(thespian/rocker while playing the part of John Lennon’s assassin a typical independent label executive, and on the right, after hunger strike to protest non-payment of royalties)

If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren’t they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn’t a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records? Or, at the very least, break even? We think so. – Jared Leto, 30 Seconds To Mars.

Harsh stuff, indeed, however Leto fails to disclose in his response to Virgin/EMI’s $30 million suit against his band precisely how much 30 Seconds To Mars were advanced against royalties.  It does seem rather fucked that a record company couldn’t turn a profit on two million sales. However, it’s entirely possible that enough dough was dropped signing the band, recording their horrible records and promoting & marketing said recordings , that EMI did in fact, lose money on the deal.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean Leto and pals aren’t owed anything, either. But if he’s unwilling to specify which portion of EMI/Virgin’s spending on his behalf was recoupable and which wasn’t, this is just a dopey exercise in posturing. But I remain hopeful 30 Seconds To Mars can resume their career with an artist-friendly label, one that unlike the revolving chair scenario at publicly held EMI, has had the same visionary leadership in place since the label’s inception.

If Tony Victory would like to pay me a finder’s fee, I’ll gladly donate it to charity.

(one big mass suicide waiting to go down)

….and every musical subgenre you can think of. From the Sydney Morning Herald’s Kate Benson :

A study, published in today’s Australasian Psychiatry Journal, found that teens who listen to pop music are more likely to be struggling with their sexuality, those tuning in to rap or heavy metal could be having unprotected sex and drink-driving, and those who favour jazz are usually misfits and loners, prompting a call for doctors to include musical tastes as a diagnostic indicator in mental health assessments.

“There is no evidence to suggest that the type of music you listen to will cause you to commit suicide, but those who are vulnerable and at risk of committing suicide may be listening to certain types of music,” the author of the study, Felicity Baker, said yesterday.

She said an Australian study of year 10 students had shown significant associations between heavy metal music and suicide ideation, depression, delinquency and drug-taking, while an American study had also shown that young adults who regularly listened to heavy metal had a higher preoccupation with suicide and higher levels of depression than their peers.

Deliberate self-harm and attempted suicide was also associated with teenagers who listened to trance, techno, heavy metal and medieval music as part of the goth subculture, while those who attended dance parties were much more likely than their peers to be taking drugs.

Some genres of rap music, such as French rap, were linked to more deviant behaviours including theft, violence and drug use, while teens listening to hip-hop were usually less troublesome, Dr Baker said.

The AJP’s study has no specific findings that relate to followers of the band Godsmack, though from our own considered research, they’re a bunch of nitwits.

If I had found it at the beginning of the set, I’m not sure I would have carried on. It was a banana skin, thrown at my feet as I played last weekend’s Download festival. On the outside, someone had written “Bizzle you black cunt”. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Being who I am, I’d probably do it again. I’m pretty sure my DJ wouldn’t though. We’re used to getting looks and things like that when we tour middle England, six black guys getting out of a van, you can see they’re looking at you and getting defensive. That can get frustrating, but you deal with it. This was different. Why did they have to bring my race into it? Lethal Bizzle, Guardian Music Blog, 6/20/08

With a flair for the aribtrary not seen since Ronald Thomas Clonte’s ‘Rock, Rot And Rule’ hit the bookstores, Paste‘s attempts to rank the nation’s top 17 record shoppes is bound to generate some cheap traffic to this blog and at least a half dozen comments between now and 5pm.

• Amoeba Records, Los Angeles, CA
• Criminal Records, Atlanta, GA
• Other Music, New York City
• Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art, Clarksdale, MS
• Waterloo Records, Austin, TX
• Aquarius Records, San Francisco, CA
• Dusty Groove America, Chicago, IL
• Ernest Tubb Record Shop, Nashville, TN
• Shangri-La Records, Memphis, TN
• Music Millennium, Portland, OR
• Ear X-Tacy, Louisville, KY
• Louisiana Music Factory, New Orleans, LA
• Newbury Comics, Boston, MA
• Grimey’s New + Pre-Loved Music, Nashville, TN
• Turntable Lab, New York City
• The Electric Fetus, Minneapolis, MN
• Jerry’s Records, Pittsburgh, PA

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I am personally saddened that my own favorite neighborhood dealer-of-things-at-high-volume failed to make the cut.   But enough about Empire Records, End Of An Ear oughta be pissed off, too.

