It's Britney, bitch! Looks like Zomba waited for everyone to go home before they serviced the new Britney track, "Gimme More," but expect to hear it in drive time as Labor Day weekend kicks off. This is the sound of summer, signing off.

It's a Danjahands joint, and he's all up in it like Timbo now: it's up-tempo and it's got that videogame bounce thing happening. Maybe they had this shit planned months in advance, or maybe it's just damage control on that "Baby Boy" demo that Perez Hilton leaked (which, by the way, we don't hate like everyone else).

It's no "Sexy Back," but as comeback joints go, she coulda done a hell of a lot worse. When the ballads start to trickle out, expect to get autobiography. For right now, though, the kids are about to go back to school and they're gonna need stuff to dance to. Best to pretend the last couple years didn't happen, hitch your ride to the hottest producer in the game, and make something that'll make the boys remember why they wanted to fuck you. It's Britney, bitch!

DOWNLOAD: Britney Spears, "Gimme More" (mp3)

Meanwhile, a demo for the T-Pain-produced "Cold as Fire" is now in circulation: this one's more promising, sorta like some Rick-James-in-the-25th-century type shit. You heard us: she's Rick James, bitch!

DOWNLOAD: Britney Spears, "Cold as Fire" (mp3)

     ARTiST.....: Kanye West
     ALBUM......: Graduation
     LABEL......: Def Jam
     GENRE......: Hip-Hop
     SOURCE.....: CDDA
     TRACKS.....: 13
     PLAYTiME...: 51:24
     SiZE.......: 64,3 MB
     ENCODER....: Lame 3.97 V2
     BiTRATE....: VBRkbps
     SCENE DATE.: 08/30/2007
     STORE DATE.: 09/11/2007


     Tracklist:

     01.     Good Morning (Intro)                 03:15
     02.     Champion                             02:48
     03.     Stronger                             05:12
     04.     I Wonder                             04:03
     05.     Good Life (Ft. T-Pain)               03:27
     06.     Can't Tell Me Nothing                04:32
     07.     Barry Bonds (Ft. Lil Wayne)          03:24
     08.     Drunk And Hot Girls (Ft. Mos Def)    05:13
     09.     Flashing Lights (Ft. Dwele)          03:58
     10.     Everything I Am                      03:48
     11.     The Glory                            03:33
     12.     Homecoming  (Ft. Chris Martin)       03:24
     13.     Big Brother                          04:47

Let the hating begin. Early word on the torrentz and the messageboards is all like, "Kanye Suxxxx." See what two hot new singles and an indie-rock mixtape buys you in America today? Not a goddamn thing.

Running "we're still listening to the album" thread:

- Production on "Barry Bonds" is kinda weak-sister, and the hottest name-check on the track isn't Mr. Asterisk, it's Ye repping a Robyn album. (Konichiwa Bitches!) Also, let's put it down right here that Mr. West here does something that no other rapper in the history of rappers has been able to do: he got Lil' Wayne to spit a boring verse.

THE BOSS: If you love someone, mpfree.

• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
  November 18, 2007 at TD Banknorth Garden, Boston
  Tickets on sale September 22

Ehhh, who really cares whether "Radio Nowhere" is any good or not? The really, really, really big huge news is that some ginormous pop star finally took the plunge: not the Stones, not U2, not Madonna, not Metallica . . . Bruce. Of course. Man of the people. Populist to the core. He's giving away the single. HE'S GIVING AWAY THE SINGLE. He's giving away the fucking single.

And because he's giving away the fucking single -- for a week, at least -- we'll abide by the webiquette and mention the album (Magic, due October 2 on Columbia Records, and billed as a "rock" album), a preferred retail link (see below), and the tour, which brings the full E Street Band back to town. They'll play the TD Banknorth Garden on November 18; tickets go on sale September 22.

