Starting this week with tidings from the good news department, Scottish music blog The Pop Cop is back online. Google shut down the blog last month and blocked site owner Jason from accessing three years of his work in his archive. After a Facebook campaign which raised awareness with Scottish bands like Franz Ferdinand and asked people to write to Google about it, Jason got his work back using Google’s own RSS reader tool, without any help from Google themselves. The site continues at thepopcop.co.uk.
You may have had the misfortune of seeing US reality TV “personality” Heidi Montag’s online tape. No, not a sex tape as you might predict but an audition tape. The video uploaded to Youtube shows Montag firing guns at targets after saying to the camera: “This is for you Michael Bay”. The video is her public audition for the replacement role of Megan Fox in Transformers 3. It’s unlikely to get her hired but it has spawned a parody site transformers3auditions.com with Ashton Kutcher, Ben Kingsley and hundreds of members of the public making their own jokey auditions.
In the free downloads department this week, State.ie are giving away a free label sampler from Ireland’s best independent label at the moment Richter Collective. The label with a DIY spirit is home to a glut of Ireland’s best guitar-heavy bands like Adebisi Shank, The Redneck Manifesto, Enemies, Worrier, BATS and more. Grab the 15-track sampler.
If you’re in a festival mood, or more specifically, a European electronic festival mood, you’ll know that Sonar takes place in Barcelona this weekend. If you’re not there you can still take advantage of Warp Records’ download store Bleep.com’s exclusive MP3 giveaway. The site has given away eight (mostly) unreleased tracks from UK artists playing the festival including Broadcast, F**k Buttons, Hudson Mohawke, Roska and King Midas Sound.
For more festival anticipation or for the seemingly thousands of Irish gig-goers who travelled to the same city for Primavera Sound 2010 last month, the New York radio station WFMU has archived hours of live broadcasts from the festival including sets from Major Lazer, Gary Numan, The Slits, Van Dyke Parks and Pavement.
Finally, if you still need another festival hit, the always brilliant NPR in the US are hosting complete live sets from last weekend’s Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. In great sound quality, you can hear full sets from She & Him, Dan Deacon, Norah Jones, Regina Spektor, LCD Soundsystem and many more. It seems NPR have a live set from every band who played so there’s hours of listening to do.
June 18th, 2010 at 11:05 am
That’s great that The Pop Cop is back online - an excellent resource.