the song tells the tale of a man’s inevitable death through organized crime, the images this track conjure up hardly bring that story to mind. Blame it on its album’s iconic production. In 1982, the great Jersey bard locked himself away in his home, where he carved out the eight tracks that would make up 1982′s Nebraska. Shortly after, he tried re-recording the album with the E Street band in a studio, but even the producers understood its raw, intimate power. Take one listen to “Atlantic City”, and you will, too. If you get a chance, though, pick it up on vinyl. There’s nothing like it. If anything, you’ll be forever haunted by the eerie black-and-white photo of Springsteen standing alone in his hallway.

1. Elliott Smith – “No Name #3″

Elliott Smith’s 1994 debut, Roman Candle, was recorded on a four-track in his basement. With the exception of a couple of tracks, it’s really just Smith alone to himself, and that’s what the end result sounded like. It’s hard to listen to Smith nowadays, not only because his tragic suicide lingers around every chord progression and Lennon-like melody, but because his music just hurts. It’s filled with aching pain, it feels isolated. So many artists attempt to commit their hearts to tape day after day, but Smith figured it out on his first attempt. “No Name #3″ acts as the dark, lonely tunnel. The tender songwriter croons so lightly that at times it’s easier to just listen to the grainy chords. It stings. It taps at the eyes. It sours the tear ducts. And if it weren’t for its lo-fi nature, it just wouldn’t work. Smith just wouldn’t be the same. In some ways, his recordings felt more human than the man himself. Very tragic.

Four Best Songs Containing the Word “Four”

By: Chris Coplan

4. Led Zeppelin – “Four Sticks”

For whatever reason, becoming a fan of Led Zeppelin is some kind of unspoken rite of passage into manhood for boys the world over. Perhaps some of us missed out on that train to chest hair and adult-sized worries. Even those people, brave souls with equally valid music tastes that they are, can still enjoy a track like “Four Sticks”. It’s the very sound even the most proud non-fan conjures up when thinking of the Zep (that’s a nickname, right?): a grand, rollicking fury that is as sonically diverse as it is prog-ish and nerdy. Thank you, rock gods, for this offering, though we never have worshipped you.

3. CAKE – “Friend Is a Four Letter Word”

CAKE have made a career out of being weird. But they drop all the goofy, borderline comical pretenses entirely on “Friend Is a Four Letter Word”. Mysterious and aloof, the track is missing on some crucial details (like, all of them) of the friendship being portrayed. Even still, it’s as powerful and stirring as any other demonstration of betrayal ever outlined in pop music format. They’ve got a great talent for illustrating painful emotional concepts, but this one takes the band’s name for most effective and haunting. Plus, who didn’t try to figure which specific four-letter word the band was referring to? My money is on, and will always be on, “shit.”

2. Feist – “1234″

Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist knows the power of simplicity. Shortening her stage name to simply Feist, she made a hugely popular song simply by counting. And she didn’t even need to go into double digits! “1234″ is elegant in its minimalism, simple enough to be on Sesame Street. Call it Feist’s voice, the strummy nature of the whole effort, the grandiose chorus, or some magic combination of each, but the track is mesmerizing despite how very little was heaped together to make it. That may speak to some greater truth about songs with numbers in them: They’re basic because, at least sometimes, that core essence and bare-bones approach is all you need in a truly great song.

1. The Beatles – “When I’m Sixty-Four”

Love is a truly beautiful and wonderful thing. It’s also scary, confusing, and, at times, violent. We all want to know if we have it or not and whether or not it’ll be here to stay with us for good. In aiding folks in that eternal struggle, the Beatles laid out the perfect thought experiment for lovers everywhere to pose to one another: Will you still be with me when I’m an old fart, needing 24-hour care and support? It’s the ultimate litmus test of romance and devotion, arguably expressed in the most bubbly, fun-loving pop song the Fab Four ever crafted. As far as Beatles songs go, it’s one of the more popular of all the popular ones (and there are a lot of ‘em), but it deserves its distinction not only for its catchy-ness but for how truly succinct it is. Vera, Chuck, and Dave would be proud for sure.

Four Best LPs With Four Tracks

By: Paul de Revere

4. Lou Reed – Metal Machine Music

“Anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am,” Lou Reed famously snarked about this 1975 release. Which means it’s a prank and a cathartic “fuck you” to his label at the time RCA… right? If so, it’s the most accidentally significant prank in experimental music history. The careers of gritty New York experimental mavens Suicide and Glenn Branca, Steve Albini’s Big Black, and every young-and-restless noise band ever owes pretty much everything to Metal Machine Music. Personally, I side with dean of American rock critics Robert Christgau on this one. “For white noise,” Christgau said. “I’ll still take ‘Sister Ray’.”

