Filed under: Video of the Day

Artist: Vision of Trees
Video: "Turn 2 U"
Highlight: "We wanted the video to share a sense of alienation with the track, but also to illustrate transformation and re-birth as well as someone thriving for solitude, while being scared of it at the same time," synth player Joni Juden tells Spinner.

Watch Vision of Trees' "Turn 2 U" Video

Filed under: News, Holy Hell

Stephen J. Boitano, Getty Images

Remember Limewire? That pirating service that enabled everyone music fans to steal any digital album or song they desired? Well, it's completely defunct now, but that doesn't mean it's out of the legal woods.

According to AV Club, music biz police the RIAA are suing the peer-to-peer network for an exorbitant amount: A whopping $72 Trillion. That's a lot of cash, you might say, and quite possibly one of the largest sums ever conjured in a courtroom.

Filed under: News, Exclusive, Pop Culture, Music Appreciation

Hulton Archive

The depths of May seems to be the perfect season for fomenting protest.

Perhaps that explains Arcade Fire's act of supporting Quebec student protesters on Saturday Night Live recently.

Win Butler and crew's act of solidarity wasn't the only rebellious music moment that occurred this week in history. This was the week that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young wrote "Ohio" in 1970 and warned everyone that Nixon was coming. The times, they also a-changed forever because someone was born, and because someone else decided to sit around in bed at a hotel.

Click to launch the gallery below and find out why Nirvana, Tommy Lee, Sublime and some protest singers made music history this week.

Filed under: News, New Music, Exclusive

Joshua Black Wilkins

The title of Cory Branan's new album, Mutt, is the same word he uses when people ask him to describe what kind of music he plays.

"It's graspable, you know? Like, what kind of music does Tom Waits play? He gets to do what he wants, he pulls from whatever form, roots music or klezmer or whatever," Branan tells Spinner. "So I was like, 'Yep, that's what I do.' It's just a big Cuisinart, a big blender of stuff."

Inside that big blender you'll find elements of blues, folk, country and rock 'n' roll, paired with vivid lyrics at once poignant and wry. Waits is an influence, of course, and so are Leonard Cohen and especially John Prine, the veteran singer and songwriter who's been a country/folk cult favorite since the early 1970s.

"I don't know how I missed them until my mid-20s, but they were like the Holy Grail," says Branan, a Mississippi native.

Filed under: News, News Today, Oh Boy!

Shirlaine Forrest, WireImage

The Flaming Lips are attempting to break Jay-Z's record for most concerts in different cities in the same day. So weird that this doesn't involve blood or gummies. [Rolling Stone]

New York City residents are trying to get a park named after Adam Yauch. Sounds reasonable enough. [Vulture]

Damon Albarn just keeps starting and stopping things doesn't he? The guy can't get enough. [Pitchfork]

Filed under: News

Matt Cardy, Getty

Actor Michael McKean, perhaps best known as fictional rock band Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins, is in stable condition after being struck by a car yesterday afternoon along Manhattan's Upper West Side.

According to the Washington Post the actor sustained a fractured leg and was taken to St. Luke's Hospital. The publication also reported the New York Daily News had three photos from the accident scene, one reportedly showing a man believed to be McKean on a spine board with a bloodied face.

"Thank you dear people for your love and support," McKean's wife Annette O'Toole tweeted this morning. "@MJMcKean and I so appreciative. He is getting great care. Spirits are good. Grateful, we."

Filed under: News, New Music, New Releases

The Deer Hunter

Providence's The Dear Hunter began as a side project of Casey Crescenzo, but as one listen to "Never Forgive Never Forget" from their upcoming album IV will show you, it has become a full band project of brutalizing force.

"I received a Twitter alert to my phone mentioning @therealtdh and a new 'official' video from the band," vocalist Casey Crescenzo explains to Spinner of the new video. "Before this we had decided to throw in the towel on making a video, so this news was a bit confusing. I followed the links and watched in disbelief as the video played.

Filed under: News, Exclusive, Spinner Interview, New Music

Jonathon Kingsbury

Daniel Pujol digs through his pockets in vain. A lighter, he knows, is somewhere on his person. With an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips, the guitarist searches frantically for what made us all human in the first place.

"And it looks like every f---in' pocket in the known universe is devoid of fire, Cameron!" he yells across a thousand miles of telephone wire.