First impressions (and the wonderful thing about giving away mpfrees is, feel free to form your own): sounds awful contemporary. Which isn't to say cutting edge or groundbreaking, unless you're still someone who finds Social Distortion and Tom Petty to be edgy. It's got that Brendan O'Brien thing going on. (By which we mean it has been micro-engineered to within an inch of its life in order to sound pristine on the radio, though not in a way you'd overtly notice: in his productions for Pearl Jam, among many others, O'Brien perfected the art of shaving the edges off capital-R Rock songs without sacrificing the grain and the grit, a near-magical boon for classic-rockers in the age of lossy compression technologies. Things sound big, but not scary big. It's almost like . . . soft big. If you wanted to be cute, you could say O'Brien invented soft-hard rock. And though O'Brien's invention is a dubious honor, it's also the kind of gradational sonic achievment that has a huge impact on the way things actually sound, even though it goes pretty much unnoticed.)

So, right, "Radio Nowhere": doesn't sound immediately dated (except for the bridge, which sounds derivatively 1980s in an interestingly Dire-Straits-meets-Bon-Jovi kinda way); it's got a wiry, Van Halen-y arpeggio simmering underneath that bar-band-by-numbers chords; and the chorus does that Springsteeny thing that the Boomers all love, where he masks his reassuringly authoratative, self-aggrandizing pronunciation (there's nobody out there) with a disingenuous but heartfelt rhetorical question (is there anybody out there?). 

DOWNLOAD: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, "Radio Nowhere" (free on iTunes)

Sort of like that episode of his brother's TV show, only with waaaay lower-end sponsors. If anyone goes to this, email us. We'll post comments . . . anonymously, of course.

Rob Zombie: huge Rocky fan. Us: not-so-secret Rob Zombie fans. Haverhill's finest b-movie auteur talked to FNX about Halloween, Haunted World of El Superbeasto, upcoming live album, and fake Wikipedia rumors. Get psyched.

DOWNLOAD: Rob Zombie interview on FNX (mp3)

Start your engines. From the inbox:

MySpace Secret Shows is very pleased to present
Broken Social Scene plays Kevin Drew "Spirit If..."
Tuesday, August 28, 2007.  FREE! / All Ages!  Doors @ 7:00 PM
At TT The Bears (10 Brookline St. Cambridge, MA 02139-4152 - 617-492-BEAR)

YOU WILL NEED A WRISTBAND - ONE WRISTBAND PER PERSON
INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO GET A WRISTBAND:

• Writsbands will be available for pick up after 2PM (NO LINE UPS PRIOR TO 1PM) Tuesday at TT The Bears.
• Entry is limited so get there early to ensure success!
• Absolutely no cameras and no camera phones will be allowed in the show
• THIS IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVED, so get there early and stay in line.

Bouncer Lit

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.smother.net/interviews/oxbow.php

Bouncers, those stone-faced guardians of the velvet rope, are known for two things: keeping "order" in your favorite nightclubs, and rearranging the faces of those who bring dischord to their (supposedly) orderly worlds.

They are not known, however, for their prose, their sentiments, their innermost feelings.

That is about to change. This week, the Phoenix's James Parker discovers that theres' a rising tide of memoirs by these glitterati gatekeepers, which he has dubbed -- wait for it -- "Bouncer Lit."

Like Chick Lit and Lad Lit before it, Bouncer Lit is a movement certain to arouse the interest of trend watchers, but, unlike Chick Lit, it features demonstrably more pummelings, beat-downs, knife fights, and overall lacerations. Whether in the work of Marc "Animal" MacYoung (A Professional's Guide to Ending Violence Quickly), Peyton Quinn (A Bouncer's Guide to Barroom Brawling) or the recent effort of Rob the Bouncer (Clublife), this is a literary movement that is unlikely to suffer from a critical backlash -- unless, that is, its critics are actually getting physically backlashed.

