The album is dead; long live the album

Interesting trend popping up in the news this week: artists doing their damnedest to make sure the album survives as an art form.

As the Associated Press notes on MSNBC.com, the list of artists taking a moment to perform classic albums live in their entireity has ballooned from an oddity into a full-blown trend. In recent months we have seen: Lou Reed playing Berlin on its 35th anniversary, Public Enemy performing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Sebadoh playing Bubble and Scrape, Mission of Burma performing Vs., Liz Phair recreating Exile In Guyville (which she will do again later this month), and -- well, okay, THIS isn't exactly news -- Roger Waters playing the entire Pink Floyd classic Dark Side of the Moon as his second set at Coachella. Not to mention similar recent performances of whole albums by artists as diverse as Jay-Z, Lucinda Williams, Sonic Youth, Wilco, Slint, Iron Maiden and GZA.

In the era of the download, where individual tracks and custom playlists have gained prominence in the marketplace, it's great to see that the artist's vision of a substantial set of interconnected songs can still have a place at the table. Rock on, album-makers...

Live Nation signs Nickelback (and Madonna and Jay-Z and Shakira...)

Those familiar with the cartoon classic Pinky & The Brain will also recall its trademark catch-phrase, wherein dumb-as-toast Pinky asks Brain what they're going to do tonight and he responds, in full megalomaniacal flower, "The same thing we do every night, Pinky -- try and take over the world! Bwa-ha-ha!"

This naturally comes to mind when reading about the latest move by Live Nation, the already-pseudo-monopoly national concert promoters who have now signed so-called "360" deals -- albums, concert tours, merchandising, the works -- with four majors acts, as well as a less comprehensive deal with U2.

Joining Madonna, Jay-Z and Shakira in the Live Nation ranks is Nickelback, the band that updated 80s corporate rock for the 00s -- like anyone was begging for that to happen. In any case, you couldn't find a more emblematic band for a company that seems to be bent on world domination.

Noel Gallagher: Wankerboy

This just in from DV Staff Writer Bruce Rusk (who's going to get his own account any moment now so I don't have to keep posting these for him):

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Professional foot-in-mouth-head-up-ass practitioner and sometime Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher has launched his semi-annual "Hey! No one's paying attention to me so I'm going to dis an artist who is still relevant" press brief.

It seems Noel is very upset that Jay-Z was selected as the Saturday headliner for the annual Glastonbury Music Festival.

The alleged musician said it was "wrong" to have hip-hop at the event which is traditionally the domain of indie rock bands.

"Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music." Uh huh. Indie bands... playing guitars... hmmm. So in other words, white guys. Sure Noel, instead of the most successful and popular hip-hop artist of the day, let's prop up a dozen interchangeable, cookie-cutter four-piece white guy emo-rock Beatle poseurs with their mod hair-dos and acoustic guitars playing the same damn indie-rock rehash for 12 hours.

But Noel, didn't you hear the Neil Diamond is headlining on Sunday? Where's the hue and cry against the inclusion of aging white crooners?

Coincidentally, Noel is also performing at Glastonbury. But unlike Jay-Z, he wasn't invited. He had NME.com contact the festival organizer and ask them if he could perform.

So, to recap, Jay-Z was invited, wankerboy begged to be included.

At least he didn't call Jay-Z a nappy headed ho.