This madman of rock 'n' roll speaks like a young philosopher king. He stops and starts his sentences with a bluesy drawl, swinging in halftime through intelligent pauses and Southern charm, all while scanning the cup holders and floorboards of his van for flint and steel.

Filed under: News, R.I.P.

AP

CHICAGO (AP) - Grammy Award-winning polka great Eddie Blazonczyk, who began playing the lively music in the 1950s and went on to earn the nickname "Polka King" after starting his own band and label, has died. He was 70.

His record label, Bel-Aire Recordings, and his son, Eddie Blazonczyk Jr., said Tuesday that Blazonczyk died of natural causes Monday at a hospital in the Chicago suburb of Palos Heights.

Blazonczyk retired in 2001 after suffering a stroke, and his son took over his band, Eddie Blazonczyk and the Versatones. The band formed in 1962, after Blazonczyk's brief venture into pop music that landed him on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand," and toured the U.S., Canada and parts of Europe.

"He attracted so many people to the polka audience, whereas previously they were scared away by the word polka," Eddie Blazonczyk Jr. said. "After hearing his style of the music they weren't afraid of polka anymore. They knew it wasn't 'She's Too Fat for Me' or 'Roll Out the Barrel.' They knew it was an evolution of the music."

Filed under: News, R.I.P.

Tom Hill, WireImage

Robert Nix, drummer and co-founder of the Atlanta Rhythm Section, has died. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the 67-year-old musician passed away on Sunday morning (May 20) at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. A cause of death has not yet been revealed.

ARS frontman Rodney Justo and Nix got their start in the music business as members of Roy Orbison's band, the Candymen. From there, the drummer went on to back the beat of prominent Southern rockers like the Allman Brothers and Ronnie Van Zant.

Filed under: Video of the Day

Artist: The Dandy Warhols
Video: "Sad Vacation"
Highlight: "Hiking and camping and generally proving your outdoor-worthiness is very Nu Portland. Portlandia," singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor tells Spinner. "This is not that. This is what it felt like growing up here. Tripping balls and having a bonfire with your friends and going home to your own bed requires no skill set whatsoever."

Watch The Dandy Warhols' "Sad Vacation" Video

Filed under: Exclusive, Spinner Says

Missing Piece Group

Years ago, I founded the company that built the Rhapsody music service. I recently gave a brief talk about certain music and movie industry claims that really bug me (see video, below). Some say that I might have come off as being ... a bit sarcastic? And they may have a point. But the numbers behind my talk all came from actual research, performed by an actual Copyright Mathematician (me, that is). Check out my talk, and if you'd like to know where my numbers came from, read on (I'll also explain the part about the aliens. There's quite a story behind that).

The Motion Picture Association's claims of $58 billion in actual US economic losses and 373,000 lost jobs came from this press release. These numbers originated at a think tank called the "Institute for Policy Innovation" -- an organization that Businessweek once profiled in an article called "Op-Eds for Sale." In it, an IPI analyst freely admitted to taking payoffs from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing "op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients." The IPI's president supported this behavior, saying it was neither wrong nor unethical, and dismissing those who apply "a naïve purity standard" to the business of writing op-eds.

Filed under: News

Kate Mercer, AP

Paul Simon's landmark album Graceland is enjoying its 25th anniversary with a host of awesome things -- a Graceland tour and "Under African Skies," a documentary of the making of the album chief among them. One thing that is probably not going to happen however is a new recording from Simon and Garfunkel.

According to NME, Paul Simon has rendered the possibility of a reunion less than likely. Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today program, Simon says that the same trouble with Art Garfunkel's vocal chords that postponed last year's 13-date tour has also turned the prospect of a reunion a "moot point."

Filed under: News, News Today, Oh Boy!

Ian Gavan, Getty Images

The 2012 Austin City Limits lineup has been announced, and it's pretty killer. [HuffPost Entertainment]

Morrissey isn't mopey all the time, and here's photographic evidence. [Flavorwire]

Liz Phair takes out her rage on a record-label boss in her new "And He Slayed Her" video. [Stereogum]

Google turns its doodle into a Moog synth, further ruining the odds that we'll get anything done today. [Google]

Doomtree recap their European tour with a collection of awesome Instagram shots. [Doomtree.net]

Filed under: News, New Music

Divine Fits
When Handsome Furs announced they were breaking up last week there was speculation the band's male half Dan Boeckner had moved to Los Angeles to start a new group.

