Blog: Listening Post - Wired Blogs

The Boss has posted a bluesy, grimy Halloween song on his web page, possibly in lieu of the Halloween display he put together last year. His theme: the "Jersey Devil," a (hopefully) mythical beast. Legend has it that one Mother Leeds predicted her thirteenth child would be the devil, and that on a dark and stormy night, she birthed a normal baby who grew bat wings, cloven hooves and a horse's head before fluttering up the chimney and into the night. The beast is said to roam the Pine Barrens area of southern New Jersey to this [...]

Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails edition of the Guitar Hero -like app for the iPhone and iPod Touch lets you tap along with 13 songs from The Slip and Ghosts I-IV on the game's three note tracks, pictured to the right. It's another example of artists using the iTunes app store to sell music in alternate formats and price points. The goal of Tap Tap Revenge: Nine Inch Nails Edition ($5; iTunes link ) is to [...]

From Logan's Run to Star Trek and onward to dystopian videos from his own band The Dears, Murray Lightburn is a sci-fi freak with a neuromantic streak. And while his postmodern soul and blues may skew too confessional to dispassionate gearheads, it has a way of burrowing inside your ear and laying eggs. That's the plan, Lightburn confides below in Listening Post's interview. But sometimes it's an accident too. Whatever. The Dears' latest effort Missiles is an acquired but nevertheless addictive taste, which has been slowly [...]

Black Sheep's "The Choice is Yours" was one of hip-hop's great party tunes, dropping in 1991 in the full swing of the genre's Golden Age. Better yet, the tune was a tongue-twisting boast designed to offer listeners a choice between gangsta rap and more alternative fare. That included the Native Tongues Posse to which Black Sheep belonged, along with A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers and founders De La Soul. But our era has knit politics and art together like few that came before. And so Black Sheep's Dres has remixed, refashioned and re-introduced the tune as [...]

It may be a mallrat paradise of punk and pop culture, but Hot Topic can smell the future of music coming just fine, thanks. So it has decided to embrace it with an online music social called ShockHound.com, which offers DRM-free MP3s, webisodes, reviews, merch, concert and more to Generation Xbox. So far, it's got its ears in the right place. ShockHound is following up its Tuesday launch with a free double-bill that's hard to beat, sending stellar noisemakers No Age and Titus Andronicus on the road for free shows in New York, [...]

Samuel Wurzelbacher, the unlicensed plumbing technician commonly referred to as "Joe The Plumber," has his eye on the recording studio. After being approached with several entertainment offers, Wurzelbacher joined forces with public relations company The Press Office and booking/management firm Bobby Roberts to weigh his options and deal with media requests, according to Politico . His PR people are already hard at work touting the would-be star's allure. "He's a complicated guy with a very dynamic personality," Della Croce told Politico. "He can sing and obviously has a strong political point of view." [...]

Apple Corps and MTV/Harmonix announced on Thursday that a Beatles videogame modeled on the Rock Band franchise will go on sale late next year, but its music is still not available on iTunes and other stores. However, Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones indicated that negotiations to start selling Beatles songs online are still ongoing, so there's a chance they could show up on iTunes and elsewhere sometime this millennium. "All I can say is that we're still working out the details, and we have no announcement to make, we have [...]

Steve Jobs' dogmatic "one price fits all" for music sold at the iTunes store faces an unlikely challenge -- from Apple itself. Jobs has held firm to his 99-cents-per-song rate with one brief exception despite pressure from the major labels to charge different prices for music depending on demand and other factors. But Apple's own App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch already allows artists and labels do an end-run around those pricing restrictions and experiment with alternate pricing models and even ad-supported music. Apple receives 30 percent or so of [...]

MTV/Harmonix's upcoming Beatles version of the Rock Band interactive music game will let people play Beatles songs in a Rock Band -like game with "new dimensions" that haven't been seen in any previous music videogame. In June, Listening Post readers weighed in on which songs they would most like to play in a Beatles version of the game. We've collated those suggestions into a voting widget where you can add your own suggestions: Show predictions that are: hot [...]

A Beatles-branded interactive music game along the lines of Rock Band and Guitar Hero will give gamers and music lovers a chance to play songs from every stage of the Beatles' storied career, from the sweet simplicity of "Please, Please Me" to more sophisticated fare like the songs on Abbey Road . Unlike previous editions of Rock Band , this one will exist as a "Beatles game" rather than as a branded version of Rock Band. The basic gameplay will be familiar to those who have played other versions [...]