Middle age has taught me that regardless of my current views on the state of print media, nobody wants to hear about the good old days reading Suburban Relapse and Sick Teen ’til 4am whilst surrounded by vomiting kitty-cats. Look, I already know that Rusty Clarke and Mission Of Burma excepted, most everything I used to love has completely gone to shit. Fortunately for the rest of you, however, former NME/current Guardian scribe Steven Wells (above) isn’t quite prepared to take the death of modern rock criticism lying down. “Once music journalism was the playground of punks, pirates, arse bandits, chancers, hardcore lesbian punk bondage freaks, revolutionaries, drug addicts and the borderline insane,” writes Wells in the current Philadelphia Weekly. Man, have you ever heard someone so romantic for the glory days of Alternative Press?

Three leading indie music magazines have bitten the dust since the beginning of the year. The spectacularly dull No Depression, the stunningly uninteresting Resonance and the jaw–droppingly mediocre Harp have all recently gone to that great Belle and Sebastian disco in the sky. All of which is great news for anybody who hates mediocrity.

Harp founder Scott Crawford was actually proud of how timid and unambitious and bland his baby was. He described Harp as ”a nice middle ground between the indie–centric Magnet and the dad–rockin’ Paste,” which is not so much a manifesto as a prenatal death rattle.

Full disclosure: I worked for Harp for a while. Publisher Glenn Sabin recently described the magazine as ”irreverent.” It wasn’t. It licked musician ass until its tongue bled. The line ”Joe Strummer must be laughing his rotting cock off,” was cut from a review I wrote of an embarrassingly necrophiliac Clash re–reissue box set because it was ”disrespectful.” And the editor who hired me—admittedly a rampaging punk rock lunatic—was told to clear his desk and vacate the building immediately.

Eventually the dullards reached a dull critical mass. They formed hundreds of dull, white, sexless and punchably smug suburban bands. And they started magazines with names like No Depression and Harp and Resonance and Corduroy. Yes there really is a magazine called Corduroy. One imagines they passed on Beige as too incendiary and Cardigan as just a shade too fucking exciting.

Why is Starbucks bringing its vagina dentata out of hiding and into plain sight right now? Maybe they were inspired by the hilarious and brilliant film Teeth. Maybe they hope consumers are more comfortable with exhibitionism than they used to be. Maybe they’re thinking sex sells.

But more likely, they’re frightened and in need of protection.

Images of women exposing their genitals were used by primitive peoples to drive away evil spirits, calm rough seas, and scare away enemies with the threat of castration. In the face of a recession, Starbucks is banking on the power of the vagina dentata to work its ancient magic and keep the wolf from their door. – Jeremiah Moss, Vanishing New York

There’s a Chock Full O’ Nuts joke in here somewhere, but it’s way too early on a Wednesday morning.

Our old pal Alan McGee once famously derided Coldplay as “music for bedwetters”. Thanks to a survey by my personal favorite econo-hut, we now have conclusive proof the band are in fact, “music for people who want to sleep really well”.  From Reuters :

Britons like a dose of music from the rock band Coldplay to help them fall asleep, a survey from hotel chain Travelodge found on Monday.

I’m sure the results of this study will provoke wild debate, so it’s important to keep in mind that not everyone got to hear the last Stills album.

While Q Magazine once described Céline Dion as a vocalist who”grinds out every note as if bearing some kind of grudge against the very notion of economy.,” The Calgary Herald’s Nick Lewis hopefully points out she’s won twice as many Oscars as Martin Scorsese. Hey, Marty never’s been a Eurovision contestant, either.

“Even though it’s in this post-modern, over-the-top way that can seem kind of synthetic, Céline Dion represents old fashioned values,” says Carl Wilson, author of Let’s Talk About Love, a book that examines why we love to hate Canada’s most popular musician.

“She represents loyalty and family and romance, and a lot of people around the world relate to that, and see her as articulating those emotions in a way that they feel they are not able.”

Wilson was no Dion fan when he took on the task of writing about one of Canada’s favourite singers, but says he now has a newfound respect for her and her craft.