3. Can – Future Days

Krautrock milestone makers Can don’t get enough credit for being, essentially, a funk band. Sure, Future Days and Can’s four peak-era releases with vocalist Damo Suzuki are better known as antecedents to Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Flaming Lips, and any number of indie, electronica, post-rock, shoegaze, and post-punk bands preceding them. But “Moonshake” stands up to all of the well-produced ‘70s funk from American bands. It’s just a lot more subtle. But a jittery, improvisational German “funk” band with a Japanese vocalist whispering and muttering barely comprehensible lyrics doesn’t really sell in the States. But Future Days is funk — weird, lo-fi funk. It was Suzuki’s fourth and final record with the band, which came to a more minimalist sound than ever before. After leaving the band soon after the recording of Future Days, Suzuki took a wife, a German Jehovah’s Witness, and married into her faith. Though, I’m not sure that’s any weirder than the whispered, barely comprehensible lyrics “You hide behind a borrowed chase/For the sake of future days” off the album’s title track. Play weird, live weird, I guess.

2. Tangerine Dream – Phaedra

On 1974’s Phaedra, Tangerine Dream pioneered virtually every cool electronica sound effect with Moogs and Mellotrons we take for granted today, perhaps most notably of all: some of electronica’s first arpeggiation melodies over washes of synth, which almost every electronica act since 1980 has done. And Tangerine did this in the early ‘70s! But the band is German (Berliners, no less), so, you know, it’s not that unusual. The band started in 1970, but Phaedra, Tangerine’s fifth album, defined its sound, defying the standard Krautrock motorik of its day, leaving ambient space in its Terry Reilly-esque staid melodies. Truly, when this came out, everyone from Brian Eno (who released two classics, Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), in the same year Phaedra was released) to Robert Fripp to Giorgio Moroder perked their ears up and listened carefully.

1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

I’m 26 years old, and I’ve written about Lift Yr Skinny Fists.. at least a dozen different ways and listened to it dozens more. It’s been a soundtrack to key points in my life over the last decade. It’s somehow both personal to me and bigger than myself and my own personal interpretation. I’ve proselytized to friends (okay, and strangers) about how amazing it is if you just “give it a chance, man.” I’ve used the words “bruising,” “cathartic,” “maudlin,” “washes of sound”, and so on to describe its dystopic, aural beauty. But it must be listened to, nay experienced (ideally with eyes closed, good headphones, a comfortable resting place, and an uninterrupted 1:27:22), to be understood. The martial first movement of the first disc’s first track, “Storm”, is a triumphant, hopeful, and gorgeous open salvo to a black-and-white feature film never made: somewhere in the creative ether between Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (and its rickety-clack score by Ennio Morricone) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows. In a word: bleak. Godspeed You! Black Emperor may never cut another record again, but Lift Yr Skinny Fists will influence decades of not just post-rock but all epic music to come. Count on it.

Four Fourth Tracks From Each of the Top Four Selling Albums of All Time (In Order of Sales, from Lowest to Highest)

By: Joe Marvilli

4. Whitney Houston – “Run To You” from The Bodyguard (44 million)

Surprised yet? That’s right, Whitney Houston’s soundtrack for 1992’s The Bodyguard is the fourth best-selling album of all time. A good portion of those sales were carried on the mega-success of “I Will Always Love You”. But there’s more to this soundtrack than one smash hit. The fourth song of this album, “Run To You”, fits Houston’s style wonderfully. Originally written as a breakup song, it was transformed by the movie’s production into a love ballad instead. True, those swelling strings may seem somewhat cheesy by today’s standards, but Houston’s passionate performance is a saving grace.

3. Pink Floyd – “Time” from The Dark Side of the Moon (45 million)

While many songs can be considered Pink Floyd’s magnum opus, “Time” has a lot going in its favor. It’s the centerpiece of The Dark Side of the Moon, it’s the only song on the album credited to all four band members, and it features vocals from David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Roger Waters. That’s before we even dive into the music. It starts with an introductory passage of chiming clocks, recorded by engineer Alan Parsons, and a two-minute drum solo by Nick Mason. Gilmour’s defiant vocals follow, channeling Waters’ refusal to succumb to time or be led by destiny. Oh, and then there’s the astoundingly powerful guitar solo that seems made to rip through time itself. While the band would run into plenty of issues down the line, this effort is the work of Pink Floyd as a whole.

2. AC/DC – “Given the Dog a Bone” from Back in Black (49 million)

Back in Black is a musical miracle when you think about it. How many bands have been forced to replace their frontman and keep their previous level of success? AC/DC not only met their past heights but greatly surpassed them with this album. There are so many classic hard rock hits here that the other tracks get overlooked. Some may think of “Given the Dog a Bone” as one of those songs after “Shoot to Thrill” and before “Back in Black”. But it’s pretty damn enjoyable when you stop and listen to it. Angus Young’s dirty guitar riff is worthy of head-banging and Brian Johnson’s vocals alternate between an elated shout and a nasty growl. How can you go wrong with a song like that?

1. Michael Jackson – “Thriller” from Thriller (110 million)

While some albums on this list may come as a surprise, Thriller definitely isn’t one of them. The sixth studio album from Michael Jackson is one of the most legendary releases in modern history. Everyone knows about it and everyone has heard at least one song from it. The record has permeated our culture in a way that few other pieces of art ever do. So what better song to look at than the title track? “Thriller” is the song that sets off the string of hits on Jackson’s masterpiece, as it’s followed by “Beat It” and “Billie Jean”. There’s not a stronger trilogy in pop music. The track itself combines a slippery bass with explosive horns and Jackson’s playful, almost dangerous vocals. Then there’s the 14-minute short film that passes as the song’s music video, proving that these promotional tools could be an art form as well. The peak of success? Yeah, it deserves this title.