The Beatles, notorious holdouts against selling music on iTunes and other online music stores, appear to have found a digital deal they like: licensing their songs to the Rock Band videogame. "Apple Corps Ltd. and MTV to announce an exclusive agreement to develop a global music project," read the invitation that was sent to journalists on Wednesday. Few, if any, other bands have matched the Beatles' influence on popular music. Since a significant portion of the next generation of guitarists is coming from the gaming world , such a deal could [...]

"It's not easy getting visas to the United States when you're from the Axis of Evil," confesses Raam, vocalist for Hypernova, which broke out of the Iranian underground in 2004 and set about making its fortune in the already packed American soundscape. No easy feat, for sure, but it beats laboring in obscurity. Or worse, jail. "The consequences of being a rock musician in Iran are so ridiculous that you would have to be crazy to pursue such a career over there," Raam concludes. So far, Hypernova has been doing a [...]

From a founding member of post-rock pioneers Slint to ax shredder for new-millennial metalheads Dead Child, David Pajo has played either side of the sonic spectrum against the mainstream. So it stands to reason that his recently published Halloween-themed Imeem playlist would be an esoteric freakout perfectly built for the horrordome. Of course, Pajo isn't just about metal: The tireless musician , above at far left, has crafted solo vehicles like Papa M and starred in groups as varied as The Palace Brothers, Stereolab, Royal Trux, The For Carnation, Matmos, Tortoise and more. But his Imeem [...]

The conventional wisdom is that punk is rebellion, a middle finger to the Establishment and propriety. But that's a pipe dream that just will not die, especially now that auction house Christie's is set to hawk memorabilia from the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Ramones, Patti Smith and other shining lights of the movement's early phase on November 24 in New York. "We understand that tastes change, tastes mature," Christie's Simeon Lipman told the Associated Press . "Ten years ago, punk memorabilia probably wouldn't be something we'd be auctioning here. But now, people of a certain age [...]

Jermaine Jackson has confirmed rumors surrounding a potential Jackson 5 reunion. He told the Australian Associated Press that all of the original members -- including Michael -- have agreed to participate and that younger sister Janet has agreed to perform as the opening act. "This has been a long time coming for the Jackson family to get back together," he said. "It is just the timing, so what we've been doing is working on the music and all the logistics. It is going to be more like a family affair, Janet's going to open [...]

Regardless of your political affiliation, you might find this jazzed-up version of Sarah Palin's chat with Katie Couric amusing. Keyboardist Henry Hey managed to sync his playing to her speech with remarkable precision. (It reminds us somewhat of the "shreds" videos that copyright vampires removed from YouTube .) See Also: Remix Sarah Palin Palin Comparison: Which Ticket Would Be Better for Music? [...]

Drag racing aficionados Cole Coonce and Ikky Shivers of Nitronic Research, formerly known as "the thinking man's drag racing site" before it went offline in '03, have returned with an album made of field recordings from the drag racing world and surf music. It wasn't easy. "I loaded up consoles, mics, cables and tape machines into the hatchback of a Japanese car, drove to drag strips here and yon, and ran mic cable up and down the length of the track to get these sounds," explained Coonce via e-mail. "The project was an homage to the [...]

Lime Wire users will soon be able to purchase spoken word albums from Comedy Central Records, including albums by Mitch Hedberg (video to the right), Bobcat Goldwaith and Jim Gaffigan from the Lime Wire store. The deal represents the DRM-free Lime Wire store 's first with a major entertainment conglomerate, according to a Fortune article that calls the 60-album deal "a coup for Lime Wire, which is trying to shed its outlaw image and become a legitimate digital entertainment provider." Comedy Central Records head Jack Vaughn told CNN he hates file [...]

Everybody seems to love "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., with the exception of David Letterman, whose producers apparently censored the song by silencing its gunshot samples. Last year, I called it "the best use of a Clash sample I've ever heard." In 2008, Thom Yorke played it on the BBC and many artists have found it necessary to bust out some impressive cover versions and remixes, some of were collected in the remix album pictured to the right. ( I'm from Barcelona even used the same name for one of their [...]

We've been playing around with another artitst's promotional iPhone app, having been somewhat impressed by Pink's initial foray into the iPhone App Store . This new one from the band Snow Patrol, whose developers were apparently in something of an arms race with Pink to release the first artist-themed app, is more artistically ambitious than Pink's straightforward collection of images and song previews. The free Snow Patrol Interactive Booklet app ( iTunes link ) includes a "3D origami star field" that fans can travel through by using a finger-spreading zoom motion on an iPhone or iPod [...]