Lineup for All Points West Shaping Up Quite Nicely

Beastie Boys.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Tool.
My Bloody Valentine.
Q Tip.
Some band called Coldplay.

Works for me. All the info is up at the All Points West website - including extended lineup listing.
Okay, I’ll go. I’ll go but on the condition that we stop at a few colleges on the way so my mom thinks I’m out scouting for my future, then we can go to a frat party where Snoop will probably do a surprise performance. Also, if we go off road at some point, don’t talk to the locals cause it’s a trick! Hey look, a big girl is flashing us!

MERCH WAR - IT’S ON.

Attention Record Labels: I would like to cordially invite you stand up to these accusations.
PLEASE, be my guest. By all means, defend the 360 and tell us what you really do for the bands in return.

I dare you.

From, MerchWar - and in full support from d2t:

Open Letter To The Record Companies – Why You Should Leave The Merchandising Industry

1. Merchandising is not the music business, it’s the apparel business. Besides, no matter how much the lop label executives try, they will not be able to swallow their pride enough to embrace a business they would have rather pissed on 10 years ago. And to those conglomerates who owned themselves a Giant, Winterland, or Niceman back in the day - that doesn’t count towards the new paradigm.

2. You have less leverage than you think because you are increasingly becoming unnecessary. Very soon, even a monkey will be able to effectively distribute music online. So why would a band trade an additional 359.5 “degrees” of themselves in exchange for a record deal? Besides, the real merchandise companies have always been happy to cover a bands short term cash needs with less exploitive terms.

3. If I could be a fly on the wall and watch a major label merchandise strategy meeting, my guess is that it resembles a 12 year old dousing an anthill with gasoline and lighting it on fire.

4. Labels: Do you really think that your best case fractional ownership of the merchandise market will come close to equalizing your loss in music revenue?

5. The real merchandise companies will push back and win. They have the tools, the drive, and quite frankly much more experience in many aspects of the industry. Maybe some of you will be lucky and they will hire you to administer their publishing companies.

What I found bizarre, was that one of the first actual comments about this was from… someone defending the labels. What are the odds some “kid” would read the above statements and take your side? Amazing.

Dumb Says:
March 26th, 2009 at 9:05 am
This is a dumb argument. Record companies are much more important and relevant to any artist than any merchandising company. Merchandising companies don’t pay to record/release an album or to publicize and market the artist (aka “the brand”). If a record company is willing to pay for the merch, pay for the design, store the merch and sell the merch, along with provide funding to actually make people know who the artist is so people then BUY the merch, then they have every right to make some money off of all the work they just did to make the consumer buy that merch. Without their initial investment (risky investment) into the artist, noone would care enough about or know who that artist is to want to even buy the t-shirt. I definitely think some record companies aren’t very smart and try to merchandise artists that maybe don’t require merchandising, but they’re pissing away their own money. All in all, if a record company is willing to do the work to make the artist known and to handle their merchandising, then they deserve payment for their work. If this puts merch companies out of business, then oh well.

Heaven help you poor schmucks if this is who you’re expecting to support your dying industry in the future. My comment is awaiting moderation as of this moment, but I’d say it’s a little more reflective of how us silly band types feel.

Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? I’ll take a Grande Coffee, no room for cream.

p.s. Visit despair.com - maybe you can pick out a gift for your favorite record executive.

Santigold (Not Sant-O-gold!) Tour Dates

Unless you’re more into infomercials, fat wrestlers and bowl cuts than you are halfway decent music, be sure that when you go to see “Santogold,” you’re actually seeing Santigold and not Santo Gold. Got it?

antiMusic.com says:

Santigold will take her endless dance party across the US one more time this spring before heading back into the studio to record the follow up to her self-titled debut.
Santigold will be performing with a full band and dancers for the first time in North America to bring her genre-blending sound to life.