Four Best Studio Guitar Solos Over Four Minutes Long

By: David Buchanan

4. The Smashing Pumpkins – “Starla”

Rarely do the Smashing Pumpkins get much credit in the lengthy solo department, especially given the lack of popularity such a technique really had during the early ’90s alternative era. This squelching Pisces Iscariot B-side leads on the first six minutes in standard melancholy before clawing steel nails on chalkboard come the last five–a certifiable audio nutshell of the band’s best phase, according to some.

3. Stevie Ray Vaughan – “Little Wing” (Jimi Hendrix cover)

When Jimi Hendrix covers a song, he expertly makes it his own to soaring applause; when a Hendrix song is covered by a late Texas bluesman, the lyrics disappear and we receive something akin to stringed instrument serenity. Heavenly harps never sounded this pleasant.

2. Santana – “Samba Pa Ti”

Carlos Santana, believe it or not, was once a highly respected and revered Latin-American guitarist. Before the shameful plugging and collaboration-weighted Supernatural, Santana made a mark via the soulful dance of “Samba Pa Ti”, and people could practically find God behind these chords (or a little black magic).

1. Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Free Bird”

An in-joke at other artists’ expense is to mockingly shout out a request for “Free Bird” at any given concert performance. Despite having lost its humorous luster in recent years, this almost irritatingly popular cut from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut LP gets name-dropped on many lists for many reasons – soloing is one.

Four Best Albums Named Primarily “Four”

By: Jeremy D. Larson

4. Blues Traveler - four

If you only know the Blues Traveler singles, you may think the only thing that separated Blues Traveler from those other 90’s bands who all may or may not have written the theme song for Friends, is John Popper and his harmonica. Lead single “Run Around” does actually sound like “Roll To Me” does actually sound like “Two Princes” does actually sound like a plasticine fart. But four [stylized as such] is more than the honkey pop that Spin Doctor Hazel Del Amitri trafficked in. Part blues stomp, part post-hippie jam band, and part radio-pop, Blues Traveler turn in a solid fourth (yup) album of their career with a fun album to drink beer in a barn to. “Hook” remains a staple of advance karaoke artists to this day.

3. Foreigner – 4

Speaking of karaoke, Foreigner’s 4 locks in at least three singles for the memories, but its Mick Jones (not of The Clash fame) whose compositional chops are on display. The frayed, acid-washed rock and roll on 4 that blasted out of Dodge Chargers everywhere in 1981 is a timepiece for one of the better AOR albums, and that’s not just indulgent riffs couched inside of greeting-card choruses. OK, there’s some of that here, but those moments are especially justified on the way-better-than-any-Bon-Jovi-rock-and-roll-dream-song “Juke Box Hero” and a precursor to new wave rock with the groovy “Urgent” which features Junior Walker sax and none other than Thomas Dolby on synths!

2. Scott Walker – Scott 4

Scott Walker still sits proudly high atop the Brit-pop family tree. Walker’s hyper-literate baroque and chamber pop still plumes through the speakers like fine London tobacco. The Smiths, Pulp, Belle & Sebastian, The Divine Comedy, and so many others are all cut from this velvet. His fourth album from 1969, Scott 4 , is Walker at his most dark, personal, and forthcoming — and still includes a song about Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” backed by spaghetti western strings. After all these years, his burgundy baritone on “Duchess” as he sings at the very end “I’m lying, she’s crying” is a good litmus test to see if your heart works properly. (Neko Case does a fantastic cover it as well.)

1. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

In spades. I’m not entirely sure Zeppelin IV is even an album anymore — it’s an epoch unto itself. It’s a symbol of something personal for me and historical for music. Its legendary status as the best rock album of all time has grown so absurdly out of proportion that the album itself has become immune to any sort of glib take-down essays or contrarian think-pieces. It’s a fortress of rock & roll that after years of sieges still stands as powerful as the day it was built. Plus it’s even got “Four Sticks” on it just to really nail it home.

Four Historic Fourth Albums

By: Mike Madden

4. Bob Dylan – Another Side of Bob Dylan

“There aren’t any finger-pointing songs here,” Bob Dylan once said of Another Side. Yup: There’s a surreal, romantic quality to nearly every track here, contrasting the accusative nature of some of Dylan’s first three albums. A lot of people complained about that, but they shouldn’t have – this is one of Dylan’s best and most underappreciated efforts. Though certainly not by artists. Following its release, Johnny Cash, The Turtles, and The Byrds all took stabs at the album’s songs, proving that there really is no side to Dylan that anyone’s opposed to – which only makes him that much more sacred.

3. Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town

Follow ups can be difficult. Carving out something after an album like  Born to Run is an exercise of the mind, body, and soul – a thousand times over. Due to some legal mumbo jumbo between The Boss and his sometime manager and producer Mike Appel, Darkness on the Edge of Town arrived a long three years after its ambitious, head-turning predecessor. In that time, the band took on a different approach to writing and recording. Many of the songs were captured with the full band together, and at times immediately after Springsteen had finished writing them. Blame it on the surrounding support, but the New Jersey legend didn’t just follow up Born to Run, he delivered an LP that gave its predecessor’s title a new meaning. To this day, fans continue debating on which album is better. Springsteen certainly made it difficult for them, what with “Badlands”, “Racing in the Street”, and “Candy’s Room” to chew on. And to think, that’s hardly scratching the album’s surface, too.

2. Outkast – Stankonia

Sonically falling somewhere between raw Dixie rap and the playfulness of, say, The Pharcyde, Stankonia was Outkast’s grandest breakthrough. It also remains their most focused and ambitious effort to date. Singles “Ms. Jackson”, “B.O.B.”, and “So Fresh, So Clean” were three of the most ubiquitous radio hits of the early aughts. In addition to the cosmic, genre-bending production, this 73-minute album found Big Boi and André 3000 rhyming with unheard of charisma, versatility, and technical deftness if not from the genre, then definitely in their career. It’s arguable that this sort of breakthrough creativity cracked them – given that they’ve never truly delivered a proper, concrete follow up that didn’t feel like a solo-album-titled-something-else – yet nevertheless their influence here is paramount. History schmistory, Stankonia is the sound of rap realizing its creative potential. Break!

1. The Replacements – Tim

Tim was The Mats’ major-label debut, and also their most frenetic, at least structurally-speaking. It would be the last album fans would hear from the original line up, as lead guitarist Bob Stinson would be kicked out the following year. And while that happened following the album’s release, those sort of “bad vibes”, if you will, carried onto the album. But it didn’t stunt it. In fact, it made for a better LP, especially one to follow up the group’s diamond LP, 1984′s Let It Be. There are two angst-ridden anthems (“Left of the Dial”, “Bastards of Young”), two drunken shakedowns (“I’ll Buy”, “Dose of Thunder”), two cynical portraits of one’s heart on a sleeve (“Hold My Life”, “Kiss Me on the Bus”), two lonely melodies (“Swingin’ Party”, “Little Mascara”), one mandatory road-rock crooner (“Lay It Down Clown”), one “You bastard!” inclusion (“Waitress in the Sky”), and one final goodbye (“Here Comes a Regular”). Similar to how early Hold Steady records sound to our generation today, Tim acts a framed portait of the band at play. It just probably could have benefited from some less-than-tidier production, and yeah, this album’s version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” is still the best.

Four Strings: Four Unbelievable Bass Solos

By: Winston Robbins

4. Rush – “YYZ”

When you write a song without any lyrics and still get stadiums full of people to sing along with you, that’s usually a pretty good indicator that you’ve written quite a piece of music. Geddy Lee’s bass extravaganza on “YYZ” is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The man shreds with such speed it’s nearly impossible for your ears to keep up. Unless you know Morse code, that is.

3. Led Zeppelin – “The Lemon Song”

Here’s how good John Paul Jones is at plucking the bass: We literally could have chosen any one of three dozen songs and made a well-founded argument as to why it’s his best. But we went with “The Lemon Song”, because, well, have you heard it? It’s a song completely surrounded by Jones’ mind-numbing bass. Heaps of adoration are given to Bonham, Plant, and Page, deservedly so, but Jones was the unsung hero of Led Zeppelin. See: the last minute of this song where he goes out of his mind shredding up and down that fretboard.

2. Metallica – “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)”

Cliff Burton was an active member of Metallica for only four years due to his tragic and untimely death, but his legacy is long from forgotten because of early pieces such as this. Burton was as talented a bassist as rock and roll has ever seen, and “(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth”, was written for the express purpose of showcasing that fact.

1. The Beatles – “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”

Paul McCartney is all too often overlooked when it comes to fundamentally great bassists. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is a reminder of why that shouldn’t ever happen. In essence, the song is just eight minutes of Macca doing whatever the hell he wants on his bass while the song goes on behind him, and never does it once fall anything short of superb.

Four Best Performances at the Big Four Festivals

By: Harley Brown

Coachella

Daft Punk (2006) – It’s Daft Punk, come on. This appearance marked their first performance on American soil in almost 10 years, and the French duo proved that they’re more than Human After All (I couldn’t help myself, I’m still dehydrated from dancing to “Around the World”). But seriously, no encore?

Rage Against the Machine (2007) – The year before Bush was ousted in a legendary election, Rage Against the Machine reunited at Coachella for the first time since the festival’s beginning in 1999. Frontman Zach de la Rocha proclaimed that the current political environment needed them, and boy, were they right.

Roger Waters (2008) – Pink Floyd’s founding member played Dark Side Of the Moon in its entirety. ‘Nuff said. (Well, it should probably also be said that he performed other Floyd hits like “Mother”, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, and “Wish You Were Here” with the aid of a giant, Democratic inflatable pig and a dazzling pyrotechnic display.)

