80s alternative music, college rock, indie // slicing up eyeballs

Video: Morrissey’s ‘Ganglord,’ off ‘Swords’

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:15:37 +0000

[tweetmeme]Despite proclaiming Swords a “meek disaster” last December, Morrissey has gone ahead and made a music video to promote one of the (best) tracks off his late-2009 b-sides album: “Ganglord,” the flip side to 2006’s “The Youngest Was the Most Loved.” Shown above, the arty, black-and-white clip — brought to our attention by Twenty Four Bit — was directed by Dennis Roberts and features Moz and his bandmates leisurely hanging out in a Los Angeles graveyard.

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Killing Joke’s ‘XIII: Feast of Fools’ album, 30th anniversary tour dates delayed until fall

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:07:27 +0000

[tweetmeme]Reconstituted postpunk act Killing Joke this week announced it will push back the release of its forthcoming reunion album XIII: Feast of Fools from April until early September, and also will delay its lengthy 30th anniversary tour of Europe and North America until later this year.

Due out Sept. 6, the new album will be the band’s first with its original lineup — singer Jaz Coleman, guitarist Kevin “Geordie” Walker, bassist Martin “Youth” Glover and drummer Paul Ferguson — since 1982’s Revelations. It had been scheduled for release in April, with the tour slated to open April 15 in the U.K.

On Killing Joke’s MySpace blog, Ferguson writes that the delay was undertaken with “great reluctance,” explaining that “unforeseen circumstances have made meeting deadlines impossible and have led to this extremely hard decision.”

Youth, on the band’s website, adds:

“It is with great pain that we had to make the decision to postpone the European and American tour until later in the year, but the wait will be worth it. I guarantee double orgasms all round when you hear the sound of Big Paul’s drum kit reducing your senses to a pulp!”

The delay calls off 24 shows in April, May and June, and, so far, the band only has rescheduled what were to be the first two dates: Edinburgh and London. Ferguson notes that, “Of course, all tickets will be honored to the rescheduled shows.”

See Killing Joke tour dates after the jump…

Killing Joke tour dates:

April 15: Picture House, Edinburgh, UK
April 16: Hammersmith Apollo, London, UK
April 19: Bataclan, Paris, France
April 20: AB Main Hall, Brussels, Belgium
April 21: Melkweg, Amsterdam, Netherlands
April 23: Werkstatt, Cologne, Germany
April 24: Grunspan, Hamburg, Germany
April 26: Lucerna Music Bar, Prague, Czech Republic
April 27: Mega Club, Katowictz, Poland
April 28: Palladium, Warsaw, Poland
April 29: Nosturi, Helsinki, Finland
May 21: Black Cat/9:30 Club, Washington, D.C., USA
May 22: Irving Plaza, New York, NY, USA
May 23: Paradise, Boston, MA, USA
May 25: Cabaret, Montreal, PQ, Canada
May 26: Phoenix, Toronto, ONT, Canada
May 28: Cro Foot, Detroit, MI, USA
May 29: Empty Bottle, Chciago, IL, USA
May 30: Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL, USA
June 2: Venue, Vancuover, BC, Canada
June 3: Shoebox, Seattle, WA, USA
June 4: Wonder Ballroom, Portland, OR, USA
June 5: Regency, San Francisco, CA, USA
June 6: Witern, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Oct. 15: Picture House, Edinburgh, UK
Oct. 16: Hammersmith Apollo, London, UK

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John Lydon: Public Image Ltd. reunion tour will fund recording of new album

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:41:35 +0000

[tweetmeme]Punk icon John Lydon hopes to use the proceeds from Public Image Ltd.’s upcoming U.S. tour to fund the recording of the reconstituted band’s first new album since 1992’s That What Is Not, the singer tells Billboard.com.

New PiL sessions likely “will come at the end of this. That’s definitely my intention,” Lydon says, referring to the reunion that began with a spate of U.K. shows last December and continues with North American concerts beginning with the band’s April 16 appearance at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

“The only way we can make money is the touring, and then we can make a new album,” Lydon says. “It’s sort of like the old days of PiL, when the Pistols went kaput; I had to scrimp and scrape out of my own pocket. Not much has changed.”

Lydon says the new album likely will be recorded in the U.S., and possibly at his new home studio in Los Angeles. The frontman, however, says PiL won’t try out any new songs during its upcoming tour.

See Public Image Ltd.’s North American tour dates here.