“Part of what my book works through is the instant reaction of, ‘I would never listen to her,’” he says. “It’s one thing to say, ‘It’s not my thing,’ but it’s another to say, ‘I could never bring myself to.’ Then it sounds almost defensive or threatened. It takes on a ‘What does it mean if I do listen to her?’ aspect that could say something about you that you don’t want said.

“At that point it’s less about the music and what the music says about you.

“The implication is that people who listen to her are stupid or declassé, everything about it is that this person is a loser on some level.”

But where and why does this snobbery arise? Unlikely musicians such as Snoop Dogg and Timbaland have taken in her four-year Vegas gig, A New Day, and Prince reportedly went to see it a number of times. So why do self-professed “informed” people dislike her?

“A lot of it has to do with social position,” Wilson says. “She’s less likely to find sympathetic ears among university-educated, urban people, people who are most represented in Canadian media. And she’s more likely to find sympathetic ears among people who don’t necessarily have a stake in staying on the cutting edge, on seeming hip.”

WFMU’s Vanilla Bean’s Elvis Phone Sex (mp3), lifted from Ken Freedman and WFMU’s Beware Of The Blog. Most assuredly not safe for work. ESPECIALLY if you work at Graceland. 

Boing Boing.tv (sorry – I just took down the embedded clip due to a BMW ad) explores the rich world of corporate anthems. As opposed to, y’know, fight songs.  I don’t know what the guy from Jesus Jones is up to at the moment, but surely there’s a bank /health care provider / state lottery that needs his help writing a song?

Here are some extracts from Jonathan Franzen’s book ‘The Corrections” I dug out from my own copy;‘

Her musical tastes ran to John Prine and Etta James, and so Brian played Prine and James at home and saved his Bartok and Defunkt and Flaming Lips and Mission of Burma for blasting on his boom box at High Temp.‘ p.347

While Denise and Rob Zito were making hardware and lighting decisions at the Generator, Brian joined Schwartz and Ribisi et al. on location at soulful ruins in Nicetown, and swapped CDs with Schwartz from identical zippered CD carrying cases, and ate dinner at Pastis in New York with Schwartz and Greil Marcus or Stephen Malkmus.’ p.406

The mention of Mission of Burma reoccurs, albeit subtly but significantly, in Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Corrections’. Unfortunately due to copyright issues I could not reference specific passages here. However I hope it will encourage more people to read this fantastic book.

Exclaim’s Brock Thiessan reports “in recent weeks, a wave of emo bashings has swept across Mexico”.  To which I can only add, Matador Records Is Very Opposed To Hate Crimes, but if you must commit a hate crime…can’t you target Widespread Panic fans, instead?

According to Daniel Hernandez, who’s been covering the anti-emo riots on his blog Intersections, the violence began March 7, when an estimated 800 young people poured into the Mexican city of Queretaro’s main plaza “hunting” for emo kids to pummel. Then the following weekend similar violence occurred in Mexico City at the Glorieta de Insurgents, a central gathering space for emos. Hernandez also reports that several anti-emo riots have now also spread to various other Mexican cities. Via the Austin American Statesmen, several postings on Mexican social-networking sites, primarily organising spot for these “emo hunts,” have been dug up and translated. One states: “I HATE EMOS!!! They are not even people, they are so stupid, they cry over meaningless things… My school is infested with them, I want to kill them all!”

More recent reports state that the emos have begun to fight back against the other “urban tribes” and organised marches in Guadalajara and Mexico City, escalating the violence and leading to increased police presence. Also, some Mexican newspapers, such as El Porvenir, have called for government intervention to protect the emos, writing, “It’s the responsibility of the authorities to make sure the threats aren’t carried out and the aggressions are punished.”

Since the Matablog’s inception in the summer of 2006, there have been no shortage of items directly or indirectly related to Kiss.

Some of these entries were on the trivial side of things. And others were just downright retarded.

Every single one, however, was more interesting and dignified than this news report from New Zealand.

On the other hand, if Punky Meadows would like to challenge Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi at Coney Island next July, I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching.

…she’s made us feel pangs of deep sympathy for one of the nation’s least likable big box retailers.