Paul McCartney (2009) – Participants in 2009’s Coachella were encouraged to “take comfort in knowing… there’s a Beatle here.” And when you can’t have the whole band, Paul McCartney proved himself a more than acceptable, sporting substitute, playing a handful of Beatles songs and more than a few encores.

Bonnaroo

Photo by Max Blau

Neil Young (2003) – Almost 70 years old, Neil Young proved he’s still more than willing and able to rock the free worlds of 80,000 people in the middle of a hot-as-expletive Tennessee summer under a full moon, playing half-hour versions of hits like “Cinnamon Girl” and “Cortez the Killer” for three hours.

Radiohead (2006) –  Radiohead probably could have stopped after the opening drum rolls of “There There (The Boney King Of Nowhere)” and still have put on one of the best, if not the best, shows I’ve ever seen. You just had to be there (there).

My Morning Jacket (2008) – “It feels awesome to be bathed in beautiful golden rain.” Well-said, Jim James. Bonnaroo stalwarts My Morning Jacket played for four hours in intermittent rain in the wee hours of the morning, making up for the wet, late set with an Erykah Badu cover and a guest appearance by Zach Galifianakis.

Phish (2009) – This one’s a toss-up between their official set with Bruce Springsteen and their late-night jam session. Never-ending experiential music arguments aside, Phish’s reunion, after years of solo appearances at Bonnaroo by Trey Anastasio and other members, warranted both outstanding sets.

Lollapalooza

Photo by Ashley Garmon

Pearl Jam (1992) – It’s almost cliché how Pearl Jam is the quintessential band to see live: helping avoid Lolla’s sophomore slump, Pearl Jam’s band members smashed guitars Pete-Townsend style, jumped off monitors, and stage dived. The audience got in on the action, too, jumping onstage and throwing mud.

Billy Idol (2005) – What better way to ring in Lolla’s first year in Grant Park but with Billy Idol? Even though it rained again (that’s the thing about summer thunderstorms) during Idol’s set, “Rebel Yell” managed to get everyone riled up. It’s Billy fucking Idol, baby!

Arcade Fire (2010) – Riding high after The Suburbs’ release earlier in the week, Arcade Fire was “Ready To Start” (again, it was just too easy). Their spectacular show finished with thousands of concertgoers—hell, maybe even some pedestrians – singing “Wake Up” at the top of their lungs in the streets of Chicago.

Foo Fighters (2011) – A universal CoS fave, Foo Fighters played for three hours on Saturday night at the Metro in addition to their official set the next day. Like Phish at Bonnaroo, it’s hard to pick just one as the better performance. Dave “I don’t give a fuck if it’s raining tonight!” Grohl gives it his all each and every time.

Austin City Limits

Ween (2002) - Gene and Dean Ween cemented their status as Austin City Limits perennials at the festival’s inauguration in 2002, with their always dependably weird, spectacular performance helping to keep jam bands represented at future ACL’s.

R.E.M. (2003) – With Michael Stipe’s famous words, “We’re R.E.M., and this is what we do,” the threesome proceeded to rip through two hours of hits and obscurities dedicated to Ben Harper and Johnny and June Carter Cash. With an inexplicable blue stripe painted across Stipe’s face.

Elvis Costello (2009) – Even though he had just released Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane, Elvis Costello pleasantly surprised listeners with more than a few songs from his debut My Aim Is True. And on a few songs from his newest album, Costello sang duets with country maven Patty Griffin, bowling over an audience already impressed with his warm persona and talented musicianship.

Muse (2010) – I would say Muse were brown-nosing when they declared Texas their favorite state, but after seamlessly moving from the national anthem to “Hysteria” to The Doors’ “House of the Rising Sun” as an opener, they pretty much schooled those other American bands in the ways of British arena rock.

In which R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe serenades the crew of the final space shuttle mission ever with a performance of “Man on the Moon”. Check out the video on nasa.gov.

Or John Cougar. Or John Mellencamp. The point is, in 1986, for their next album, the band chose to record at Mellencamp’s recording studio in Indiana, a far cry from London, and much closer to their home base in Athens (Georgia, not Greece). In addition to the location, they worked for the first and only time with Mellencamp’s producer, Don Gehman, and created a politically-charged, much more upbeat record called Lifes Rich Pageant. The album is the second masterpiece from the band, and their last great album for the I.R.S. label (sorry Document fans). Though a few great albums would follow, this may be the band’s finest work (again, apologies Document fans).

Cut to this week: Thanks to modern technology, we have a welcome, less-balanced sound emanating from our speakers while listening to Lifes. Guitarist Peter Buck’s Rickenbacker has a bit more kick, and oftentimes bassist Mike Mills’s harmonies enter through the headphone marked “L” while lead singer Michael Stipe’s vocals pop through “R”. Bill Berry’s percussion is given an extra boost, as well. Some vocals get appropriately buried in the mix (“Underneath the Bunker”), while others are justifiably pushed to the forefront (“These Days”). Like the previous three deluxe edition R.E.M. records, there is a bonus disc, with material culled from demo sessions recorded by the band in Athens before heading west. Like the rest of the album, they make for essential listening.