Virgin Records artist Trouble Andrew, who can be heard on the Santigold track “I’m A Lady,” along with Downtown Records’ singer/mc Amanda Blank will be the openers.

May
21 San Francisco, CA The Warfield
22 Sacramento, CA Empire
24 Eugene, OR Cuthbert Amphitheatre
25 George, WA Sasquatch! Festival
28 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
29 Des Moines, IA Peoples Court
31 Baltimore, MD Rams Head Live

June
1 Boston, MA House Of Blues
3 Toronto, ON Phoenix Concert Theatre
4 Montreal, QC Metropolis
6 Philadelphia, PA The Roots Picnic @ Festival Pier
7 Norfolk, VA The NorVa
9 New York, NY Terminal 5
10 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
12 Manchester, TN Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival
13 St. Louis, MO Barcardi B Live @ The Pageant
15 Austin, TX Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater
17 Houston, TX House Of Blues
18 Dallas, TX House Of Blues
21 Hollywood, CA Hollywood Bowl / KCRW World Festival Serie

In Other News: GIT YOU SOME!

Rock Band Sells $1 Billion In Music. 1. Billion.

So, wonder where all the bands have gone? Where are the new revolutionaries of music when we need them most? I’ll tell you: They’re at home, in front of a bitchin’ flat screen, playing karaoke.

The good thing about this? Sure, we may be missing out on the next Hendrix, but think of all the shitty bands we’re avoiding!

TechRadar reports:

MTV Games and Harmonix have turned the volume up to 11, shifting over $1 billion (£700 million) worth of games and downloads in North America in just 15 months, according to data from NPD Group.

In addition, over 40 million songs have been paid for in downloads to the RockBand platform, surpassing arch-rival Guitar Hero.

The franchise has 614 songs offered via the Rock Band platform, both on-disc and the in-game music store, from 269 different artists and bands.

Meanwhile, this kid is unimpressed:

Emo is… Scary?

Well, I’ve had this story from PunkNews in the can for a couple days but figured I’d just get on with it:

According to a recent Guardian report, the fourth scariest word for parents right now is “emo.” The word is among the ten most common words that parents are blocking their children from searching for. Other words include “suicide” and “depressed” and “skinny.”

The source of the paranoia about the otherwise innocuous word likely stems from media coverage of a recent suicide and similar incidents.



As Punknews.org has mentioned before, we urge
people facing depression or suicidal thoughts to consider calling 1-800-SUICIDE where they can speak to a counselor. Prevent children from searching for words like “depression” and “suicide” does absolutely nothing to prevent tragic incidents from occuring.

No kidding.
This is just… pathetic, really.
Dear Parents: Time to watch some of those old John Hughes movies so you can remember what it was like… and what you swore you’d never do.

Agnostic Front announces new drummer

Punknews is reporting that Agnostic Front has announced the addition of drummer Pokey Mo. Mo is formerly of hardcore/metal act Leeway. AF frontman Roger Miret commented:

The band is extremely happy to welcome Pokey to the fold. He’s a pro and we look forward to having him as a part of the band.

Couldn’t find a very clear pic of Pokey Mo, but chances are that if he’s joining this band…

… he probably got the name “Pokey” after he stabbed your mom with a shank carved from the broken shard of a feral dog’s jawbone.

The band will be touring with Ruiner in April.

Countdown - Hannah Montana: The Movie

Yes, a countdown was necessary for this. There is no hope.
And you people ask what’s wrong with the music biz. HOW DARE YOU.
Summary

In anticipation of the upcoming theatrical release of Walt Disney Pictures’ feature film “Hannah Montana The Movie,” Radio Disney AM 990 Miami will host a countdown to “Hannah Montana The Movie” on SATURDAY, MARCH 21 (1:00 – 3:00 p.m.) at The Promenade at Coconut Creek. Radio Disney’s Road Crew will entertain the crowd with sing-alongs, interactive games and prizes. The station will also sponsor a national sweepstakes where kids can enter to win the National Grand Prize, a 4 day/3 night trip for four to Los Angeles, California to attend the Red Carpet Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures’ “Hannah Montana The Movie.”

