CBGB’s is moving to Las Vegas. Sigh.

And someone’s gone and made a Warcraft video for it. We present: Jonathan Coulton‘s re: Your Brains over on YouTube.

Syd Barrett, originally the primary songwriter in Pink Floyd and subject of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” has died. He was 60.

There’s a sizeable portion of the population that listens to the music they listen to because it’s there and they don’t know any better — a reality that actually predicates the existence of mainstream music. Here’s what I mean: nobody thinks long and hard about music and what it means to them and then ultimately decides to listen to Toby Keith. (Emph. added.)

More here.

Tom Waits to tour.

Van Halen, in Rio, playing a ZZ Top Cover. Courtesy of Mad.

This one time in the Seventies, Stevie Wonder did a completely scorching version of “Superstition” on Sesame Street. It’s nearly 7 minutes long. He stuck around for his own version of the theme, which is similarly awesome. All hail YouTube.

(This reminds us of this skit, too. Enjoy.)

This is fun: our brother’s brother in law was on TV last night.

It’s our bet that when that sentence is usually uttered, it refers to an unfortunate cameo shirtless, in a gimmee hat, as a victim on COPS. Not so this time: the show was Conan, and the occasion was an appearance by the band Strays Don’t Sleep (they also have MySpace, natch).

The Jackson Office’s wife’s brother is Neilson Hubbard, who sings and plays keys wih this outfit. It’s a grownup band, not some bubblegum pop thing, and we’ve been enjoying the CD for several months. For some reason it was released in the U.K. first, but it finally dropped here on 6/13. Take a listen at their site; you might like it.

Pitchfork lists 100 videos they think are cool.

It is no longer necessary to do stoned rock band interviews, as the gold standard was set sometime in the early 90s by Nirvana. Enjoy.

Screenhead points us to Blondie’s Heart of Glass video, which made us feel very funny when we were 10. As Screenhead’s editors put it: “What’s important here, is that we’d all still eat a pregnant tarantula for the chance to lick one of Deborah Harry’s footprints.”

By the way, it appears the linked site, Sugarjar, includes a metric shit-ton of music videos. Enjoy. (Also, note how insanely young the introducing guest host is just before their clip of David Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World from SNL.)

Pete Townshend explains why Won’t Get Fooled Again isn’t conservative or, really, political at all.

Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, the new record by Neko Case, who is also hot.

The new Dixie Chicks record debuted at number 1 despite spotty radio play and lingering ill from folks irritated by the implications of Voltaire’s maxim.

The TimesOnline has an open letter to Paul McCartney from, well, the guy whom Heather dumped to marry Paul. Hi-larious.

The cartoonist Tom Tomorrow (of This Modern World) had a visit this week from his friend Eddie.

The Raconteurs, featuring Jack White. Check out the tracks, too.

“Best Radiohead Cover Ever” over at Joey’s. (Here’s a local copy of the MP3, just to share the bandwidth burden.)

Amusingly, this is a wholly separate effort from the pending all-dub “OK Computer” cover album being assembled by the same folks who gave us Dub Side of the Moon.

Warner Music bought Rykodisc.

Buck Owens, 1929 – 2006. There was a hell of a lot more to Buck Owens than Hee Haw. SAAAH-lute!

They’re really showing that the giveaway model can work. Now, if only the RIAA was listening…

They don’t want to grant exceptions to DRM measures even when critical infrastructure or even lives are at stake. No, we’re not making this up; Prof. Felton actually filed a request for such an exemption, and the RIAA, etc., specifically opposed it.

Seriously: buy no DRM music. Ever. We don’t.

Agent Triple-FFF and his Ace Sidekick Boogielips have blessed HeathenHouse with some damned fine Miles Davis for our birthday, and it just plain smokes. Some fool’s been sitting on this stuff for 30 years.

Of course, it being 1970-era “Live-Evil” Miles, it’s probably best that Mrs Heathen is out of town this weekend. Chicks don’t dig on the fusion Miles so much.

Still: SMOKES. Smokes. Smokes. This band includes his “young turks” — John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Michael Henderson on bass, Glen Bartz on sax, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Airto Moreira on percussion. It’s six disks of live goodness from the Celler Door, in Washington DC, from December of 1970. As our friend Cary is fond of quoting, it’s worthy of a full-on Ted Baxter “TOP NOTCH” bellow.

(Of course, if you don’t dig electric Miles and all his trumpet-through-a-wah-wah glory, you can also use it to clear rooms.)

One of the top songs at the iTunes Music Store is “I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper)”. All spelling choices in the original text, natch.

In February, Prince played with Sheila E, Wendy, Lisa, and Tamar at the Brit awards, and brought the motherfucking house down. Four songs, twelve minutes.

The Pogues are touring.

Ten Memorable SNL Musical Moments, though we’d probably pick the recent Prince performance over the Replacements they have at #5. They don’t quite capture how awesome the 2004 U2 set was, however — it’s still on the HeathenTivo.

In the dark days of 1981, Tom Waits did a dog food commercial. We are not kidding. (More background here.)

Zombie Alert! Zombie Alert!

Oh, wait, that’s Eddie Van Halen. Nevermind.

(Yeah, yeah, yeah, we kid. We know he’s had a hip replacement, cancer, and a divorce. It’s still a hilariously bad picture.)

Forty-odd years ago, The Rolling Stones made a Rice Krispies commercial.

Prince remains teh awesome, even when relegated to backing duties as “just” a guitar player for protege Tamar’s last-minute Houston gig on Friday night.