Among this new breed is one Eugene S. Robinson, whom fans of particularly fucked-up music may recognize as the singer for OXBOW. Eugene is fucking crazy, and he's also extremely articulate. Parker's survey of the current Bouncer Lit includes a preview of Robinson's Fight: Or, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, which will be published by Harper Collins this fall. First, an anecdote from Eugene. Second: an exclusive empeefree taken from Oxbow's current album, The Narcotic Story (Hydrahead), which we encourage you to listen to while you're reading the story (on newsstands tomorrow, and on the web this afternoon)

Eugene S. Robinson, fighter, author:

"My last night as a bouncer? I used to bounce at a club called Paradise Beach, in San Jose. And one night I get in this little dust-up, and I choke this guy out, and then later he's outside talking at me. So out I go, little knowing that the dude's brother is hiding by the door, and soon as I pass the doorjamb he hits me. Well, anyway, my jaw was a little fucking tender from this donnybrook, and I go and talk to my boss about the possibility of getting some medical attention. The guy goes: 'We can't afford that. Go chew some gum!' So now I'm pissed, and at the end of the night, when all the guys who are getting laid have already left with their women, and the only guys still in play are the ones who aren't getting any, I get in between these two groups who are going at it. 'The evening is done,' I say. 'Go home!' But one of them takes this as a signal to get his last licks in, and tries to get by me with this looping overhand right. Well, I'm still thinking about, 'Go chew some gum!', so now I'm like, 'I've got something I wanna show YOU.' And I beat the shit out of these three guys, just beat the fuck out of them. Then I hear people yelling, 'Eugene! Eugene!' and just as quickly as it started, it stopped and I was completely fucking lucid, and it was eerie and creepy. But I was trying to make a point to the boss, which was, 'If you're not gonna take care of us, this is how I take care of us!' It was lost on him, I think. Anyway, that's how I went out. But bouncing definitely impacted how I see things. When I go into a club now, I'll scope out the fucking exits, acquaint myself with the trouble spots."

DOWNLOAD: Oxbow, "Down a Stair Backward" (mp3)
CONTINUE READING: James Parker, Beyond the Velvet Rope: The Rise of Bouncer Lit

Most of the above beauties are available on eBay. Also, we highly recommend the Boombox Hall of Fame, and the fascinating History of the Boombox. This guy made a ridonculous boombox pc. More discussion here.

Van Halen
At the TD Banknorth Garden
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $49.50, $79.50 and $149.50.
Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 25, 2007 at 10:00 am

Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Amos Lee
at DCU Center, Worcester
Tuesday, October 2 at 7:00PM
Tickets: $69.50, $49.50 & $39.50
ONLINE PRESALE HERE starts October 24 (password: Metro)
Tickets on-sale to public Saturday August 25, 10 am

Dropkick Murphys, Horrorpops, Everybody Out
At Avalon
Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Tickets are $30.00
Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 25, 2007 at NOON

The Hold Steady, Art Brut, Demander
At the Roxy
Monday, October 22, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Tickets are $20.00
Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 25, 2007 at NOON

WFNX Disorientation 2007 featuring Guster, Bleu, Hooray for Earth
At the Bank of America Pavilion
Saturday, September 8, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Tickets are $10.00*
*plus $5.00 venue charge and applicable fees
Tickets go on-sale August 24, 2007 at 10:00 am

Bad Religion, the Briggs
At the Roxy
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Tickets are $23.50
Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 25, 2007 at 10:00 am

An Evening with They Might Be Giants
At the Roxy
Friday, October 19, 2007 at 7:45pm
Tickets are $20.00 and $22
Tickets go on-sale Monday, August 20, 2007 at 10:00 am

High School Musical: The Musical
Wang Theatre, Boston
October 31 - November 4, 2007
Members-Only Presale on now: www.citicenter.org/club
Public on-sale September 9
Tickets $15-$68

Spike Jonze interviews M.I.A.:

Lessons learned: Ketamin-addled Pollacks give weird haircuts; being the ex-wife of a Coppola doesn't make you immune to getting mugged; even Spike Jonze can't get an interesting interview out of M.I.A.

