Trent Reznor on what new musicians should do.

Over the past couple of years Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor has proven himself to be one of the more new media savvy musicians around and the way that he has engaged with his fanbase through twitter and blogs has demonstrated that he understands the challenges caused by the changes in the music business in the last decade better than most, in fact someone told me before that he himself was the person who originally uploaded the torrent of one of his more recent releases to the what.cd torrent tracker.

In a recent blog post that you can read here Reznor gave advice on how new bands should attempt to go about their business in the most sensible fashion. In some ways it's a 21st century update of The Minutemen's "jam econo" philosophy and many of these ideas are quite obvious and I'd imagine that most bands that most people have not heard are doing some of them but to have them all distilled into one article is very useful. They're certainly more relevant and useful than the Steve Albini penned "major labels are the devil" screeds that have been floating around the web for the past decade which were pretty much the last lengthy writings on the subject by a significant musical figure before this one as far as I'm aware.

New music from the bestest band in the whole wide world ever.

It's now nearly 6 years since The Wrens released The Meadowlands and up until recently the New Jersey 4-piece have shown few signs of producing a follow up to an album which since my discovery of it has caused me to log enough travelling miles to circumnavigate the globe at least once to see the band play (as well as indirectly resulting in me getting into what was and to date has still been the most significant relationship of my life). Work has apparently finally begun on the follow up and a number of demos for new tunes have cropped up here and there online, though mostly on the website of Magnet Magazine who are maintaining a weekly "Wrens Watch" whereby every 7 days they ring up guitarist/singer Charles Bissell (nee: Mexico) and he tries to come up with a fresh excuse as to why the band still haven't made a new record.

Up till now all the new material emerging has been coming from bassist/keyboardist/singer Kevin Whelan and I think that I've previously put up some of those songs here but just this week Bissell put down the new baby boy (that was one of the more commonly used excuses) and wrote a new song, his first he claims, in many years. It's called "The Thousand Dos" and I'm putting it up along with a couple of other demos just because they were there on the same page that I found the Bissell song on. Also becasue I think that "Marked Up" songs like The Beatles, and not in the bad way that almost all of Pugwash's songs sound like The Beatles.

MP3: The Wrens - Z Kevin Whelan demo
MP3: The Wrens - Marked Up Kevin Whelan demo
Mp3: The Wrens - The Thousand Dos Charles Bissell demo

The Tallest Man On Earth to play debut Irish date.

The announcements of fantastic gigs just keep coming and coming. Another one of the best things that I saw at Primavera (and to be honest one of the main reasons that I went in the first place) will be playing his first ever Irish show in Whelan's on September 11th.

From the fantastic Shzallow Graves.

Little Stevie in Tower Records this Sunday.

Hey, come see me do my fuckin' radio show.

Bruce Springsteen And The E-Street band are in town this weekend playing a couple of gigs in the RDS. Where the Boss is going to be on his off time is unknown (although last year he was hanging out in in The Temple Bar and the Bowling Alley in Stillorgan; no, really). However if you want to run into bandanna aficionado, guitar player and former Sopranos star "Miami" Steve Van Zandt then he'll be broadcasting his radio show Underground Garage from 1-3 PM in Tower Records on Sunday afternoon.

THE JESUS LIZARD - DUBLIN plus other things.

Just when you thought that the gig announcement news couldn't get any better today following Yo La Tengo.

Tuesday, September 22nd. edit: Button Factory price/on sale date not announced yet but this is fabulous news, The Jesus Lizard were one my Primavera highlights by a long ways.

Also announced today ... The Redneck Manifesto plus Patrick Kelleher in Whelan's on August 29th in Whelans.

AND

Silver Apples, September 12th, Whelan's. €20

Yo La Tengo to play Tripod

November 5th. Tickets on sale on Thursday priced €20 and €24.50. This will be in support of the forthcoming Popular Songs but fingers crossed they'll be throwing in a few tunes from the still giving me lots of joy Condo Fucks record from earlier this year.

Yay.

Competition: Win Deerhoof tickets

One of the best live bands that I've ever seen are in Ireland in the coming week playing 3 dates (Whelan's on Friday, Roisin Dubh on Saturday and The Pavilion on Sunday) and thanks to the fine people at Foggy Notions I've got a double pass to give away to the Dublin gig this Friday.

As far as I know this will be the band's first Irish gigs as a 4 piece as all their previous ones here took place after Chris Cohen's departure from the band. I caught them in the 9:30 club in Washington DC with new member Ed Rodriguez late last year and they put on probably the best show I've ever seen them play (though I'll admit to have only seen 3-piece gigs from them before). I'm really, really looking forward to this gig.