Said gig started at midnight, which is late enough that we took post-work naps to better prepare. We are: old.

Prince’s awesomeness is in no way reducted by the unmitigated halfassery of the venue. They were clearly wholly unprepared for the crowd — which was only about capacity; it wasn’t super-crowded — and had the world’s worst will-call scenario despite knowing in advance that virtually everyone going to the show would be doing will-call. We’ve been in Soviet hotels with better efficiency ratings. A significant number of people were STILL IN THE WILL CALL LINE when the music started, and they’d been there over an hour.

Said venue also manage to have, near as we could tell, only two bartenders. There may have been another bar somewhere, but we can’t be sure. We CAN be sure that the ones we saw were absolutely swamped and wholly insufficient to the crowd gathered ten deep around their bar.

We can’t decide if our favorite part was the “Purple Rain” encore or the moment, early in the show, when Prince dropped the mike and name-checked Sexual Chocolate.

Really.

Check this out, and stick with it. The dude has got no mercy. Seriously. (Local copy, in case that one goes away someday.)

Van Halen will follow INXS and pick their new singer with a TV show. At least Screehead leaves us with some choice samples from their heyday — TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO.

Now they’re claiming that you only get to copy music to your iPod because they let you, as a favor, and not because doing so is protected Fair Use.

What jackasses. It gets better, as said RIAA actually admitted that iPod copying was legal in their own filings in MGM v. Grokster, so this pronouncement is a bit of a reversal. Once again, guys, your failed business model is not our problem.

At George Harrison’s 2004 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Prince stopped by to help out. We suspect this popped up on MeFi because someone saw him kick ass on SNL and remembered “oh yeah — that little dude’s a badass guitar player, too!”

If he comes anywhere near you on tour, pay whatever it costs to see him. Hock something if you have to. Eat ramen for a week or a month if that’s what it takes, but see him. Up close. We saw him in 2004, and it was, bar none, the best damn rock and roll show we’ve EVER seen.

If we are ever 62-year-old rock icons, we won’t wear midriff-baring t-shirts no matter how fit we are.

Anyone with a brain knows that most musicians don’t make it big. They play all sorts of gigs they don’t like, or that pay poorly, because they love to play. They frequently work in cover bands to fund the time spent on their own music. It is therefore not surprising that any musician whose name you know probably did this, too. It is furthermore unsurprising that, once a given musician reaches a certain level of fame, evidence of these previous musical endeavors becomes much more interesting. And the Internet, of course, makes it much, much easier to distribute these examples of juvenilia.

So, via Mefi, we point you to video of Trent Reznor’s 80s cover band doing “Eyes Without a Face”. Given the quality and song choices (not to mention Trent’s baby face), we figure this dates from his late teens or early 20s at the latest. (There’s also a Joe Jackson cover. We shit you not.)

(As “Rebel Yell” was released in 1983, which Wikipedia says was Reznor’s senior year, it looks like the time frame works.)

There is apparently a chance that chance that Sly Stone will perform at the Grammys.

Um: Holy Crap! (Via MeFi; above link is local PDF because the Post sucks.)

Prof. Felton points out that some new legislation being proposed in Congress to close the so-called “analog hole” for Hollywood and the RIAA includes provisions that are secret, and which can only be reviewed if you pay $10K and agree not to disclose what you find. In other words, the MPAA/RIAA are proposing secret laws. Um, NO. Prof. Felton:

The details of this technology are important for evaluating this bill. How much would the proposed law increase the cost of televisions? How much would it limit the future development of TV technology? How likely is the technology to mistakenly block authorized copying? How adaptable is the technology to the future? All of these questions are important in debating the bill. And none of them can be answered if the technology part of the bill is secret. Which brings us to the most interesting question of all: Are the members of Congress themselves, and their staffers, allowed to see the spec and talk about it openly? Are they allowed to consult experts for advice? Or are the full contents of this bill secret even from the lawmakers who are considering it?

Wilson Picket is dead at 64.

Groklaw has a great and brief bit on the implications and dangers of a DRM-friendly world. Go. Read.

So, Wired Magazine had this list in its December issue of “Online Fan Clubs That Rock.” It included NIN, Kelly Clarkson, Wayne Newton (!) . . . . and the Nelly i-Squad I helped build in 2003 with this guy.

That it’s possible to download “Los Angeles” by X as a ringtone from Cingular.

“Neutral Milk Hotel sounds like several punk rockers and a Bulgarian wedding band trapped in an elevator, screaming.“

The Medicine Show are awesome, and you should go see them. Mondays at Helios.

BoingBoing and Pandagon both have coverage of the following insert in the new Coldplay CD:

Of course, these rules are only visible after you’ve paid for the CD and brought it home, and as the disc’s rules say, “Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept product exchange, return or refund,” so if you don’t like the rules, that’s tough. What are the other rules? Here are some gems: “This CD can’t be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3” and “This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs.” BoingBoing

We’ve no clue if they’ve broken the CD so it won’t play right or not; the copy we have at Heathen Central was purchased long ago, and we had no trouble ripping the tracks at all. Even if it’s just sabre rattling, though, a big “fuck you” to any buyer who wants to play it on an iPod, or any CD player they want, or some DVD players, or whatever. There’s got to be more to this, but that’s all we got for now.

JWZ points us to Information Society vs. VH1, a writeup by Kurt Harland Larson on what happened when the excreble “Band Reunion” people ambushede him and his former bandmates and tried to browbeat them into doing the show. For free. As it happens, the VH-1 people are pretty much grade-A pricks.