Obey launches MC5 clothing line:

Lessons learned: When some streetwear kid bootlegs your shit, don't sue him, just go into business with him; the White Panther logo looks really fucking cool on a t-shirt, not so much on a doodcap or an army jacket; we will write about anything if you send us records like this as swag.

Graphic design now competitive sport: move over, skateboarding:

Lessons learned: Graphic design is the new punk rock. Graphic design is the new Miami bass. And if some competitor's rag decides to bandwagon on a graphic design event, OTD will be disinvited as a judge. They scared of us! OK, OK, it probably doesn't help that we failed design class in college, or that our idea of awesome graphic design is this thing that Vicki sent us this morning:

Apollo Sunshine

Bang Camaro

Band of Horses

Wolf Parade

Neko Case

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Guster

Modest Mouse

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL
with Apollo Sunshine, Bang Camaro, Wolf Parade, Band of Horses, Neko Case, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Guster, and Modest Mouse
August 18, 2007 at Tweeter Center, Mansfield
All photos by Carina Mastrocola

There was no right-clicking Saturday at the Tweeter Center Download Festival, one of four such events occurring this month across the country, this one featuring Modest Mouse, Guster, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Neko Case, Wolf Parade, Band of Horses, Bang Camaro, and Apollo Sunshine. Indeed, it remains a mystery just what this "computah concert" (as one grizzled scalper in the parking lot called it) had to do with its name.

But if there weren't banks of computers from which fans could insta-blog to the indie masses or fill their flash drives full of live tracks, there were plenty of other diversions for a decidedly less-than-capacity crowd. One could line up for free screenprint T-shirts at the Volkswagen garage. Or have a digital photo taken at the Nikon booth. Or grab a totally sweet Nokia beer cozy. Or noodle on a Gibson guitar. Or paint a custom environmentally aware slogan on a canvas tote bag at the Natural Resources Defense Council booth, barely a hundred yards from where Gulf Oil was trying to give away free swag . . .

>>CONTINUE READING: Modest Mouse, buzzing bees: Download Fest at Tweeter Center

On the 30th anniversary of the King's death on his throne, Lisa Marie broke down and did the Nat-&-Natalie/father-daughter corpse duet thing . . . for charity, of course. It is, of course, a train wreck: Elvis onstage in the '70s, babies playing with handguns, Lisa Marie decked out in zombie eye makeup, her face transformed with faux-religious solemnity as a tear drips slowly down her face. In short, it's tacky, morbid, garish, and gorgeous -- all of the qualities for which we love the Presley clan and its ruins at Graceland. Debuted last night at the end of a particularly intense Death Week (the annual Elvis confab in Memphis), it's available on iTunes as a single.

YOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUAA!

BIRD FLU: tonight at Enormous Room

Mr. Collipark, eight zillion kids with youtube accounts, four out of five bloggers, and Winnie the Pooh agree: teenage sensation Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat" (a/k/a "Superman That Ho") is officially the viral hit of 2007, has spawned a superhero dance craze that's even more fun than that whole Chicken Noodle Soup thing, and is probably the grimiest-sounding rap vocal ever to become a hit. We're still trying to learn the dance steps, but we keep getting interrupted by new "Crank Dat" answer songs, which appear to be dropping at a rate of about three per minute: it seems quite possible at this point that "Crank Dat" will surpass rap's reigning record holder "Roxanne, Roxanne" as the most-answered song ever. Possibly this week. (See "Crank Dat Batman," "Crank Dat Spiderman," "Crank Dat Wonder Woman," "Crank Dat Aquaman," "Crank Dat Robocop," and our favorite, the Simpsons-referencing "Crank Dat Spider-Pig.")