Despite the snazzy Thurston Moore design, I’ve neglected to pick up my SXSW goody bag. No offense to the organizers or their lovely sponsors, but I’ve got enough stacks of CD’s I’m never gonna listen in my house already, thanks. But enough about my weekly care packages from 304 Hudson St. (hey, JUST KIDDING), the Chicago Sun-Times’ Diablo Cody-baiting Jim DeRogatis (who kindly, though incorrectly ID’d me as the guy who signed Naked Raygun — please, some long overdue credit for Sam Berger) reveals a rather peculiar inclusion in the 2008 bag o’ swag :

The most notable thing about this year’s bag, in addition to its skimpiness, is a green plastic toy soldier of the classic “kids’ army guys” variety, except this one is holding a guitar instead of a rifle, and he’s twisty-tied to a color card that identifies him as “Sgt. Solo,” brave representative of Armed Forces Entertainment. (Why they didn’t just go with “Sgt. Rock,” I’ll never know; maybe there were copyright issues.)

The blurb at the bottom of the card reads: “Plug in your weapon, turn up the power and fire away. Your limo is a Humvee and your ride is a Blackhawk. For over 50 years, America’s stars have earned their stripes by performing for our country’s greatest audience. Find out if you have what it takes to tour the world entertaining the troops with Armed Forces Entertainment.”

Yes, you read right: These are your tax dollars hard at work in a promotional effort to recruit rock bands to travel to Iraq and Afghanistan to entertain our troops. Mind you, if anyone deserves free entertainment, it’s the brave men and women making incredible sacrifices for their country overseas. But really, wouldn’t they be better served by the government spending that money on better benefits and health care, more useful gifts for a theater of war (like adequate armor on those Humvees) or, heaven knows, upping the diplomatic efforts to end these conflicts?

These are things worth mulling while visiting the group’s Web site, which features an even more bizarre piece of promotional artwork via the illustration of a doctored Sherman tank — the kind that won the “good war” of WWII — with an acoustic guitar replacing the turret and gun barrel and a swirl of paisleys beneath the treads, all under the banner “SXSW Music.”

(Curb, right, relieved that Blender has left him off the hook)

Blender’s just issued their “20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups of All Time” list, and while I’m grateful Matador escaped their wrath (amazingly, no mention of Johan Kugelberg’s departure or “Whitechocolatespaceegg”), I’m still not entirely satisfied with the selections on offer.

Sure, it’s hard to argue with a few of ‘em (ie. Berry Gordy selling Motown for a collection of blankets and beads, Geffen suing Neil Young for making records that stiffed) and there’s undoubtedly others that should’ve made the cut (Mike Curb dropping the Velvets, the Mothers Of Invention and Solger on the same day).  But I’m pretty sure there’s no way you can make a list of historic rock biz fuck ups without mentioning there was once a bidding war for a band called Spade Ghetto Destruction.

Unless there’s a new James Toback film waiting in the wings, we might not read a piece of film criticism this year as scathing as the review handed out to “10,000 B.C.” by the Baltimore Sun’s Michael Scragow :

10,000 B.C. may take place in the moviemakers’ fanciful vision of life 10,000 years before Christ, but after you see it, the “B.C.” seems to stand for “Before Cinema.” It’s as if all the digital tools of new millennial filmmaking fell into the hands of men who had less storytelling sense than a campfire bard or a cave painter.

The new holder of the White Spear, Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis), tries to squelch that tale, but can’t stop teen bullies from sneering at D’Leh as the son of a coward. I don’t think there’s ever been an epic with more unfortunate names for its heroes. Unless you’re enthralled by the sight of mammoth herds and fearsome prehistoric emus and a spear-toothed tiger that responds to human kindness, all given that real yet unreal CGI glow, you hear the clock Tic’Ticing in your head and pray for a conclusion without delay or D’Leh.

Sorry.  He meant the other Corey Hart.

The following is from the Niagra Gazzette’s Rick Pfeiffer.  Not to diss a Love Canal answer to the Springfield Shopper too harshly, but how can a story like this not be accompanied by a photograph?

Sorry I failed to make it to Falls City Court on Friday morning for the appearance of two legendary rockers.

His final transgression was apparently telling a young girl at the fast food joint that, and I’m paraphrasing here, large chests mean large trouble.

