Sunday, March 21, 2010

• Rolling Stone’s Top Stories

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  • RS’ 100-Band SXSW Twitter Marathon!
  • Muse Pack Anthems Into SXSW Show
  • Hole Cover the Stones at SXSW
  • STP Rock New Songs, With Krieger at SXSW
  • Lady Gaga Sued by Producer/Ex-Boyfriend
  • BSS, Truckers, Band of Horses: SXSW
  • Weekend Rock List: Rock Biopics
  • James Murphy Talks Greenberg Songs
  • Win a Special Greenberg iPod
  • Rob Sheffield Remembers Alex Chilton
  • Spoon, Broken Bells Shine at SXSW
  • Secrets of The Runaways: Inside the Film
  • Steve Perry Denies “N-Word” Story
  • New Dead Weather Album Title Revealed
  • Graham Nash on Hollies’ Hall of Fame Career
  • Idol Axes Lacey Brown, Ke$ha Performs
  • Universal’s New CD Plan: $10 Discs
  • Win a Joan Jett Guitar and More Prizes
  • Jimi Hendrix’s Last Days: The New Issue
  • Best New Bands of 2010
  • Dixie Chicks Team With Eagles for Tour
  • Phish Announce Big Summer Trek
  • Breaking: Local Natives
  • Stooges, Genesis Join Rock Hall of Fame
  •

  Rolling Stone’s Top Stories
• Muse Pack Arena-Size Anthems Into Surprise SXSW Show

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  Muse are a band that like things on a massive scale, igniting big sounds on the biggest stages, with the kind of big visual effects known only to the likes of Pink Floyd and Daft Punk. That’s the Muse comfort zone, but the British trio’s special appearance Friday on a much smaller stage at a MySpace Music-presented South By Southwest show traded grand gestures for relative intimacy, without deflating the band’s soaring post-punk prog sound.

  There were still laser-beams and songs delivered at arena-rock size at the outdoor amphitheater of Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, but singer-guitarist Matt Bellamy embraced all that is the ground-level nature of the annual SXSW music festival. “We’re feeling good vibes in this town right now,” he told a packed crowd.

  RS is tweeting 100 bands from SXSW 2010! Follow the action here.

  The band’s hour-long set began with the ominous keyboards and revolution rock of “Uprising,” a track from last year’s The Resistance, calling for “fat cats” to succumb to heart failure while promising, “They will not degrade us, they will not control us…” The band stretched out in a variety of disparate sounds and directions, usually within a single song. Bellamy led the crowd in clapping to the straight-ahead heartbreak beat from the ’80s-style pop hit “Starlight” (from 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations), but also unfurled the galloping Spanish surf-guitar vibe of “Knights Of Cydonia,” sounding like something Dick Dale and ELP might have cooked up together for a Spaghetti Western soundtrack, before Muse slipped into the Queen-like vocal harmonies of “You and I must fight for our rights / You and I must fight to survive.”

  There was a welcome bit of funk in some of Muse’s prog, and occasional, if brief guitar flourishes that echoed Hendrix, Black Sabbath and Aerosmith, demonstrating real hard-rock chops in the anxious playing fingers of Bellamy. The songs were anthemic, melodramatic and performed with all the self-confidence of a consistently platinum-selling act. There are many fans and many critics, and the comparisons to Radiohead are not often meant as a compliment. But Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard demonstrated that the great walls of sound Muse have spent the last decade creating can still connect to an audience at ground level.

  Indie-rock quartet Metric opened the show, beginning their set with the crackle and hum of “Twilight Galaxy.” The quartet’s 45-minute set was fueled on excited postmodern pop and explosive melody. At one point, singer Emily Haines included a few whispery, spectral moments of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My” as an intro to Metric’s “Gimme Sympathy,” which asks the contentious pop music question: “After all of this is gone / Who’d you rather be? / The Beatles or the Rolling Stones? / Oh, seriously.”

  Haines hopped and banged a tambourine in a short sparkly dress during “Help I’m Alive,” her voice going from heavy to high and wailing, “My heart keeps beating like a hammer!” She picked up an electric guitar for “Gold Guns Girls” to slash rhythm during the intense soloing of guitarist James Shaw, stirring up a crowd of festival-goers close enough to be reached.

  Muse Set List:

  “Uprising” (Riff Version)
  “Supermassive Black Hole”
  “Resistance”
  “Hysteria”
  “Stockholm Syndrome”
  “Nishe”
  “United States of Eurasia”
  “Starlight”
  “Time is Running Out”
  “Unnatural Selection”

  ENCORE
  “Plug in Baby”
  “Knights of Cydonia” (Harmonica Version)

  More SXSW 2010:

  • RS’ SXSW Twitter Marathon: Catch the Tweets Here!
  • Spoon, Broken Bells Grab the Spotlight as S...