As if that weren't enough, now that the original's getting a wide-release on Interscope (speaking of which, go find the original: the Uni version cleans it up and kinda ruins the screaming-into-a-cheap-mic, Minor-Threaty quality that made it a hit in the first place), the intertubes are flush with "Crank Dat" remixes. It's gotten so heated that the Hollerboard's got a dedicated remix thread. But nothing quite compares to what COUSIN COLE (of Atlantic Records TI Clearance fame, among other OTD faves) did to "Crank Dat" just a minute ago: his new rework flips the moment's blog-rap phenomenon into a blog-house phenomenon. It'll be destroying dance floors everywhere in about five seconds.

Most notably, it will be destroying the Enormous Room tonight (see flyer), when Cole himself steps to the decks alongside his Flagrant Fowl cohort Pocketknife. They're going head-t-head against Brooklyn's femme-tastic DJ duo the Hot Hens for some bird-flu-flavored smackdown-type battling. Do not miss.

DOWNLOAD: Soulja Boy, "Crank Dat (Cousin Cole Remix) (mp3)

DOWNLOAD: Big Digits and DJ Mark E. Moon, "Music is Magic (Live)"

OTD leaked the studio version of this track last year, but if you’re relying on studio recordings to form your impressions of Boston party-rap saviors Big Digits, you’re missing 99.9 percent of the fun. Over the past year they've stepped their live game up considerably by adding Mark E. Moon to the stage and letting him run the show like a DJ set. With a specially-modified Wii controller in one hand and a laptop's worth of fun in the other, he dials in phantom beats, top-40 hits, underground mixes, and god knows what else underneath rabid MCs TD and No. 1. Now the Big Digits concert experience is coming to a digital format near you, with the release of Congratulations You Have Just Won a Free Apple iPhone, a live album recorded during their recent performance opening for geek-tronic legend Dan Deacon. In this excerpt, Moon takes Big Digits' "Music Is Magic" under a sped-up chop of Rihanna's "Umbrella" – taking the song from zero to hyperspace in 16 bars. Big Digits hold a CD-release party for iPhone tonight (Thursday, August 16) at Hennessey's. For an idea of what's in store, check the video for their track "The World Is Yourz":

Thurston: Academy fight song

It's not exactly news that as he's gotten older, Thurston Moore has found time in his life for more than Sonic Youth. When he's not reviewing noise records with Byron Coley, making noise records with people you've never heard of, or asking his daughter if she knows how to play that Dinosaur Jr song, he's apparently found time to record a proper follow-up to Psychic Hearts, the completely unexpected and awesome-beyond-belief (and recently remastered) solo album that all your Pitchfork-reading friends will tell you is secretly better than the last (insert any number from one to five) Sonic Youth records. Trees Beyond the Academy is like that too: very little bullshit noise, lots of songs that sound more like song-songs than anything Sonic Youth writes, plus "some weird cassette tape that Thurston found at his mom's of him at 13 years old in the early 70s making some kind of sound-theatre." Trees won't be out until September. But if the "first single" (har har) above doesn't get you fucking amped, we suggest listening to this or this or this. Plus, he's spent the past few months playing nothing but Daydream Nation. Plus, he's put together a band to support it that includes all-city guitar maestro Chris Brokaw (of Come, Codeine, the New Year, too many others to mention). The rest of the band ain't no slouches, neither: SY drummer Steve Shelley, MV & EE's Samara Lubelski (spkng of which, MV & EE are at MidEast Sept 1), and No Neck Blues Band's Matt Heyner, a frequent collaborator with frequent Thurston's free-noise collaborator Chris Corsano.