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Video: Erasure’s Andy Bell and Vince Clarke recording new album in EMI’s parking lot

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:05:28 +0000

[tweetmeme]Holed up in a mobile recording trailer in EMI’s London parking lot, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke of Erasure this week began offering fans short glimpses into the recording of their 14th studio album, posting a pair of videos (the first is above, the second, released today, is below) in which they discuss their writing sessions — and Clarke’s plans to only use analog synths on the record.

See more video from Erasure’s Andy Bell and Vince Clarke after the jump…

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Milestones: Depeche Mode’s ‘101′ live double album released 21 years ago this week

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:14:58 +0000

[tweetmeme]Milestones is a periodic feature marking important album releases, concerts and figures in the history of ’80s college rock.

RELEASE: Depeche Mode, 101

PERSONNEL: Dave Gahan (vocals), Martin Gore (keyboard, guitar, vocals), Alan Wilder (keyboard), Andrew Fletcher (keyboard)

RELEASE DATE: March 13-14, 1989

BACKSTORY: Depeche Mode’s first-ever live album was recorded at the band’s mammoth June 18, 1988, concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., during the Music for the Masses tour. The two-disc document and accompanying D.A. Pennebaker documentary/concert film (see clip above, and several more below) in many ways captured DM as it crossed from widespread cult stardom to flat-out mainstream success, a move the group would complete with 1990’s blockbuster Violator. The live album also serves as a greatest hits set recapping the band’s first decade, sprinkled with some crowd noise and a lot of “Good evening, Pasadena!”

REISSUED? Yes, Mute Records released a hybrid SACD edition of 101 in 2003, a set that contained a 5.1 Surround mix of the entire Rose Bowl concert.

See full tracklist and more clips from Depeche Mode’s ‘101′ after the jump…

Tracklist: Depeche Mode, 101

Disc 1
1. “Pimpf”
2. “Behind the Wheel”
3. “Strangelove”
4. “Sacred”
5. “Something to Do”
6. “Blasphemous Rumours”
7. “Stripped”
8. “Somebody”
9. “Things You Said”

Disc 2
1. “Black Celebration”
2. “Shake the Disease”
3. “Nothing”
4. “Pleasure Little Treasure”
5. “People are People”
6. “A Question of Time”
7. “Never Let Me Down Again”
8. “A Question of Lust”
9. “Master and Servant”
10. “Just Can’t Get Enough”
11. “Everything Counts”

Video: Highlights from Depeche Mode’s “101″ film

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Elvis Costello to release ‘Live at Winterland, San Francisco,’ recorded in 1978, in Japan

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:59:06 +0000

[tweetmeme]Rocker Elvis Costello is poised to tap his 1978 U.S. tour for a second live album in six months, at least in Japan, where the 16-track Live at Winterland, San Francisco — recorded only three days after the just-released Live at Hollywood High — is slated for exclusive release this summer.

Online retailer Eil.com lists Live at Winterland as an “exclusive limited edition” Japanese SHM-CD (that’s a “super high material CD, playable on regular CD players) release on Universal that features “soundboard-level audio quality” and will be packaged in a mini LP-style card sleeve. The album is scheduled for release June 23.

Recorded with The Attractions on June 7, 1978, the disc isn’t being promoted as part of the musician’s The Costello Show live series, which has seen the release so far of Live at the El Mocambo and the aforementioned Live at Hollywood High. As The Second Disc blog notes, “Will it end up part of the series in America? Doubtful, since the show was recorded only a few days after Live at Hollywood High — but you never know.”

Check out the full Winterland concert right now at Wolfgang’s Vault.

See full tracklist for ‘Live at Winterland, San Francisco’ after the jump…

Tracklist: Elvis Costello, Live at Winterland, San Francisco

1. “Mystery Dance”
2. “Lip Service”
3. “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes”
4. “Goon Squad”
5. “Less than Zero”
6. “Blame It On Cain”
7. “The Beat”
8. “This Year’s Girl”
9. “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea”
10. “Pump It Up”
11. “Radio, Radio”
12. “Lipstick Vogue”
13. “Watching the Detectives”
14. “Party Girl”
15. “You Belong to Me”
16. “I’m Not Angry”

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Faith No More to play New York in July; band’s first East Coast date in more than a decade

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:55:29 +0000

[tweetmeme]The reunited Faith No More continue to eke out U.S. tour dates, today announcing a New York City concert in July — the band’s first East Coast show in more than a decade — to follow its three sold-out San Francisco gigs in April in advance of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

The group — which just wrapped a run of shows Down Under, where they apparently bumped into a very tan Tom Jones, above — will perform July 5 at the Williamsburg Waterfront as part of a benefit series for the Open Space Alliance of North Brooklyn.

