Your day-before-Warped update on a muggy Saturday evening.
We have a double-barreled edition of Essential Listening for today, August 11th.
Keane, hailing from England, are as close to perfect piano pop/rock as it gets, led by a vocalist who is simply superb. If you get HDNet on your telly, keep an eye out for a live concert, filmed in high-def, at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom - it is truly something.
The other half of today's EL is none other than - coincidence? - Warped veterans Face to Face, whose best-of Shoot the Moon is jammed with 21 cuts from all the albums, including a handful of live songs. A great listen.
A pretty good prank pulled by some folks in my line of work: a radio station in Moncton, New Brunswick honoured the opening of The Simpsons movie by re-imaging themselves - entirely - as KBBL Springfield, the fictional radio station in the TV series. Station IDs, jingles, promotions, logo - everything was changed. That's ambitious. Well played. [MMU]
The record drops Tuesday, but Mae have put it up online anyway: check out their entire new album Singularity over here. Stellar. [punkbands]
We'd link to it on Youtube if ESPN hadn't removed it over legalities - but did anyone not see the skater(one Jake Brown by name) fall forty feet from the sky last week at the X Games? Both shoes were blown off this guy, so hard he landed in the base of the halfpipe. How he walked away no one knows. If you haven't seen it, find it.
Missed this a while ago - Offspring drummer Atom Willard(Rocket From the Crypt) has left the band to devote his full energies to Angels & Airwaves. Pete Parada is the new guy - wasn't that the dude from Face to Face, whom we were speaking of a few minutes ago?? How 'bout that.
Switchfoot have severed ties with their longtime label, Columbia Records(Sony). Singer Jon Foreman wrote in his blog, "We are thankful for the incredible success that our partnership has produced over the years; yet within this ever-changing business there can arise differences in vision and goals. These differences have now come to a point where we feel like parting ways would be best for us, and best for Sony." A ton of new projects are in the works, first and foremost a new album from the band in 2008. [CMcentral]
Posted by mike at August 11, 2007 10:35 PM