Around the time the record comes out Thuston and band will be playing a college-students-only gig at the Museum of Fine Arts -- part of an annual shindig that last year included a set by Joanna Newsom (sign the petition, fuckface). If you're keeping score, the MFA is now two for two on hitting the college-kid market between the eyes, and for the second year in a row, we anticipate the ironic role-reversal of over-21 douchebags (for example, us) hiding their drivers' licenses and whipping out 10-year-old BU id's to sneak into this beeyatch. We've heard (totally unconfirmed) rumors of a special guest opener, another guitar hero (lately playing with a band who shall remain nameless) with a solo record due soon. Ticket onsale news should be available very, very soon. To recap:

• Thurston Moore band
• September 27 at the Museum of Fine Arts
• Bring your fake college ID

While the MFA hasn't officially announced the Thurston gig (too late: Thurston did), they just announced the rest of their fall indie-rock season, for which college ID's are not, thank god, required. Most shows start at 7:30. Tickets for members, seniors, students $16; nonmembers, general admission $20.

Saturday, September 8: Bill Callahan (Smog) with Sir Richard Bishop
Friday, September 21: Joe Henry
Sunday, September 23: Gruff Rhys (Super Fury Animals) and Ulrich Schnauss
Sunday, September 30: The Sea and Cake
Saturday, October 6: The Blow
Thursday, October 25: Mates of State
Sunday, November 18: My Brightest Diamond with Tim Fite ($15)

We've been marvelling these past few weeks that our old favourite band, the Hives, have managed to weather their sales-dip (unwarranted, as Tyrannosaurus Hives was fucking brilliant) without missing a beat: having fully embraced their commercial instincts, they made lemonade out of that Timbaland-collabo lemon by selling it to the WWE (see below) then snuck a sneak peak of their forthcoming single into a Nike commercial (see above). Now comes word that they'll play the Middle East in Cambridge on October 14 (huuuuge sigh of relief: this means we won't have to shell out to see them play the Garden the following night), with tickets going on sale this Friday, August 17, presumably at 9 or 10 am. We expect the MidEast show to be completely sold out by the time High School Musical 2 airs that night.

As we were pressing "publish" we also noticed that the Hives have just announced the title of their new disc -- The Black and White Album, a fantastic title which manages to trump Metallica, the Beatles, and Jay-Z in one fell swoop -- as well as its release date (Oct 8 UK, Oct 9 US), plus the identity of the first single, "Tick Tick Boom" (yes, the one from the Nike commercial) which will be available for iTunes download . . . in less than 48 hours. Of course, you can hear it right now via someone's crappy cellphone. Our first impression: a little on the genericky-Hives tip, but catchy enough to make us psyched for whatever comes next. Like maybe Pelle in Vanity Fair? Sweet. For those of you who can't wait until then, Hives fan community has YouTube links to unreleased/potential-album tracks here. And the Hives themselves have posted a wonderful teaser that mimics the old Metallica intros when they'd come out to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." See here:

DOWNLOAD: The Hives, The Black and White Album teaser (QuickTime) (or, for you iPod-video peeps, .m4v):

In this interview, Pelle tells NME, "Sometimes it felt like we were making Chinese Democracy," and that there are songs the feature "only piano and fingersnaps." Various reports have had the Hives collaborating with rap and pop producers for TB&WA, which has been making us nervous. The Tim thing was a total bust, and historically, garage-band collabos with big-name producers have ranged from things like this to . . . well, things like this. It's more than a little disconcerting that they were so willing to turn the enthralling lettrist/situationist animation of their best video into a thinly-veiled Sin City ripoff for an embattled pro-wrestling franchise. "Tick Tick Boom," though, sounds like their best Veni Vidi Vicious goodness, and since the best anyone's been able to offer up in the garage-rock arena is Black Lips (fine band, very funny, best song titled, not surprisingly, "Veni Vidi Vici"), and since some group called Belanova has had a monstrous hit everywhere else in the world by pairing a singer who looks like Amy Winehouse with a band that are dead ringers for the Hives, the time seems ripe for a reclamation of the throne.