Pitchengine… or Machine of the Apocalypse?

Radiohead, Billy Bragg critical of YouTube royalties

PunkNews’ recent article on Radiohead and Billy Bragg should serve as a pre-earthquake tremble to the Record industry:

Radiohead, Billy Bragg and others have come out strongly against the relationship between their record labels and video streaming super-site YouTube. According to this cnet report. Billy Bragg noted:

Google, YouTube’s owner, is a company that makes billions in profits,We think they should be paying artist royalties from the advertising revenue they make. A dispute like this illustrates the needs for the creation of the Featured Artists Coalition, so we have a voice and the public understand that sites like Google should be paying for music.

YouTube responded with this statement:

We absolutely agree that artists and writers should be paid from the advertising revenue earned from their content on YouTube. That is precisely what we are offering the PRS.

Much of the controversy in the UK stems from a failure of the PRS (”Performance Rights Society”) reaching an aggreement with YouTube. As a result, music video content was recently yanked from the UK version of YouTube.

There is too much happening here to be ignored - and if things take a turn the artists way, more changes could immediately follow. This could climax with a nice little collision between the Monopoly Men, Google/YouTube and the artists actually providing the content that all these middle management types rely so heavily on.
FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! Is it too good to be true?

Depeche Mode Announce US Tour Dates

From the “Old Dudes That Will Always Be Cooler Than You and Your Dumb Friends” Department:

Depeche Mode is touring the universe.
The dates are as follows - and these are just for North America.
I’m not rich or on the Galactic Amazing Race so you can go look for the international stuff, I’m over it.

Depeche Mode - 2009 Tour Dates
July 24 - Toronto, Ontario - Molson Amphitheatre
July 25 - Montreal, Quebec - Bell Centre
July 28 - Bristow, VA - Nissan Pavilion At Stone Ridge
July 31 - Mansfield, MA - Comcast Center
Aug 1 - Atlantic City, NJ - Borgata Hotel, Casino & Spa Event Center
Aug 3 - New York, NY - Madison Square Garden
Aug 10 - Seattle, WA - KeyArena At Seattle Center
Aug 12 - Mountain View, CA - Shoreline Amphitheatre
Aug 14 - Chula Vista, CA - Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
Aug 16 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl
Aug 17 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl
Aug 20 - Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara Bowl
Aug 22 - Las Vegas, NV - Pearl Concert Theater
Aug 23 - Phoenix, AZ - US Airways Center
Aug 25 - West Valley City, UT - E Center
Aug 27 - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Aug 29 - Dallas, TX - Superpages.com Center
Aug 30 - The Woodlands, TX - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Sept 1 - Atlanta, GA - Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sept 4 - Tampa, FL - Ford Amphitheatre at State Fairgrounds
Sept 5 - Sunrise, FL - BankAtlantic Center

I took those dates from Brooklyn Vegan - the initial story is from Filter, but they don’t need any more coverage - they’re already awesome enough.

Because Touring Was Too Easy, Y’Know?

One of these days, Punknews is gonna have some good news. GEEZ.

The Chicago event promoter ordinance, first reported back in May, is currently before City Council’s License and Consumer Protection Committee. While there have been changes made to the original ordinance, the current version of the legislation would still require promoters to obtain $300,000 in liability insurance on top of paying fees ranging from $500 to $2,000.

Promoters are still worried the current ordinance would significantly affect business and DIY shows would become all but impossible.

To read the new version of the bill, along with explanations (prepared by the City of Chicago) on the changes made, go here.

Any word there on whether or not the City of Chicago will at least balance this with providing a bathroom stocked with toilet paper and free of vomit, shoe-soaking urine and bad graffiti? I mean, it’s no way to treat a guest, jus’ sayin’.