(Mother Mercy, above, include no members, original or otherwise, from LA Guns, Faster Pussycat, Odin, D’Molls, Pretty Boy Floyd, Foxx or Reinkus Tide.)

The LA Times’ Neal Shah on the sort of legal wrangling that sounds terribly familiar to anyone who ever purchased a Dead Kennedys ticket and ended up watching Brandon Cruz.

Steve Riley is a survivor. At 51, he still plays the drums for L.A. Guns, a biker-themed hair-metal band famous mostly for once featuring Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose. Riley and first mate Phil Lewis, who sang L.A. Guns’ only Top 40 hit, “The Ballad of Jayne,” toured Australia last fall before joining Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil for a show in St. Paul, Minn.

Downe, 43, says he rejected an overture from Muscat to share the band’s name. “It’s my company. Someone from Starbucks is not going to go out and form another company called Starbucks.”

For perhaps the first and last time in his career, Downe has made a salient point. Perhaps Muscat should start a band called LA’s Best Guns?

How do we get in touch with his lawyer or manager?

It doesn’t seem particularly constructive for the maker of the above celluloid masterpiece to try and harass and intimidate a person who has merely opined the film in question sucks.

Then again, depending on the reviews for Times New Viking’s ‘Rip It Off’, we’re not necessarily above doing the same thing.

We’re gonna have a long, thrilling announcement for you very shortly concerning the new Matmos LP/CD, but prior to that, here’s the latest bit of extracurricular news from Drew Daniel :

Pardon my mass missive but I wanted to spread the word that I am now a published author. Thanks to the trusty/crusty crew of the Continuum imprint, I now have my own contribution to their 33 1/3 series of books, complete with an ISBN number and a Library of Congress Data tag and everything. My book is called “Twenty Jazz Funk Greats” and it is about the album of said name by the English band Throbbing Gristle. It weighs in at 176 (teensy) pages. It features original interviews with all four members of Throbbing Gristle, some never-before-published photos and/or drawings from their private notebooks, and lots of interpretive blood sweat and tears from yours truly. Check it out!

(Matador’s annual Xmas party for Soon-To-Be-Abandoned Kids was once again, a huge hit)

Ok, the climatic update has just been posted and while most of it is most assuredly old-fuckin’-news for regular readers of the Matablog, we have, however, managed to collect year-end Top Top Tens (12′s?  15′s?) from an All-Star cast including Stuart Braithwaite, James McNew, Roger Miller, Jennifer O’Connor, Howard Draper, Luke Horton, Times New Viking and other close pals of The Record Co.   Enjoy…and if you’re not checking your computer again until January 2, the staff, management and ownership of Matador wish you a very, very happy December 21st!

…neither Matador Records nor any of our artists signed off on this particular bit of clumsy attempted co-opting.  But we’re very pleased to see some of our favorite bands getting involved in setting the record straight and hopeful making future advertorial mavens think twice before pulling a similar stunt.

Always wear a clean pair of undies, folks, ’cause you never know when yours might up in the Daily Mail. Said tabloid’s Tom Rawstrorne is genuinely bummed at Facebook’s “30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night”

Part of the Facebook phenomenon (6.5million active users in the UK alone and growing by the day), it was set up by an American student and as its name suggests has as its basis a 30-strong list of telltale signs that the “sisterhood” should recognise as being indicative of home-time.

“Although there is now a fairly deeply entrenched drinking culture amongst young people where basically people drink for its own sake, it is also being used as a way to show people what a daring, risk-taking, funky young person they are,” he says.

Sheesh. Good thing only women get up to this kind of thing.

Go on, sue us.  We used to love you to bits, but in retrospect, the Mary Jane Girls were so much cooler than Vanity 6. 

(finally, someone agrees that listening to Meshuggah is not merely a lifestyle choice)

…because he's Metally Handicapable!  From The Local :

A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.

"If somebody has a gambling addiction, we don't send them down to the racetrack. We try to cure the addiction, not encourage it," he said.

Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, the Employment Service has agreed to pay part of Tullgren's salary. His new boss meanwhile has given him a special dispensation to play loud music at work.

"I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against."

A: Depends. Do you mean the double vinyl version, the standard CD or the CD/DVD configuration?