Music's 3R's 11.16.09: Blink-182 Update, Super Bowl Halftime Performers, Aerosmith's Continued Turmoil, Lil' Wayne News, More

Posted by Aaron Titan on 11.16.2009

From Travis Barker's upcoming solo album, the future of Blink-182, and The Who performing at Super Bowl 44 to Steven Tyler/Aerosmith's continued drama, The Flaming Lips' new nudity-filled music video, Lil' Wayne's new music and documentary film, and more, 411's Aaron Titan breaks down the Right, wRong, and Ridiculous from the week in music!



Greetings

Greetings 411 readers! Aaron Titan here bringing you another edition of the always sensational, sometimes controversial Music 3R's. Just saw the always wonderful Trans-Siberian Orchestra this weekend! This was my fifth TSO show and by far, my favorite. They raised the stakes yet again this year, drastically changing their setlist to accompany several great cuts from their newly-released double-album, Night Castle. Also, their set features new pyro mechanisms, innovative LED video screens, and more lasers than I'd ever seen in my life. Awesome time had by all from what I could tell!

And now, a rebuttal of sorts. If you didn't read the column last week, you can probably just skip this part as it won't make a whole lot of sense.

Last week, my commentary on Miley Cyrus admitting to releasing a song just for promotional purposes drew a lot of comments on the pro and anti-Miley sides of the fence. Honestly, those kinds of debates are what make writing this column fun, as I enjoy hearing many people's opinions and takes on the music news stories I discuss here. I find this to be pretty interesting and hope to continue sparking rousing reader feedback comments from you all in the future.

Now granted, some people took offense for my sarcastic bashing of Miley, saying she didn't deserve such grandiose and vitriolic words from me being as young as she is. Others pointed out that she's a musician and put the comments out there for people to react to, which is what I did in my MUSIC column last week. To those that took offense, please do remember that cyber-sarcasm doesn't always come through as strongly as writers intend it to sometimes. That commentary in my column last week was in the spirit of fun and I certainly don't intend any ill will to this young entertainer, who no doubt has a long and successful career ahead of her, regardless of your opinion of her work in TV, music, and film. Let's face it: her fan base is pretty damn huge. This is a music column about popular music, her music is currently popular, so she qualifies for discussion here in my opinion. That's what we cover here on 411Mania's Music section after all, isn't it?

Oh, and to those that read the column and thought I was lame for writing about Hannah Montana, do remember that YOU read the tagline on the 411Mania Music or Home pages which detailed the exact content of the column and chose to read it. Nobody duped you into reading it, did they? Nope. HA! Seriously though, it's just entertainment guys. Have some fun. Smile. See…that's better.

So, this week was particularly slow on the music news front. I apologize for the dearth of music news here at the Music 3R's this week, but to make up for it, I've included some tidbits on new music that's come out lately or that will be coming out in the near future. There just wasn't enough out there that inspired me enough to write about my impressions on it. Plus, I certainly don't want to over-cover news that my other fellow 411 staffers have already eloquently covered quite well.

OK, let's get to work, shall we?

The Column

For those unfamiliar with the 3R's concept, here's the breakdown. I will be reporting and commenting on happenings in the music world and categorizing all the hoopla into three sections: the Right, the wRong, and the Ridiculous. The Right will feature news, albums, and announcements music-related that I'm personally stoked about. The wRong will be the bad versions of all three of the aforementioned. The Ridiculous is the worst of it all, that which makes good ol' Mr. Titan shake his head in perplexing amazement.

The Right

"The State Looks Down on Sodomy!": That's a kudos line to a buddy of mine who got obsessed all over again with Blink-182's Enema of the State album this past summer. I can't begin to tell you how many times he sang that line of "What's My Age Again" to all of us. Good times? Yeah, I suppose so! Shout out to Luke!

There's some news in the Blink-182 camp these days that I thought was pretty cool, having been a fan of these guys for a while. Travis Barker actually is at work on a solo album, which sounds like it could end up being a lot of fun. He said recently he's most likely going to get Chester Bennington, Slash, and yes folks, Blink-182 on the record. No, it won't be the song "Up All Night" that Blink played on their reunion tour this summer, but a brand new Blink song. Other collaborations Barker reportedly has for the album - on track to be finished in January/February 2010 - include Lil' Wayne, Rick Ross, The Game, Beanie Siegel, Too $hort, Federation, Damian Marley, and Willie Nelson. He's also talking about touring behind the outing in some fashion, whether that be with some sort of supergroup lineup or a DJ in the fashion of his TRV$DJAM project with the late Adam "D.J. AM" Goldstein.

Honestly, any sort of collaboration between genres and artists you wouldn't necessarily expect is extremely interesting, regardless of how it turns out. There's always that intrigue about what the final project is of the meeting of minds between two parties. The most intriguing one on Barker's project HAS to be the joint with Willie Nelson (joint pun unintended).

