Trent Reznor, halfway to an EGOT

Wow. Last night, this guy:


won an Oscar.


Looking awfully cleaned-up with that tux, Trent.

New Foo Fighters: "Rope"

The Foo Fighters' new single, "Rope" was released to radio on Wednesday. Hear it here. As we mentioned Friday, the new album, Wasting Light, comes out April 12. Antiquiet went to a secret show the band did in Santa Barbara and have some videos of some of the new songs.

What do you think? It's clearly in the same vein as "Best of You," "The Pretender," "In My Life," and other 21st-century Foo tracks. But there seems to be an added element of cock-rock: is that an '80s-metal solo towards the end?

This week in reunions... Blink-182! STP!

* In the week's most exciting news, Spacehog are back together and working on an album, their first since 2001. Track their progress here. I like Spacehog: 1998's "Mungo City" is very under-rated. And the lead singer used to be married to Liv Tyler.


* Blink-182 are working on an album, which may or may not be out before they play a run of European shows beginning in mid-June.

* Stone Temple Pilots, who have been back together for enough time that it may not really be a "reunion" anymore, may be putting out another album this year. Scott Weiland may be putting out a Christmas album this year, too. In the meantime, the band's touring Australia in March.

* That Oleander reunion album may be out by April. Maybe.

Bass player week: Sean Yseult's autobiography

Sean Yseult, the bass player from White Zombie, just put out an autobiography. It's entitled I'm In the Band: Backstage Notes from the Chick in White Zombie, and it's as much coffee table book as memoir. Yseult's book joins such other '90s rock memoirs as Juliana Hatfield and the drummer from Semisonic.

Don't hold your breath for a White Zombie reunion anytime soon. Yseult says she hasn't spoken with Rob Zombie in 14 years, nor have any of the other former band members.

Coming soon...

Several of the bigger artists of the '90s have albums in the works:

* The Foo Fighters' new album Wasting Light comes out April 12. Krist Novoselic plays on one of the tracks, and Pat Smear is back in the band! Here's the first video, "White Limo" (featuring Lemmy from Motorhead)


* John Frusciante is gone, but the Red Hot Chili Peppers are in the studio working on a new album with new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, formerly a touring musician for the band. Flea's Twitter is apparently the resource for recording updates. No release date has been announced, but the band is playing festivals in Japan in August and Brazil in the fall, so expect something around then.

* Radiohead's King of Limbs is out now electronically. If you want a hard copy, wait until May 9.

* R.E.M.'s new album Collapse Into Now comes out March 8. Four songs from the album have been released so far; I particularly like "Uberlin." Sadly, they've chosen not to tour for this one.


* Green Day will release a(nother) live album, Awesome as Fuck, on March 22. It has one new song, "Cigarettes and Valentines." See full tracklisting here.

Bass Player Week: Ex-Alice in Chains' Starr busted for drugs

Mike Starr, former bass player for Alice in Chains, was busted in Utah last week for possession of prescription drugs. TMZ has the mugshot, in this case because Starr was featured on a recent season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Starr left Alice in Chains during the Dirt tour in 1993 and was replaced by Mike Inez, who's still in the band.

This week in break-ups: Beady Eye! Live!

* Ed Kowalczyk is spending the month of March touring solo around the US. Part of the dates are his regular Open Wings Broken Strings dates, featuring solo acoustic stuff. For this run, the guy from Tonic and the girl from Sixpence None the Richer will be opening up.

* Oasis-minus-Noel-Gallagher are calling themselves Beady Eye, and their first album comes out at the end of the month. The first single, "The Roller," did not chart as well as expected when it came out in Britain earlier this year.
Listen for yourself:


* In case you hadn't heard, the White Stripes (who just barely qualify for this blog, their first album having been released on a tiny indie in June 1999), broke up. Look for Jack White in about 40 other bands.

* Staind's Aaron Lewis has a solo album coming out soon. It's supposedly a country record. Now let us never speak of this again.

Portland, where the dream of the 90s is still alive

IFC's new show Portlandia is intermittently amusing, but overall, I've enjoyed it (the season finale airs Friday). The best sketch, by far, has been the one where Fred Armisen (who spent the '90s in Trenchmouth) tells Carrie Brownstein (who spent the '90s in Sleater-Kinney) all about Portland, where the dream of the '90s never died:

Bass Player Week: A tale of two Smashing Pumpkins

Ex-Smashing Pumpkins bassist D'Arcy Wretzky, who left the band in 1999 and now lives in rural Michigan, spent some time in jail last week because some of her horses have been running around free and she skipped several court appearances to deal with the problem. Long-time readers may remember D'Arcy phoning into a Chicago radio station to free-associate about all sorts of random things about two years ago. If you'd like to see D'Arcy's (extremely-unflattering) mugshot, go here. You know, if I wasn't nervous about the laws on libel, I would speculate about certain aspects of D'Arcy's personal life, given these two incidents and that picture.

Meanwhile, the current (and fourth, if you're counting) Smashing Pumpkins bassist, Nicole Fiorentino, has revealed that she's one of the children on the cover of the band's 1993 album, Siamese Dream. Which means yes, she was in elementary school when the album came out. Fun fact: Fiorentino is experienced at being a replacement member of a once-beloved band; she was in a latter-day version of Veruca Salt before joining up with the Billy Corgan Experience.

This week in reunions... Cold! Unwritten Law!

* Cold are back for the first time since 2005. You might remember them as the Limp Bizkit associates whose label paid a fortune to let them open up for Weezer, whereupon they got regularly booed off the stage. Rivers Cuomo later wrote their biggest hit, "Stupid Girl." Anyway, they're touring beginning March 15, and here's the first single off their new album.


* Soundgarden are going to record a new album. In the meantime, a live album recorded in 1996 comes out next month. Here's an interview with Kim Thayil, where he mentions the band may be doing some more live dates, depending on Matt Cameron's Pearl Jam commitments.

* Unwritten Law are getting ready to release their first album since 2005, and they're doing some dates on this summer's Warped Tour.

* Blur are getting together to record every now and again, Graham Coxon says. But he also says to expect new material around 2017.

We're back!

Hello all. Back from hiatus, and invigorated to talk about the sounds of two decades ago. You know what got my creative juices flowing again? The big top-40 station here has done three "Big '90s weekends" in a row, full of Sugar Ray, Ace of Base, Digable Planets, Gin Blossoms, and more. And it made me realize that yes, I am the same age as those slightly unhip people grooving to "Big '80s weekends" were around the turn of the century. sigh.

If you've missed having regular posts on this site, I hope you've filled the '90s-shaped hole in your Internet life with the absolutely outstanding series Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? on the AV club. I can't recommend it enough, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the final installment, on 1999 (will they mention Stroke 9 and Vertical Horizon? Fingers crossed!).