The original album, though, sounds superb. Opener “Begin the Begin” still stirs up the emotion any great album or concert opener should, inviting the audience in to play. The guitar chords hang in the air during the verses, while Stipe’s vocals sound even more venomous than they did before. “These Days” now features a clearer harmony from Mills at the song’s conclusion, before fading into the background. The companion piece to “These Days” comes in the form of “I Believe”, perhaps the most inspiring music from the R.E.M. catalogue. The soaring chorus, and Buck’s guitar-picking elevate the track to a different level.

From a technical standpoint, “What If We Give It Away?” has a clearer guitar line before each Stipe lyric. The numerous instruments in the semi-instrumental “Underneath the Bunker” get a little more attention, from the Spanish guitar to the percussion. Each beat in “Flowers of Guatemala” lands at a different area in the mix, creating a fuller sound for an already gorgeous, acoustic-driven track. Closer “Superman”, a Clique cover song, sounds janglier than ever before. The Krypton-influenced track is the first on any R.E.M. record to feature Mills on lead vocals, and his contribution remains the perfect way to close out Lifes Rich Pageant.

As for the demos, they provide a fascinating insight into a band laying its thoughts down on tape. The results bear strong resemblances to the album, though the lyrics are sometimes different, placeholders, in a way. “Hyena”, which the band had been performing live during the Fables tour, bears the strongest resemblance to the eventual final product. But a song like “Fall on Me” features a different lyrical harmony from Mills, while his vocals are absent together in early versions of “Begin the Begin” and “Just a Touch”. The demo of “Cuyahoga” is just about the same for the first half, before Stipe’s vocals drop out completely, as though he hadn’t written lyrics for the rest of the song (he would go on to basically repeat each verse on the record). “Salsa (Underneath the Bunker)” and “Flowers of Guatemala” didn’t get lyrics until the band started recording in Indiana, heard here as instrumentals.

So, having demo versions of the studio album (sans their cover of “Superman”) is a great get, but we also get eight additional demos of songs from these sessions that weren’t fully realized until later on in the band’s career, if at all. “March Song” is a guitar-heavy instrumental that would morph into “King of Birds” for Document. The band plays around in the studio with the short, bass-led “Out of Tune”, and country-fied “Jazz (Rotary Ten)”, the latter of which received release on the unreleased-songs compilation, Dead Letter Office. “Two Steps Onward” is quite the slow burn before the chiming chorus, sounding more like an outtake from Reckoning than anything. Early versions of “All the Right Friends” and “Bad Day” are here in their infancy, as well.

Even without the bonus disc full of rare goodies, this remastered version of Lifes Rich Pageant is required listening. It manages to sound of its era, yet somehow seems timeless. Relocating back to the states did wonders for the band, and propelled them towards the dizzying heights of success that was just around the corner. Ain’t that America.

Update: The contest is now closed.

In past CoS Giveaways, we were more than willing to fork over fabulous prizes for a simple tweet or to those describing their Moogy-ness. Well, those days are over, and if someone wants the goods, they’re going to have work for it from here on out (or until the next giveaway).

Our latest offering includes three copies of the recently released reissue of R.E.M.‘s seminal Lifes Rich Pageant, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. To get your hands on the effort, including its 19 unreleased demos, for no semolians of course, decipher the following scrambled lyric:

“ysnio ew era awht satc”

The first three folks to post the correct lyric and song title in the comment section below will win. So, grab a pen and some paper, bust out the decoder rings and Ouija boards, and good luck!

According to Slicing Up Eyeballs, Capital/I.R.S. will release the 25th anniversary edition on July 12th. The two-disc set will feature a newly remastered version of the 1986 album and a bonus CD that includes 19 unreleased demos.

The bonus disc is titled The Athens Demos and features material recorded in March 1986 at producer John Keane’s studio in Athens, GA. Most of the cuts are early versions of tracks that appeared on Lifes Rich Pageant or subsequent releases, but the disc does include a demo of an unreleased song called “Want”.

The reissue will be available as a 2-CD set and on 180-gram audiophile vinyl. Find the tracklist below:

Lifes Rich Pageant Tracklist:
Disc 1: Original Album
01. Begin The Begin
02. These Days
03. Fall on Me
04. Cuyahoga
05. Hyena
06. Underneath The Bunker
07. The Flowers of Guatemala
08. I Believe
09. What If We Give It Away?
10. Just a Touch
11. Swan Swan H
12. Superman

Disc 2: The Athens Demos (All Previously Unreleased)
(Recorded March 1986 at John Keane’s Studio, Athens GA)
01. Fall On Me
02. Hyena
03. March Song (King Of Birds)
04. These Days
05. Bad Day
06. Salsa (Underneath The Bunker)
07. Swan Swan H
08. Flowers Of Guatemala
09. Begin The Begin
10. Cuyahoga
11. I Believe
12. Out Of Tune
13. Rotary Ten
14. Two Steps Onward
15. Just A Touch
16. Mystery To Me
17. Wait
18. All The Right Friends
19. Get On Their Way (What If We Give It Away)

