Butthole Surfers return

The vintage-1980s lineup of the Butthole Surfers will reunite for a series of shows in the US and Europe beginning in June, says Live Daily, minus guitarist Paul Leary, who has prior commitments (Leary has become an in-demand producer and mixer, working with Sublime, the Refreshments, the Meat Puppets, U2, Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, and others).

The band last released any music in the summer of 2002, with an odds-n-sods compilation, Humpty Dumpty LSD. Their last proper album was 2001's Weird Revolution, which was a sort-of replacement for 1998's ultimately-unreleased After the Astronaut (about half of the Astronaut songs ended up on Revolution). You could call Revolution commercially disappointing (it charted at #130, then sank), but come on, "Pepper" was a bit of a fluke, right?

Surfers lead singer Gibby Haynes put out a solo album in 2004.

Butthole Surfers tour dates:
June 24 - Asbury Lanes, Asbury Park, NJ
June 26 - 9:30 Club, Washington DC
June 27 - Electric Factory - Philadelphia
July 15 - Melkweg - Amsterdam
July 17 - Minnemeers - Ghent, Belgium
July 18 - Carling Academy - Bristol, UK
July 19 - Academy 2 - Manchester, UK
July 20 - ABC1 - Glasgow, Scotland
July 22 - Wulfrun Hall - Wolverhampton, UK
July 23 - Rock City - Nottingham, UK
July 24 - Vicar Street - Dublin, Ireland
July 26 - Kentish Town Forum - London, UK
July 28 - The Stone Church - Newmarket, NH
July 29 - Webster Hall - New York, NY (Leary supposedly to play with the band)

Here's 1993's "Who Was in my room last Night?" I believe this is the video that got Beavis and Butthead all hot and bothered.

Everclear on tour

Everclear are on tour this summer, doing mostly the festival / military base route. On Monday they played the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No word on whether the al-Qaeda prisoners are big "You Make Me Feel Like a Whore" fans.

They're not coming near me. But I saw 'em last year; read that report here.

Everclear tour dates:
June 8 - Arlington, VA - 4th Annual Crystal Rocks
June 28 - Mount Clemens, MI - Stars & Stripes Festival
July 6 - Kaneohe Bay, HI - Marine Corps Base
July 9 - Lahaina, HI - Hard Rock Maui
July 18 - Waukesha, WI - Waukesha County Fair
July 26 - Royalton, MN - Halfway Jam
July 27 - Altamont, NY - WZMR Festival Show
August 28 - Marshfield, WI - Central Wisconsin State Fair

Half of Smashing Pumpkins celebrate anniversary

Blabbermouth reports that the Smashing Pumpkins are going to commemorate their 20th anniversary with some special shows in August and September. Just guessing, but James Iha and D'Arcy probably won't be involved.

In other Pumpkins news, last month they sued their old record label, Virgin Records, reports the Associated Press.

With no current recording contract, the Pumpkins are rumored to be considering a Radiohead / Nine Inch Nails-style move away from traditional CDs, and have hinted that both new and archival material may be made available later this year. Their last album was last year's Zeitgeist, which was... you know... OK.

New Beck album (maybe) coming soon

MTV is reporting that Beck might have an album ready to stealth-drop in stores within a few weeks. Supposedly, Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame is producing. Filter says the album will be entitled Modern Guilt.

I've honestly lost track of Beck's mellow-crazy cycle; is the next album supposed to be mournful acoustic songs or whacked-out sex-bomb keyboard songs?

Here's 1999's "Sexx Laws," which was a bit of a disappointment, only charting at #21 on the modern rock charts. Watch for the Jack Black cameo:

Kids in the Hall on the death of grunge

I'm going to see the acclaimed Canadian sketch comedy group Kids in the Hall tonight (go here for tour dates). It's their first tour since 2002, and is supposedly all-new material in preparation for a new TV show or movie. I remember setting my VCR in junior high to tape CBS at 3 a.m. Sunday nights, which is when KitH aired in my hometown (obviously, it was a huge hit program on the CBC in Canada).

In celebration, thought I'd take this look back at what happens when grunge meets antidepressants:


From Kids in the Hall:Brain Candy, which came and went fairly quickly in the spring of 1996. Matador did the soundtrack, which is heavy on mid-'90s indie-pop (Liz Phair, Pizzicato Five, Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, etc.).

New Weezer video gets down with YouTube

I laughed way harder at this than I had any right to.

From the Cutout Bin: Super Deluxe - Via Satellite

Welcome to From the Cutout Bin, where we dig up old CDs that have been forgotten for whatever reason and can now be found in the dollar (or quarter) bin at your local used CD store (if your community still has a used CD store). This installment features 1997's Via Satellite, the second album from power-poppers Super Deluxe.

An example that this band has been almost completely forgotten? Their Wikipedia page wasn't created until two months ago (and not by me, OK?). And now that superdeluxe.com is a comedy short-film website (check out the Team Tiger Awesome stuff on there, it's hilarious), few people even realize that Super Deluxe was a band.

There were two streams in the Seattle scene of the '90s: grunge and power-pop. The power-pop scene was led by the Posies (you could probably make a case for lumping the Presidents of the United States of America in there too). Super Deluxe were firmly in the latter camp.

Via Satellite was released in the summer of 1997, when the big hits on modern-rock radio were "Semi-Charmed Life," "Impression that I Get," Sugar Ray's "Fly," and Smash Mouth's "Walkin' on the Sun." The atmosphere was ripe for a power-pop band to make a big splash on the charts.

But this album stiffed, big-time. Unfortunate, because it's good, but there's no stand-out hit single. It seems to be the classic example of a band zigging when they should have zagged; this album is much harder and grunge-like in its sound (especially on songs like "Lost in Your Failures") just as modern-rock radio was taking a turn to softer and more poppy. If they'd stuck with the lighter sound of their 1995 debut (which featured "She Came On")...

It's a grower. "Your Pleasure's Mine" wasn't a great song the first time, but was really good the second time. There are big-time Queen influences in "Alright," and "Half Asleep" is good in that "could have soundtracked the closing credits of a late-'90s teen movie" way. "I Can See" is good, too.

It's too long by 3 or 4 songs, at 14 tracks (see the Connells, an album that came out at the same time with similar problems), the back end is better than the front, which is bad for a new band that needs to prove itself to radio programmers and fickle reviewers, and there's nothing as great as "She Came On," which got almost no airplay itself.

Of note to '90s rock fans: the producer and mixer on this album is Tim Palmer, who did mixing work for Pearl Jam, Catherine Wheel, Concrete Blonde, Stabbing Westward, Reel Big Fish, U2, Live, and the Cure, and producing work for Kajagoogoo, Big Country, Tears for Fears, Goldfinger, and Switchfoot. He produced and mixed Sponge's Wax Ecstatic (which is very underrated), and mixed the last two Better than Ezra albums, Closer and Before the Robots. And he's still quite in demand: he's done recent work for Robert Plant, Hot Hot Heat, and H.I.M. Clearly, the man transcends boundaries, a nice way of saying he doesn't have a particular "sound." The production here is workmanlike, and doesn't get in the way of the hooks.

Here's one of the two (unsuccessful) singles: "Your Pleasure's Mine." Apparently it was featured in an early episode of Dawson's Creek (and Revolution didn't bother making a video for it):