Barker also gave an update on a new Blink-182 album, saying "Up All Night" will be a part of whatever release format they eventually go with when they get to the album (seemingly in 2010 sometime). He mentioned the possibility of online releases, much in the vein of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails.




Who Are You? Who Who? Who Who?: News broke last week on this year's performers at Super Bowl 44 on February 7, 2010, in Miami, FL, at the Dolphins' Land Shark Stadium. Check out ESPN's equivalent to The View reacting to the news:





C'mon man! You have no idea AT ALL who…who The Who are? Who are you? Who, who? Who, who?

I mean, sure it's just two of em' left in The Who, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, with some hired hands, but I'll admit to having some fun watching this current version of The Who at VH1's Rock Honors event during the summer of 2008. I know that this sort of contradicts what I said last week about Aerosmith going on without the lead singer everyone associates with the name Aerosmith, but The Who still have Daltrey and Townshend. That's enough for me to enjoy them playing on TV while I refill my plate with snacks and grab another Miller Light. I know this won't happen, but how weird yet cool would it be to see "Happy Jack" played at the Super Bowl? Nobody would know how to react and it would be hilarious.

To get real here, they'll probably play some combination of "Pinball Wizard," "Who Are You," "My Generation," "Teenage Wasteland," and maybe one other song. These songs are big time classic songs and fit well with the biggest of big time games, so I'm OK with The Who getting tapped for one of the most coveted gigs of the year.

VH1 Rock Honors: The WhoUploaded by tvguide. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

The wRong

Aerosmith Needs a New Lead Singer…or Do They?: Man, oh man! I haven't seen band turmoil aired out in the press like this in quite a while. One of the bigger stories in music news lately has been that rock icons Aerosmith were going to look for a new lead singer, replacing Steven Tyler. Originally, Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry – who's out promoting his new solo album Have Guitar, Will Travel - claimed that Tyler had quit the band over the internet and that nobody in the band had had contact with him in months, despite several attempts.

Then, Joe Perry's solo band was playing in New York last week and guess who shows up?





OK, so Aerosmith doesn't need a new lead singer, right? Well, not the way Joe Perry tells it:

"There was all this commotion during our encore break and somebody said, ‘Steven is here.' And I was like, ‘What?' "

So after chatting briefly, Steven Tyler asks to sit in with The Joe Perry Project and they do the final encore song, Aerosmith's classic "Walk This Way."

"Being an acquaintance of 40 years, I said, ‘Why not?' So he came up and sang and that was the last I saw of him."

An acquaintance? That sure sounds like shit ain't fine. Like, if I was as pissed at my lead singer as I'm sure Joe Perry probably is, why even let the little fucker come on stage and steal your spotlight? And then, Steven seemingly bails right after the show. I don't know. Something doesn't smell right here, especially given Perry's new comments on Aerosmith's current beef with their potentially former frontman:

"He wants to take two years off from the band. The rest of the band wants to keep on working. We have so many different options to fill up that time. Anything is possible at this point. Basically, any communication that we've had over the last couple of months has been through managers, so that's been pretty strange.
I never won any money trying to second-guess what goes on in Steven's mind. I guess this is just Aerosmith business as usual."

The bottom line is that Joe Perry and the rest of the band want to do some recording and touring in that two-year gap of time, and Perry insists they're completely open to doing that with without Steven Tyler. I don't know guys and gals. What's the point of tarnishing the Aerosmith legacy more than they've kind of already done in the last decade or so with some of the less-than-stellar stuff they've been releasing and their poor tour showings from Steven, repeatedly injuring himself onstage and having to cancel dates.

Again, they should really just have fun at this point of their careers. What's left to prove and what's left to be done? What mountains can this band ascend that they haven't already? Say what you will about Aerosmith, but even extremely casual fans of this band like myself can see how popular and influential they've been over almost the last 40 years. As turned off as I am to the 2009 version of Aerosmith, I would be even more so with that version having a new lead singer and calling themselves Aerosmith. Then again, I'm not a member of Aerosmith and have no say in what they do with the Aerosmith banner and legacy. That's their right. We'll have to see what emerges from all of this, I suppose.

The Ridiculous



Lil' Wayne Update from All Angles: There's kind of a lot of Weezy news coming from all three categories for this column, but I wanted to keep it all together so in one report so I just chose the Ridiculous section. I mean, I haven't had to debate that with myself before, so that pretty much qualifies it to go right here.

OK, so we all know the guy is going to prison for the better part of 2010. Seriously though, we could end up getting 3-4 projects from Mr. Carter before he goes behind bars if he's as productive now as he's always been and claimed to be. First off, he dropped his No Ceilings mixtape recently, which I have listened to within the last 24 hours. What a fun album, simply because of all the ridiculous beats he stole and used in a way that only he could. He's got samples of Jay-Z's "Run This Town" and "D.O.A." and Kid Cudi's "Poker Face"-sampled "Make Her Say" which Wayne titles "Poke Her Face." It's a completely irreverent, party-atmosphere album, which is capped off by his rendition of the terrible Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" into a great song about going out and getting fucked up.