As far as star-studded tributes go, the March 26th concert in honor of Big Star arguably shines as the biggest and the brightest. Featuring the likes of Mike Mills and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., The dB’s Chris Stamey, members of Yo La Tengo and Teenage Fanclub, Matthew Sweet, Matt McMichaels, and surviving Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, the event at NYC’s Baruch College celebrated the music of the band’s “lost” album, Third. If doubters or curious fans needed proof said concert was going to be memorable, then check out the clip above of Stipe leading the bevy of talent on The Box Tops’ “The Letter”, which was one of Chilton’s biggest hits. After that, make sure to head over to SlicingUpEyeballs.com to check out other videos from that night, including Stipe’s rendition of “Kangaroo” and McMichaels doing The Replacements’ “Alex Chilton”.

There’s been quite a few tributes to the legendary Big Star in the past year, especially given the passing of two of the band’s members. Back in December, a bevy of artists joined together to play Big Star’s Third (their critically successful, oft-bootlegged “lost” album that’s getting the RSD treatment), for the first time recreating the original recording live with the complete wind and string orchestrations. Those two concerts sparked something in the performers, as a repeat is scheduled in just two days.

The March 26th tribute show is being held at Mason Hall at Baruch Performing Arts Center in NYC, and the full set-list with specified performers has just been released (via BrooklynVegan). R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe joins a group of previously announced indie heavyweights including Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Stipe’s band-mate Mike Mills, Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub, and drummer Jody Stephens, the only surviving current and original Big Star member. Chapel Hill, NC natives Lost in the Trees will provide the orchestral pieces needed to fully realize Third.

Some names that had been previously announced for the show are noticeably absent. M. Ward (Bright Eyes, She & Him) and Chris Stamey and Will Rigby of The dB’s are on multiple posters for the event, but not this schedule. There are some TBD/“Various” spots, so don’t rule out their presences yet.

You can find the complete details/setlist for the performance below. Tickets are still available through TicketWeb.

BIG STAR THIRD TRIBUTE SHOW SONGS/PERFORMERS:
01. “Kizza Me” – Matt McMichaels (from Mayflies USA)
02. “O Dana” – Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo)
03. “For You” – Jody Stephens (Big Star)
04. “Nighttime” – Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub)
05. “Jesus Christ” – Mike Mills (R.E.M.)
06. “Take Care” – Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo)
07. “Big Black Car” – Matthew Sweet
08. “Stroke It, Noel” – Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub)
09. “Blue Moon” – Jody Stephens (Big Star)
10. “Femme Fatale” – TBD
11. “Downs” – Various
12. “Dream Lover” – Tift Merrit
13. “Holocaust” – Django Haskins (The Old Ceremony)
14. “You Can’t Have Me” – Tift Merrit
15. “Kanga Roo” – Michael Stipe (R.E.M.)
16. “Thank You, Friends” – Various

Plus a rich encores list featuring the above plus Brett Harris and Fan Modine.

Enjoy the following recap, and get ready for what’s sure to be another packed week.

– Arctic Monkeys fans rejoice. In addition to announcing tour dates, the group revealed plans for their fourth LP.

– It’s officially official: Beastie Boys’ reworked and retitled eighth studio album, Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2, will finally receive release on May 3rd.

– The Chemical Brothers have gone the route of Daft Punk and scored a film. Preview their musical contributions to Hanna right now.

– As for Daft Punk, you can sample Legacy R3CONFIGUR3D before it hits stores on April 15th right now.

– Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold dropped three new solo tracks.

– You think winning an Oscar would be enough to satisfy Trent Reznor. Nope. Now it seems like he’s busier than ever.

– Former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr passed away at the age of 44.

– Langerado Music Festival is back.

– The National have an awesome new video out.

– Red Riding Hood, like most would-be blockbusters these days, has a pretty trendy soundtrack, which includes a contribution from Fever Ray. 

–The U2 Spider Man musical saga continued.

– Jack White‘s record store on wheels (yes, you heard correctly, on wheels) is set to debut at South by Southwest.

– What else? Even more Record Store Day releases to look forward to.

– Thom Yorke delivered a surprise DJ set in LA.

– Foo Fighters: Back and Forth, Foo Fighters‘ documentary, will receive its national premiere early next month, just days before Wasting Light is scheduled for release. Can’t wait for either one? Here’s the video for the single “Rope.”

– Need another excuse to get excited for TV on the Radio‘s new record? Well, here you go.

– “Ice Cream”, Battles‘ first post-lineup change single, hit the airwaves.

– The original Beach Boys‘ Smile LP is officially scheduled to be released later this year.

– And speaking of pleasant surprises, how does new material from Kate Bush sound?

– Or what about the long-awaited second LP from Justice?

– American Idiot, Green Day‘s over-the-top Broadway musical, will close next month.

– The ever-elusive Lauryn Hill extended her “Intimate Playdates” tour.

– Charlie Sheen found something to laugh about. OK, you’re probably wondering what he’s doing on this site, but just click on the link. You won’t regret it. Trust me.