To win the tickets just send your answer to this question (use of this blog's tags might help) to thrillpiercomp@gmail.com with the subject "Deerhoof comp".

Back when he was in high school in the eastern Virginia/DC area Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier was in a band that made a type of old-fashioned music that you might never imagine him making were you to simply listen to what he has done in Deerhoof. What sort of band was it?

Entry to the competition will close on Wednesday afternoon and the winner will be picked using random.org and shortly thereafter will be informed of their triumph.

Subscribing to Holy Moly pays off.

From today's mailout, this is a thread on a sound engineering forum where a couple of people who worked with Michael Jackson over the years told a few storys about him and how he worked in the studio.

Link.

From that thread: footage of Jackson recording vocals for "we are the world".

Times New Viking - Dublin

Whelan's.
September 19th.
Tickets: €14.95
On sale now.

Final Fantasy to play Belfast in August

Empire music hall - August 4th.

£14.50

Tickets on sale here.

Seeing as I missed out on the Whelan's gig a few weeks ago I think I'll be travelling up for this.

Video: Wavves - No Hope Kids

Includes shots of when they played Ireland a few months back. It's not quite the "Born to Run" video with footage of Springsteen's Slane gig but those poorly painted cows on the wall of the gourmet burger place beside Whelan's are pretty distinctive.

Yarr, the pirate bay to go legal, sold for many doubloons.

From torrentfreak.

According to gaming company Global Gaming Factory X, it is in the the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay for $7.8m (SEK 60 million). The acquisition is scheduled to be completed by August and will see the site launch new business models to compensate content providers and copyright owners.

Software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) says it is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay and file-sharing technology company Peerialism. GGF claims to have the biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world.

The changeover of ownership is scheduled for August 2009, whereby GGF will take over the operation of the site.

The company says that after it has completed the acquisition it will launch new business models so that copyright owners get paid, which is clearly a huge diversion from TPB’s previous modus operandi.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF.

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary,” said Pandeya.

“Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality,” he added.

GGF will acquire the site’s domain names and sites for SEK 60,000,000 ($7.8 million) - SEK 30,000,000 in cash and the rest in newly issue shares.

File-sharing technology company Peerialism will also be acquired by GGF for a total of SEK 100 million, of which at least SEK 50 million will be in cash.

According to GGF, Peerialism has developed a new P2P distribution technology which will be used on The Pirate Bay. The technology is said to be backwards-compatible with BitTorrent although details are scarce at the moment.

At the time of writing, shares in GGF are up 155% - this will quickly become outdated, so check here for latest stats.

This is breaking news and this article will be updated constantly - please keep checking back.

So, for dummies like me, is this basically the same as when Napster was sold and a legal version was launched and they're basically just slapping an existing name on a new entity?

Handsome Furs Irish tour - update

Belfast - October 26th
Dublin (Acadamy) - 27th
Cork (Cyprus Avenue) - 28th

Tickets for the Dublin gig go on sale on Friday, no word one way or the other on whether that possible Galway gig on the 30th that I mentioned a couple of days ago is happening or not.

LeGalaxAID - because black combat suits and Batmobiles for seeking vengence in don't come cheap.

Le Galaxie have been burgled and are now broke, but The Funeral Suits, Grand Pocket Orchestra and YOU can help.

In their own words:

"Last week one of the lads' apartment was broken into and all our band money which we have saved and saved for ages was taken. This money was to be used to pay off our recording, duplication and PR costs and now we have absolutely nothing. Frowny-emoticon!

We are having a fundraiser on July 1st in Whelans and we have a few friends playing with us on the night to help us get bodies into the venue to help re-coup the cash that was lost as we truly have no money after the break in and are fantastically in debt."

And so we have:

LeGalaxAID - In Defiance Of Crime:
LE GALAXIE
Grand Pocket Orchestra
The Funeral Suits
Wednesday, 1st July, Whelans, Wexford Street, Dublin 2
Doors 8pm
Admission €10
Le Galaxie's new EP Transworld FREE for everyone on the night!
Followed by late club with DJ sets & from Delorentos & Let's Fighting Love

More at: www.myspace.com/lemusicgalaxie

Pixies to play 2 night stand in the Olympia

October 1st and 2nd.

No details of price yet but according to their MySpace blog tickets will go on sale on July 3rd.

Edit: Thanks to a commenter who says ... "
They go on sale at 9am on Friday July 3 priced €44.20 (Upper Circle Seated) and €54.80 (Standing & Circle Seated).


Being the album’s 20th anniversary, the band will perform all of the songs from Doolittle and its related B-sides. "