Then, the documentary about Lil' Wayne, The Carter, which follows him for a few months and provides an in-depth look into his life and creative process, comes out in theaters this week.





Up next is his 80-percent rock-influenced album Rebirth, which is going to be partnered in a 2-LP package with his Young Money clique album called We Are Young Money. It's been delayed so long, that I for one just wanna' see what the album turned out like. I thought his song "Prom Queen" was pretty awful, so here's hoping he didn't auto-tune the entire thing, given how creative of a rapper he is (in my opinion, not a general statement of fact people!).

He's also talking about Tha Carter IV already, saying he's done some studio work on it and that it'll be out in 2010. Now, the interview I read about that was before his conviction for gun charges, so I wonder if he'll end up trying to bust his ass and get that out before his prison stay. I mean, everybody's so used to new Lil' Wayne music coming out all the time! To ensure his reputation as THE most productive MC in the game, what better way to remain so than by delivering a potential classic with your remaining time of freedom outside bars before a fairly significant jail sentence?

New Flaming Lips Video…If You Dare: Here it is, if you so dare (male and female nudity heavily included)…the new Flaming Lips music video for "Watching the Planets." It's off of their new, fantastic album Embryonic.

To give a synopsis, since 411Mania rules prohibit me from posting a video of this nature, there's a lot of naked people who are birthed from this weird hairy vagina ball thing, sort of comparable in size to the one frontman Wayne Coyne stand inside of at their live shows and of course, in the video. Wayne is stripped down at the end of the video too, by the way. Definitely the most disturbing and weird music video I've ever seen. While it won't get any airplay, it'll most likely get a few spins over the Internet. So viewer beware, lots and lots of both male and female nudity. A band would never have tried a video like this in the pre-Internet times, as there would've been little to no way to get people to see it.

Like I said before, a slow week of music news.

Easter Eggs

Here's the Easter Egg of my column this week. As promised, some updates on new and upcoming releases. Many of these I just got off the Internet so forgive me for not having complete reviews. May of the great staffers on 411Mania have extremely thorough and reliable reviews if you check out the Reviews section of our Music page, you'll find more in-depth analyses:



The Flaming Lips - Embryonic: Let's just segway fluidly here despite the album having been out for a month or so now.. This album came out on October 13th and while I won't be getting the physical copy of it until Christmas, I think this is one of the group's more majestic and ballsy records to date. That sentiment is certainly echoed by the spirit of the music video I spoke about above.



Wale – Attention: Deficit: Wale's official studio debut album came out last Tuesday. I spoke a few weeks ago about how highly I thought of his Seinfeld-themed Mixtape About Nothing. As recommended by some of my readers, I downloaded his other acclaimed mixtape Back to the Feature, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I will do so in the coming week, I promise!

But back to Attention: Deficit, I've listened to a few tracks so far and I kind of find it containing less heart that his mixtape stuff. I don't know if its success getting to this D.C.-based MC or what, but perhaps I just need to finish it out. I definitely intend to do so on the way to work sometime this week.






Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures: While the album isn't officially released until tomorrow, the band has been streaming it online for about a week now. I preordered my copy and am damn glad I did. Essentially, this is an album that you really have to absorb before you can truly appreciate it. "New Fang," the first single, is pretty catchy, but the rest reads for me like a Queens of the Stone Age album usually does. At first, I think it's pretty OK, but after repeated exposure, I fall in love with it. I'm still in the falling-for-it process, but I definitely dig this album.







John Mayer – Battle Studies: I heard the lead single "Half of My Heart" featuring Taylor Swift. It's OK, but just OK in my opinion. It's simple, but almost too simple for what this excellent guitar player is capable of. We'll see how the rest of the collection turns out. It comes out tomorrow as well.







50 Cent – Before I Self-Destruct: While I am definitely not a big fan of 50 Cent, I enjoy Eminem a lot and think the track "Psycho" featuring Slim Shady himself – off of this album – is awesome.







Rihanna – Rated R: Comes out next week and sounds like a pretty moody album from what I gather from reviews and the lead single, "Russian Roulette." Could be a good winter album as that's when I tend to listen to the more downer stuff in my music collection.







Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster: Don't fret if you bought The Fame already. Lady Gaga is offering the eight new songs in their own separate package and is recognizing The Monster as its own album in addition to the reissue version containing both albums' material. Here's a track off of it:





Hasta Luego

Well kids, that's all for me this week. I'm definitely gearing up for some turkey and taters here really soon! Please leave comments below, and I'll see you back here same time next week. At the time I'm writing this, I'm gearing up in my New England Patriots gear for the big showdown in Indy against the Colts tonight. I've gotta' put this column to bed and get ready! Cheers!