Someone save us a seat at the side of the stage.

p.s.: The Middle East is letting loose with a bonkers fall schedule; the following also go on sale Friday:

JT, "What Goes Around" at Boston Garden, 8/10/07

We've reviewed Justin Timberlake enough that we didn't expect to have anything new to say about his show at the Garden last night, a return trip on a tour that Sharon has already gushed about anyways. Partly we wanted to see how the crowd makeup changes when he had a so-called rock band opening (answer: an even larger ratio boost, this time it appeared to be about 12:1 women). Partly we wanted to see what the HBO special is going to look like. 

The last time we saw JT -- a couple of days after the album leaked, but before most of his fans had heard it -- "What Goes Around" was greeted with blank stares. This time it was the centerpiece of the set, with Justin playing piano while rotating on a platform in the middle of his in-the-round stage. (He appeared to be playing an electric keyboard; if memory serves, he had a real-live baby grande at Avalon. What gives?) In the middle of the song, he started singing some new lyrics, and for a second we couldn't place them. "Come pick me up . . . " No, it couldn't be. "Take me out." Oh my god. "Fuck me up." Holy shit. "Steal my records, screw all my friends." Jesus H. Christ. Justin Timberlake is sneaking in the chorus of "Come Picke Me Up," a song from Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker, which still hovers in our mental all-time top 10 albums list. We suspected that maybe we were hallucinating. But when the song came back around to the bridge he did it again, sneaking in pretty much the same lines. We have no audio evidence or even a pictoral illustration, so we guess you'll just have to take our word for it. Video found! See above! (At the 1:47 mark you can hear him sing, "I wish you would . . . fuck me up . . . steal all my records.")

Other observations:

- We also suspect Justin's a Trent Reznor fan. NIN's "Closer" (aka the "fuck you like an animal" song) blared as one of the two get-back-to-your-seats songs immediately before JT took the stage (the other one was, even odder, the Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers"). And the semi-transparent-scrim stage treatments, with Justin visible behind the video projections, seemed a pretty overt homage to/ripoff of Trent's performance of "Hurt," which if you haven't seen you should.

- Timbaland's DJ set is mostly blah (here it is in three parts on youtube, but if anyone has seen it HQ, please give a shout); or, at least, as a DJ set it's pretty disappointing. As self-promotion, though, it's pretty great, and even the lack of a solid flow all the way through can't obscure some of the whoa when he drops "Billie Jean" into that Keri Hilson "Since You Been Gone" remix. Might even be better  Way better than the Robyn cover of "Since U Been Gone" that's been making the rounds.

Bad Religion

Flogging Molly

Coheed and Cambria

As I Lay Dying

Warped Tour 2007
Tweeter Center, Mansfield
August 9, 2007
All photos: Carina Mastrocola

JoJo: suicide solution

DOWNLOAD: Jo-Jo, "Beautiful Girls" (mp3)

With a new line-up of teen rap phenoms schoolhouse-rocking this summer — the Pack, Huey, Lil' Mama, Sean Kingston — it's a lousy time for an underage pop star to be hitless. So what's a girl to do? If you're Foxborough teen queen Jo-Jo and your sophomore album, The High Road, has already gone one-single-and-out, the answer is our favorite brand of novelty track: an answer song. Her reply to Kingston's smash hit "Beautiful Girls" — which flipped the Boomer national anthem, "Stand by Me," into an ode to suicidal tendencies — is unlike most other back-atcha tracks in that she doesn’t dispute the facts of the original; mostly, she just wants us to know that she is, indeed, the kinda girl who makes boys want to kill themselves. And she does it so sweetly that we’re hoping she decides to come back at Kingston's latest single, "Me Love," a bubbegum-dancehall rework of Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er."

Speaking of great remakes on the pop charts, that Gym Class Heroes/Fall Out Boy rework of Jermaine Stewart's "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" has erased all our horrible memories of that terrible "Cupid's Chokehold" song (which will easily place as the most annoying song of 2007, and possibly of the 21st century to date). This is superstar material. Sure, flipping the theme of the song is in bad taste -- Jermaine died in 1997 of liver cancer after a long bout with AIDS -- but hell, the whole thing's in horrible taste. Scheming, macking, goofing, and sliding around like a combination of Will Smith and Justin Timberlake, Travis McCoy projects the kind of safe-but-naughty sexuality that makes 15-year-old girls SMS their panties off:

Before we get to the regularly-scheduled installment of "Tuesday Ticket Alert," we bring you news of the fall season at the ICA-Boston, which is officially on fire.