Faith No More — featuring Mike Bordin, Roddy Bottum, Billy Gould, Mike Patton and Jon Hudson, one of the late-’90s fill-ins for Jim Martin — reunited last year after 11 years apart, playing a string of festival dates across Europe and South America. So far, though, the band has only announced U.S. shows in New York and California.

Following the Brooklyn show — which goes on sale noon EST Friday via Ticketmaster — the band is slated to head back to Europe for a string of festival performances.

See Faith No More tour dates after the jump…

Faith No More tour dates:

April 12: The Warfield, San Francisco, CA, USA
April 13: The Warfield, San Francisco, CA, USA
April 14: The Warfield, San Francisco, CA, USA
April 17: Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, Indio, CA, USA
July 5: Williamsburg Waterfront, Brooklyn, NY
July 8: Alive Festival, Lisbon, Portugal
July 9: Sonisphere Festival, Madrid, Spain
July 10: Bilbao BBk Live, Bilbao, Spain
July 15: Dour Festival, Dour, Belgium
July 16: Gurtenfestival, Berne, Switzerland

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Ex-Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell touring U.S., South America, U.K. this spring

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:04:57 +0000

[tweetmeme]Former Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell will embark on a 14-date North American tour later this month — hitting the West Coast and Midwest of the U.S., plus a lone Canadian stop in Vancouver — before venturing to South America and back to the U.K. for more concerts this spring.

Cornwell, who left the Stranglers in 1990 after 16 years, is still touring behind his 2008 album, Hooverdam, which is available as a free download on his website (right-click here to save a zip file containing the album); he also produced a film, “Blueprint,” documenting the making of the album, including a full in-studio performance (see trailer below).

Although Cornwell’s North and South American dates are billed as “full band” performances, at his U.K. concerts, he’s announced that he’ll reprise “by popular demand” something he debuted last year: front-to-back performances of Hooverdam and the Stranglers’ 1977 debut Rattus Norvegicus.

Also of note: Cornwell’s March 31 concert in San Francisco is part of that city’s In the Name of Love series, a string of concerts featuring artists who have agreed to donate a portion of those shows’ proceeds to Doctors Without Borders to help with the recovering efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

See Hugh Cornwell’s full tour dates after the jump…

Hugh Cornwell tour dates:

March 13: Club Tvornica, Zabreb, Croatia
March 24: Club Congress, Tucson, AZ, USA
March 25: The Platinum Room, Phoenix, AZ, USA
March 27: Alex’s Bar, Long Beach, CA, USA
March 28: Brick By Brick, San Diego, CA, USA
March 30: Spaceland, Los Angeles, CA, USA
March 31: Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco, CA, USA
April 2: Media Club, Vancouver, BC, Canada
April 3: Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR, USA
April 4: The Tractor, Seattle, WA, USA
April 6: The State Room, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
April 7: Soiled Dove Underground, Denver, CO, USA
April 8: Knickerbockers, Lincoln, NE, USA
April 9: Off Broadway, St. Louis, MO, USA
April 10: The Abbey, Chicago, IL, USA
April 29: Barranco Bar, Lima, Peru
April 30: Niceto Club, Buenos Aires, Argentina
May 1: CB Bar, Sao Paolo, Brazil
May 7: Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, UK*
May 8: The Caves, Edinburgh, UK*
May 14: Guild Hall, Gloucester, UK*
May 15: 53 Degrees, Preston, UK*
May 21: Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK*
May 22: Komedia, Brighton, UK*
May 28: Cockpit, Leeds, UK*
May 29: The Robin, Bilston, UK*

*Performing ‘Hooverdam’ and The Stranglers’ ‘Rattus Norvegicus’

Video: Trailer for Hugh Cornwell’s film “Blueprint”

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Simon Larbalestier’s iconic Pixies album-cover photos to receive U.K. retrospective

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:27:42 +0000

[tweetmeme]Photographer Simon Larbalestier’s iconic Pixies album artwork — created during the college-rock kingpins’ original 1986-1993 run as well as the band’s reunion — will be the subject of a six-week retrospective at a U.K. art gallery beginning next month.

“Simon Larbalestier: A Pixies Retrospective 1986 to 2009″ will run from April 17 to May 29 at Snap Galleries in Birmingham, England, and will spotlight Larbalestier’s cover images from each of the Pixies’ five albums — including Surfer Rosa’s famous topless shot, seen at left — as well as photos used on various 12-inch singles.

