Just a few days after the Yeah Yeah Yeah's replaced the Beastie Boys at Lollapalooza, the spot vacated by the Brooklyn rappers at All Points West this coming week is now filled by another Brooklyn rapper...JAY-Z! That's right, HOV will make his US festival debut in his own backyard on July 31 in Jersey City.
Another Lollapalooza headliner maybe in jeopardy of pulling out of this years festival as well, Jane's Addiction has been forced to cancel the Australian leg of their reunion tour due to drummer Steven Perkins getting an infection in his elbow. The Australian leg of the tour was supposed to kick of this past week starting on July 25. Lollapalooza creator and Jane's front man Perry Farrell stated “I know how excited we were to come play in Australia, and how long the fans there have waited for this. I want everyone Down Under to know that we will come back as soon as we can." Keep it hear for more info on what will happen to the band at the Chicago festival.
Since reforming this summer for a series of festival headlining gigs and a few solo ventures, Blur have no plans at the moment to do anything else with their reunion after the summer. Blur bassist Alex James told UK's The Guardian newspaper "That was what we said we'd do and we did it and it was great. It hasn't been mentioned the idea of doing anything else but hey, it was great." Prior to this the band said they were tooling around new material and hoped to come to the US. Time will tell now what they choose to do, all I can wish for is that they do make it across the pond!
Editors front man Tom Smith has lashed out at critics on the band's website saying he is bored of people asking why his band is "dark." Smith wrote "I am so fucking bored of people asking us why we're so 'dark' [...] or worse questioning our integrity for being this way. This is how we do it, it excites us to express ourselves like this, to be honest we don't even understand what the alternative is and the alternatives we can imagine are too boring for us to even consider." Smith then went on to explain how the Editors material must be this way by stating "dark is interesting, dark is exciting, dark can be funny, there’s real life in the dark, real life IS dark, when an album feels like this the fragments of hope and love that do occasionally shine through shine through ten times brighter than they would normally do so." The band's latest effort In This Light and on This Evening is slated to come out this September, meanwhile the record itself has been influenced by the dark and dreariness of London and sci-fi films such as Blade Runner. This is one of the most anticipated releases for me this year, whatever sound or how light, dark, heavy it maybe, The Editors never disappoint!