People do love the ukulele these days, from Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele — who is just a bit too adorable for my tastes — to a seemingly endless parade of YouTube videos featuring amateur uke takes on popular songs of today. Still, occasionally overly-precious Swede Jens Lekman, ...

Give credit to Jim DeRogatis for being a relentless pain-in-the-ass to Bono in the middle of a glad-handing radio event last night in Chicago. While I imagine Bono would have preferred to discuss whether the new U2 album is just a great 2009 album or the greatest, DeRogatis decided to ask a series o...

I've never been to SXSW, so it's a little hard for me to understand how exactly the whole thing works from the generally ecstatic coverage the event receives, especially from online sources. As far as I can tell, attendees wander from jam-packed showcase to jam-packed showcase, largely to see bands ...

For a rough-looking guy with a giant beard, Jamey Johnson has done relatively well in mainstream country music, with award nominations and a top ten hit, "In Color." However, "In Color" was a touching track about a veteran showing old pictures to his grandson, the sort of thing that tends to do well...

It's not a surprise that the new U2 album is, barring some sort of crazy coup by Taylor Swift fans, going to hit No. 1 on the album charts next week, but music biz projection types seem to think that Bono & co. are going to scan right around 500,000 copies the first week out of the box which to say ...

The Pitchfork Music Festival is starting to roll out the acts playing Chicago's Union Park July 17-19, with the slate for Friday night—where bands will play setlists chosen by ticket buyers—being announced. The lineup is loaded with indie's elders: Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo, Tortoise (...

So, Wayne Coyne doesn't really care for the Arcade Fire, dropping some really spectacular quotes— including the bon mot "They have good tunes, but they're pricks, so fuck 'em"—into an interview with Andy Greene of Rolling Stone. More of Wayne gone wild: "I'm a fan of them on one level, b...

The Birmingham Weekly reports that local classic rock station Eagle 106.9, with no prodding from the FCC or corporate higher-ups, censors the Eagles' "Life In The Fast Lane" to remove the "god" from the line "We've been up and down this highway / haven't seen a goddamn thing." I don't know if it's s...

A few weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen fans were up in arms after tickets to his hotly anticipated homecoming shows appeared on Ticketmaster's "secondary market" site TicketsNow suspiciously close to their onsale time. But somehow, the ticketing behemoth managed to top itself, faux pas-wise, with the No...

Things Fall Apart , the Roots album that bumped the Philadelphia band from hip-hop underdogs to the favorite rap group of thousands of white kids (this one included, for awhile), celebrated its 10th anniversary on Monday. With the band being installed as the house musicians for Late Night With Jimmy...