The show also will feature the new photographs Larbalestier took in 2008 and 2009 for the Pixies’ Minotaur box set, a mammoth visual-art project that found the lensman collaborating once again with original 4AD graphic designer Vaughan Oliver.

According to the gallery, Larbalestier was discovered by Vaughan at the photographer’s final degree show for the Royal College of Art in London in 1987; the designer was taken by “an elaborate and slightly unsettling scene in which a bald headed man with an outrageously hairy back sat with his back to the camera, face obscured.” Vaughan, by then already working for the band, “knew instantly that it fitted perfectly with the brief he had received from Pixies frontman Charles Thompson.” That picture would become the cover of the band’s 1987 debut, Come On Pilgrim.

The gallery quotes Vaughan as saying, “If there were a ‘fifth Pixie,’ it would have been Simon — his work so suited what they were doing.”

For more information, or to purchase prints, visit Snap Galleries’ website.

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Beggars preps ‘The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall’ 4CD ‘Omnibus Edition’

Slicing Up Eyeballs — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:42:56 +0000

[tweetmeme]Beggars Archive this morning revealed a preliminary tracklist for its upcoming 4CD “Omnibus Edition” of The Fall’s 1984 album The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, which is due for release late this summer alongside an expanded 3CD edition of the band’s follow-up, This Nation’s Saving Grace.

Expected in August or September — following the April release of the band’s new studio album, Your Future Our Clutter — the 50-track box set will include a remastered edition of the original album, a second disc with singles and rough mixes (some of which appeared on the original Wonderful and Frightening World cassette and later CD edition), a third disc of BBC session recordings and a fourth disc featuring a concert broadcast on Dutch radio.

The Beggars Archive blog notes the remastering of Wonderful and Frightening World “continues apace,” and that the label has secured the necessary rights to the bonus live material. The BBC “shortsightedly transferred their tape archive onto digital,” Beggars notes, but Dutch radio station VPRO “still have their original analog tapes (and supplied) high resolution 24bit/96khz transfers, which sound so much better.”

Although Beggars hasn’t revealed the tracklist for its This Nation’s Saving Grace reissue, it did preview the 3CD “Omnibus Edition” of the 1985 album last November, indicating it will include “a second disc of the rough mixes and selected outtakes and a third disc of singles and relevant tracks from John Peel sessions.”

See tracklist for ‘The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall’ after the jump…

Tracklist: The Fall, The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall: Omnibus Edition

Disc 1: Original Album
1. “Lay Of The Land”
2. “2 By 4″
3. “Copped It”
4. “Elves”
5. “Slang King”
6. “Bug Day”
7. “Stephen Song”
8. “Craigness”
9. “Disney’s Dream Debased”

Disc 2: Singles/Rough Mixes
1. “Oh! Brother”
2. “God-Box”
3. “O! Brother”
4. “c.r.e.e.p.”
5. “Pat – Trip Dispenser”
6. “C.R.E.E.P.”
7. “New Fiend (2 By 4)”
8. “No Bulbs 3″
9. “Slang King 2″
10. “Draygo’s Guilt”
11. “Clear Off!”
12. “No Bulbs”
13. “Lay Of The Land” (Rough Mix)
14. “Pat – Trip Dispenser” (Rough Mix)
15. “New Fiend” (Rough Mix)
16. “Slang King” (Edits Version 1)

Disc 3: BBC Sessions
1. “Creep” (BBC Peel session)
2. “Pat – Trip Dispenser” (BBC Peel session)
3. “2 By 4″ (BBC Peel session)
4. “Words Of Expectation” (BBC Peel session)
5. “God Box” (BBC Jensen session)
6. “Lay Of The Land” (BBC Jensen session)
7. “Oh Brother” (BBC Jensen session)
8. “Creep” (BBC Jensen session)
9. “No Bulbs” (BBC Long session)
10. “Draygo’s Guilt” (BBC Long session)
11. “Stephen Song” (BBC Long session)
12. “Slang King” (BBC Long session)
13. “Copped It” (BBC Saturday Live)
14. “Elves” (BBC Saturday Live)
15. “Fortress/Marquis Cha Cha” (BBC Saturday Live)

Disc 4: Live at Pandora’s Music Box Festival (VPRO Radio)
1. “Lay Of The Land”
2. “Craigness”
3. “2 By 4″
4. “Draygo’s Guilt”
5. “No Bulbs”
6. “Kicker Conspiracy”
7. “Stephen Song”
8. “Copped It”
9. “Pat – Trip Dispenser”
10. “Middle Mass”

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