  Muse Pack Arena-Size Anthems Into Surprise SXSW Show
• Hole Cover the Rolling Stones, And Courtney Love Isn’t Satisfie...

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  “Make a hole!” yelled one of the bouncers at Dirty Dog, where Courtney Love was about to continue her return to music with a reconstituted version of her band Hole on the third night of the SXSW Music Festival. It was creeping up on 1:15 am. The crowd was packed so tightly together stage left of the dive bar that an emergency situation seemed imminent. Just then the bouncer bulldozered an opening through a space out of thin air to accommodate Woody Harrelson, dressed in a light tan suit and matching Kangol cabbie hat, and his entourage of almost 10 deep. John Doe, frontman for the punk band X, was nearby in the crowd and grew absolutely irate. He pointed at a passing Harrelson and barked, “You fucking celebrities.”

  Harrelson and crew, en route to Love’s dressing room, did an about-face minutes later, as Love had just taken to the stage. She was dressed like a wood nymph in pink, with a halo atop her long blond locks. She was telling the audience that she wasn’t doing this for them, but for herself. Then she flipped everyone the bird and said, “Suck it.”

  RS is tweeting 100 bands from SXSW 2010! Follow the action here.

  A sludgy, bluesy opening number led to a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” followed by a take on the new Hole song “Skinny Little Bitch,” from the forthcoming album Nobody’s Daughter, out April 27th. It sounded much better live, with Love’s raspy growl coated by new guitarist Micko Larkin’s swirls of fuzz.

  Love continued with “Doll Parts,” an older song that was supposedly written in response to her first encounter with Kurt Cobain. After that, she started complaining that her voice was shot and that if she kept playing loud songs she wouldn’t be able to play Perez Hilton’s party the following night. “It’s 1:00-fucking-am and I’m an old person,” she said. “It’s time for me to get my blowjob on.”

  But she broke out a few more covers, including a full-on band version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman” and an acoustic duet version of “Bette Davis Eyes” with Larkin. Elsewhere in the crowd, Matthew McConaughey, wearing a Kangol to match Harrelson’s, looked on approvingly. But Love, who wouldn’t let up about her voice, wasn’t pleased. “Worst show of my life,” she told the crowd, in parting. “I’m so glad you were here to witness it.”

  More SXSW 2010:

  • RS’ SXSW Twitter Marathon: Catch the Tweets Here!
  • Spoon, Broken Bells Grab the Spotlight as SXSW 2010 Launches
  • Stone Temple Pilots Debut Songs, Rock With Robby Krieger at SXSW
  • Broken Social Scene, Band of Horses, Drive-By Truckers Bring Big Guitar Rock to SXSW
  • Muse Pack Arena-Size Anthems Into Surprise SXSW Show

  Hole Cover the Rolling Stones, And Courtney Love Isn’t Satisfie...
• SXSW 2010 Day Three Twitter Marathon: 24 Reports, From Liars to L...

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  The big story on SXSW’s third day was the surprise Muse performance at Stubb’s, which was announced during the broadcast of the Fox show Human Target earlier in the week (yes, really) — though Rolling Stone’s own showcase featuring Band of Skulls, Jimmie Dale and Colin Gilmore, Court Yard Hounds, John Doe, Rye Rye and Nneka was a pretty hot ticket, too.

  Christopher R. Weingarten of @1000TimesYes continued his Twitter odyssey yesterday, tweeting about 24 bands in 14 hours for @RollingStone. Relive his epic quest in our TwitterCam (clips range from the dark rock of Zola Jesus to the pumped-up party pop of Yacht) and catch up on his 140-character reports here:

  Check out our day one and day two Twitter marathon recaps.

  54) SCORPION CHILD: Local Wolfmother-styled blooz-metal loudly shimmies all over a pre-noon crowd, beckons “scaredy-cats” to dancefloor

  55) WARPAINT: Emo’s Jr. absolutely packed by noon to watch these up-and-coming art-rockers lay down spacey, bassy grooves.

  56) LOCAL NATIVES: Snaky grooves, spastic energy, excellent Talking Heads cover. So why is this audience so mellow?

  57) JAVELIN: Their trademark, water-damaged, rapcentric funkfuzz inspires everything from languid headnods to total spazzing.

  58) BANG BANG ECHE: A 15-minute set from impossibly young kiwi synth-garage punx, walking line between savage, spasmodic and huggable.

  59) ZOLA JESUS: Keyboard-saturated gothpunk at its most life-affirming and holyshitbeautiful. In the hottest sun-baked cabin in Texas.

  60) ANTLERS: Cinematic rock, near-emo wail and devoted followers triumph over the blaaaaazing sun and a malfunctioning kick pedal.

