Lou Barlow will commemorate the 15th anniversary of Emoh with a reissue, slated for July 31st via Merge Records. The solo album — which the Dinosaur Jr. bassist and Sebadoh frontman released in January 2005 — will be released as a double LP with eight demos. The vinyl marks the …
Read More »Katy Perry, Black Eyed Peas to Headline Rock the Vote Livestream
Katy Perry and the Black Eyed Peas are set to headline Rock the Vote’s first event of its Democracy Summer campaign for 2020: a two-hour virtual concert taking place on Thursday, June 18th beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET, on democracysummer.org and Democracy Summer’s Facebook and YouTube pages. Co-hosted by Logan …
Read More »Useful Idiots: Shahid Buttar on Police Reform, Kente Cloth, Running Against Nancy Pelosi
In this week’s quarantine episode of ourUseful Idiotspodcast,Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined once again by Shahid Buttar, the San Francisco attorney and community organizer who is running against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Our hosts break down Congressional Democrats kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while wearing African …
Read More »'The First Time' With Actor Rob Huebel
Rob Huebel may be an actor-comedian, but his role on HBO’s I Know This Much Is True — in which he plays Mark Ruffalo’s best friend Leo — is pretty serious. “It’s not funny at all,” he notes in the latest installment of “The First Time.” “It is so awesome …
Read More »The Grammys' New Rules Confirm Anyone Can Be a 'Best New Artist'
In 2017, when Chance the Rapper walked triumphantly onto the stage at the Grammys to accept his award as that year’s Best New Artist, he was wearing a tab baseball cap emblazoned with the number “3” — a reference to how many full-length projects he’d released. Last year, Lizzo was …
Read More »Drake Returns to Number One on Artists 500 Chart
Drake is back on top of the Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart for the week of May 29th through June 4th. Last week, Gunna took Number One, but Toronto’s very own bounced back this week with 123.7 million total song streams. That tally was bolstered primarily by Drake’s latest single, …
Read More »The Last Word: Judas Priest's Rob Halford on the Joys of Leather and 40 Years of 'Breaking the Law'
“There was a time when ‘heavy metal’ was a dirty word,” Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford says. “But we have always said that we fly the flag of British heavy metal. It’s something that we’re extremely proud of. We take it seriously.” For nearly half a century, Halford has been …
Read More »Sweet Bassist Steve Priest Dead at 72
Steve Priest, founding bassist and singer for “Ballroom Blitz” glam rock band Sweet, died Thursday at the age of 72. Priest’s family confirmed his death on social media Thursday. No cause of death was revealed, but guitarist Andy Scott — the last surviving member of the band’s classic lineup — …
Read More »New Protest Anthems: Songs of the Uprising for George Floyd
In the wake of George Floyd‘s killing by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25th, streaming numbers for protest songs have soared. Vintage tracks like N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” that specifically call out police violence serve as a reminder that our current national crisis is nothing new. As Black Lives …
Read More »Eagles' Don Henley Calls on Congress to Bolster Online Copyright Laws
The Eagles‘ Don Henley urged Congress to strengthen anti-piracy rules online while testifying virtually before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. The hearing was held to mull possible changes to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Henley spoke specifically on the need to update the DMCA’s …
Read More »