A tipster pal sends along a photo of Saturday Night Live castmates Andy Samberg and Will Forte hanging out in the will-call line at last night's Pearl Jam concert at MSG. Note the era-appropriate flannel! Our pal Hipster Runoff might have something to say about the man who dates indie rock goddess Joanna Newsom lowering himself to the level of Eddie Vedder & Co., but us, we just want to know where Samberg copped his shirt.
Live by the reunion hysteria, die by the reunion hysteria. Pavement has now added a whopping fifth show to their September stand in New York, playing the Williamsburg Waterfront on September 19th in advance of four straight shows in Central Park later that week. If you thought it was like a handsome elf alighting from the sky and granting you your most personal and everlasting wish at the first announcement, and chuckled in shared anticipation at the second and third, and began to feel somewhat manipulated at the forth, may the fifth be the bolt of lightning that makes explicit what's been true all along: they are going to drag this out as long as humans will continue to buy tickets for it. Should be a lovely evening though! Cop here, starting Friday at noon. [Brooklyn Vegan]
Pearl Jam's semi-self-released, Target- and indie-distributed Backspacer debuts at #1 this week, selling 190K copies its first week out. At the rumored $5 per CD the band is taking home off their new arrangement, one could imagine Vedder & Co. might well be popping a bottle of champagne right now. Although Kurt Cobain will still probably make more money this year. Anyway, this dethrones Jay-Z's Blueprint 3, which goes to #2 and around 904,000 copies sold total--dude will have to wait at least another week to go platinum. The rest of the top five? Three Day's Grace, Whitney Houston, and Miley Cyrus. And up next? Paramore vs. Mariah. Only one of those voices is shot--just sayin'.
--Jay Z, who released a new track with Drake yesterday, is expected to announce today that he will play Madison Square Garden on September 11th, the day Blueprint 3 is scheduled to come out. The show will benefit the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund, created in 1985 to "support families of firefighters and police officers who have died in the line of duty," the New York Times reports. Jay's one of the best massive live acts out there at the moment: his last-minute addition to All Points West last month provided the highlight of the muddy festival. We don't recommend missing this.
--Weezer has released an edited version of their live mash-up of MGMT's "Kids" and Lady Gaga's "Pokerface." The video feels pretty raw, and Rivers offers plenty of Bono-like arm gestures while drummer Pat Wilson plays synth and sings backup. It's better than about 93 percent of The Red Album. The footage was pulled from the band's May 9 performance at the KROQ Weenie Roast.
--Paul McCartney has probably avoided this headline for so long due to
the high expectations it induces, but he's heading back to the Ed
Sullivan Theater. The former Beatle will appear on The Late Show with David Letterman
for the first time to promote his upcoming appearances at Citi Field
July 17, 18, and 21. McCartney will be the only guest, and will be
interviewed before he performs. The Beatles made their US TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. With Letterman at the helm, it will likely be Sir Paul's most honest interview since he reluctantly talked cocaine with Howard Stern in January.
--Pearl Jam's new album has a release date. Backspacer
will be released September 20, the bands first disc on the
Universal/Island label, and, like most Pearl Jam discs, it was produced
by Brendan O'Brien. We hope it sounds a little better than the muddy
preview the band offered on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien last month. Pearl Jam has announced some tour dates to celebrate the album, and Cameron Crowe is apparently working on a film about the band, tentatively due in 2011.
--Trent Reznor spoke out against former protege Marilyn Manson, saying, "He is a malicious guy and will step on anybody's face to succeed and cross any line of decency. Seeing him now, drugs and alcohol now rule his life and he's become a dopey clown." The Nine Inch Nails mastermind doesn't hold back. He recently dissed songwriting output of Prince and Rivers Cuomo. Reznor's Manson comment may be true, but he shouldn't be slagging anybody off for being an addict.
--Eminem and Jay-Z performed together last night at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater. The show, promoting the launch of "DJ Hero," saw the two team up for "Renegade." Judging by the footage, it was a solid performance. Eminem also played a mini-set of mostly new material. In other Em news, an MTV writer admitted what we already knew: the Bruno crotch thing at the MTV Movie Awards was staged. But it is funny they rehearsed it in an empty theater.
--M.I.A. is pushing fans to vote for independent European Parliment candidate Jan Jananayagam by offering a new song. The voting will occur June 4-7. As activism, this move should prove a lot more effective for the Sri Lankan singer than relying on Bill Maher.
--Pearl Jam performed a half-assed sludgy new track on the premiere of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (which still sounds weird) last night. The song is from the band's forthcoming album, Backspacer. The show was otherwise a respectable debut: the host was clearly nervous, and new announcer Andy Richter interrupted too much, but they're still working it out. Will Ferrell gave the Cone-zone tips for living in California, recommending a great Pasadena burger joint "called Burger King."
Pearl Jam
Madison Square Garden
Wednesday, June 25
I was born in 1982. Not exactly a watershed year in American history, but notable in that when I became sentient enough to be an actual music "consumer," a band called Pearl Jam released an earth-shaking breakthrough album Ten. Predictably, that record was enormously important to me as a kid. I'd like to say that’s because Ten expressed something profound about being roughly ten years old at the time it was released. But of course that would be complete nonsense. The reality is that I probably just really liked "Alive," had a lot of energy that could be expediently dispensed in shouting along to the chorus, and thought Eddie Vedder's voice was eminently cool. In retrospect, this actually occurs to me to be a much more authentic representation of the band's core appeal than anything most of its many, many veteran fans would sell you today.
In any case, the significance is that Pearl Jam is one of those few bands I can actually say I “grew up with.” I remembered that again last night, and when you realize a band is distinctly “of” a certain generation, the natural ensuing tendency is to think about what that band might symbolically represent about it—particularly if that generation is your generation. So I do. Somehow, though, Pearl Jam’s symbolic meaning always seems incredibly vague.
Soon-to-be heritage act Pearl Jam are firmly in the summer of their career, which is to say these days they tend to take the other three seasons off. Last year’s Eddie Vedder–penned soundtrack to Into the Wild was at least a soothing change of pace for a band whose so-called “golden baritone” blueprint has done more damage to modern rock than anything Ticketmaster ever devised. All credit to the dudes, however, for their choice of an opener. Fans have watched Ted Leo steadily earn his way into, and then utterly destroy, progressively bigger venues since his days in Chisel; now, 13 years later, punk rock’s last best hope finally gets his shot to play what is arguably the country’s biggest venue. Amen to that. — ZACH BARON.
7:30 p.m., $77. Madison Square Garden, Seventh Ave. & 32nd St., 212-465-6741, thegarden.com. Tickets available here, THROUGH TICKETMASTER!
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