The speculating's done now because the new group Divine Fits -- featuring fellow members Britt Daniel of Spoon and Sam Brown of New Bomb Turks -- outed itself to the world via a new Twitter presence and website earlier today.

"Hi. We are Divine Fits from LA, CA. We've been making a racket while the pool drains into the yard. We want to share it with you soon," the band said in its first tweet.

Filed under: News

Iain Macmillan, Courtesy of Bloomsbury Auctions

A photograph of the Beatles walking "backwards" across the Abbey Road pedestrian crosswalk has just sold for £16,000 (about $25,000 U.S.) at auction.

The photo shown above was not used for the band's Abbey Road album cover and was therefore unseen by many until now. Only six shots of the rockers were taken on that sunny London day in 1969 when the late Iain Macmillan was given 10 minutes to photograph the band. Aside from the direction the Beatles are walking, the most notable difference is that Paul McCartney is waering sandles instead of going barefoot, like he did in the picture chosen for the cover.

Poppy Walker from Bloomsbury Auctions tells Spinner that after a frenzied bidding session this afternoon, an unnamed winner claimed the photo for £7,000 above asking price.

Filed under: Concerts and Tours, News

Erika Goldring, Getty Images

On Monday night, Jack White played the first of two sold-out gigs at New York City's Roseland Ballroom. Performing with Los Buzzardos, his all-male backing band, White treated the crowd to an 18-song set that included songs from his new solo album, Blunderbuss, as well as his hits with the White Stripes, Dead Weather, Raconteurs and Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi.

Rather than write up yet another narrative review of the show, here are the observations I jotted down. Full disclosure: These notes are most likely "enhanced" by the fact that the venue, at least where I stood, was pretty much a cloud of pot smoke. And it's saying something that I was taken aback by that, given that I was at Roseland recently for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros concert/contact-high party.

-- White might have the most punctual audience in rock 'n' roll. Despite the fact that he was slated to go on at 9:10PM (he actually went on around 10:10), hundreds of fans were lined up, in the rain, around the block before doors opened at 7. I'll admit that at one point, I thought about telling the ones on 53rd street that they were actually in line for the musical version of "Sister Act," but I'm not that much of a jerk.

Filed under: News, Exclusive, Pop Culture, Music Appreciation

Getty | Getty

Today, May 22, is World Goth Day. Besides meaning that you probably shouldn't go outside after dark tonight, it also means there's going to be lots of music played -- and listened to -- by people who wear capes and roll around in graveyards for exercise. (What? Exercise is important!)

Here at Spinner we were curious: a lot of our favorite bands seem to have bleak worldviews, so does that mean they're actually "goth"? So we called up Liisa Ladouceur, author of the evil tome Encyclopedia Gothica and finalist for World Goth Day's "Best Author" competition (against noted nosferatu Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and Mick Mercer). Taking time away from her latest project -- a documentary film about the Devil, natch -- Ladouceur cast some spells of knowledge.

Click on the gallery below to find out how the likes of Austra, Florence and the Machine, Paramore, Skrillex and other dark-hued musicians rate on our goth scale of 1 to 10 skulls.

Filed under: News

SCI Fidelity

Jam band String Cheese Incident are no strangers to standing up to Ticketmaster, but they took their stance one step further recently by scalping their own tickets for one show so fans could be basically guaranteed avoiding ticket surcharges.

According to the New York Times, the group recently had roughly 50 friends and fans stand in a queue outside the Greek Theater in Los Angeles to purchase tickets to the band's July 13 show at the venue.

Armed with about $20,000 cash the band gave them, some 400 tickets -- each priced at $49.95 as walk-up purchases contained no ticket surcharge -- were then sent back to the band's Colorado home base where they were placed on the band's site for $49.95. The band's site says July 13 in Los Angeles and July 14-15 in Berkeley have "limited service fee-free tickets back on sale now!"

Filed under: News, RPM

Mark Davis, Getty Images

Deadmau5 has made clear his dislike of Jersey Shoreman turned DJ Pauly D before, but he certainly isn't afraid to continue his beef with the celebrity personality. According to TMZ, while shooting a music video in Los Angeles over the weekend, the DJ was asked if he thought Pauly D had any real talent. He promptly responded, "No, not really."

Though he did backtrack a little bit, he essentially stood by his position. Then again, in a blog post last week he sarcastically observed that, "since Pauly D and his hair obviously has no need for my advice, let me elaborate pass it along to someone who's actually serious about music." may have been a moot point all along. Take a look at the video below.