September 23: at 4 and 8 pm, MISSION OF BURMA. Boston punk legends make their new ICA debut, presented with The Critique of Pure Reason. Tickets: $25 general admission; $20 members, students, and seniors

We'll let that sink in for a minute. Now back to our show:

Paula Cole and Mandy Moore
At the Berklee Performance Center
Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $30.00
Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 10:00 am 

Stevie Wonder
At the Bank of America Pavilion
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $40.00, $55.00, $75.00 and $125.00*
*plus $5.00 venue charge and applicable fee.
Tickets go on-sale Monday, August 13, 2007 at 10:00 am

Toby Keith and Miranda Lambert
At the Tweeter Center
Saturday, September 22, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Tickets are $29.00 and $65.00*
* plus applicable fees per ticket
Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 10:00 am

Scorpions
At the Orpheum Theatre
Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $39.50 and $51.00
Tickets go on-sale Friday, August 10, 2007 at NOON

Motion City Soundtrack, Mae, Anberlin, and Metro Station
At the Palladium
Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Tickets are $22.00
Tickets go on-sale Friday, August 10, 2007 at 10:00 am

We promised, so here's the rest of the Tegan and Sara set from First Act Guitar Studio on Saturday. We cut most of the banter out of the videos, but since we know how precious all that sisterly love is to y'all, we left the conversations in for the mp3s (VBR-encoded, by the way, for the geeks in the audience). The video for the first song from the set (the title track from their new album, The Con) isn't here because we posted it on Saturday, feel free to go have a look-see.

We're also curious whether anyone out there would download these in m4v/mp4 iPod video format. If you want 'em that way, holler at us in the comments and we'll get you the files. UPDATE: See below!

AUDIO:
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, WFNX Interview (Live in Boston, 08/04/07) (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "The Con (Live in Boston, 08/04/07)" (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "Nineteen (Live in Boston, 08/04/07)" (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "Back In Your Head (Live in Boston, 08/04/07)" (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "Living Room (Live in Boston, 08/04/07)" (mp3)

VIDEO:
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "The Con (Live in Boston)" (ipod video)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "Nineteen (Live in Boston)" (ipod video)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "Back In Your Head (Live in Boston)" (ipod video)
DOWNLOAD: Tegan and Sara, "Living Room (Live in Boston)" (ipod video)

STREAM:

VIDEO: Tegan and Sara, "Nineteen"

VIDEO: Tegan and Sara, "Back in Your Head"


VIDEO: Tegan and Sara, "Living Room"

DOWNLOAD: Drug Rug, "Tiny People" (mp3)
WATCH: Drug Rug at YouTube
FRIEND: myspace.com/drugrugdude

Along with Mean Creek and Hats and Glasses, Drug Rug are among our favorite newish local bands led by a boyfriend-girlfriend team making beautiful music together, as Pepé Le Pew would say. On their forthcoming Drug Rug debut, Tommy Allen and Sarah Cronin are joined by a killer supporting cast: Apollo Sunshine frontman Jesse Gallagher; Allen’s brother and Viva Viva bandmate, Johnny; Dead Trees’ Mike Cummings and Noah Rubin; former Lot Six guitarist Julian Cassanetti; and Tulsa frontman Carter Tanton, who recorded the album in his Allston basement. But it’s the songs of Allen and Cronin — simple, timeless-sounding little pop gems like this 12-string-and-xylophone-driven number — that take center stage. Catch them thisThursday, August 9, at T.T.'s.

The Beastie Boys at Bank of Americ