– We announced no ordinary CoS Giveaway, or, as Michael Roffman put it, ” the Revenge of the Sith of giveaways.”

– Justin Gerber reviewed Collapse Into Now, the latest offering from alt-rock kingpins R.E.M.

– Chris Coplan offered his thoughts on Lupe Fiasco‘s notoriously delayed Lasers.

– Whether or not you can make it down to Austin next week for South By Southwest, check out our guide to this year’s festivities.

– Daniel Koran caught up with Meric Long of The Dodos.

– Winston Robbins spoke with Cut Copy mastermind Dan Whitford in the latest installment of our quickie interview series, The Call Up.

Documentaries:

Takeaway Show #100 – Soema Montenegro Pt. II

- Take a look at Part II of Vincent Moon’s Takeaway Show, as he goes further into the world of Argentinian musician, Soema Montenegro. In the last part, Montenegro plays a number of her songs at her home, and oddly enough, she barely comments on her work. This time, there is virtually NO dialogue, as we watch her wander the streets, guitar in hands, and voice in the air. Her second album and first U.S. release, Passionaria, comes out on May 31^st.

Animation:

LoopLoop

- There’s a certain feeling one gets when trying to recount a lost detail of a certain event. You may have the majority of elements right in your head, but sometimes, one minor detail can escape you. Welcome to the animated piece, Loop Loop, which focuses on that concept. With a series of trippy animation, sound warps, and time shifts, the video follows a group of locals, leaving us to search for all the pieces of the puzzle.

Music Videos:

- In the new video from British Sea Power, “Who’s in Control”, the English sextet combines the arts of rioting and streaking into one politically charged video via salvaged, actual footage. Ah, guerilla filmmaking at its finest. The track comes from the band’s latest LP, Valhalla Dancehall.

- People always say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” and sometimes this is the truth. However, you can’t ignore how light your wallet eventually gets. Tristen’s “Baby Drugs” video depicts the opposite, though, showing how sometimes fortune can prevail.

- Be sure to check out the video from the Non-Commissioned Officers entitled, “No Means No”, which comes from the original score to the 2008 film, Make-Out With Violence. A success in the film festival circuit, the film is now available on DVD. FYI: The band itself was actually formed just to write the soundtrack to the movie, but eventually the group decided to play shows to help raise money for the film during post-production. Not necessarily a bad gig! The band’s debut arrives next week on March 14^th and it’s titled, Money Looking for Thieves.

- In Ponytail’s new video for “Easy Peasy”, director Ray Concepcion takes the concept of the live-concert music video to a whole new level. Shot at the Siren Festival on Coney Island, the show is displayed before us through the eyes of a sunglasses-wearing fan. The crowd is having fun, the sun is out, and Coney Island is in full effect.

Yesterday….

Music Videos:

- Be sure to take a look at the video for Yuck’s song “Get Away”. Recently, Alex Young went on to say, “Solo projects are fun and all, but Daniel Blumberg has a good thing going with Yuck. Especially if we put much stock in their new music video for “Get Away”, which essentially sees the band drink what appears to be either corn syrup, whiskey, or urine and then pick up a nude female hitchhiker. Ah, the the added perks of being in a profession with >$50,000 a year salary..” ‘Nuff said.

- A Cluster 1 Premier for you all! The world famous R.E.M. performs its new track, “That Someone is You”, live in the studio! As some of you may know, the band released its 15th effort, Collapse into Now, this past week.  Consequence of Sound’s Ben Kaye commented, “Though the shortest track on the record by a full minute (and one second!), R.E.M. still pump in as much energy and joy into the simple, fun pop song as anything else. Stipe and unofficial member Scott McCaughey can’t help but smile; and with lines like “pull me up and out of cartoon quicksand,” how could they? No, it’s not one of the 12, but it was recorded in Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studio (where Brian Eno and David Bowie laid down Heroes), and that’s pretty extraordinary.”

Don’t Forget….

– Want a constant stream of musical goodness? Check out our Channel, featuring over 30 music videos, several short films, and other nifty clips, all crammed together in one non-stop barrage of visual and aural stimulation.

- Social networking is a way of life, so follow us at @cluster1tv and on Facebook

Though the shortest track on the record by a full minute (and one second!), R.E.M. still pump in as much energy and joy into the simple, fun pop song as anything else. Stipe and unofficial member Scott McCaughey can’t help but smile; and with lines like “pull me up and out of cartoon quicksand,” how could they? No, it’s not one of the 12, but it was recorded in Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studio (where Brian Eno and David Bowie laid down Heroes), and that’s pretty extraordinary.

This marks the fourth live video to appear online after “Mine Smell Like Honey”, “Oh My Heart” (which also recently had a music video land), and thanks to Rolling Stone, “Discoverer”. You can also check a ‘making of’ video featuring the boys in the same studio and clips from other album tracks over at Italian website Rockol. In sum, four live clips and four music videos have hit thus far. Wonder what’s going to drop next? We’ll let you know when it does. For now, though, be sure to head to Cluster 1 to view the clip in full.

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