  61) VULTURE WHALE: Fairly brawny Birmingham garage twang. Unexpectedly deafening for guys who don’t move around much.

  62) FIGHTING WITH WIRE: Gnashing Irish crunch-pop terrorizes a pub. Like Foo Fighters for ugly people (and that’s a compliment).

  63) CASIOKIDS: The name of this cartoon-trance crew implies 8-bit fun, but they’ve got quite a handle on understated ambiance too.

  64) WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS: “This has been our worst show so far. Glad you could be here to rub it in.”

  65) EPILEPTINOMICON: Denver trio makes pulseless, charred, feedbacky, quasi-mystical emo noise for ski mask and sweater

  66) YACHT: Wild, cinematic nu-new wave party devolves into random partiers storming the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen… That guy!”

  67) BLACK ANGELS: Stoner-psych ramblers face comedy of gear errors; shirtless guy who offers them a gift of moss on a stick.

  68) MAN MAN: Zappa-punks premiere new material that’s as hectic, fun and dangerous as their audience’s pre-show chicken fights.

  69) CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS: Rapidfire banjo, fiddle and beatboxing in the Driskill Hotel’s stately Victorian Room. Their newgrass cover of “Hit ‘Em Up Style” has been upgraded from “must hear” to “must experience.”

  70) WET HAIR: Iowa City drone ‘n’ drum duo make appropriately planetarium-worthy ooze in the Hideout’s black box theater.

  71) MUSE: The day’s big unannounced show. Appropriately anthemic, appropriately huge, appropriately packed. People that couldn’t get in catch sneak peeks from the parking garage, listen and dance from the street.

  72) FREDDIE GIBBS: Midwest gangsta rap artisan delivers rapidfire rhymes, each one crystal-clear. And looks good without a shirt!

  73) DONNIS: Atlanta rapper brings his usually nimble rhymes, but his stage presence is filled with bounceworthy crunk ...

  SXSW 2010 Day Three Twitter Marathon: 24 Reports, From Liars to L...
• Rewind: The Week in Rock Daily

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  • Down at SXSW, Rolling Stone has already caught hot performances by Stone Temple Pilots, Spoon, Broken Bells, the xx and many more up-and-coming acts. Keep it tuned to our SXSW coverage for all the best showcases, and be sure to follow @rollingstone as we continue to tweet 100 SXSW shows.

  • Guitar god Jimi Hendrix landed on the cover of the new issue, and David Fricke looks back at the Greatest Guitarist of All Time’s last days and lost music.
  • The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame welcomed the Stooges, Genesis, Abba, the Hollies and Jimmy Cliff at the 2010 induction ceremony, which featured performances by Phish and more. Be sure to check out our backstage and onstage photos. Plus, two-time Rock Hall inductee Graham Nash visited RS to talk about the Hollies.
  • Big Star’s Alex Chilton passed away at age 59. Rob Sheffield paid tribute to the Memphis rock god, and we flashbacked to Big Star covers.
  • We took a close-up look at the Best New Bands of 2010 in a gallery of on-the-road photos. We also explored intimate backstage shots of Ryan Adams.
  Rewind: The Week in Rock Daily
• Weekend Rock List: Rock Biopics

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  This weekend, The Runaways biopic starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning as Joan Jett and Cherie Currie hits movie theaters — Rolling Stone brought you a peek inside the year’s most anticipated rock film, now tell us your favorite rock biopics (and no, Purple Rain doesn’t count). We’ll tally up the votes on Monday; check out five of our favorites for inspiration:

  • Sid and Nancy
  • 24 Hour Party People
  • The Doors
  • Walk the Line.
  • Ray

  Weekend Rock List: Rock Biopics
• Flashback: Big Star Classics By Beck, Wilco, Elliott Smith and Mo...

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  This week the rock world lost Alex Chilton, so we’re devoting our Flashback to covers of Big Star songs by artists ranging from Beck to Wilco to the Bangles, who perform the classic “September Gurls” in the video above. As Rob Sheffield wrote in his remembrance of Chilton, the singer was “the ultimate indie cult hero”, who despite “years of hard living, always seemed indestructible — and thanks to his music, he always will be.”

  Below, watch four artists — Beck, Bat for Lashes, This Mortal Coil and Jeff Buckley — take on Third/Sister Lovers’s “Kanga Roo,” while Wilco, Garbage and Elliott Smith each cover “Thirteen.”

  
  Beck – “Kanga Roo”

  
  Bat for Lashes – “Kanga Roo”

  
  Jeff Buckley – “Kanga Roo”

  
  This Mortal Coil – “Kanga Roo”

  
  Wilco – “Thirteen”

  
  Elliott Smith – “Thirteen”

  
  Garbage – “Thirteen”

  Flashback: Big Star Classics By Beck, Wilco, Elliott Smith and Mo...