The Foo Fighters are gearing up for an acoustic tour, which will include a violinist, a pianist and a percussionist and will start rehearsing as soon as drummer Taylor Hawkins returns from his tour with side project The Coattail Riders.
The plan is to tour the In Your Honour album and dates will be announced in the future. This comes after the group announced they are to play Hyde Park and Cricket’s Old Trafford, as well as the Isle Of Wight festival.
Check out www.foofighters.com for all news.
Well, they did it. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo’s Gnarls Barkley have made music history by becoming the first single to go to number one in the charts through download sales only. Crazy knocked Ne-Yo off the top spot and kept Morrissey away from the challenge by selling over 30,000 downloads.
Big ups to the duo, making history AND keeping shitty pop away from the top. Can’t say much fairer than that.
Meanwhile, Danger Mouse is going to keep himself busy by helping produce the new album for The Rapture, following their well receieved debut album Echoes.
*DISCLAIMER: This conversation was allegedly held between two fictional industry types on Crossfire crosswires…*
– “Hey! Have you heard?? Koston quit Es!”
– “Of course I have! The 40 + forums geeks on the company payroll have been keeping tabs on this hot potato for several months now!”
– “He rode for them for over 10 years… I wonder what happened?”
– “Well, we’re about to leak a love triangle gone wrong on the net tonight, seeing how homophia always rocks the boat…”
– “I don’t think so! I prefer the money pitch- How about Green Flash getting bumped by Pony with a $2 million contract?”
– ” Make it $3 million!”
– “No- $5 million and a season ticket for the Lakers!”
– “Sweet. Kids love the money nowadays…”
Sorry, we lost it. In any case, Eric Koston is a free agent and probably the best skater in the world – a combination that sets the stakes pretty high. Good luck dude, 10 years spent giving all for a fantastic shoe company and vice versa has got to be applauded, new kids on the block take note….
Read Eric’s Crossfire interview from last summer’s Urban Games here.
If you have been skating for more than 2 years you will be bound to know that Circa shoes have lost a lot of their top riders to companies such as Fallen, Osiris and the mighty Globe. This may have damaged their previous reputation of having one of the strongest shoe teams in the business but they still manage to make some kick ass shoes.
The pair I got, Circa Cx205’s (brown and white in colour) had many functions such as a ‘C1 Reflex cushion’ attached to the innersole, a rubber toe cap, a removable strap and is made from a 100% synthetic leather upper for all the vegans out there.
I got these shoes in the middle of the summer and seeing as I was skating hard every day, and these shoes lasted me six to eight weeks, I was well impressed. They felt pretty stiff at first but after a day or two of wearing them in they felt like a dream. They were particularly good to Ollie in and were great at absorbing the shock from big drops.
These shoes really are one of Circa’s finest moments.
Chris Arundel
Make sure you check out www.circafootwear.com for all the trimmings.
Whether or not you are aware of this small UK outfit – Science Skateboards– you should be. Click your nimble fingers over to www.barelyoriginal.co.uk , an online magazine, and check out as the boss Chris Morgan explains his operation.
Basically Science is a platform for artists to get their work out there via 7 plys of fine maple wood. Chris also informed us that Science is working on audio and visual projects for the near future.
For more info visit www.scnc.co.uk
Poor old Greg Lutzka had his wisdom teeth out last friday and even though the doctors said he would be ok in time to go to Europe his head is still the size of a balloon and he has been told he cannot fly until the swelling has gone down, whjch means he won’t come for the Euro Tour.
Luckily, with the help of Chris Robinson, Globe team manager US, we can confirm that Paul Machnau will be taking his place for the whole tour !
Get ready to see the biggest rails destroyed!
www.theworksskatepark.co.uk and click the banner for all the Globe news.
White Rose Movement have hot footed it from SxSW in order to join up with Placebo as the support for the latter’s upcoming UK Tour. White Rose Movement have recently supported The Strokes, played on tour with The Rakes and been on their headline tour and have been earning a reputation for being a hard working and exciting new act.
Their new album Kick is due for release on the 17th of April with the band’s new single Girls In The Back released on Monday.
The April tour dates are:
3rd – Leicester : Princess Charlotte : Headline show
4th – Liverpool : Korova
5th – Blackpool : Empress Ball Room : With Placebo
6th – Glasgow : Academy : With Placebo
8th – Newcastle : Carling Academy : With Placebo
9th – Birmingham : The Academy : With Placebo
10th – Leeds : The Cockpit : Headline Show
11th – London : Alexandra Palace : With Placebo
13th – London : Insomniacs Ball: SeOne
15th – Dublin : Temple Bar Music Centre : Headline Show
Check out www.whiterosemovement.co.uk for more
Kids In Tracksuits, who have been championed by Kris Drew over in The Mix, are set to hit the road to bring their unique brand of hip hop madness to the whole country, culminating with a massive spot supporting Big Daddy Kane. Make sure you check them out if you can, as they are one of the mostly original and exciting groups in the UK.
The tour dates are:
Bristol – E-Shed – 14th April
London – Cargo w/ Lazy Habits – 20th April
Nottingham – Rescue Rooms – 21st April
Glasgow – 13th Note Cafe – 26th April
Dundee – Felt @ The Reading Rooms – 27th April
Birmingham – Drop Beats Not Bombs @ the Factory – 29th April
Nottingham – Detonate @ Rock City w/ Big Daddy Kane – 30th April
Check them out at: www.myspace.com/kidsintracksuits2
The best American hip hop journalism of the last 25 years
Edited by Raquel Cepeda
Faber & Faber
This book is one which stands out amongst the masses of hip hop history books for one simple reason: It takes articles written at the times when specific events happened. Where one book would look back on an event and be able to write with hindsight which would shape the opinion and narrative, this book simply uses the exact articles written at the time, giving you a perfect idea of how hip hop was viewed within certain periods.
The opening part of the book looks at the early days of the movement, and its interesting to see how people saw the future of hip hop, whether it was just a phase or whether it had some long lasting appeal. It seems, looking back on what the journalists thought at the time, that no-one could ever have imagined just how much impact hip hop would have on the music world and beyond. The stories make for great reading to see how the early pioneers went about their business, especially the stories of the Rock Steady Crew going to Paris with various rappers, DJs and graf writers and how they were viewed by the European crowds.
The middle part of the book looks at the rise of rap in the 90s and features articles written with Tupac and Biggie before their untimely deaths and provide a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the two rappers, how they viewed the world, where they came from and what impact they had at the time they were alive.
And finally the book ends up in the current decade, with an obituary on Jam Master Jay being the particular article that stands out as we can look back now, over 20 years on from the start of hip hop and see what he helped achieve for the music which has grown from a small start in the Bronx to an all encompassing lifestyle and which Jam Master Jay was a catalyst for.
Being able to read the thoughts of the journalists at the time enables the reader to get a mindset of the time, giving them the opportunity to imagine just how big a change the emergence of hip hop was and allowing the mind to wander into the psyche of the major players of each era that hip hop has passed through. A brilliant read with some excellent choices of articles.
Courtney Love, former wife of the late Kurt Cobain, has sold 25% of Nirvana’s publishing catalogue to Larry Mestel, who is involved with Primary Wave Music Publishing.
She claimed that she couldn’t have all of the publishing catalogue because it was getting too much and so she sold the share to Mestel to help take the songs “into the future and into the next generation”.
Early meetings with Bono came to nothing, and not Love and her new partner must decide how they take the catalogue to “places its never been before”.